DEVELOPING SALES PERFORMANCE

It is always fascinating to get feedback from clients on their perceptions of consultants. I belong to a group of freelance consultants who, from time to time, organize a clients' forum at which selected clients are invited to give feedback on their experience in using consultants. At one of these forums a client, who had invited tenders for a consultancy contract worth £500,000, commented on the mixture of responses he got: 'The worst compensated for their incompetence by their arrogance; they couldn't answer simple questions. The ones we appointed were the opposite - technically excellent. Moreover they were sensitive to the cost implications of the project and ensured we had the financial resources to implement the changes required.' Another client commented, 'The consultant made it easy for us to buy - it was not hard work for us. At no time did we feel that we were being sold to.'

Consultancy firms nowadays often solicit feedback from prospects and clients on their performance, after a sales effort or on the completion of a project. Follow-up after a sales effort should be implemented irrespective of whether the effort resulted in success.

One head of a firm tells an interesting story concerning one of his fellow directors, who asked a prospect what had clinched the sale in favour of his own practice. The client replied, 'It's because your people looked more like a team than the competition.' The director probed to find out what had led the client to this conclusion. 'A very simple thing,' replied the client, 'when your competitors made their presentation two of their team gave a disparaging look concerning the third, who was presenting.' How frightening to think that a major sale was affected by such a simple piece of body language! But what helpful intelligence in managing sales training.

One of my associates talks about organizations that seem to have a 'sales prevention department'. Presumably no organization has the aim of preventing sales, any more than a salesperson would wish to have the negative effect quoted above. Yet everybody who is involved in selling will have experienced occasions when they leave a sales meeting knowing that they have failed. The failure is not that the customer did not want to buy - that possibility always has to exist if you want to be anything more than a high-pressure salesperson. The failure is because the customer might well have bought, but poor selling technique resulted in the salesperson failing to convert the opportunity to a sale.

There are no techniques that will guarantee success in selling consultancy every time. But a good management process, which enables lessons to be learned and applied from experience, will enhance selling performance.