Measuring Up

The Science of Sales Success uses the MeasureMax selling system as its plug-and-play framework for you to custom-tailor the book's concepts to your sales situations. MeasureMax is short for "Measure to Maximize." The powerful business axiom, "You can only manage what you can measure," is its engine. By using this unique selling system, you learn how to help customers measure in financial terms the value they receive from achieving their goals via your products and services. Some examples are shown in Exhibit I-2.

With traditional selling, customers venture:	With the plug-and-play format of MeasureMax, customers state:
"I need to improve reliability by 5 percent over last year."	"My goal is to prevent annual production losses of $50,000 due to unscheduled downtime."
"I need to reduce operating expenses significantly."	"My top priority is to save $30,000 on administrative paperwork."
"I need to increase revenues by 15 percent."	"My number one objective is to add $1,000,000 to net profits."
"I need to gain market share."	"My top-ranked goal is to generate $5 million in sales for every one percent of increased market share."
"I need to upgrade quality."	"My most pressing priority is to reduce mean time between failures to lower warranty costs by $250,000."

Exhibit I-2: Comparing traditional selling to the MeasureMax selling system.

This selling system also provides you with the means to influence results by measuring the progress of your sales opportunities while they are occurring. No more postmortems on lost sales after it's too late to do anything. You and customers learn how to take the guesswork out of advance-or-abandon decisions. Some examples are shown in Exhibit I-3.

With traditional selling, salespeople venture:	With the plug-and-play format of MeasureMax, salespeople state:
"I have a great chance to get the sale."	"In this market segment and dealing with a vice president of manufacturing, I can demonstrate that our two unique strengths will achieve her goal of improving productivity by 15 percent or $2,000,000 annually."
"Both of my sales opportunities are in the qualifying stage."	"For the first sales opportunity, I only have six of the nine critical purchasing criteria measurable. In the second opportunity, I only have four of the nine purchasing criteria measurable. My first opportunity is definitely more qualified at this stage."
"My proposal should meet all their requirements."	"I can connect seven different features to the customers' three measurable benefits; four with measurable value; three with an external focus, and two of them are unique strengths. I can definitely value-justify their investment (and our price)."
"It looks like our products and services will be a good fit for this customer."	"In this market segment, manufacturing managers' primary goal is to reduce the number of returns. They typically use a system of evaluation that measures warranty expenses on a dollar-cost-per-incident basis."
"I am pretty sure the customer will be able to afford our products."	"The way they are measuring the benefits from achieving their goals to increase production by $3,000,000 annually makes me question whether they will be able to justify their investment."
"I seem to be making good progress."	"I have made three in-person sales calls without understanding how they will know whether they achieved their goal of 'increasing market share.' If I cannot find out what measurements they will use on the next sales call, I'm going to invest my selling efforts elsewhere."

Exhibit I-3: Comparing traditional selling to the MeasureMax selling system.

This book also shows you better methods for applying best practices. Best practices are the strategies and tactics from past sales successes that you repeat in similar situations. Logic seems to dictate that if they worked in one situation they should work in similar ones. Yet, how do you know these sales situations share enough similarities to make these best practices apply?

You probably rely on gut instinct and common sense. The Science of Sales Success adds to your insight by providing you with the means to put to use not only anecdotal war stories involving how "Joe sold Mary" but also analytical evaluations. You learn not only what best practices worked but also how and why they worked. You learn to predict and duplicate success so sales orders become planned events, not random occurrences.

The common denominators you will use to make best practices analytical are:

• Customers' goals and benefits

• Market segments that share those goals

• Strongest features or unique strengths that achieve those goals

• Systems of evaluation used to calculate the value of those goals, and the "costs" of doing nothing

• Positions of customers that determine their goals

• Competitive offerings that match up to customers' goals

• Profit levels earned from achieving customers' goals

Note that each common denominator contains the word goals. The Science of Sales Success revolves around helping your customers achieve their goals, thereby making you the person they want to do business with. Its selling system increases in value the more you use it, as your database of sales knowledge increases.

The Science of Sales Success will work for you because it encourages you to answer, in very specific terms, the following four questions:

1. What do you know about new sales opportunities from your past experiences that will help you to earn higher profits for providing measurable value?

2. What do you need to find out to determine the potential for success in any particular sales opportunity?

3. How well did you find out from customers the specifics involving your sales opportunities?

4. What do you still need to find out or do next in your sales opportunities based on what you have already found out?