I have been called out. By my mentor. Like Kwai Chang Caine, AKA “Grasshopper” on the Kung-Fu television show from the 70’s. “How quickly they forget” he says. Undaunted, Unrepentant and not at all unusual, my brain goes into overtime crafting a response. Sure, it started innocently enough; Connie Kadansky asks a great and simple question based on something she had read. It included a definition of sales and Connie asked her friends on the AzSalesPros, communications list how this group of 500 plus sales professionals would define sales.
As the author of the Solomon Sales System it only makes sense to post back the answer already written in that work. “Sales is creating change by choice and relationships by intention.” Months were spent crafting that definition and why it is what it is. It is simple, elegant and powerful. Ok, yes, I am a bit biased.
John Buie, from whom I have learned so much, and enjoy intensely the rare opportunities for discourse on sales we get to share, fired back the dreaded judgment of shame in my forgetfulness of not remembering the definition from his amazing piece of work called PainPowerFit. PainPowerFit is the single best intellectual property on qualifying transactions or deals I have ever seen. And I have seen a lot of them…
John, when he wasn’t calling me out for forgetting his
definition was kind enough to re-iterate it for those unwashed and forgetful
sales people who show not nearly enough respect for his intellectual offspring.
His definition is "Talking
to Power about Pain in specific, quantitative and referential terms (stories)."
Now
you know, if I haven’t already made it clear, how much I truly respect both
John and his intellectual property on sales.
Taking my tongue out of my cheek for a moment, allow me to say,
companies would be very wise to understand the model, adopt it, quit asking the
government for bail out money and sell their way out of their problems versus
saddling the public with their foolishness.
<replacing tongue now.>
So
with that much appreciation in my soul, you can imagine how difficult it is to
tell John, Uhhm, ahem, you are wrong.
The
question was to define sales. What is
sales? Well, let’s examine sales from
the perspective of the three participants in the sales cycle, the seller, the
buyer and the sales professional. The
seller hires the sales professional and expects them to generate revenue by
changing the ownership of the sellers product or service from his to the
customer. The seller expects the sales
professional to show up, perform whatever activities are required to achieve
revenue goals, whether specifically articulated or not, and is willing to pay
them for that service.
The
expectations of the buyer, when not overwhelmed with fear that the sales
professional is going to puke his/her personal agenda all over them is to solve
a critical problem or achieve a significant gain AND that the sales
professional MAY have some means of achieving that. Because they do not know what the agenda of
the sales professional really is early in their relationship, they keep some
barriers in place so as not to be taken advantage of. They have an expectation that some of the
sales professionals they will be talking to will try to exert influence on them
regardless of their needs and they do not want to feel taken advantage of
afterwards. Because their desire to
solve their critical pain is greater than their fear of being taken advantage
of, they will allow the sales professional to orbit the problem and offer
solutions. They are also extremely
likely to research answers on the internet in forums, communities and websites
that pertain to the critical problem.
Finally, when they find a solution that seems to best match their
critical need and wherewithal capability, they expect to see a return on
investment similar to what they learned would be true in their research or
education phase.
The
sales professional expects he/she must wake up in the morning, find people who
need the product or service of the company they represent (I.e. specifically
looking to create a change in their lives,) build trust and credibility to
overcome the barriers to really understanding what the buyer wants and needs
and aid the buyer in recognizing the return on investment his offering brings. Great sales professionals recognize that in
addition to the qualifications specifically required to solve the critical
problem, RELATIONSHIP criteria fall to either the investment side or the return
side of the equation in the buyers mind and the better a sales professional can
fulfill those, the more cooperation and happiness he will have from the buyer
going into and long after the sale.
THEREFORE,
sales is “creating change by choice and relationships by intention.”
The
seller expects to create change in ownership, the buyer expects to create
change in needs and wants and the sales professional expects to be the creator
of that change, all by choice for all of the participants. To do so, the sales professional must have
sufficient relationship development capabilities and intentionally use them to
develop trust, foster credibility and discover interest to effectively be the
catalyst of choice between the buyer and the seller.
I
would submit however, no better explanation of HOW sales is made than my most
esteemed colleague’s explanation within the PainPowerFit model. I am also happy to report that I will be
teaching that model specifically in the qualification segment of the upcoming
online weekly coaching/training program and if you want to learn it as well as
you can along with the rest of effective selling I am happy to get you the
information.
Respectfully
Submitted,
Michael D. “Grasshopper” Goodman
goodman@ussalesgroup.com
480-874-3664
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