The sales process made simple by Blair Singer

I recently heard Blair Singer speak at a seminar in Barcelona. This blog post is a summary of my notes on his session on sales. He spoke of the importance of selling ability and its influence on your income, your promotions, your relationships and ultimately where you take your life.

Every sales process is essentially the following six steps:

1. Find somebody with Money ("That guy looks good")
   
2. Approach and contact ("Hey, do you have a minute?")
   
3. Present and ask for the sale ("After 17 years experience with customers such as X, Y; I know our solution can be of help to you Mr Customer")
   
4. Handle objections (Turn No into Yes)
1. First acknowledge the objection ("I understand that you are happy with the current product")
   
2. Second ask a question ("What are the existing levels of waste?")
   
5. Close ("Excellent, the product will leave our warehouse tomorrow first thing.  Cash or credit card?")
   
6. Ask for Testimonial
1. Before and after, story with numbers ("Before I met Conor I was unable to string 5 words together, now I regularly give powerful persuasive speeches and kids ask me for autographs")
   

Most people’s best sales presentation is their explanation of why they haven’t sold anything.  Most salesmen think they are finished at number 5 in the process.

Blair spoke of the "pipeline" and a need to understand the numbers.Roughly, 50 calls leads to 12 conversations, leads to 6 meetings, leads to 1 sale.  It will differ between products and industries but essentially there is no world in which everyone you contact will buy. Every “no” is a step closer to the sale. Every “no” opens up a moment of power. Do not fear the “no”. Do not censor yourself to avoid having your buyer say “no”. Get the “no” and then begin your objection handling process.

Energy matters and you must learn how to give yourself energy. When you are full of energy you will be able to take more risks, go the extra mile, stay when others would leave. Celebrate all wins. Jim Rohn has a nice story called “The ant philosophy”. When do ants give up? Never. They will keep going until they find a way over, around or through the obstacle. The ant philosophy is a good philosophy for humans as well.

School has taught us to fear mistakes, to fear giving the wrong answer. If you did well in school, you learned to work in that system – don’t take responsibility, don’t be too visible and don’t ever make mistakes.

SPIN Selling is a great book on high value sales by Neil Rackham. Effective high value selling (over $100) is different than low value, single decision maker sales. The aggressive salesman may be able to sell plenty of low value product, but is a failure when there is an extended sales cycle and multiple buyer decision makers. In high value sales, the key success factor is to be able to coach your buyer to be able to sell your solution when you are not there – you must help the buyer verbalise the current problem, the urgency, the needs that must be fulfilled and then connect with why your solution best meets those needs.

Three pearls of Australian management wisdom

I was at the Sydney Cricket Ground yesterday and sat in the crowd with my friend Maurice.  We watched Ricky Ponting and his Australia team score 267 runs against the Pakistan team on an overcast but warm day - perfect temperature for sitting outside.

Maurice shared with me three pearls of wisdom that had been passed down to him by an early boss:

1. Don't polish turds
2. Don't boil oceans
3. Hope is not a strategy

 You can put glitter on a turd, but inside it will still be a turd.  Life is too short to have any great success heating an entire ocean. If you don't have any idea how you're going to get there, it's unlikely that you get there.

We also talked about the best books we had read in 2009.  I am running low on fiction ideas.  Any thoughts?

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Five days in Saudi Arabia

On Thursday evening I was sat at a low table with Maureen.  “It is nice to be able to speak to people”. She clarified “At most events the majority would have had several beers by now”. “We can have a real conversation and I like that.”

I knew that Saudi Arabia was alcohol free, but it was a different thing to know and then to live it and see so many of my own cultural moments where alcohol has become part and parcel of the experience – relaxing after the last meeting with a beer, wine with food, a beer as we watch the sun go down.  Diageo, Budweiser, Heineken have done a powerful job in rooting alcohol at the core of my ideas of enjoying special moments.

I woke my first morning to the call for prayers from a mosque that was six floors down outside my bedroom window.  Saudi Arabia is the Muslim country – protector of the two shrines – Mecca is the centre of the universe for one billion– they know its location each time they kneel down to pray.  Abraham built the shrine at Mecca – the Abraham of my bible, the Abraham who was asked to sacrifice his son.  There is a security cordon 30km around the city of Mecca and only Muslims can enter. I only saw photos, and heard stories.

That Thursday night a man spoke to us in steady and clear English. He was dressed in a white thobe, a long dress shirt and a traditional desert head scarf with the black two ring snake-like bands that hold the scarf in place. This man’s thobe was not the simple sheet for everyday wear; I suppose he was in thobe formal. We were outside in the desert hills an hour from the beach at Jeddah. A friend was hosting the group at his horse and camel ranch.

The man spoke of Hajj. The fifth pillar of a Muslim’s life. The completion. Three million people a year come to spend a week following the steps of Mohammed.  More would come, but Mecca, a town of three hundred thousand squeezed in between mountains cannot handle more in a safe way.

The man is a descendant of a family from Mecca that for generations has been in the vocation of serving pilgrims. There are five associations – each tasked with serving pilgrims from a different geographical region. Those that serve speak the languages of their pilgrims and take care of those on the Hajj during their time in Saudi Arabia. The three million want to be in Mecca on a specific 8 days in the Hajj month.

The man described the rituals of Hajj. “A person must be spiritually, financially and physically ready to do Hajj – it is not compulsory”.  After Hajj, one is “cleansed”. This means that many leave Hajj to the last possible moment, sometimes too late.

Part of the tradition of Hajj is a visit to the central shrine. The man spoke of his habit, a habit widely shared by those who serve pilgrims, of looking not at the shrine, but at the faces of the pilgrims. He talked of an incredible moment where he knew immediately who were the first-timers. As they catch their first full image of the massive black cloth covered temple there is a paralysis, no more than 30 seconds, a whole life running by in front of your eyes in deep connection with something thought about for their entire lives.

This is a country that is a generation and a half away from an existence as tribal nomadic tent people. Oil wealth has transformed the buildings in which they live, but the culture and rules that kept peace amongst proud tribes of the desert remain. These are strict rules.

Ziad spoke to a small group on the first evening. He spoke of his life in Saudi and in the west. He spoke of a time when he was walking through a public shopping area holding the hand of his wife whose head was not covered.  An old man came up to them with bright eyes and a charming smile. He said “this woman is a flower. Not all men are so lucky. Think of the others, you will make them jealous.” The religious police can be poetic.

Doctor Ghazi spoke to us of real connection between people. He spoke of the traditions of the merchant traders on the old trade routes. In his grandfather’s tented village there existed a place called the medulus, a place where all would share their meals at the end of the day and share stories; a place which allowed a deeper connection because people shared food and stories of their lives, their homes, their travels. He spoke of it not being enough for governments to speak to governments – our world needs connection between people and people.  He spoke of the superficial nature of a tourist visit, and the deeper connection that happen when Saudi doctors sit with English doctors, when Saudi dentists sit with German dentists, when teachers sit with teachers and in our case when entrepreneurs spend four days together and share common desires, frustrations and challenges.

Maureen told me that she was scared to come to Saudi Arabia, was scared that she would break some rule unknowingly.  When I first reached the hotel and two fully covered women entered an elevator I paused before entering thinking “is this ok to share an elevator with women?”  I had a great few days and got to know interesting, thoughtful women and men from this country of oil, Islam and desert.

Tiger, Mozart and the Pogar sisters. How you too can become excellent. (World class even)

Take a look around you.

Take a look at the people you work with, the people you meet at parties, even the people you just casually pass in the street.

How do they spend their days?

Most of them work.  They do some other activities as well. They sleep, eat, cook, hang out with friends, watch TV, play sport and some might play an instrument.  Nothing, however, comes close to the hours that they dedicate to work.

Now, ask yourself, honestly, how well do they do it?  Well enough to not be sacked?  Maybe well enough to get a promotion now and then?  But are any of them awesomely great at what they do?  Truly world class?  Excellent?

Why?  How can they spend so much time at it, going through school, through university, maybe even an MBA, some executive seminars, coaching, mentors, high-flyer programs…  but they are not great at what they do.

Why?

Some people have been working for a long time.  They have been going at it for 20, 30 even 40 years.  After all these thousands of hours most people are just plain ok at what they do.

This is sad.

I am currently reading “Talent is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin.  This is a well referenced book on what does in fact lead to great performance.

“Being good at what we want to do – playing the violin, running a race, painting a picture, leading a group of people – is among the deepest sources of fulfillment we will ever know. ” Geoff Colvin.

So, what does lead to great performance?  What is the secret that Tiger Woods, Mozart, Jack Welsh, Steve Jobs have found?

First, let me tell you what it is not due to:

1. Experience (alone)
2. Innate abilities
3. High general intelligence, powerful memory or other “general” cognitive ability.

Let me now tell you what 30 years of scientific research say it is due to:

Deliberate Practice.

What is deliberate practice? “For starters, it isn’t what most of us do when we’re practicing” Geoff Colvin.  The key piece of scientific literature on this subject is “The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance” by Anders Ericsson.

There are five things that characterize Deliberate Practice:

1. It is designed specifically to improve performance
2. It can be repeated a lot
3. Feedback on results is continuously available
4. It is highly demanding mentally
5. It is not fun

A note on Tiger, Mozart and the Polgar sisters (top 3 female chess players):  It was due to something they were born with:  Their fathers.  Earl Woods was a golf fanatic and an expert in the process of teaching. Leopold Mozart published the leading book on violin instruction in the year his son was born. Lazlo Polgar wrote “Bring up Genius” before marrying and deliberately putting into practice his theories with his three daughters.

I finish with a sentence for my friend Piero in response to a profound statement that he managed to use in normal conversation “the zero point field that sustains the energy of the universe”.  In the words of a group of scientists investigating talent: “Whatever it is that an IQ test measures, it is not the ability to engage in cognitively complex forms of multivariate reasoning”.

They are saying of course, that high IQ doesn’t help you succeed in the real world.  If you are interested I will write more on the three models of deliberate practice: The musician model, the chess model and the sports model.  Only if you are interested...

Feel in control of your life? You will live longer. It's science.

I was reading a book by Professor Richard Wiseman (nice name for a professor) where he quotes a study by Ellen Langer of Harvard University.

Half of the residents in a nursing home were given a houseplant and asked to look after it.

The other half were given an identical plant but told that the staff would take responsibility for it.

Six months later, the group who were taking care of their plant were significantly more happy, healthy and active than the other group.  Even more impactful, 30% of the residents who had not cared for their plant had died, compared to 15% of the group who were taking care of the plant.

Does meaning come from excellent execution or excellent execution from shared mission and vision?

Should we focus on the ends to improve the means or focus on the means to improve the ends?

On Monday I spent a couple of hours at IESE in a research seminar where Harvard Professor Julie Battiliana presented her research on professional and organisational identity in two Bolivian commercial microfinance institutions.

BancoSol and Banco los Andes were both created in the early nineties in order to provide financial services to a large group of people that had never had access to banking services before.  They both target urban and rural poor who have no fungible collateral and need to borrow amounts under $1,000 to improve their incomes.

When these organisations were started, they both faced an important foundational question: Who do we hire?  Who can sell our loans, evaluate customer capacity to repay, define terms, approve loans and (most challenging) collect on loans in arrears?

BancoSol took a strategy of hiring existing talent - they hired existing loan officers from commercial banks alongside social workers from existing NGOs.  The bankers would bring financial expertise and the social workers would bring the right attitudes towards the mission to assist poor who had no previous access to bank finance.  The employee induction and early training focussed around mission and values.  The CEO would regularly remind staff that they were doing "the most important work in Bolivia".

Banco los Andes bank took a very different strategy - they hired new graduates direct from college and put them through extensive process training.  The focus of the training was on following a strict process.

A loan officer in commercial microfinance is a tough job - it requires the ability to be "caring but firm". A typical day in the life of a Bolivian microfinance loan officer would be as follows:

• Morning - (marketing) spend time in local markets making contact with stall keepers and traders
• Afternoon - (sales) visit specific people in their place of work or home
• Late afternoon - (collections) visit customers whose loans were in arrears
• Evening - (review, approve) in the office preparing and approving paperwork

One of these organisations became a great success and its company policies and procedures have become the basis for most of the world's commercial microfinance organisations today.  The other had to make major structural changes and was stuck with intractable group identity conflicts.

Banco los Andes with its strategy of hiring new graduates and training them intensively in operations was the success.  The intense focus on quality of execution allowed a pride and shared identity to arise in the staff of Banco los Andes.

BancoSol never reconciled the bankers and the social workers and had two groups who identified more with "banker" or "social worker" than BancoSol.  The bankers thought the social workers were unprofessional "idiots" who didn't understand commercial reality. The social workers thought the bankers lacked an ability to deal with customers as people.

My reflections as I sat and listened to this discussion about tension in organisations, professional vs organisational identity was that it is excellence in our work that allows true meaning and shared purpose to arise.  It is not enough as a leader to give nice speeches about mission and vision - there must be a relentless unwillingness to accept anything less than excellent execution.  It is not enough to sit in the tower and think, there must be a systematic getting out into the world and ensuring that processes are correct, quality is high and people are being held accountable for their goals.

A presentation on the presentation secrets of Steve Jobs

I would place Steve Jobs way up there in my list of powerful public speakers. I think Steve is somebody well worth study because his presentations are so powerful because of how much hard work he puts in to making them that great.

Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Barrack Obama are great speakers but somehow less useful to us mere mortals to study because such a huge part of their power comes from their intrinsic charisma - and it is extremely difficult for you or me to just become as charismatic as Barrack, Bill or Ronald by following a set of instructions.

I would like to credit Sticky Slides, the blog of Jan Schultink for the link to this presentation.

Those of you viewing via subcription/RSS feeds may need to view the original post here.

And for a bonus, one of the greatest ever speeches (IMHO): here is a link to Ronald Reagan's speech on the Challenger space shuttle disaster.

How to pitch a brilliant idea

The conclusion: it doesn't matter how good the idea, it matters what the "buyer" thinks of you as a person in the first few seconds of your pitch.

I have just read "How to Pitch a Brilliant idea" by Kimberly Elsbach in the Harvard Business Review.  In 150 miliseconds a "buyer" will have categorized you in one of seven stereotypes - only three of which will allow you to have a chance of selling them on your brilliant idea.

Kimberly has looked at the film industry, venture capital and entrepreneurs and within the corporate world.  In these environments only 1-3% of ideas make it beyond the initial pitch. What does it take for somebody with a brilliant idea to get it noticed, financed and implemented?

"When a person we don't know pitches an idea to us, we search for visual and verbal matches with those implicit models, remembering only the characteristics that identify the pitcher as one type or another.  We subconciously award points to people we can easily identify as having creative traits; we subtract points from those who are hard to assess or who fit negative stereotypes." Kimberly Elsbach.

The seven stereotypes that Kimberly developed that are relevant in the pitch of an idea to a "buyer" who has not met us before are:

• The three positive stereotypes
  
• Showrunner: Looks the part, comes with a successful track record, delivers the idea with a great interactive performance that engages the "buyer" in the idea.
  
• Artist: Displays single minded passion but not as polished as the showrunner, tend to be shy or socially awkward (a sense that they are living in their own internal world)
  
• Neophyte: The opposite of showrunners - they know they need help and present themselves as eager learners (never looking desperate).
  
• The four negative stereotypes
  
• Pushover: Look like they are trying to "unload" an idea rather than own it and run with it.
  
• Robot: Presents sticking to a formulaic script as if it had been memorized from a how-to book.
  
• Used-car salesman: Argumentative and slightly obnoxious (standard issue from the consulting world or large corporate sales department). Fails to treat the "buyer" as a partner, to turn the sale into a collaborative process. Arrogant.
  
• Charity case: Needy. As soon as he senses rejection begins pleading with the "buyer" that he really needs just one small sale. In reality is not selling an idea but looking for a job.

The only stereotypes which have a chance of the "buyer" engaging are showrunner, artist and neophyte.  If you manage to present the visual, audible, dress clues that lead a potential buyer to categorize you outside of these three categories, you will not sell your idea.

One key to the three successful stereotypes is a positive, proactive engagement of the buyer in the development of the idea during the pitch process. 

What stereotype do you get categorized into by people on the first impression?  It is unlikely to be showrunner (there are really very few of these types out there).  So are you a pushover?  Are you a used-car salesman?  The only thing that you cannot be is nothing...  You will be categorized.

The very latest in neuroscience: Mirror Neurons and "The Great Leap Forward"

The brain: 3 pounds, you could hold it in the palm of your hand... but it can contemplate the vastness of the universe, the reason for its own existance or why I am writing this post at midnight when I need to be up at 5am tomorrow.

How?

There are 100 billion neurons in the adult human brain, each with between 1,000 and 10,000 connections. (That's lots).

Giacomo Rizzolatti discovered the existence of mirror neurons in the late 1990s in the frontal lobes of macaque monkeys, and later confirmed their existence in the human brain.  About 20% of the neurons in the front, intentional, human cortex are these mirror neurons. Leading neuro-scientists including V.S. Ramachandran (great TED talk here) consider mirror neurons one of the most important recent discoveries in neuroscience.

The majority of the human frontal lobe is made up of motor neurons. Motor neurons fire when I reach out and grab something.  Mirror neurons fire when I watch somebody else reach out and grab something.

For 400,000 years the human brain has had its current shape and form, but something arose 75,000 years ago that allowed the extremely rapid spread of human culture, allowing "The Great Leap Forward" in human society - the emergence and rapid spread of human culture - tool use, language, shelter, theory of mind. Some speculate that the development of 20% of frontal lobe dedicated to mirror neurons was what allowed the rapid spread of culture - humans could learn not just from doing, but from watching somebody else doing.

There are mirror neurons for action, also for touch.  These motor neurons will fire simply when I watch somebody else being touched.

How do I not get confused?

Touch and pain receptors "veto" the mirror neuron.  But, if my arm is anaesthetised or if I have lost my limb, the touch and pain receptors do not veto and I will feel the sensation of touch even though it is only that I am watching another person being touched. This happens to people who have lost a limb in traffic accidents.

So there actually is some type of universal consciousness - I am feeling what my neighbours are feeling. I am emersed in a some sort of meta-social type of consciousness. "This is not mumbo-jumbo philosophy, this emerges from neuroscience" VS Ramachandran. 

The thought is that the existence of these mirror neurons will start to allow us to understand how consciousness arises.  Some say that psychology/neuroscience will be to this century what physics was to the last.

What will be the 20XX advances in neuroscience that compare to the 19XX advances such as radio, industrialization, electrical power or nuclear energy?

Its not what you do but how people perceive what you do

I came across the concept of Personal Branding via the blog of Dan Schwabel about 6 months ago and have been a regular reader of his blog.  Some ideas have been percolating up through my unconsciousness and drifted into consciousness during a day skiing with my friend Javi. (Thanks to Ana, Piero and friends for inspiring the early morning start and a fine dinner in Andorra).

The concept we discussed is that it does not matter how hard you work or how brilliant you are, but how others perceive your work or your brilliance.

There are two types of people in the world:

• Category One: this person works really hard and achieves a lot - but bosses and peers say, "yeah, but that was an easy client" "yeah, but he had an easy project".  Category one people never really get the credit for the work that they are doing.
  
• Category Two: this person works just as hard and achieves a lot - and bosses and peers say, "he always turns things around" "We knew that he would make the difference". Category two tends to get more credit than is really due from those around them.
  

I was lucky back in 1995 to begin my career with Accenture working on a project at Nationwide Buiding Society with the best manager that I have had.  Michael was a humble, smart and innovative consultant and I spent the first two years of my career working directly for him on a range of exciting, leading-edge projects at Shell, Nat West and the Labour party (pre-power).  He knew how to get the best out of me and keep me engaged and running at 95% (he was great at recognising somebody who was "coasting along" at 60-70% of their potential and saying "you are capable of better than this"; see David Maister on professionalism in Professional Services Firms).

Due to his coaching and unwillingness to take anything but my best, I was rated the highest possible rating upon my promotion to consultant. The next 7 years at Accenture, I had it easy because when I showed up on a project, the senior Accenture people would say "you guys are lucky to get this guy, he is a 'band one'".  If the team that I was on did well, the senior people would say "great that we put Conor in there". If the team I was on did poorly, the senior people would say "the objectives were unclear" "the project was over ambitious".  It was like my own guardian angel.  I was incredibly lucky. I had done nothing to seek out a guardian angel, but found that I did have one. (It was also unfair many times when I was not at my best and was receiving credit for some Category One's hard work).

My reflections and discussions on the ski slope with Javi (who has great experience in Bain and Banco Santander) were that:

• The first few months in a new company matter more than any other time in your career
• The first boss really matter (each time you change company)
• You can only switch from Category One to Category Two by changing company. It is almost imposible to re-position yourself once you have been "branded".
  
• The more senior we get, the less we can leave this personal branding process to chance
  

Do you have a strategy to manage your personal brand? What can you do in the first 90 days? What type of boss would be your best first boss in each new company?  Are you currently in Category One or Category Two?  If you are in Category One when will you change job?