My other half works in an extremely fast growing internet company. Weekly I hear him discuss the sales approach of almost every sales person walking through the door and it reminds me of my own experiences which were much the same.
The sales person comes in, fires up powerpoint. Generally they are OKAY on the interpersonal skills (not great), well turned out, and professional. However, they then fire up powerpoint and take you through the same ridiculous process:
“we are company XYZ, here are the same slides I show everyone else (if I really want to look good, I add your logo or some of your webpages). We were established in xxxx (who cares?). We are the leading company in (service). We have lots of big clients (unrelated to your industry as you are just another company). Therefore we are great at what we do. Here’s, therefore, what we can do for you by listing our standard product range…basically the same thing as we did for all the rest.”
This goes on for ten minutes typically without any interaction from the client. At this point, one of the client’s management team strats to ask questions, often related to the lack of presentational relevance of their business. The salesperson is tired as its there third presentation that day, stressed, and annoyed that its obviously a different scenario from the list of unrelated clients that they have presented before them. But its accepted as the status que, so the client actually can feel awkward asking these obvious questions and the salesperson rightly aggrieved in their own mind.
I watched a video on Youtube recently which I now cannot find!!!! It was by an American business coach who hit the nail on the head when it comes to this scenario. She said “imagine the average sales pitch as a date”.
Now this really shows how lousy this approach is, and yet every sales person in the UK seems to follow it!
She asks us to imagine going out on a date, exchanging niceties and sitting through:
“I am great..,, I studied at X, joined X, I was promoted, founded a company, achieved x, y,z, turnover x million / billion, etc. Now because I did all of this, I would be really great for you, because you are like all the other women /men out there. Any questions now after ten minutes of talking about myself?”
The parallels between the two approaches are obvious and that is why most sales people, and most dates “convert” in the low single figure percentages, and especially in the average market where competition is strong.
Now imagine a sales pitch or dinner date which involves “the audience”. A good salesperson or “dater” will shown an interest in the other person. They do this by asking lots of relevant questions (not too deep to begin with!), verbally nodding, smiling, holding eye contact for a natural period of time, acting interested but not overbearing, etc. Imagine the impact of these basic skills on sales performance by keeping to these basics. On my sales and negotiation courses, I regularly stun experienced sales directors, executives, and managers by taking them back to basics. They do not realise what their own actions. They cannot believe the bad habits they have fallen into. Then I hit them with all the secret skills and techniques they never imagined to exist!
