The Science of Sales Success: A Proven System for High-Profit, Repeatable Results

Time powers your progression from brinkmanship to courtship to relationship selling. As the time of doing business together with a customer increases, everyone's risk goes down. Conversely, trust levels and the value you provide (through better understanding of the customer's business) and receive (through higher profits) goes up. As you will see, the element of time becomes both a benefit and a liability to your pursuit of relationship selling. (See Exhibit 1-3.)

Exhibit 1-3: It's all about time.

Getting Rid of the Wait

While it is easy to see the benefits of long-term customers and relationship selling, they do have one major drawback: They are dependent on time. You must accept that relationships often take years to develop. Fulfill your commitments, do not disappoint your customers, mingle socially, and let nature take its course.

In other words, if you wait long enough, you will have long-term customers that embrace relationship selling. With the selling system in this book, you can short-circuit the time requirements and still have all the benefits of relationship selling. As previously mentioned, it works like a time machine.

You quickly progress from brinkmanship to courtship to relationship selling over the course of several sales calls, not in a matter of months or years. MeasureMax dramatically shrinks the time it takes for prospects and new customers to act like long-term ones. As time speeds up, so does your productivity.

You need fewer sales calls to get more orders because measurable information flows freely. Customers benefit too. At an accelerated pace, they also know whether they can receive the value necessary to make working together worthwhile. Together, you both quickly gauge the potential of a business opportunity. You know whether to stay with this sales opportunity or to move on to one with a higher potential for success.

Shrinking Time

The principle behind how MeasureMax shrinks time is simple. It makes the five key components found in every sales opportunity visible and measurable to customers and you. When these key components become measurable, trust is not a function of repeated successes over time, but of short-term, quantifiable results. These five components determine whether customers act like new ones or long-term ones. They operate the same way laws of nature, such as gravity or centrifugal force, do. They have measurable effects on the outcome of sales opportunities whether you or your customers are aware of them or not.

The five waiting-to-become-measurable components are as follows:

1. The dollar value the features of your products or services generate by achieving customers' goals (Chapter 2 explains this topic)

2. The dollar value customers gain from achieving specific goals (Chapter 3 explains this topic)

3. The ability of customers to achieve their goals (Chapter 4 explains this topic)

4. The progress customers and you are making in achieving their goals, which tells you whether it is worthwhile to continue investing in the sales opportunity (Chapter 6 explains this topic)

5. Your ability to achieve customers' goals and receive higher profit margins for doing so (Chapter 7 explains this topic)

When you are unaware of these components, they stay invisible. Even if you wait until you win, lose, or abandon sales opportunities, you still might not know what they are. However, you are the only one with the power to make them visible by making them measurable. Once they become measurable, you are in the relationship-selling mode. You also doom competitors to brinkmanship or courtship selling—even if these opportunities involve their current customers.

Take these two selling scenarios. While slightly exaggerated for effect, they highlight how a salesperson seeking measurable details can go from brinkmanship to relationship selling in one sales call. You probably can put faces and names to both of these scenarios—unfortunately more often on the first than the second, but that will change shortly.

In the first scenario, Carole Nelson, a top-performing salesperson, is on a first call with Pete Sommers, a new prospect. She is in full brinkmanship selling mode, with her focus on obtaining Column 1 details. The second scenario illustrates what would happen if Carole's questions sought measurability and motivated Pete to act like a long-term customer. The difference in Column 2 details that Pete provides Carole jumps out at you, as she is at the height of relationship selling.

Scenario One: New Prospect (Brinkmanship Selling)

Carole is meeting with Pete Sommers for the first time. Although they spoke briefly on the telephone a week ago, Carole is not certain what to expect or how the sales call will turn out. (Her thoughts are in italics and parentheses.)

• Carole: Good morning, Mr. Sommers. (Should I call him Pete? Should I make a comment about the picture of the sailboat on his wall?) It's nice to meet you.

• Pete: Yeah, you too. I tried to contact your office to let you know that a last-minute meeting popped up. Therefore, I only have fifteen minutes, not thirty. So, what can you show me quickly about your products and services?

• Carole: Uh, did you get the brochure I sent? It explains our sales-training program, and how it can increase productivity for companies like yours. (With only fifteen minutes, I better spare the small talk and get right to the point.)

• Pete: I got it, but I didn't get the chance to read it. It's somewhere in this pile. Can you give me a quick rundown?

• Carole: Okay. (I won't hand him a brochure now. The last thing I need is Mr. Pete reading my brochure while I'm talking to him.) When we spoke last week, you mentioned that you are responsible for the company's sales-training programs. You said something about increasing sales training and productivity, but also decreasing the costs for training each salesperson. Is that right? (Whew, am I ever glad I practiced my opening line on the drive over.)

• Pete: Exactly.

• Carole: Well, in what areas do you see opportunities for cost savings? (That ought to get Pete talking.)

• Pete: I'm sure there are opportunities everywhere since we have not done a major review of our sales-training programs in more than three years.

• Carole: Okay, let me suggest that we focus first on the costs of training new hires. They usually consume the largest portion of a company's training budget and provide the greatest savings opportunities. (Am I good or what?)

• Pete: New hires are definitely our largest expenditure. So, how does your program reduce the costs of training new hires? By the way, how much does your training program typically cost?

• Carole: We reduce training costs by . . . (blah, blah, and blah).

The fun begins as Carole starts reciting countless features and benefits to see which ones (if any) interest Pete. She also slips in some qualifying questions to gather purchasing information. Finally, Carole tries to put off answering the how-much-does-it-cost question until she finds out his budget. Who knows? The sales call might turn out to be a good opportunity rather than a waste of time. It is anybody's guess.

Scenario Two: New Prospect (Relationship Selling)

In this second scenario, Carole gets the opportunity to make the same sales call over again ( la Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day, in which one day is continually relived until the main character gets it right). Only this time, although Pete Sommers begins the sales call like a typical new prospect, Carole's questions motivate him to act like a long-term customer would and share measurable details.

• Carole: Good morning, Mr. Sommers (Should I call him Pete? Should I make a comment about the picture of the sailboat on his wall?). It's nice to meet you.

• Pete: Yeah, you too. I tried to contact your office to let you know that a last-minute meeting popped up. Therefore, I only have fifteen minutes, not thirty. So, what can you show me quickly about your products and services?

• Carole: When we spoke last week, you mentioned that, as director of learning services, you are responsible for sales-training programs. I understood that your two primary goals are to reduce your training costs and yet increase sales productivity. Are there any others? (I'm glad I remembered to confirm the customer's position, and then start with his or her goals, not my products.)

• Pete: No, that's it.

• Carole: Pete, which of those two is your highest priority? (Getting Pete to rank them will open the floodgates on details.)

• Pete: Definitely reducing the costs of sales training.

• Carole: Why's that? (Come on, Pete; give me the details.)

• Pete: About a year ago, we noticed that our training costs increased about 10 percent per employee.

• Carole: What did that relate to in dollars? (Keep building on what Pete tells me.)

• Pete: Our expenses rose from $50,000 to about $55,000 per person.

• Carole: How many people do you train in a year? (I need to get to a dollar figure.)

• Pete: We train two hundred new hires a year.

• Carole: Wow, that's an additional million dollars in training expenses on top of your $10 million training budget yearly. What are you currently doing to reduce those expenses? (Well, at least Pete knows that I can multiply; I still need to find out more details before I mention specific products or services.)

• Pete: We're talking about cutting back on the number of people we train.

• Carole: How many people are you looking to postpone training for? (Let me help Pete think through the ramifications.)

• Pete: Approximately 15 percent or thirty people.

• Carole: Besides delaying the spending of $1,650,000 in training costs, how will that affect your business from a sales standpoint? (I need to help Pete realize not only what he can save but also what it costs to delay training to help him justify any purchase. Also, he's a quick learner when it comes to understanding the importance of providing measurable details.)

• Pete: We figure that a trained salesperson produces $100,000 more in profits annually than an untrained one.

• Carole: Thirty untrained people could cost your company $3 million in profits. In what other ways are you looking to reduce your training expenses? (I want Pete to know that I'm listening to him as I seek more details as I build the Column 2 measurable benefits.)

• Pete: We contacted your major competitor, Advanced Training Systems, to give us a proposal.

• Carole: When you seek proposals from sales-training companies, in general, what area do you feel is most important for them to highlight? (No negative sell from me, Pete. I want to make sure my questions seek to understand what you're trying to accomplish—not what competitors have to offer.)

• Pete: A payback that makes sense for us to proceed.

• Carole: What does that involve? (We're getting closer to understanding Pete's measurable expectations.)

• Pete: We want to make sure that we get at least a two-year pay-back, and don't exceed our budget.

• Carole: What dollar amount have you established to reduce your sales-training expenses? (Funding is always easier to ask about when you can relate it back to their goals.)

• Pete: We've set aside $2 million in our operating budget.

• Carole: Who, besides yourself, will be involved in approving this project? (Thanks for the excellent opportunity to find out about the decision makers.)

• Pete: My boss, Mary Jones, who's the vice president of operations. She can approve it unless it goes over budget, then corporate gets involved. They take six months to a year to do anything.

• Carole: Pete, I noticed my fifteen minutes are up. When will be a good time to continue our discussion? (Let Pete know I respect his time.)

• Pete: I can't believe all the ground we covered. I look forward to continuing our conversation next Thursday at 9 A.M. How does that work for you?

• Carole: Sounds great. That will give me enough time to review my notes and prepare for our next meeting. I think there might be a way to cut the costs of your training system without affecting its quality. On Thursday, I think we should concentrate on understanding how you'll know whether you achieve your goal of decreasing sales-training costs. In addition, we need to examine what sort of sales productivity gains in dollar terms you are looking to accomplish. In the interim, I'd like to send you an article on methods that directors of learning services use to calculate the costs associated with training programs, and the different ways to measure productivity. How does that sound to you? (I'm glad I remembered to set the purpose of the meeting so Pete knows exactly what to expect and can be prepared to discuss these items.)

• Pete: It's a good plan. I look forward to seeing you next week.

As Carole leaves the meeting, she cannot help but hear a sound. Only this time it is not the sound of a door closing. Instead, it is the "cha-ching" of a cash register going off in her head as she starts calculating the savings and increased sales she can generate for Pete and his sales force. Not to mention her potential commission check.

Carole still needs to find out more information. However, like Carole, when you use the MeasureMax system, these quantifiable details change the entire feel of your sales calls. They go from having a product focus to having a customer focus (notice that no specific products or services were mentioned). In addition, these details help you to measure the progress and potential of sales opportunities while they are occurring. You know exactly where you left off, and what you must do next to provide more value than competitors and receive higher profits for doing so.