If asked, I suspect that most salespeople would say that they do not get involved in their clients internal politics. But, they would be making a big mistake if they ignored them. Indeed if you believe Wikipedia; politics is defined as “a process by which groups of people make collective decisions”. Any salesman who avoids or ignores the politics therefore is unwise.

Before we start, let’s be very clear about one thing. Playing politics inside of a client will almost certainly backfire. Customers have enough internal issues as it is without an outside supplier trying to get involved in the intrigue and power positioning. However, being aware of the politics and the political anatomy of the customer, and using that knowledge to advantage is one of the secrets of success.

We have all heard at loss reviews the various reasons why a deal was lost. Chief of these I suspect is the statement “we lost on price”, but also high on the list is the statement “we were never going to win – it was a political decision”.

It is fairly easy to tell when a deal is lost due to “a political decision”. It happens when your price was the best, your product was the best and your proposal was the best – but you still lost. We have all been there. The fact is the deal was lost because other factors were involved that the salesman didn’t know or understand. What really happened was that the salesman got outsold.

The good news is that as most salespeople avoid politics, it puts us in a very powerful position when selling. Salesmen who respond to RFP’s and make the odd phone call to see if their proposal is still alive – live in the sad world of failures who dwell in the valley of Quote and Hope.

We have just worked with a client who had a bid to win ration of 18:1. Their bid managers and pre-sales people were just about worn out by endlessly producing proposal after proposal. The salesforce for the most part were not particularly skilled and blamed their lack of success on everything else – but the real issue, once we uncovered it, was their lack of political acumen.

Every world class salesperson will have a documented PIM (Political Influence Map) of their client. They will have plotted on a chart the key players against the axis of Authority and Influence and will have a specific plan to address the needs of each one.

“The sad world of failures who dwell in the valley of Quote and Hope”

Very few salesmen are naturally very good and skilled at politics – but they are rare. Most need to be helped and coached to understand and work with the politics. It can be taught and it can be learnt.

Politics results in “Power” within an organisation. And power is a factor of two very specific elements that the salesman needs to know. Unless the salesman and his proposal can help give these elements to his client he is a very weak position – and he will always dwell in the valley of quote and hope.

At the time of writing the power brokers within the UK political parties are possibly hours away from cutting a political deal to form a new government. Anyone who says that politics doesn’t also play a major part in cutting a commercial deal making is missing the point.

Most people think their own sales teams are not “World Class” and that they lack sales efficiency and effectiveness. Possibly you feel the same. Do you think that your sales could be better? Do you wonder why deals are just not happening?

Time and sales – Do you have too much or too little?

The good news is that you are not alone; almost all companies think the same, including your competition. Not many people however know what is causing the problem or even how to fix it.

Have you ever asked yourself why, when you spent so much time, effort and money on recruiting the very best salespeople you could find and afford – why things are just not clicking? Well, here are two of the largest issues regarding sales efficiency:

1. The biggest waste of any salesman’s time is not travel, or writing proposals, or email, or indeed any one of a thousand other things that can burn his time. It is quite simply working on deals that he is never going to win. FACT
2. The average salesman spends less than 25% of his time actively “advancing a sale” in front of a customer (source performance101 study 2009). Indeed, our study showed that Account Managers, as opposed to New Business Salespeople, are often only spending 10% of their time actively advancing a sale. FACT

If you put the two facts together it is no wonder that sales results are what our American cousins term “sub optimal”.

Sobering isn’t it? It is possible that between 75 to 90% of your salesman’s time is not spent selling. When he is, he may well be working on a deal that he simply has no chance of winning.

“The biggest waste of a salesman’s time is working on a deal he is never going to win”

How would you rate the performance and sales efficiency of your sales people – have you ever measured it?

There is an old corporate saying that I am sure you have heard time and time again. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

Just imagine what would happen if you could improve the efficiency of your team and got them only working on deals they could win and allowed them to have more face time with the customer. You know what? It doesn’t take much to improve sales efficiency by 50%!

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”.

If you could improve sales efficiency by 50% everyone wins.

1. The salesmen stop doing things they don’t like and focus on the things they do – namely selling.
2. You effectively get twice as big a sales team at no additional cost.
3. The salesmen become happy as they get more commission.
4. The customer becomes happier as he doesn’t waste time with a salesman who is trying to sell him something he doesn’t want.
5. The rest of your organisation doesn’t waste time supporting a sale that is not going to happen.
6. Your company starts to make real progress when selling against the competition.

Sales Efficiency: Bottom Line Results

An efficient, happy and successful sales team is what every company should aspire to. They will not only increase turnover and margin, but increase what psychologists call “value attribution”. Strangely enough a happy and successful sales team also starts to get noticed by your customers and your competition.

Where to begin? Those of us who have spent a career managing sales teams will know that the Sales Director and Sales Managers are swamped. Their day is taken up with supporting sales teams, helping out on deals, forecasting, reporting, recruiting, motivating, presenting, cajoling, negotiating, writing compensation plans, doing annual appraisals, account planning, territory planning, succession planning and customer complaint handling. No wonder you are where you are today.

Help is at hand. There is a methodology that can help your existing Sales Directors and Managers. For instance, to prevent a salesman working on a deal he is unlikely to win – the whole company needs to buy into the concept of “deal qualification”. We have two tools for this, one is a very simple approach that is guaranteed to get you quick wins, and the other is more methodical and thorough. Whichever approach you take – the sooner you start the better.

Selling is fun when it goes well and this can only happen when the whole company is involved and your sales team is efficient and effective.

Have Fun. Enjoy the journey and get more deals.

Tips for improving your sales performance: Customers are now smarter at buying than the salesmen are at selling

If you are an executive, you may have read one or more of the thousands of books currently available on how to improve sales performance. With so many books advising on how to be great at sales, you may be forgiven for wondering why there are so few talented salespeople out there.

You see, the thing is, in the last 40 years there have been no significant advances in sales techniques. Virtually all were built on a foundation E.K. Strong laid down in 1925. Any “new way” of selling can be mapped to one of 4 approaches that were first promulgated in the 1960’s. Procurement methods have changed – but selling methods have stood still.

If a company is not hitting its sales targets it may be due to one or more of the following problems:

Most salespeople have had little formal training

In a survey of our clients we found that most salespeople have had less than 4 days formal training in the profession of selling. Less than 2% of salespeople had been on a structured sales training program that the likes of IBM and Xerox once ran.

Most companies don’t have a formal sales process

Almost any sales process is better than none, but most salespeople are not required to follow any process at all. Only 12% of companies have a formal sales process.

Most executives don’t know how to sell

The vast majority of senior executives are not necessarily skilled in sales. Often thought leadership and mentoring on salesmanship doesn’t exist. We worked with a large organisation last year where the CEO was shown the Account Plan of his largest client. It was apparent to everyone in the room except him that he just didn’t understand the language of sales. For instance, he wanted to know where “the compelling event” was taking place.

Customers are smarter at buying now than the sales are at selling

It wasn’t so long ago when the buying department was a much underrated offshoot of the Accounts department. Today it is not unusual to have a Strategic Procurement Director helping the exec team shape the direction of the business. With e-auctions and supply chain strategies in operation, buyers are now better able to take control and the salesman often finds himself dancing to the buyers tune.

Sales are not empowered to sell

Many sales people are simply not empowered to sell their product. They are expected to raise the awareness of their product and get to a point where the customer may buy. But they do not have the authority to truly negotiate a creative win-win outcome for their own company or that of their customer. At best they can offer a bit of discount to try and sweeten the deal.

Sales hasn’t got anything to say worth listening to

When I was an IBM salesman in its heyday, I could walk into any MD’s office and he would be glad to see me. Why? Because I had something to say that was of interest to him and relevant to his business. If you waste a customer’s time with irrelevant solutions – don’t expect him to answer the phone when you next call.

Training for a better sales performance is often a waste of time and money

Much of today’s sales performance training is based on techniques that are 40 years out of date. A bigger need is training in the cognitive psychology of selling. Some salespeople are naturally skilled in this area, most are not.

People don’t buy from people they don’t like

Let’s be blunt. The cruel truth is that if you have salespeople in your organisation that you don’t particularly like, the chances are high that your customers won’t particularly like them either. You can train, pay or bully a salesperson as much as you wish, but unless they have that certain spark they are doomed to fail.

Now, the good news is that your competition almost certainly has one or more of the above issues. Sadly, the bad news is they may be doing something to address them.

There is a wind of change blowing through the way we look at sales and selling, what worked in the past won’t work now.

Phil Smith the CEO of Cisco UK and Ireland sits on the European board and knows all about the need for a different approach. His view is as follows; “Here at Cisco we recognise that sales models evolve and those traditional models do not always remain relevant and can become costly and ineffective. The “High Touch” model which has Cisco sales teams directly building relationships with customers, while partnering with a highly enabled and motivated channel, provides flexibility for our partners and we believe the best possible solution for our customers. In the mid-market and SMB space this model is not affordable and provides an opportunity for a different “partner led” approach. In today’s market sophisticated and customer centric sales will prevail – It’s not good enough simply to do it the way it was done in the past.”

Whilst many companies wrestle with the problem Siemens Financial Services have not stood still. Jonathan Andrew the Siemens Financial Services CEO for Europe and Asia Pacific says: “In today’s increasingly competitive environment it is essential that sales organizations recognize that customers’ expectations, business models, buying processes and sales channels have changed significantly in recent years. Successful sales organizations eagerly embrace and anticipate the evolution and accordingly re-engineer their sales processes and approaches in order to gain the essential competitive edge necessary to differentiate and win market share”

Sales performance: Old sales approaches no longer apply

The big guns in industry recognise that the old sales approaches no longer apply for today’s sales performance – and they are actively doing something about it.

They know that the old way often involved “selling hard”. But the fact is that customers simply do not respect or accept this anymore. The secret lies in helping a customer to achieve their goals and to ensure that the buyer considers the seller to be adding real value to the transaction.

Patrick Allainguillaume the Chairman and CEO of Muzicall puts it this way: “It is absolutely true that selling has changed significantly over the years. Our strategy is 180 degrees away from trying to “get” a deal from a customer. To us selling is about helping, advising and guiding the customer. In today’s market, customers will choose vendors who add the most value – not those who are simply trying to push product”

Recent research has shown that buyers are more responsive to sellers who go out of their way to help the buyer. The antiquated method of selling which was about persuasion is long dead. In today’s business world the “Law of Value” applies. Bestselling authors Bob Burg and John David Mann define it as: “Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment”

About the author: Ray Coyte started his career in IBM and was part of the “Golden Circle” of the highest performing salesmen in the company. He was European Managing Director and General Manager for two of the largest software companies in the mobile phone industry. Ray heads an International consultancy practice that helps companies get more out of their sales teams by building bigger and better relationships with customers. Ray is currently studying for his Doctorate in Business Psychology. View Ray’s short bio