People from the Sales 1.0 mindset live by “Always Be Closing!”. They destructively compete with coworkers. They close wrong-fit customers. They sell to get paid, and that’s the only reason they stay in the job. This isn’t the future of selling, especially not in a Sales Machine world.
The future of high-value selling, the Sales Machine way, is “Sell To Success”. It’s salespeople who believe in their company’s vision and value. It’s salespeople helping new prospects appreciate that vision, and then seeing these new customers succeed. They don’t close customers that aren’t a good long-term fit. It’s working with a team of other great salespeople, all working together to help each other improve and learn. Money isn’t the primary motivation for selling, it’s a byproduct of their success.
What Makes Closing So Artificial
Sales people get paid to close deals, and they tend to be pressured, I mean managed, by fear. Fear is the classic sales management tool of choice, especially in technology.
Ever seen the Glen Gary Glen Ross “Always Be Closing!” sales motivation speech? It’s extreme, but there are grains of truth in there.
When anyone gets 1) paid to do something, and 2) has managers breathing down their neck, it distorts behavior. Empathy with prospects is lost in the push to “just close the deal!” Strong ‘trustmanagers’ can help protect their sales people from these effects to focus on doing the right thing; fearmanagers exacerbate it.
The result: powerful incentives to sell high-value services like a late night cable TV guy. “Buy now and get a month-end discount!” (By the way, to prospects getting time pressured: you can get the same discount next month, whatever the salesperson’s telling you today).
An Ancient Non-Secret
Customers don’t care at all whether you close the deal or not. They care about improving their business.
Ok, yes, you know that. But you or your team is not selling this way.
This idea is constantly driven out of sales people’s heads by commissions, quotas and pressure. It requires constant reinforcement (at least until the issues around commissions, quotas and pressure are fixed…more on that in the future).
“Sell To Success”
Sell ‘through the close’, to the prospect’s success. Success is defined by the customer (usually with your help). Success is not when your service is launched; it’s when your service is successfully impacting the customer’s business, such as when CRM is adopted (not deployed).
Push Selling vs. Pull Selling: Another benefit of selling this way is to begin to pull prospects through a buying cycle, rather than pushing them through a sales cycle. Not only is it a pain in the ass to push a prospect through a sales cycle…it tends to be a lot less productive, and you end up with more customers that aren’t a great long-term fit for the company.
Selling to success helps pull a prospect through a buying cycle by helping tie their goals and desires to your company’s ability to help achieve them.
There’s A Catch
One of the tricks in selling to success is not caring about the close. Caring too much about the close will cause you to give off subconscious signals to the customer that you really don’t care about their success, you care more about getting paid or getting your fearmanager off your back. That’s the irony of caring too much about closing: it reduces the likelihood of achieving it.
The Close Becomes A Natural Step In Achieving The Vision
If you and the customer create a joint vision around how your company will make them successful, and they believe you, then the close becomes just a logical step in the progression to achieve that dream. You can remove the artificiality of ‘closing’, and make it feel natural.
RELATED POSTS
View all
