Soropa Blog

Have you ever considered why a business advertising model like telemarketing died? Sure we know that the Senate and US Congress Passed a Bill for Do Not Call Lists and that the President of the United States signed it into law right? And we know that the Federal Trade Commission fined a few companies a lot of money and like FAX Marketing; telemarketing died on the vine. But why did this happen?

Well, telemarketing became too efficient and too many companies hired too many firms to cold call targeted lists and often random phone numbers too. Some marketing consultants who have written books on the subject say that it conflicted with people’s lives; such as phone calls at dinner time and actually turned off customers and it did not really help folks get the information in the way they needed at the appropriate time to assist them in their decision making process for the product or service.

In fact many of us have simply been very upset by pushy telemarketers calling at our dinner hour. When you are busy and not interested they waste your time and will not take no for an answer and some of these persuasive folks indeed are paid commission and try every manipulative trick in the book. It is for these reasons telemarketing lost favor and indeed has been literally slaughtered.

The few companies remaining due to bogus government regulations due to lobbyists are extremely careful now how they do things because people, customers and consumers no longer accept these intrusions. They no longer consider it advertising, but rather more liken it to International Terrorism. Consider all this in 2006.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

Assumptions can kill a sale. In my sales training workshops, I
frequently discuss the importance of not making assumptions
about a person before, during, or after the sales process.
Participants frequently nod and tell me that they NEVER make
assumptions. One person (Doug Maquire, www.MaquireMarketing.com)
sent me this story of a situation that occurred in a department
store he worked in many years ago.

“I was the ‘young kid’ who had signed on to take the 9 month
Management Training course for a department store chain. Sales
people were generally assigned specific areas to cover within
the store but being a ‘management trainee’ I had to learn all
departments.”

One day, a rough looking middle aged fellow entered the store.
He was dressed in well-worn workpants, work boots, and a soiled
red and black plaid shirt just like you’d expect a lumberjack to
wear. No one approached him (I guess he didn’t look like a good
sales prospect) and he didn’t move from the front entrance; he
just stood there surveying the store from left to right. I
walked up to him and asked if I could help. He said, “I need a
pair of wool socks. No nylon, no cotton, just wool socks.” We
went to the Menswear Department and both watched as the sales
person assigned to that department walked away from us so he
wouldn’t have to waste his time going through the full selection
of hosiery just to find a single pair of wool socks.”

I then started asking questions about style, colour, size, price
range, etc., to help narrow down exactly what the customer
needed. “It don’t matter.” he replied, “Just wool socks. I work
back in the bush and we only come to town every three weeks.
Nylon makes my feet sweat. Cotton’s okay but it don’t last long.
I need socks I can wear at work everyday and that’s wool.”

So, I checked the content label of every style and colour of
sock that we had in stock and eventually found a pair of 100%
wool socks. “Good”, he said, and we walked up the checkout
counter to ring in the $3.95 pair of wool socks. The man left
and I got a bit of ribbing from the sales person in the Menswear
Department about my ‘big sale of the day’ and how ‘not to spend
my commission all in one place!’”

Three weeks later the customer returned. He then walked over to
me and said, “I need more wool socks like that last pair”. This
time he decided that he’d take 6 pair. We took the socks up to
the checkout counter and rang in the six pair of $3.95 socks.
The customer paid cash, said thanks, and walked away with his
purchase. This time I didn’t get quite as much ribbing from the
sales person in the Menswear Department.

Exactly three weeks later the customer came back. He walked
through the front door and made a beeline for me. “I need more
of them wool socks”, he said. “The boys at camp want to know
where I got them and want some too. How many have you got?” I
checked the display area, the stockroom, and our new stock
shipment and told him I had 58 pair. He paid cash and bought
them all.

I never found out exactly how many people he worked with, but
every three weeks he’d show up at the store and ask what I had
in the way of tee-shirts, long johns, plaid wool shirts, work
boots, gloves, caps, toques, coveralls, work jackets, etc., and
each time he arrived, he’d walk right up to me for service and
we’d both go to the proper department and select what he needed
for himself and for the guys he worked with. He always paid cash
and always thanked me for my help.”

If Doug had made the mistake of following his coworker’s
footsteps and made the same assumptions about the customer, he
would have lost thousands of dollars in sales. It is easy to
make assumptions about our customers and prospects. A person’s
appearance, age, gender, nationality, or role within the
company, often influences us. I have made this mistake when
speaking to companies in the past. Upon learning that they only
had a few salespeople, I made the assumptions they would not be
willing to pay my standard fee. I later learned that this
assumption was completely inaccurate and that they were fully
prepared to invest in their teams’ development.

As a consumer, I have often noticed that most sales people will
approach well-dressed customers before they talk to people who
are attired in jeans or casual clothing. Avoid this fatal
mistake and go into every sales interaction with an open and
clear mind. This will definitely have a positive impact on your
sales.

Copyright 2004 Kelley Robertson, all rights reserved.

What is the new paradigm for professional selling?

To answer this question, one must first understand that a paradigm is simply a “way at looking at the world.”

The new paradigm for selling entails all sales professionals understanding what this view should look like, no matter what their vertical market of focus. In other words, an “operative paradigm” for professional selling needs to exist. The reason the operative paradigm must exist stems from the fact that sales as a profession must have a common language, a common understanding of what is important, and a common approach to creating new “sales knowledge.”

To create an operative paradigm (a paradigm that is standardized)all sales professionals must first understand “what” selling is, at it pertains to:

– finding ourselves at the intersection of many different beliefs, values, emotions, wants, needs, and personalities (within the human element). For example, we will intersect with hundreds of buyers and individuals throughout our career.

– finding ourselves at the intersection of organizations, norms, cultures, systems, and visions (within the organizational element). For example, our organization will intersect with many others throughout our career.

– finding ourselves at the intersection of numerous professions. We exist at the intersection of Human Resource competencies, training and development approaches, purchasing, marketing, and consulting. Each profession with their own operational paradigms.

Yet, we don’t yet have a fully embraced operational paradigm for the single most important profession in the world. The profession that drives the global economy — sales.

Sales professionals exist at all these intersections as a “boundary spanner” between two companies and between two people and between several professions. This means we are in a very complicated profession. It also means that we are not often understood by many people –including our own management.

Because salespeople exist between two organizations, we have the ability to “become a part” of both of them at the same time. Like most in the sales profession, we take this pretty seriously. Especially when we have to exist within three different organizations within one day due to the nature of the work we do (three different sales calls in one day.)

All of this means that the intersection of organizations and individuals also exist within a constant state of change. It’s hard to keep your footing within the range of human emotions, let alone the range of organziational change and dynamics.

Have you ever wondered what this intersection looks like? Have you ever wondered how organizations fit together, how individual competency is created, how different functions related to the sales profession fit together, how all the body of knowledge could be framed up into an architecture?

WAIT! Don’t stop reading!

If you haven’t thought of these questions, you are missing what it is to be a professional. If you learn “what” these things are, you can learn how to become more proficient. The more you look, the more you will realize that the explanation and understanding of “what” it this intersection looks like doesn’t exist for all of sales. The key is to create this reality yourself and hopefully the profession will come along and help one day in the future.

The framework of the profession DOES exist in the work of a few people that have created the first definition and operational paradigm for professional selling since 1999. They realize that no common language = no common understanding (find out more at www.upsa-intl.org)

Sure, everyone’s own opinion or fact regarding how to exist at the intersection exists, but no two people can agree on what this looks like. This is like two doctors being unable to discuss medical procedures because nobody took the time to create the “Grey’s Anatomy Book” explaining what the human body is. Sure, they can spend hours going over “how” they do a procedure, but without an operational paradigm, the discussion wouldn’t go far and it sure wouldn’t see the test of time. There would always be a “new and better way.

To begin understanding this intersection, you have to begin with the ultimate assumptions about professional selling. Can we all agree taht Selling is ultimately:

1 - Grounded to a buyer(s)

2 - Focused on a transaction

3 - Bound by an ethical responsibility?

IF we can all agree on these things from all sides of the table we can begin to disseecxt the sales profession step by step using the system’s approach. IF the buyer can agree to this, the marketing and purchasing professions, and even HR , then why can’t we gain further understanding?

Based on this approach, what if we dissected what a buyer goes through to buy? Further, what happens if we “synchronize” a universal selling and marketing model to that process they go through to buy? Because it’s focused on a transaction, we would begin to look at economics and capitalism and the sales professional’s role within. We would begin to look at corporate strategy for competition and link indvidual sales performance within this strategy. We would look at the nature of solution selling and creating win-win relationships and bind it to an ethical code within the context of a transaction. And so forth…

With these assumptions and the systems approach we could begin to build a methodology for gathering more data quantitatively and qualitatively to build the operational paradigm. Through professional discussions, focus groups, interviews, and literature reviews we could solicit input into the operational paradigm and build on this for many years. This is what the United PRofessional Sales Association has done.

Therefore, the operative paradigm being created serves as the starting point for this journey in how I how we can attempt to achieve new breakthroughs in the profesion. It will also bridge the gap to to the actual roles, competencies, and outputs of Professional Business-to-Business Sales Professionals.

If you are interested in helping in this global project, feel free to contact me. It’s something that must be done if the sales profession is to become a “true profession.”

Brian
lambertb@upsa-intl.org

Brian is the Chairman and Founder of the the United Professional Sales Association (UPSA). UPSA is a non-profit organization headquartered in Washington DC that has addressed the concerns and challenges of individual sales professionals. Brian has authored the world’s first universal selling standards and open-source selling framework for free distribution. This ‘Compendium of Professional Selling’ containing the commonly accepted and universally functional knowledge that all sales professionals possess. The open-source selling standards have been downloaded in 16 countries by over 300 people. Over 30 people have made contributions.

Because UPSA is not owned by one person or any company, it is a member organization and guardian of the global standard of entry into the sales profession.

Find out about the membership organization and understand the processes and framework of professional selling at the UPSA Website at http://www.upsa-intl.org

Find out more about Brian at: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert_bio=Brian_Lambert

Or at http://www.brianlambert.biz