Cold Calling: an interview
Doing the rounds in North London Choices Magazine caught up with Sean Lydon. We talked business, drank coffee and picked up some gems from a master business sales trainer who…
People buy value but make buying decisions in the moment for reasons which may bear little if any relation to demonstrable value.
In sales however we can easily become invested in demonstrating value at the expense of closing: telling not selling.
But people buy for their reasons not ours.
‘Closing’ means being attuned to those reasons: structuring what you say to advance the decision making process rather than demonstrating value alone: selling not telling.
And in many business scenarios, particularly where the proposition is high value entailing a technical/creative/professional services component, even with a compelling demonstration of value people do not volunteer buying decisions. The proposition must be sold.
The purpose of sellingnottelling is to equip you and your business with a learnable and repeatable sales methodology: to win the opportunities that are there to be won, to not spend time on the ones that aren’t, and to systematically recognise the difference.
Creative or technically minded professionals typically ‘pitch’ rather than *sell*, relying on their demonstration of value to secure the business. Thus they become so invested in the *value* that the *decision* is overlooked.
If your market isn’t coming to you, you have to go to it. Nothing could be more direct and targeted than a phone call. And nowhere is a structured approach more essential.
The ju-jitsu principle means manipulating an opponent’s force against him rather than confronting it with one’s own. In ju-jitsu proper that means physical force, in sales it means turning the logical force of what a client says around to one’s commercial advantage.
Of course one can still make a sale without a structured sales approach. After all many if not most sales happen irrespective of the salesperson, because in some business scenarios people will ‘open’ and ‘close’ themselves.
Start-up founders by their nature tend to excel at demonstrating value: they know their value proposition. They live and breathe it: that’s why they’re in business.
In people facing roles, especially sales, the interview is likely to prove decisive irrespective of any other consideration. In effect the interview is the demonstration of value.
For many businesses the expense, not to mention
risk, of employing a proven sales professional can
be prohibitive.
But employing a junior can be a false economy,
even counterproductive. Retaining an experienced
salesperson on a part-time basis at a comparable
cost can prove a wiser option, in the short as well
as longer term
A sales methodology is only half of the equation without effective management and reporting processes to monitor and reinforce its consistent application.
Of course there’s no management or reporting procedure that can guarantee sales. But there are methods to mitigate the risk of failure and greatly increase the odds of success.
The downfall of most sales operations, assuming reasonable activity levels, is chasing lost causes, a failure to qualify and prioritise effectively.
