What is a sales methodology?

What is a sales methodology?

What is a Sales Methodology? A sales methodology provides the pathway, skills and steps required for the sales professional to complete the task of winning business. It ensures that the sales professional knows where they are within the sales process and how to create value with the customer in order to move the sale forward. A professional sales methodology provides a framework for the salesperson by answering the question 'how to sell'. The implementation of a professional sales methodology can dramatically increase the sales effectiveness of your entire organization, significantly increasing your revenue. The bad news is that not all sales methodology solutions are implemented well! Sales methodologies come from a number of different sources and can be singular or a combination of approaches. There are many excellent Sales Methodologies including: Complex Selling Thull Customer Centric Selling Bosworth & Holland Dale Carnegie Power Base Selling Holden Strategic Selling Miller & Heiman SPIN (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need Payback) Rackham Target Account Selling RSVP Selling - Tony Hughes??

What's the difference between a sales method and a sales process? Its important to understand the difference between a sales methodology and a sales process: A sales process is a set of steps from start to finish, see example below: It tells you, step-by-step, what you need to do to get a certain outcome. If you are baking a cake, a recipe takes you from start to finish, covering all the steps in between. These steps obviously vary from organisation to organisation and product to product but they basically enable the salesperson to understand the sales process for the organisation that they work for. Every company has it s own selling process. At a high level, the steps may be similar; after all we all do qualification. But it s at the critical activity level that the sales process needs to be unique after all; these are driven by our company s strategies and priorities. The process is driven by its strategy for how it wants to work with its customers. The process is driven by the company s experience in winning or losing deals. A sales methodology however is different. If the sales process is the recipe then the sales methodology would be how to make the delicious icing that makes the cake taste nice! I guess the important point here is that both go together and should work in harmony. I would suggest however that a professional sales methodology is more important as it provides the framework for 'how to sell' and can be adapted to many different sales processes.

What is slowing down sales success within your organisation? Before you launch headlong into a new sales methodology its worth taking a step back and understanding what limiting factors exist within your business that are restricting sales success. Examples could include: Poor sales Inaccurate forecasting Account strategy and planning problems Poor sales qualification techniques Sales approach poorly aligned with the customers buying cycle Too many 'lone wolf' sales staff Management not being used appropriately Poor alignment between sales and marketing Excessive use of discounting Disconnect between sales and the rest of the operation Ineffective use of CRM Systems Unsatisfied customers! Its worth taking some time to understand what the real issues are and how they effect performance from the sales person and how they impact on your customers. The manager responsible for sales plays a critical role here to define and correctly identify these pain points. Once this research has been completed its then worth considering the choices available: What are your choices? It s also worth noting that sales methodologies are targeted at different sectors, products and services and they all have specific advantages. For example the sales methods deployed for selling enterprise software will be different from those used for selling semiconductors! So choosing a sales methodology is like choosing a suit! The suit has got to fit and if it doesn't fit, don't use it! I have chosen four different sales methodologies to explore in more detail, as follows: 1. SPIN Selling SPIN Selling is a specific questioning technique pioneered by Neil Rackham, a research scientist. Starting in 1976 over a 12-year period, Rackham worked with a team to study the success factors of human relations in the sales field and analysed more than 35,000 sales calls. He formulated the results of that study into a scientific sales method and in 1988 published a best-selling book called SPIN Selling.

SPIN Selling by Neil Rackman is a hugely influential book that argues the importance of asking the right questions in the sales conversation. Customers will only be motivated to buy something if they identify there s a need. And because there are times when prospects are not even aware there s a problem, the questions you ask are key. This book describes a powerful sales process that reveals four types of questions that when asked in sequence, will significantly increase the likelihood of a lead translating into a sale. Lots of businesses struggle to close enough deals because their selling strategy and sales techniques are not customer-centric. Instead of understanding the buyer, and presenting a solution from a buyer s perspective, too much emphasis is placed on the features and detail of the product/service that s being sold and the credentials of the business itself. SPIN Selling describes a sales tool that will enable sales teams to instantly become more customer-centric by revealing the questions that need to be asked to build rapport, credibility and pave the way for a sale. SPIN Selling seeks to build value in the customers mind and it is this value that enables the customer and the seller to move forward together. Quote from Neil Rackham: People do not buy from salespeople because they understand their products but because they felt the salesperson understood their problems. 2. Strategic Selling Strategic Selling is a sales methodology aimed at Enterprise selling and is owned by Miller Heinman. Miller Heinman is a proven leader in sales performance. Their sales methodologies and sales training workshops consist of three core solutions, Strategic Selling, Conceptual Selling and Large Account Management Process(SM). Strategic Selling helps organizations develop comprehensive strategies to win sales opportunities. Sales teams will use a 'Blue Sheet' to develop action plans to successfully sell solutions that require approval from multiple decision makers in the customer's organization. An example of a Miller Heinman 'Blue Sheet' is below:

Strategic Selling significantly improves the odds of winning complex sales opportunities. It gives organizations a common process and language for pursuing sales opportunities and criteria for allocating resources to determine when to walk away from resource-intensive deals with a low probability of success. However its worth noting that Strategic Selling has a fair amount of administrative overhead associated with it and needs be effectively communicated with the sales teams to ensure that it works correctly. 3. Target Account Selling The TAS Group s Target Account Selling (TAS ) methodology has been developed over a 20-year history, and is the world s leading sales methodology for organizations and enterprises with demanding selling processes and sales cycles. Delivered through The TAS Group s Dealmaker Sales Performance Automation Platform, the TAS Methodology breaks opportunities down into their key components, and educates and sustains sales people on how to best evaluate, progress and win deals. This creates a standard, repeatable, measureable framework for working opportunities, and allows management to focus on coaching rather than inspecting. Specifically, the TAS Methodology addresses the following areas of an opportunity: Assess the Opportunity: an objective process that reveals critical customer, business and competitive information, and drives an informed decision to compete. (I.e. Qualification: is the deal worth chasing?) Set the Competitive Strategy: a framework for determining the most effective approach to winning the customer s business. (I.e. Why will the customer choose to but from us?) Identify the Key Players: a method to identify the roles and status of people who affect or will be affected by customer buying decisions. (I.e. who are the key players?) Define the Relationship Strategy: a process to align with influential decision-makers in the buying organization who can help you win the sales opportunity.(i.e. How to align with the key decision makers) Turn Ideas into Actions: an approach to identify specific tactics needed to win the opportunity and the resources required to support each task. Test and Improve the Plan: a structured process that analyzes Opportunity Plans and refines them to the highest possible quality for implementation in the field.

4. RSVP Selling RSVPselling is next generation selling with strategy as a way of thinking and excellence in execution. RSVPselling was pioneered by Tony Hughes and is an excellent low overhead framework for sales mentoring and opportunity management. Importantly, it can complement your existing methodology and tools for strategic selling and won't confuse your team. RSVP provides a framework focussed on: Relationships: Are we selling at the right level? Do we have positive relationships with the key people aligned with genuine political and economic power? Do our relationships provide differentiating intelligence and genuine influence? Strategy: Do we have an effective strategy for managing our relationships and do we understand the power-base inside the account? Have we identified the competition (external and internal including the risk of them doing nothing). What's our strategy for winning while engineering a positive bias in the customer's requirements toward us? Value: What insights can we offer and are we uniquely creating compelling business value? How are we differentiating and evidencing our credentials as lowest risk and best value? Process: Are we aligned with the buyer? Do we truly understand the customer s process for evaluation, selection, approval and procurement? Do we understand how they define and assess risk with suppliers and solutions? Do we have financial, cultural and process alignment with how the customer defines and assess value for money and ROI? Summary Choosing and successfully deploying sales methodology is not for the faint hearted but can have significant benefits for your sales organisation. Productivity results when a sales organization adopts a common way of selling that is understood, not just by the sales team, but by the rest of the departments that support the sales team. Sales representatives are speaking the same language as sales management. Marketing and customer support understand what is happening in the sales cycle, and there is a common understanding of when a sale will close.