- July 17, 2019
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The first contractor got a proposal to us within a few days, the second contractor got a proposal to us later the same day and the third contractor gave us a price on the spot. On the responsive scale, the third contractor was the best.
Certainly, responsiveness is not the only criteria that prospects weigh as part of their decision-making process. They may also consider:
- Trustworthiness
- Timeline of the deliverable(s)
- Referrals
- Expertise
- Credibility
- Personality
- Understanding of your needs
- Fit
- Price
- Chemistry
- Ease of working with
- Capabilities
- Your comfort level
- Reputation
- Proximity
- Flexibility
The list isn’t complete as I’m sure there are more.
Although price is only one of 18 criteria listed, it’s the only objection salespeople ask for help with. Salespeople don’t ask if we can help with the reputation objection, chemistry objection or personality objection. With salespeople it’s always about price.
The thing is, if you have a reputation problem, or any of the others on the list that aren’t price, they may be difficult or impossible to overcome. Price, the criteria salespeople obsess about, can be eliminated when salespeople sell value. That’s not accomplished by talking about value, saying there’s value, or adding value. It occurs when salespeople bringing the actual value to the customer. Salespeople must be the value. When customers perceive that you provide a value that others don’t, your higher price won’t matter.
Objective Management Group (OMG), which has evaluated and assessed 1,879,518 salespeople, has some data on selling value, one of the 21 sales core competencies we measure. 41% of all salespeople are strong at value selling, but that’s deceiving because only 11% of the bottom half of all salespeople have selling value as a strength and that group’s average score is just 46%. On the other hand, 97% of the top 5% of all salespeople have selling value as a strength and their average score is 87%. Top salespeople are 791% more effective at selling value!
Why is there such a difference?
72% of all salespeople have non-supportive buying habits and understand it when their prospects shop for the lowest price, comparison shop or think it over. Yet, if you break it down by performance, it’s quite a different story.
Only 23% of elite (top 5%) salespeople have non-supportive buying habits but it gets a lot worse from there and quickly.
46% of strong (next 15%) salespeople have it, 72% of serviceable (the next 30%) salespeople have it and 89% of weak (the bottom 50%) salespeople have non-supportive buying habits.
You might be thinking, “It can’t be that big of a deal if almost a quarter of the best salespeople in the world have this weakness and they’re doing fine,” and you couldn’t be more wrong. Understand that if the best salespeople have this weakness, it’s likely the only weakness they have and their considerable strengths, grit and tactical selling competencies make up for it. On the other hand, most of the weak salespeople have many more weaknesses and too few strengths to compensate.
Almost ALL of the bottom 50% buy in such a way that their habits don’t support ideal sales outcomes. And sales training won’t fix that.
What does?
You have to change the way you buy things!
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