Sales champions what and how the best salespeople in the world do differently. Book: Sales Champions

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Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson

Sales champions. What and how best sellers the world is doing differently

Published with permission from Andrew Nurnberg Literary Agency

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and corporate networks, for private and public use, without the written permission of the copyright owner.

Legal support of the publishing house is provided by law firm"Vegas Lex"

– You will learn what qualities distinguish sales champions and how to turn average sellers into outstanding ones

– You will be able to build a truly successful sales team

– You will learn to sell more tomorrow

This book is well complemented by:

SPIN sales

Neil Rackham

sales arithmetic. Vendor Management Guide

Timur Aslanov

Clients for life

Carl Sewell

Turnkey sales department

Sergei Kapustin and Dmitry Krutov

SPIN sales. Practical guide

Neil Rackham

To hell with prices! Create value

Tom Snyder, Kevin Kearns

To the members of every board of directors in the world who, day after day, demand from us ideas worthy of their time and attention

Foreword

The history of sales has developed slowly and consistently, but there have been some real breakthroughs that have completely changed the direction of this type of activity. But breakthroughs, marked by radical new thinking and exceptional performance improvements, were rare. Over the past century, I can recall only three such cases.

First breakthrough

The first breakthrough began about a hundred years ago when insurance companies discovered that they could double their sales with a simple change in strategy. Prior to this giant leap, insurance policies (as well as many other products—furniture, household items, manufacturing equipment) were sold by salespeople. They signed contracts with clients, and then paid them weekly visits to collect an insurance premium or another payment. When the number of customers exceeded a hundred, the sales employee became too busy collecting weekly payments and he was no longer up to new contracts. Then a thought hit someone's genius head, which later morphed into what we now call the hunter-farmer model. Previously, the same person sold policies and collected premiums; these duties are now divided. So there were sellers who are exclusively salespeople and are reinforced by less experienced (and therefore less expensive) collectors who tracked existing customers and collected fees. This idea was incredibly successful and changed the entire insurance industry overnight. The concept quickly spread to other areas, and for the first time sales became “clean”: they were relieved of the burden of collecting payments.

Second breakthrough

We do not know exactly when the idea of dividing into sellers and assemblers was proposed, but we know the exact date of the second grandiose breakthrough. It happened in July 1925 when Edward Strong published The Psychology of Selling. This work dealt with new and very fruitful ideas of sales technology, such as describing the properties and advantages of a product, working with objections, closing a deal, and perhaps the most important point- open and closed questions. Through this book, it became clear that people could be taught to sell better and more effectively, and this was the impetus for the development of sales education.

Now, when we look back from our days so rich in knowledge, much of what Strong wrote about seems naive and even a little awkward. However, he—and those who followed him—changed the face of sales forever. Perhaps Strong's most important contribution to the industry human activity was the idea that the seller does not have to be born, that there is a set of certain skills that can be mastered. For 1925, this was an incredibly bold idea. As a result, completely new people entered the trade and, as the stories of those times tell, the efficiency of sales increased dramatically.

Third breakthrough

The third major breakthrough came in the 1970s, when researchers became interested in the idea that the skills and techniques that work for small sales can be very different from those needed for larger, more complex sales. I was lucky to be one of the participants in this revolution. In the 1970s, I led a large research project that tracked the work of 10,000 people in 23 countries. We observed employees and their sales proposals, reviewing more than 35,000 options in the end, and analyzed why some of them turned out to be more successful than others in complex sales. The project lasted twelve years, and several works were published as a result of its results, the first of which was the book SPIN Selling. Thus began what we now call the era of consultative selling. It was a breakthrough because more sophisticated models of complex sales appeared and as a result, as with previous breakthroughs, the performance increased significantly.

There have been many small improvements in sales technique over the past thirty years, but what we might call game-changing breakthroughs have yet to be seen. Yes, such concepts as sales automation, sales funnel and the concept of CRM - customer relationship management have appeared. Technology has begun to play an increasingly important role. With the advent of the Internet, there have been huge changes in transactional sales. But all of these changes were by no means revolutionary, often questionable in terms of effectiveness, and none of them, in my opinion, can be considered a breakthrough in the full sense of the word - a change that would allow selling in a completely new way and more efficiently.

The Procurement Revolution

It is curious that the breakthrough did take place, but on the other side of the trade interaction. The real revolution has taken place in procurement. In the 1980s, work in this area was a personnel dead end, but now procurement has become a significant strategic force. Armed with actionable methodologies such as supplier segmentation strategies and sophisticated supply chain management models, purchasing required a fundamental change in sales thinking.

I waited, looking for signs of how the sales industry would react to changes in the purchasing industry. If there was to be another breakthrough in sales, I thought, it must be a reaction to the purchasing revolution. It was like waiting for an imminent earthquake. You know it's going to happen, but you can't predict exactly when - you just feel that it's going to happen, it's about to happen. But nothing of the sort happened.

Fourth breakthrough?

All of the above brings me to Sales Champions and the work of the Sales Executive Council (SEC). It is too early to say that this is the breakthrough that we have been waiting for so long. Time will tell. But at first glance, this study has every indication that it could be a game-changer. First of all, as in other cases, it challenges traditional ideas. However, we need something more, because there are a lot of crazy ideas that violate established ideas in the world. What makes this study different from and similar to other breakthroughs is that as soon as sales executives delve into its content, they say, “Of course! It all seems illogical, but it makes sense! How did I not think of this before?! The logic that you will find in Sales Champions leads to the inevitable conclusion: this is an example of a completely different way of thinking, but it works.

I don't intend to spoil your appetite with retelling of details or climaxes. I will just explain why this study seems to me the most important step in understanding the art of selling in recent years and why it deserves to be proudly called a "breakthrough".

This is good research.

The study is very solid, and believe me, I don’t give such compliments so easily. Many so-called sales studies have methodological holes so big that you could fly an airliner through them. We live in an age where every consultant and every writer is quick to claim they have done “research” to prove the effectiveness of what they are selling. Once upon a time, having research ensured that what was written would be believed; now it is rather a guarantee of losing trust. Buyers are healthy cynics about unsubstantiated claims of all sorts that masquerade as research: “Study has shown that after completing our training program, sales more than double” or “In our study, we found that when salespeople use our model seven types of buyers, customer satisfaction increases by 72%. Such claims are not supported by any evidence and greatly undermine the credibility of the present studies.

I was at a conference in Australia when I first heard that the SEC had an amazing new sales performance study.

I must admit that although I have always respected the SEC and knew that their methodology is very reliable, I still lost faith in the studies to such an extent that I thought: “Well, this will surely turn out to be another disappointment.” Back at my office in Virginia, I invited the research team to spend a day with me, and we went over their methodology with a fine-tooth comb. I confess that I was sure in advance that I would certainly find serious omissions in their work. In particular, I was concerned about two things:

1. The division of all sellers into five categories. The study said that every salesperson falls into one of five well-defined types:

hard worker

Relationship Builder

Lone wolf

Problem Solver

This classification seemed naive and dubious to me. What were you guided by, I asked the authors, when you made a distinction into five types? Why not seven? Or, shall we say, ten? But they were able to show that these categories were not taken from the ceiling, but arose as a result of a vast and deep statistical analysis. In addition, unlike many researchers, they understood that these five categories are behavioral patterns, not narrowly defined personality types. I was pleased: they successfully passed my first test.

2. The trap of comparing leaders and losers. A huge number of sales performance studies compare high performers with those who are nowhere near as effective. At the beginning of my activity, I also sinned in the same way. As a result, I learned a lot of interesting things about losers. When you ask people to compare rock stars to those who have not been very successful in the music world, it turns out that they are able to sort out failures with truly surgical precision, but at the same time they are not able to determine what exactly turns a musician into a star. . I soon realized myself that I had a good idea of why the results are poor - but that's all. For the study to make sense, I had to compare high-performing salespeople with average employees, with the bulk. And I was delighted when I discovered that the SEC team followed this approach in their study.

The study is based on a convincing representative sample

Most studies are based on small samples - from 50 to 80 participants from three to four companies are analyzed. Larger surveys are difficult to carry out, and they are much more expensive. In my own research, I used more than a thousand samples, not because I suffered from megalomania, but because real sales data are often erroneous. They contain a lot of errors, and in order to achieve statistically significant results, a huge amount of information had to be processed. The initial sample in this study was 700 units, and by the end it had grown to 6,000. That's impressive - by any standards. But even more impressive is that the study covered 90 companies. With such a large sample, many of the factors that would normally prevent a study from being applied to sales in their entirety can be discarded. The discoveries made by the SEC do not concern any particular company or particular area. They are applicable to the entire field, and this is very important.

The study did not give the expected results

I am always wary of research that gives exactly the results that its organizers need. Researchers, like all people, have their own prejudices and prejudices. If they know in advance what they are going to find, then, of course, they will find it! I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the researchers themselves were shocked when they found that the results they got were practically the opposite of what they had hoped for. This is a very healthy sign, one of the characteristics of really serious research. Take another look at these five types:

hard worker

Relationship Builder

Lone wolf

Problem Solver

Most sales directors, if they had to choose one of these five types to form a team, would settle for the Relationship Builder. This is what the researchers expected to find as a result of their work. No matter how! Research has shown that Relationship Builders are not prone to high performance at all. And Champions, on the contrary, demonstrate the best results. Champions who are so difficult to manage, who have not easy relationships with both clients and management. As you will learn later in this book, the Champions won not by a small margin, but by a very significant one. And in complex sales, this gap turned out to be even more significant.

Reducing the number of advisory sales

How can we explain these illogical discoveries? Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson build a very convincing system of evidence in the book. Let me add a couple of phrases to what they said. There is a common belief that the sales process is based on relationships, and in complex sales, relationships are the key to success. However, over the past ten years, we have seen troubling signs that advisory selling is becoming less effective. My observations of what customers value in salespeople can help good example. After surveying 1,100 clients, we were surprised to find that only a few of them mention relationships. It seems that the old adage “build relationships first, and then you can sell” doesn’t work anymore. This does not mean that relationships are not important. In my opinion, it would be more correct to say that the old link "relationship - purchase decision" has broken up. Today, you often hear customers say, "I have a great relationship with this rep, but I'm buying from a competitor because I'm more comfortable with the price." Personally, I believe that the relationship with the client is result and not the reason successful sale. This is the reward given to the seller who has created customer value. If you help clients learn new mindsets, if you spark new ideas in them—and that's what Champions do—then you earn the right to a relationship.

Challenge for Champions

The purpose of this book is to demonstrate how excellent the Champion's ability to influence the client is, and therefore how effective he is. This comes as a surprise to many, and I suspect a significant portion of readers will be shocked. But although the idea of the Champion is new, we have been seeing manifestations of it for some time. Surveys consistently show that customers prefer sellers that make them think, bring new ideas, and offer creative and innovative ways of doing business. AT recent times customers began to demand from sellers more insight into the problem and more knowledge. They hope the salesperson will teach them something they don't know themselves. And this is the main skill of the Champion. The future belongs to such skills, and any trade company that ignores the main message of this book is doomed to failure.

I've been innovating in sales all my life, so I don't expect a revolution to happen immediately after the publication of this important study. Change happens gradually, and it can be painful. But I know for sure that there will certainly be companies that will be able to perceive and properly implement the ideas outlined here. These companies, by finding (or raising) real Champions among their sales representatives, will reap a bountiful harvest and achieve significant competitive advantage. As the SEC study demonstrates, we live in an age where manufacturing innovation alone cannot be the key to success. The way we sell has become far more important than that exactly what we are selling. An efficient sales force is a far more significant competitive advantage than product flow. This book offers a well-articulated blueprint for how to build a truly successful sales force. Take my advice: read, think carefully, and implement. You'll see, you'll be glad you did it, and your company will too.

...

Neil Rackham,Author of SPIN Selling

Introduction

A look into an amazing future

In those unforgettable first months of 2009, when world economy sinking rapidly, B2B sales executives around the world faced a challenge of truly epic proportions, as well as a puzzle that seemed unsolvable.

All of the clients disappeared overnight. Trading operations have been suspended. Loans were practically not issued, and there was no need to even talk about cash payments. Hard times have come for all businessmen. And the heads of sales departments were in a real nightmare. Just imagine: you get up in the morning, gather your army and send it to a battle in which victory cannot be expected - and you know this for sure. And so from day to day. You order your warriors to find money where it is impossible to find it. In fact, selling has always been like a battle, because those who do it invariably have to deal with serious resistance. But this time it was different. It's one thing to try to sell something to a stubborn, nervously bucking customer. It's quite another thing to try to sell to customers who simply don't exist. This is exactly what happened in early 2009.

But at the same time, truly mysterious and even mysterious stories sometimes happened. The situation for concluding trade deals has not been so unfavorable for a long time - but what is there, it was almost the most unfavorable for the entire foreseeable period! - however, some especially gifted sales representatives still succeeded something to sell! In fact, they managed to sell not "something" - they sold a lot. While others fought for the tiniest of deals, these outstanding personalities made contracts that many could only dream of in the most favorable times. Was it luck? Or were these characters born with such abilities? And the most important question: how to grab this magic, how to bottle it, cork it tightly and distribute it to those who were not born sorcerers? The survival of many companies depended on the answer to this question.

It was in these circumstances that the Sales Executive Council (SEC), a program within the Corporate Executive Board, embarked on a study that has proven to be one of the most important in the field of sales rep productivity in decades. Participants of our program are heads of sales departments of the largest and famous companies of the world – set us the task of determining what exactly distinguishes these incredibly successful sellers from all others. We have studied this issue for almost four years, covering several dozen companies and several thousand sales representatives, and as a result came to three fundamental conclusions that completely changed the rules of trade and forced B2B sales managers to rethink their views.

We made the first discovery where at first we were not going to even look. It turned out that almost all B2B sales representatives can be divided into five clear categories, depending on their skills and behavioral patterns that determine the system of interaction with customers. Well, it's interesting in itself - to try to determine what type you yourself and your colleagues are. These five types have proven to be an incredibly handy way of dividing the world into a manageable set of diverse sales methods.

The second conclusion turned everything upside down. If you take these five patterns—five types—and compare them to real-world performance, you'll see that there is one clear winner and one clear loser among salespeople, one clearly outperforming the other four, and one clearly outperforming the other four. . And these results could not but cause bewilderment and even anxiety. When we showed them to sales executives, we encountered the same reaction: the results were quite shocking, because executives were betting the most on exactly the type that turned out to be the loser. It was this conclusion that shattered the imagination of many about a sales representative who would help them survive in harsh times.

And here we come to the third discovery, which seems to be the most explosive. Digging deeper, we discovered something quite amazing. We started the study four years ago, when the economy was in full decline, and the goal was to find a recipe that would help sales representatives emerge victorious in the current difficult conditions. But all the data pointed to something much more important and valuable. The type of sales rep that most often won won not because that the economy was in decline - he won regardless from her condition. These salespeople won because they knew how to deal with complex sales, not because they were like fish in water in a difficult economic environment. In other words, when we solved the puzzle of high performance during the economic downturn, the solution was bigger than anyone thought. Your best sales reps - the ones who got you through the hard times - are not just heroes today. They are the heroes of tomorrow because they are the ones best suited to drive sales and generate customer value in any economic environment. So as a result, we managed to find a recipe with which you can create a truly successful salesperson.

We called such sellers Champions. This is a story about them.

Principle #3: A Champion Needs Organizational Capabilities, Not Just Sales Representative Skills

Many companies assume that the transition to a champion sales model is a matter of improving the skills of individual employees. But for the model to really work, this is not enough. This book is as much about building organizational capabilities as it is about developing personal skills.
Developing the ability to teach, which we will discuss in more detail in later chapters, is not a skill your sales reps should learn on their own. Yes, some of the Champions already on your team are actually capable of doing it themselves. But a company that leaves training content up to its sales reps has a turbulent future ahead of them as salespeople promise solutions to their business problems, many of which your company simply can't deliver.
To teach, of course, a certain skill is needed, but the content of the training must be repeated and varied, and therefore must be created by the company (in most cases this is the task of the marketing department).
The same can be said about aspects related to the ability to adapt. While it is the responsibility of the sales representative to clearly and concisely articulate information for training specific individuals in the client's company, the company has a huge responsibility to adapt this information. Above all, companies can leverage their knowledge and research assets to help rising Champions better tailor their presentation messages to the industry and context of each client. It is also the company's responsibility to determine which salespeople will benefit from which training formulation. The wording "any size" is unlikely to suit most sellers, except for those who sell goods of the same type and communicate with a homogeneous mass of customers. Although it is worth noting that at this level, the segmentation of participants by the client is both an organizational ability and a personal skill in equal measure.
If the ability to adapt is both individual and organizational, then the only component of the championship model that can be safely called to a large extent individual skill is the ability to take control into one's own hands. This is where developing the skills of sales representatives makes a big difference, and in Chapter 7 we will explain how you can encourage this behavior. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the company plays a role here too. Champion salespeople, armed with a message prepared by their company, will be much easier to take control of the dialogue with the client. A recent SEC study showed that a company plays a huge role when it comes to training sales reps to identify and build relationships with the right customer side of the deal.

Principle #4: Raising Sales Champions Is a Long Journey, Not a Short Walk

A big mistake we often see in companies trying to develop Champions is the assumption that change will happen instantly. Moving towards a championship model is a change trading system, and those who tested the model first confirm that it takes time to properly implement this transformation. And it's hard work, in part because the championship model requires changes in both organizational capacity and sales rep behavior.
If you provide championship training for employees, encouraging ordinary managers to behave correctly and learn new skills, you can achieve a small burst of productivity. But the increase in productivity will be far from what it could be with proper organization process, and, most likely, growth will quickly come to naught. The training will soon simply be forgotten by most employees.
Many companies acknowledge the fact that moving towards a champion sales model is a long way to go. Those who have overcome it speak of years, not months and weeks. It certainly takes a lot of effort to get your leadership team to embrace the new model. The champion model is not a one-time upgrade software, and the new operating system for a trading company. And it is definitely not suitable for those who want a quick victory.

Does the champion sales model work?

Shortly after we released the findings of our study, the sales leaders who took part began to tell us about how their sales representatives began to practice the principles of the Champion Selling Model in their interactions with customers—and often achieve extraordinary results. results. Let's look at a few examples to see what this model looks like when implemented correctly.

Learning = change

What truly sets Champions apart from other sellers is the ability to teach customers something new and valuable. Our research on customer loyalty (which we will explore in detail in the next chapter) showed that it is precisely this behavior that allows you to retain customers for a long time.
Learning is about offering clients unique perspectives on their business, describing them with such passion and precision that the client can't help but engage in dialogue. The perspective we have in mind is not about your products or solutions, but about how your customer can compete more successfully in their niche. These are ideas that he can use to get rid of unnecessary transaction costs, to reach new market or reduce risk.
To show how this learning approach works in practice, here are a few examples. The first example describes the case of one of our study participants, an employee of an office furniture company. He told us about a sales rep who tried to build a relationship with a prospect. The client had just built a new office building and, in order to furnish it, chose a competitor of our participant as a supplier - it seems that they simply did not want to deal with him. However, the sales representative hired by the hero of our story still felt that there was an opportunity to close a deal before the client finally agreed with a competitor. After several persistent attempts, he managed to arrange a meeting with the head of the client company.
One of the key priorities of this company was to create a common space where employees could effectively interact with each other. Looking at the project, our hero said: “By the way, we have reliable data, according to which effective cooperation is impossible in groups of more than eight people. It is possible in pairs, triplets, but as soon as the number of participants becomes more than seven, the group ceases to be productive. You are most likely building conference rooms the wrong size.”
"This is very helpful information, - the client answered, - but the conference rooms have already been built. What we can do?"
Using knowledge of the product, the sales representative explained how partitions could be installed in each conference room, thus creating several separate rooms, each of which would accommodate groups of three to four people. He then spoke about a product that his company offers that could help develop collaboration within the client company. He told the client about a problem that he did not even suspect existed, expressed an idea, aroused interest, and eventually turned the situation in his favor.
Another example concerns the international pharmaceutical company X. Anyone familiar with the industry knows the race that the biggest players in the field have been in for the past four years – there are too many sales reps and the doctors they try to meet and build partnerships with. , too little. In such a stressful environment, Company X set itself the goal of forging ahead and becoming the supplier that physicians would prefer to work with. The company conducted a study that showed that in the eyes of the client, all suppliers are indistinguishable from each other.
To stand out from the crowd, Company X gave its sales representatives the tools to communicate new ideas to physicians—not about the products they were selling, but about how physicians could improve their professional skills. What is this about? Drawing on the company's extensive knowledge of disease management, the marketing team developed a series of "patient visits" that contained information that sales representatives could share with physicians. These "visits" described the full picture of the disease - from the onset of the first symptoms and the course of treatment to monitoring the patient's condition after recovery.
For a doctor, the opportunity to learn about the course of the disease to the smallest detail can be a real revelation. For example, imagine that a patient is known to experience an average of two and a half flare-ups per year, often requiring an urgent hospital visit. At the same time, the family doctor who sees this patient may never know that such exacerbations occur between visits to him. As a result, the doctor treats the patient, believing that the disease is milder than it really is. As soon as the doctor receives new information, he can change the patient's treatment in such a way as to avoid exacerbations or significantly mitigate their course, which significantly improves the quality of the doctor's work in the eyes of the patient. Doctors value such information very much, and it really helped the seller to establish contact with his clients that was previously inaccessible.
And the last example. There is a lot of talk these days about how sales reps can “over-deliver” and exceed the expectations of a bid. offer. The story we tell below is a clear illustration of how to effectively use training not only to exceed expectations, but also to transform the application for the benefit of the client.
The hero of our story is a company that provides corporate benefits management services. One of her longtime clients suddenly announced that he would like to cut costs, and therefore decided to announce a competition among companies providing these services. Our hero was upset that they were trying to drag him into a price war, and replied that he was not interested in a partnership based on price, and with all due respect refused to participate in the competition. In doing so, he took a completely unique step: he stated that since his company would not participate in the competition, but at the same time very much appreciates a long-term relationship with a client, he would be happy to help develop a proposal for a commercial offer in such a way that the client is guaranteed to receive from the next seller what he needs.
The client was so pleased with the free consulting that he invited our hero to his office, and they spent several hours together thinking about what to include in the proposal for a commercial offer. Recommendations were made during the discussion, including: "If someone tells you the following three things, they are wrong, and here's why"; “If someone says that you need the following four things, then this is not so, and here's why”; "Whatever happens, make sure your bid includes the following two items, and here's why"; “If any company says you don't need these two items, you don't, and here's why. They just want to force you to buy what they need to sell, but you need to insist on these two key points, and here's why.
The client found these recommendations amazingly valuable, because all this would never have occurred to him. When the proposal was developed, our hero's team took a look at it and said, "OK, since This and there is your application, then we would like to take part in the competition, since you describe exactly the partnership in which we are interested.
This example illustrates why the teaching approach works so well. What the sales representative taught the customer is tied to unique opportunities his company. The ability of a sales rep to come up with these kinds of ideas is perhaps the most powerful weapon in the Champion's arsenal and the strongest determinant of customer loyalty in a B2B business. We'll talk more about this in chapters 4 and 5.

Offer customization

Training is a defining quality of a Champion, and the ability to tailor an offer to different customers – as well as to different individuals in the client's company – is what resonates with the client and binds them to your company.
Adaptation is based on knowledge of the specific priorities of the business in which the interlocutor of the sales representative works. We are talking about specific parameters that are most valuable for this particular client, as well as the results that he aspires to, and various economic factors that have the strongest influence on these results.
If a Champion Salesperson sits across from the CMO, they know how to frame their offer in a way that resonates with the customer's priorities. If he then meets with the production manager, he will find the right words to transform his message. But this is not just a matter of business acumen, but of acumen - the ability of a sales representative to adapt his story to the business environment of a particular participant. What exactly worries the client? How is productivity measured? How does this fit into this particular company?
An example of the power of effective onboarding comes from the case of one of our study participants, an employee of a business services company. Two sales representatives worked with the same client for about six months, establishing contact with the company's management and at the same time developing a full-scale presentation for the CEO and senior management. Sales reps focused on what they thought the customer needed most. It was an outsourced solution designed to deliver significant savings.
But just a week before the presentation was due to be given to the client's CEO and senior management, sales reps showed up for their company's annual sales meeting to discuss developing champion skills in sales. When it came to onboarding, sales reps realized that they hadn't fully explored the personal motivations and business goals of the client's management, which meant they were risking a presentation far short of the best way.
The sales representatives then promptly set up a meeting with several key employees of the client company to find out the CEO's personal goals and objectives and see if they could come up with an idea that would appeal to him. What they learned at the meeting was invaluable. They found that the CEO is extremely interested in the level of customer satisfaction, which he just recently received data on. They also found out that the CEO is a fan of modern technology.
Instead of meeting with a proposal to reduce costs, they shifted their focus and focused on how their proposed solution would not only save money, but also improve customer satisfaction, and with the help of new technologies will reduce the time spent on solving problems. . Moreover, the technology they proposed allowed everyone, from the head of the company to managers, to see the process of customer service in real time.
The CEO of the client company was curious from the very beginning of the presentation and carefully listened to it to the end. The meeting, which promised to be a standard discussion of the seller's proposal, suddenly turned into a discussion of one of the most interesting topics for the CEO. At the end of the presentation, he thanked the sales reps for showing the business problem in a new light and showing opportunities he didn't even know existed. While the competitors acted on the basis of a standard offer, the heroes of our example benefited by tailoring their presentation message according to the most important topic for the CEO. In this day and age, consent is more important than ever to closing a deal, so it's no surprise that the seller who can effectively tailor their offer to a wide range of participants wins. We will explore this topic in more detail in Chapter 6.

Sales control

Finally, the characteristic that distinguishes Champion Salespeople is their ability to resolutely take control of the sale. Before we look at this point in more detail, it is important to note that decisiveness is not the same as being aggressive or, even worse, pushy or tough. Decisiveness is the willingness and ability of the seller to stand his ground in those moments when the client tries to retreat.
The Champion's determination can manifest itself in two forms. First, Champions are able to take control over price discussions and other monetary matters. The Champion Salesperson will not hesitate to raise the issue of a 10% discount, but will lead the conversation to a common solution - seeking agreement on value, not price. Secondly, Champions are able to challenge the client and put pressure on decision-making - both of which help to make decisions faster, as well as overcome the very “inertia of indecision”, due to which the outcome of the transaction often turns out to be uncertain.
In essence, if the key to the success of a Champion salesperson lies in educating the customer (that is, changing their minds), then the Champion needs to be prepared to be actively involved in the process. It's impossible to be a good teacher if you don't put some pressure on your students; likewise, it is impossible to be an effective Champion if you are not determined to put pressure on your clients. Today, when clients seek to avoid risks, this approach is becoming increasingly important. Fun Fact: Sales Directors often complain that average salespeople can't leave their comfort zone when it comes to selling, but an even bigger problem is that customers are often unable to leave their comfort zone when it comes to buying. And Champion takes customers out of their comfort zone by showing them other possibilities. The key to success, of course, is to do it diplomatically, with proper empathy and control.
Here's how a participant in our study explained it, former director on sales of one of the world's chemical industry giants: “In practice, a decisive takeover of control can take many forms. In essence, it means that a professional salesperson takes the lead in communicating with a supplier, planning the outcome of this communication. While the toolbox for taking control is vast and rather complex, there are many simple ways that can be successfully used.
“Negotiating price – both up and down – is an area that the ability to control is extremely important for a professional salesperson,” our source says. - When price comes up in a conversation, a sales rep can use a powerful technique: move the conversation from price to value. The value proposition is a great starting point for dialogue. Try asking the client to rank the elements of the offer in order of importance. This sometimes gives the opportunity to see the offer in a new light, which is useful for all who value value - both sellers and customers.
Our interlocutor told the story of one of his sales reps who needed to inform a longtime client about a price increase that was not only significant, but also inconsistent with the economic situation. None of the other suppliers increased the cost, but in this company, raw materials had risen in price so much that there were no other options.
The sales rep recalled that several years ago his client asked the company to replace regular packaging product to a more expensive and non-standard one. The cost of packaging over time has significantly reduced the profitability of the product for the supplier. During the price increase conversation, the sales rep asked the customer to prioritize all the components of their offer. Expensive packaging did not make it into the top three. As a result, the parties agreed to switch to standard packaging and a lower price than expected. The repackaging boosted profitability more than the possible price increase. “It was a great result,” our interlocutor said. – With the help of relatively simple solution the seller took control of the price negotiation, and in the end both sides won.”

Roadmap for the next chapters of the book

4. Learning = Change (Part 1): Why Your Ideas Matter

Over the past fifteen years, much of the training in the field has been based on the principle that the shortest path to a successful sale is through a deep understanding of the client's needs. Accordingly, if you are going to sell "solutions", you first need to discover your customer's most sensitive areas, and then establish a close relationship between what keeps him awake at night and what you are trying to sell.
So it's no surprise that sales leaders have spent millions of dollars and countless hours teaching sales reps to ask the right questions. Many questions. Suggestive questions. Financial questions. hypothetical questions. Open questions. Closed questions. Questions designed to get as close as possible to the client's "three main strategic goals next year”, “two things to fix this quarter”, or better yet, his “burning issues”.
The idea is that if we dig long enough, exposing layer after layer, we will eventually reach the desired point. And clients will be so candid about what they really need that we can put together a highly targeted quotation that embodies the ideal "solution" to the client's problem. A solution that suits his needs so perfectly that he will have no choice but to buy it, no matter what the price.
It all sounds great on paper, but this approach has one major drawback: it doesn't work nearly as efficiently today as it used to. It no longer justifies the huge investment in training sales reps in information gathering skills. And the reason is not only that it is extremely difficult to improve the ability to ask the right questions - especially when it comes to average sellers. The reason is also (and this is much more important) that this approach based on the deeply flawed assumption that clients know what they want. And the client's needs are just waiting to be uncovered through the art of negotiation.
What if customers don't really know what they need? What if the greatest need of the client - paradoxically - is to to figure out what exactly does he need?
If so, then instead of to ask customers about what they need, wouldn't it be better to tell what do they need? And Champions do just that. In a nutshell, Champions aren't so much first-class researchers as they are first-class teachers. They win not because they understand the needs of the client as well as he does, but because they know about these needs better than the client himself knows about them, and because they tell the client what he needs to know, but doesn't know.
In the next two chapters, we'll take a closer look at the Champion's ability to teach, perhaps the most important of the Champion's three core competencies. In addition, and most importantly, we will take a close look at what is and is not related to learning. We will focus on answers to a number of difficult questions, including, for example:

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Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson
Sales champions. What and how the best sellers in the world do differently

Published with permission from Andrew Nurnberg Literary Agency

Legal support of the publishing house is provided by the law firm "Vegas-Lex"

– You will learn what qualities distinguish sales champions and how to turn average sellers into outstanding ones

– You will be able to build a truly successful sales team

– You will learn to sell more tomorrow

This book is well complemented by:

SPIN sales

Neil Rackham

sales arithmetic. Vendor Management Guide

Timur Aslanov

Clients for life

Carl Sewell

Turnkey sales department

Sergei Kapustin and Dmitry Krutov

SPIN sales. Practical guide

Neil Rackham

To hell with prices! Create value

Tom Snyder, Kevin Kearns

To the members of every board of directors in the world who, day after day, demand from us ideas worthy of their time and attention

Foreword

First breakthrough

Second breakthrough

We do not know exactly when the idea of dividing into sellers and assemblers was proposed, but we know the exact date of the second grandiose breakthrough. It happened in July 1925 when Edward Strong 1
Edward Strong (1884–1963) was an American scientist, one of the founders of applied psychology and a pioneer in the study of advertising, the author of a well-known test for measuring attitudes towards professions. Note. transl.

Published The Psychology of Sales. This work dealt with new and very fruitful ideas of sales technology, such as describing the properties and advantages of a product, working with objections, closing a deal, and, perhaps most importantly, open and closed questions. 2
Open question assumes an answer in an arbitrary form; closed - offers to choose an answer from the proposed list. Note. ed.

Through this book, it became clear that people could be taught to sell better and more effectively, and this was the impetus for the development of sales education.

Now, when we look back from our days so rich in knowledge, much of what Strong wrote about seems naive and even a little awkward. However, he—and those who followed him—changed the face of sales forever. Perhaps Strong's most important contribution to the development of this branch of human activity was the idea that a salesperson does not have to be born at all, that there is a set of certain skills that can be mastered. For 1925, this was an incredibly bold idea. As a result, completely new people entered the trade and, as the stories of those times tell, the efficiency of sales increased dramatically.

Third breakthrough

The third major breakthrough came in the 1970s, when researchers became interested in the idea that the skills and techniques that work for small sales can be very different from those needed for larger, more complex sales. I was lucky to be one of the participants in this revolution. In the 1970s, I led a large research project that tracked the work of 10,000 people in 23 countries. We observed employees and their sales proposals, reviewing more than 35,000 options in the end, and analyzed why some of them turned out to be more successful than others in complex sales. The project lasted twelve years, and several works were published based on its results, the first of which was the book "SPIN sales" 3
Rackham N. SPIN sales. Moscow: Mann, Ivanov i Ferber, 2013. Note. transl.

Thus began what we now call the era of consultative selling. It was a breakthrough because more sophisticated models of complex sales appeared and as a result, as with previous breakthroughs, the performance increased significantly.

The Procurement Revolution

Fourth breakthrough?

This is good research.

I was at a conference in Australia when I first heard that the SEC had an amazing new sales performance study.

1. The division of all sellers into five categories. The study said that every salesperson falls into one of five well-defined types:

hard worker

Relationship Builder

Lone wolf

Problem Solver

This classification seemed naive and dubious to me. What were you guided by, I asked the authors, when you made a distinction into five types? Why not seven? Or, shall we say, ten? But they were able to show that these categories were not taken from the ceiling, but arose as a result of extensive and in-depth statistical analysis. In addition, unlike many researchers, they understood that these five categories are behavioral patterns, not narrowly defined personality types. I was pleased: they successfully passed my first test.

The study is based on a convincing representative sample

The study did not give the expected results

hard worker

Relationship Builder

Lone wolf

Problem Solver

Reducing the number of advisory sales

How can we explain these illogical discoveries? Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson build a very convincing system of evidence in the book. Let me add a couple of phrases to what they said. There is a common belief that the sales process is based on relationships, and in complex sales, relationships are the key to success. However, over the past ten years, we have seen troubling signs that advisory selling is becoming less effective. My observations of what customers value in salespeople are a good example of this. After surveying 1,100 clients, we were surprised to find that only a few of them mention relationships. It seems that the old adage “build relationships first, and then you can sell” doesn’t work anymore. This does not mean that relationships are not important. In my opinion, it would be more correct to say that the old link "relationship - purchase decision" has broken up. Today, you often hear customers say, "I have a great relationship with this rep, but I'm buying from a competitor because I'm more comfortable with the price." Personally, I believe that the relationship with the client is result and not the reason for a successful sale. This is the reward given to the seller who has created customer value. If you help clients learn new mindsets, if you spark new ideas in them—and that's what Champions do—then you earn the right to a relationship.

Challenge for Champions

The purpose of this book is to demonstrate how excellent the Champion's ability to influence the client is, and therefore how effective he is. This comes as a surprise to many, and I suspect a significant portion of readers will be shocked. But although the idea of the Champion is new, we have been seeing manifestations of it for some time. Surveys consistently show that customers prefer sellers that make them think, bring new ideas, and offer creative and innovative ways of doing business. Recently, customers have begun to demand from sellers more insight into the problem and more knowledge. They hope the salesperson will teach them something they don't know themselves. And this is the main skill of the Champion. Such skills are the future, and any trading company that ignores the message of this book is doomed to failure.

I've been innovating in sales all my life, so I don't expect a revolution to happen immediately after the publication of this important study. Change happens gradually, and it can be painful. But I know for sure that there will certainly be companies that will be able to perceive and properly implement the ideas outlined here. These companies, by finding (or raising) real Champions among their sales representatives, will reap a bountiful harvest and achieve significant competitive advantages. As the SEC study demonstrates, we live in an age where manufacturing innovation alone cannot be the key to success. How we sell has become more important than what we sell. An efficient sales force is a far more significant competitive advantage than product flow. This book offers a well-articulated blueprint for how to build a truly successful sales force. Take my advice: read, think carefully, and implement. You'll see, you'll be glad you did it, and your company will too.

Neil Rackham,

Introduction
A look into an amazing future

During those unforgettable first months of 2009, when the global economy was rapidly sinking, B2B sales executives 4
B2B (eng. business-to-business) - inter-corporate commercial operations, sales to corporative clients. Note. transl.

Around the world, a problem of truly epic proportions was faced, as well as a mystery that seemed unsolvable.

It is in these circumstances that the Sales Executive Council (SEC), a program within the Corporate Executive Board 5
The Corporate Executive Board Company is an American research company serving big business all over the world. Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Arlington. Note. transl.

— embarked on a study that has proven to be one of the most important in the field of sales rep productivity in the past few decades. Our program participants, the heads of sales departments of the world's largest and most famous companies, challenged us to determine what exactly distinguishes these incredibly successful salespeople from all others. We have studied this issue for almost four years, covering several dozen companies and several thousand sales representatives, and as a result came to three fundamental conclusions that completely changed the rules of trade and forced B2B sales managers to rethink their views.

And here we come to the third discovery, which seems to be the most explosive. Digging deeper, we discovered something quite amazing. We started the study four years ago, when the economy was in full decline, and the goal was to find a recipe that would help sales representatives emerge victorious in the current difficult conditions. But all the data pointed to something much more important and valuable. The type of sales rep that most often won won not because that the economy was in decline - he won regardless from her condition. These salespeople won because they knew how to deal with complex sales, not because they were like fish in water in a difficult economic environment. In other words, when we solved the puzzle of high performance during the economic downturn, the solution was bigger than anyone thought. Your best sales reps—the ones who got you through the hard times—are not just the heroes of today. They are the heroes of tomorrow because they are the ones best suited to drive sales and generate customer value in any economic environment. So as a result, we managed to find a recipe with which you can create a truly successful salesperson.

We called such sellers Champions. This is a story about them.

Published with permission from Andrew Nurnberg Literary Agency

Legal support of the publishing house is provided by the law firm "Vegas-Lex"

– You will learn what qualities distinguish sales champions and how to turn average sellers into outstanding ones

– You will be able to build a truly successful sales team

– You will learn to sell more tomorrow

This book is well complemented by:

SPIN sales

Neil Rackham

sales arithmetic. Vendor Management Guide

Timur Aslanov

Clients for life

Carl Sewell

Turnkey sales department

Sergei Kapustin and Dmitry Krutov

SPIN sales. Practical guide

Neil Rackham

To hell with prices! Create value

Tom Snyder, Kevin Kearns

To the members of every board of directors in the world who, day after day, demand from us ideas worthy of their time and attention

Foreword

First breakthrough

Second breakthrough

We do not know exactly when the idea of dividing into sellers and assemblers was proposed, but we know the exact date of the second grandiose breakthrough. It happened in July 1925 when Edward Strong published The Psychology of Selling. This work dealt with new and very fruitful ideas in sales technology, such as describing the properties and advantages of a product, working with objections, closing a deal, and, perhaps most importantly, open and closed questions. Through this book, it became clear that people could be taught to sell better and more effectively, and this was the impetus for the development of sales education.

Now, when we look back from our days so rich in knowledge, much of what Strong wrote about seems naive and even a little awkward. However, he—and those who followed him—changed the face of sales forever. Perhaps Strong's most important contribution to the development of this branch of human activity was the idea that a salesperson does not have to be born at all, that there is a set of certain skills that can be mastered. For 1925, this was an incredibly bold idea. As a result, completely new people entered the trade and, as the stories of those times tell, the efficiency of sales increased dramatically.

Third breakthrough

The Procurement Revolution

Sales champions what and how the best salespeople in the world do differently. Book: Sales Champions

Principle #4: Raising Sales Champions Is a Long Journey, Not a Short Walk

Does the champion sales model work?

Learning = change

Offer customization

Sales control

Roadmap for the next chapters of the book

4. Learning = Change (Part 1): Why Your Ideas Matter

Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson Sales champions. What and how the best sellers in the world do differently

Foreword

First breakthrough

Second breakthrough

Third breakthrough

The Procurement Revolution

Fourth breakthrough?

This is good research.

The study is based on a convincing representative sample

The study did not give the expected results

Reducing the number of advisory sales

Challenge for Champions

Introduction A look into an amazing future

Read also on the topic:

Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson
Sales champions. What and how the best sellers in the world do differently

Introduction
A look into an amazing future