Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson challenge traditional sales thinking. After conducting in-depth research on several thousand salespeople in various industries, they debunked the conventional wisdom that in complex selling, those salespeople who build relationships with the client are the most effective and that they form a high-performing team. It turns out that everything is exactly the opposite: it is these sellers who are the least effective. Most best sellers don't just build relationships with customers, they challenge them.

The qualities that make Champions unique can also be nurtured in the mid-range salesperson. Read about how to do this in this book. It will help you identify the Champions in your company, model their approach, implement it in your sales team, and dramatically increase your overall business performance.

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

Matthew Dixon

Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson challenge traditional sales thinking. After conducting in-depth research on several thousand salespeople in various industries, they debunked the conventional wisdom that in complex selling, those salespeople who build relationships with the client are the most effective and that they form a high-performing team. It turns out that everything is exactly the opposite: it is these sellers who are the least effective. The best salespeople don't just build relationships with customers, they challenge them.

The qualities that make Champions unique can also be nurtured in the mid-range salesperson. Read about how to do this in this book. It will help you identify the Champions in your company, model their approach, implement it in your sales team, and dramatically increase your overall business performance.

Published in Russian for the first time.

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

© The Corporate Executive Board Company, 2011

© Translation into Russian, edition in Russian...

Published with permission from Andrew Nurnberg Literary Agency

© The Corporate Executive Board Company, 2011

© Translation into Russian, edition in Russian, design. LLC "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", 2014

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"

© Electronic version book prepared by Litres (www.litres.ru)

– 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

The history of sales has developed slowly and consistently, but there have been some real breakthroughs in it that 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.

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 person 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.

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 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.

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 has 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.

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.

Current page: 1 (total book has 18 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 5 pages]

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

© The Corporate Executive Board Company, 2011

© Translation into Russian, edition in Russian, design. LLC "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", 2014

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 the law firm "Vegas-Lex"

© The electronic version of the book was prepared by LitRes

– 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 in it that 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 person 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 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.

There have been many small improvements in sales technique over the past thirty years, but what we might call game-changing breakthroughs has 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,

Introduction
A look into an amazing future

In those unforgettable first months of 2009, when world economy sinking fast, 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.

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 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. 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.

Current page: 1 (total book has 19 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 4 pages]

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

© The Corporate Executive Board Company, 2011

© Translation into Russian, edition in Russian, design. LLC "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", 2014

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 the law firm "Vegas-Lex"

© Electronic version of the book prepared by Litres (www.litres.ru)

– 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 in it that 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 person 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 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 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 has 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 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.

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 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,Author of SPIN Selling

Introduction

A look into an amazing future

In those unforgettable early months of 2009, as the global economy plummeted, 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. 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.

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 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.

In 2009, the economy was sinking, and consulting company The Corporate Executive Board decided to find out: how to stay afloat? Managers of 90 companies were interviewed and the work of 6,000 salespeople was evaluated. As a result, the book "Champions of Sales" was born - a textbook for salesmen of a new generation. We have read it and selected the most important for you.

Everything is not what it seems - why do you need a champion sales model?

In the book Sales Champions Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson all sellers are divided into 5 types:

1. Hard workers. They inject like hell, invest twice more effort than colleagues.
2. Relationship builders. They try to get along with everyone, always come to the rescue, in a word, put the relationship with the client in the first place.
3. lone wolves. They never follow protocol, they never report, they never work as a team. They act instinctively. They would have been fired long ago if they weren't so good at what they do.
4. Problem solvers. They are more customer-focused than sales-focused, but not to the same degree as relationship builders. We try not to leave any problem unresolved.
5. Champions (or Challengers). Sales people with a deep understanding of the client, who love to argue, have their own views and push the client to a decision. They challenge and reach the goal.

It would seem that from the point of view of the leader, the Relationship Builder is the best manager. But while gathering material for the book, Dixon and Adamson did some research and found: Builders outperform Champions in terms of deals!

The authors of the book went further and asked the leaders of the “experimental” companies to identify among their sellers the so-called “stars” - sellers with higher transaction rates. The rest of the salespeople fell into the category of "average". At the same time, both “stars” and “middle peasants” are found among salesmen of each type. Interestingly, the number of "middle peasants" was distributed approximately equally among different types of sales representatives. But Champions took the leading position in terms of the number of "stars".

Dixon and Adams' surprising discovery upends sales habits. It turns out that there is no need to impose a product and rub in the trust of the client. You need to choose the path of the Champions - this is the challenge sales technique. Fortunately, a team of sales champions can be built from the managers you already have. Now we will tell you how to do it.

Teach to teach

How is a Sales Champion fundamentally different from other types of sellers? The fact that in communicating with the client he takes the position of not an expert, not a friend, but a teacher. Other sales techniques are taught to learn more about the client's business, to show empathy - Champions are taught to help clients, train them.

The owner of a candy store will be impressed if your salesperson knows the assortment of his store by heart. Perhaps the client will treat your manager better. But only the sale of such an approach will not help.

But if your specialist explains to the confectioner why his cakes fall apart during transportation to the point of sale and explains how your product can help him avoid this, the client is in your pocket!

This approach will also help in the long run. According to a survey of 5,000 customers conducted by the authors of the book, 53% of customer loyalty depends on how the sales process went. While 38% of loyalty depends on the brand and product, and only 9% on the price-quality ratio.

Tip: share with your salespeople all the information about the industry or specific client. This will help you quickly understand how to help him.

Learn to speak

The champion does not just communicate with the client. He builds a dialogue in such a way as to smoothly lead the interlocutor to the desired solution. Teach your salespeople six simple steps.

Let's say your company manufactures office furniture. The client has recently moved to a new office building, and the manager in a conversation with him must go through 6 steps:

1. Instill confidence. Show your expertise by making a rational comment. For example, point out that the new meeting rooms are not very conducive to teamwork.
2. Show a different point of view. For example, note that effective teamwork takes place in small groups of 3-4 people. The new premises are designed for eight!
3. Indicate the severity of the problem. Give research results that prove that large conference rooms do not contribute to the growth of the number of innovative solutions.
4. Explain how the problem affects the client's business. Teamwork is bad - the innovative component is falling - competitiveness is decreasing.
5. Suggest an idea that can improve the client's situation. In this case, divide large rooms into two smaller ones.
6. Offer a turnkey solution. It is very important not to express it ahead of time. In our example - to offer movable walls to organize space.

Learn to influence the top

“The bottom wants - the top does” - this principle is guided by a manager who has read the book “Champions of Sales”. What does it mean?

Tip: don't aim to convince the director himself. Convince his team that your product is profitable, and he will have no choice but to accept the offer.

But in order to motivate ordinary employees to influence the decision of the management, you need to answer yourself the following questions:

• What exactly do the people you interact with care about?
• What are their economic objectives?
• What do they want to achieve?

Then you need to build the offer so that it fits the needs of the person you are interacting with.

Let's get back to moving walls. For example, you explain their benefits to a personnel officer. Yes, the purchase decision will be made by the director. Yes, it is more important for the director to learn about financial side question. But you are not talking to him. Therefore, you are focusing on something else: the division of space will reduce stress and make employees happier. And now, the personnel officer is already interested.

Tip: prepare a cheat sheet for beginner Champions, which will spell out the interests / goals / tasks of workers in different positions in different industries with which you cooperate.

Learn to control the situation

The champion always takes the helm and tries to control sales. But there is a problem: some salespeople are afraid to talk about money or push the client to the final decision.

That's what's interesting. According to a study conducted by BayGroup International, 75% of decision makers believe during negotiations that the other party - the seller - has control over the situation. At the same time, 75% of salespeople believe that the “power” is in the hands of the decision maker!