Sales Performance Perspectives

Her are some of my perspectives on selling and sales training that are based on years of research, benchmarking, analysis and successful personal sales experience. See what you think and give me some feed-back.

Selling Defined
Let's start with a definition of selling: "The exchange of goods or services for mutual satisfaction between a buyer (ownership/usage/benefits), the company (revenue/profit) and the seller (achievement/compensation)"

Selling Perspectives (Styles)
There are two basic selling perspectives and associated styles that are prevalent today.
Traditional (established) seller perspective – Buyers the same (manipulative style)
Definition: "The seller does everything that he/she can to make the sale"

Contemporary (emerging) buyer perspective – Buyers are different
(non-manipulative style
Definition: "The seller does everything that he/she can to help the buyer make a safe and
sound decision to select his/her offering."
I prefer this perspective and style because sales success is often determined by the seller's understanding and ability to respond to the consumer differences or characteristics listed here and not just their selling skills.
1. Purchase (Pending) motives
2. Decision criteria (Dimensions)
3. Benefit objectives (Impact)
4. Value premise (Return)
5. Spending traits (Value or price)
6. Demographic (Size and scope) profiles
7. Vertical (type of business) profiles
8. Buying team (matrix) profiles
9. Individual buyer profiles
10. Decision process (Strategic investments or tactical purchases)

Universal Selling Process - Common Buying Process
There are only four basic types of selling and they all depend on a keen understanding of the universal selling process and its corresponding common buying process. Sales success often depends on understanding and applying these basic process concepts.
1. Stage processes, knowledge, skills, competitive strategies, messages, buyer/seller resources
2. Stage alignment and buyer and seller profile compatibility creates positive selling
experiences
3. Stage scaling (contraction/expansion) occurs based on scope of sale and key selling variables

Natural consumer life cycle
There are four basic phases or stages of a customer life cycle - the buying and selling process integrates within these stages - selling stage on the left and buying process on the right
Phase 1: Targeted consumer – Attention phase (Marketing communications)
Suspects (Consumers) Awareness stage
Prospects (Shoppers) Discovery stage
Phase 2: Active buyer – Purchase phase (New sales – Universal selling cycle)
Approach strategies (Interest) Attention stage
Engagement strategies (Ability) Feasibility stage
Analysis strategies (Need) Involvement stage
Configuration strategies (Desire) Desire stage
Recommendation strategies (Timing) Conviction stage
Approval strategies (Authority) Action stage
Phase 3: Expectant customer – Implementation phase
Establish relationship – Transition service and incremental sales
Phase 4: Established client – Performance phase
Maintain relationship – Life cycle service and repeat (aftermarket) sales

Four types of selling - Buyer and seller profiles
The universal selling process scales to the four types of selling
Business to business (government) selling
1. Commercial sales (Consultative seller – New system buyer)
Strategic (complex) sales dynamics – top down approach
Business window/buying team (inductive - solutions messaging)
Tactical acquisition – bottom up approach
Expert (simple) window/purchase process (deductive - features messaging)
Team sale – integrated bottom up - top down
2. Relationship sales dynamics (Relationship seller – Established business buyer)
Business (consumer) to consumer selling
3. Consumer sales dynamics (Closing seller – New product buyer)
4. Retail sales dynamics (Display seller - Commodities buyer)

Sales Training
Although there are as many types of sales training as there are sales experts, there are really only two effective ways to train consistently successful sales people
1. Skills (Deductive) based - Single dimension
2. Process (Inductive) based – Multiple dimensions (My personal preference)
Refer to the Seller Certification Perspectives post for a process based training overview