Wind in the sales

Whatever the business, whatever the market or specialisation, selling is the lifeblood of success. In the early stages of an enterprise, the founder is usually the person who is responsible for selling. But as the business grows, the company’s principal and probably most effective salesperson – the person who best understands the product or service on offer – finds that there’s less time to devote to sales and marketing.

When entrepreneurs reach this critical point in their business, it’s time to delegate. For some, it’s the myriad management and operational responsibilities of a growing business that must be delegated so that they can concentrate on winning new customers. Others delegate the selling function to focus on running the business.

This was the decision that faced Queensland businessman Joel Nebauer , founder and managing director of Gold Coast-based commercial fit-out and exhibition-display builder Focus Productions .

Nebauer started the business in 2005 and was working 14-hour days involved in every aspect of the business, from sales and quoting jobs to product development and delivery. He knew it couldn’t go on this way. The way he ran the business had to change. “It required a new mindset,” he recalls.

Nebauer engaged Gold Coast accountant and business adviser Michael Burke of Burke Associates to help him restructure his role so that he could focus on sales and marketing. “I love the creative and production side [of the business], but the company needs me to concentrate on sales,” Nebauer says. “I am passionate about what we can do and I know what we can achieve for clients, so I’m the best one for this role.”

Burke helped Nebauer to restructure the business and develop a new business plan, and he assisted in training staff to take on new responsibilities. Most importantly, he helped Nebauer rewrite his job description.

“Joel’s business was in great shape, but it could not grow any further while Joel continued to be immersed in every aspect of it, ” Burke says. “It is always difficult for an owner to let go and trust staff to do their job properly.”

Nebauer’s decision to focus on selling meant that he was able to remove a critical obstacle to further growth: himself. “Joel was the bottleneck,” Burke says. “He was too involved in the details and day-to-day activities of the business.”

The cold hard reality was that the best contribution Nebauer could make to the prosperity of his business was to recognise where his true strengths lay.

The executive chairman of training provider Leadership Management Australasia , Grant Sexton , says that by focusing on “high pay-off activities” business owners, managers and employees can improve their contribution to the organisation. He urges clients to identify their high pay-off activities and increase the time devoted to them. For some it is a rude awakening. “Once they start analysing their working week, many managers and employees are shocked to discover how little time they devote to the most important tasks – sometimes as little as 15 per cent of their time,” Sexton says.

For Nebauer, his principal high pay-off activity was selling. By dedicating himself to the task, he now has the time to take a more strategic and considered approach to winning new business. “We can be more selective about the work we pitch for,” he says.

Being selective usually means being authentic. Companies fed up with being bombarded with indiscriminate sales pitches from business-to-business service providers are increasingly insisting on authenticity says James Mason , managing director of business coaching company Mindshop .

Service providers that treat selling as “purely a numbers game” – the number of pitches it takes to convert to a sale – do not focus on tailoring their marketing approaches to the specific needs of potential clients. A company that mass-mails its marketing pitch to 20,000 prospects to secure 100 sales – a conversion rate of 0.5 per cent – has no interest in either the quality of clients or whether their offering is right for them.

Such an unsophisticated approach may have worked once, but Mason believes this no longer holds true. “With most business owners now mature and savvy enough to spot one of these typical sales pitches from a mile away, the trait that is winning new opportunities for [service providers] at present is to be authentic during the sales process,” Mason says.

So-called “authentic” sales pitches – in which the focus in on targeting fewer, quality prospects – usually have higher conversion rates.

An authentic, or client-focused, business-to-business sales proposal, according to Mason, includes the following elements:

• Demonstrating a genuine desire to help the client.
• Incorporating a prospective client’s direction, vision and key issues before offering a customised solution.
• Having a problem-solving mindset.
• Providing a regular review period for the engagement with no long-term contracts.

“For most business owners, having [a service provider] sitting in front of them who is authentic is like a breath of fresh air,” Mason says. “So, if seeking to boost your conversion ability, don’t resort to the hard sell or pitching a product that promises the world. Instead be authentic, listen to your prospective customers’ needs and have a genuine intent to deliver the most appropriate, customised solution. This will provide you the high-value, long-term clients that you will enjoy working with.”

Sales coach Sue Barrett says that in “turbulent and challenging economic times” businesses need to rethink how they sell and buy. “Business and sales leaders will need to examine their go-to-market strategies and sales force structures,” she says. “Anyone looking for things to settle down and return to the good old days of selling should think again. We’re never going back, so it’s time to adapt and forge a new path to selling. Selling now requires a different philosophy and approach.”

Barrett says this includes placing customers at the core of a company’s operation. “This means integrating marketing, sales, service and support to provide a single view of the customer as they move through the engagement lifecycle,” she explains.

It also means moving away from mass marketing to customer fragmentation and segmentation. She believes niche sales and marketing strategies will become the norm – particularly as new consumer markets emerge demanding different ways of doing business.

“Smart companies will tune in to where buyers are electing to spend time and money,” Barrett says.

“Sales teams will need to be even more targeted in their sales planning and prospecting efforts – no more scatter-gun approach – and marketing teams will need to stop producing catch-all marketing materials that ignore buyer preferences and attitudes.”

She recommends that companies take the lead of business-to-consumer online retailers by making smarter use of customer data to predict business-to-business buying behaviour, drive sales and strengthen relationships.

As available data grows around buyers’ preferences and habits, businesses will find new ways to understand their customers. “We now have the science of behavioural economics where businesses can selectively target, connect and communicate with the worker, buyer, supplier and communities with much greater accuracy, relevance and meaning,” Barrett says. Selling in 2012, she adds, will be about “paying attention, really listening and responding in a much more considered manner”.

BRW

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