Same Side Selling Read online

  Copyright ©2014 by Ian Altman and Jack Quarles.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by IdeaPress Publishing,

  an imprint of the Influential Marketing Group.

  IDEAPRESS PUBLISHING

  WE PUBLISH NON-OBVIOUS BUSINESS BOOKS

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  Cover Design & Page Layout by PanoGraphics

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the

  Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 978-1-940858-07-4

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014934405

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY

  Selby Marketing

  SPECIAL SALES

  IdeaPress Books are available at a special discount for bulk purchases for sales promotions and premiums, or for use in corporate training programs. Special editions, including personalized covers, custom forewards, corporate imprints and custom bonus content are also available. For more details, email [email protected] or [email protected]

  No animals were harmed in the writing, printing or distribution

  of this book. The trees, unfortunately, were not so lucky.

  For more ideas on how to be successful with

  Same Side Selling, visit:

  www.SameSideSelling.com

  Acknowledgments

  Catherine Oliver’s editing was brilliant. We credit her with great improvements in the clarity, organization, and readability of our work. Tim Ingle was a keen set of eyes and our technical wizard. Denise Solan kept us focused and made sure that the world would get to hear about our work.

  It was through Derek and Melanie Coburn, the creators of the group Cadre, that we met. Cadre provided the fertile ground for friendship and collaboration that inspired us to work together.

  We want to give special thanks and acknowledgment to our respective spouses, Deborah and Linda, as well as our children. They give us constant support and inspiration, and they put up with the phone calls, meetings, and interruptions that led us to Same Side Selling.

  Contents

  Introduction

  A Better Way to Sell (and Buy)

  How This Book Started

  Getting on the Same Side

  A Different Type of Book on Selling

  Terminology

  How the Book Is Organized

  Chapter 1

  The Old Metaphor: Selling Is a Game

  The New Metaphor: Selling Is a Puzzle

  A Deeply Entrenched Mindset

  A New Acronym, A New Focus

  Finding versus Closing

  The Game-Based Mentality Has to Change

  Put Same Side Selling to Work

  Chapter 2

  Standing Out from the Crowd Is Essential

  Start With What You Do and Whom You Serve

  Stay Away from Problems You Don’t Solve

  When You Think You Are Not Unique

  Put Same Side Selling to Work

  Chapter 3

  The Cost of Pursuing Too Many Prospects

  Qualify by Knowing Why

  Get on the Fast Track to Why

  Put Same Side Selling to Work

  Chapter 4

  The Need for a Good Diagnosis

  Get to the Truth about Urgency

  Have the Right Conversation

  Their Readiness Is Your Concern

  Put Same Side Selling to Work

  Chapter 5

  Why We Don’t Always Educate and Why We Must

  Education That Is Buyer-Focused, Not Product-Focused

  Mastering the Third-Party Story

  Educating Is Another Round of Qualifying

  Putting Boundaries Around Education

  Put Same Side Selling to Work

  Chapter 6

  Never Lose Sight of the Buyer

  Sell Results Instead of Resources

  The Need for Clear Boundaries of Expertise

  Put Same Side Selling to Work

  Chapter 7

  What It Looks Like to Force the Fit

  The Hazards of Pushing the Sale

  Why Restraint Is the Best Path

  Is It Forcing the Fit or Just Good Selling?

  Referring from the Same Side

  Put Same Side Selling to Work

  Chapter 8

  See the Big Picture

  Framing Total Cost and Total Value

  Address the Total Cost and Assess the Buyer’s Needs

  Address Objections in Advance to Avoid the Eleventh-Hour Disaster

  Put Same Side Selling to Work

  Chapter 9

  Stay Involved

  Bringing Others to the Same Side

  Responding to the Adversarial Trap

  Finishing Strong

  Put Same Side Selling to Work

  Chapter 10

  Chapter Summaries

  A Message from Ian and Jack

  Introduction

  A Better Way to Sell (and Buy)

  Every day, buyers and sellers speak with each other. Many of those conversations lead to sales and high satisfaction. But far too often, the buyer-seller discussion leads to such challenges as mutual mistrust, poor communication, misunderstanding, confusion, and disappointment.

  Obviously these challenges are bad for the seller and the buyer, yet they seem to be more the norm than the exception. Why?

  In most cases, the symptoms of these challenges reveal a deeper problem that we call the adversarial trap. In the adversarial trap, the buyer-seller dynamic can develop into an us-versus-them mentality, implying that one “side” can win only if the other loses. The adversarial trap leads to long decision cycles, deception, and the withholding of information for the buyer and the seller. A drawn-out, contentious dynamic is in neither party’s best interest.

  There is a better way to sell. Great selling should not be adversarial. (Neither should great buying.)

  How This Book Started

  Ian and Jack met at a networking event. Ian is well known for helping companies achieve more success with selling, and Jack has a strong background in helping companies save money when they buy. Given their job titles, you might think they would be natural enemies, like the sheepdog and the wolf. Vivid stereotypes come to mind:

  The sales pro—slick, manipulative, pushing buttons to cajole people into buying what they really don’t need for exorbitant prices.

  The procurement guy—controlling, power-hungry, solely focused on price and viewing everything as a commodity.

  The traditional caricatures may be rooted in truth. But as Ian and Jack talked, they discovered that neither of them fit the stereotypical mold.

  Ian spoke about solving problems more than about selling, and he discussed an integrity-based approach in which the goal is to get to the truth with prospects as soon as possible. Jack talked about the buyer benefit far more than the price, and about finding expert vendors that delivered the greatest value. Far from disagreeing and debating, Ian and Jack seemed to be using the same language and describing the same goal: making the selling process as efficient and productive as possible.

  At some point, Ian remarked to Jack, “I wish all of my clients were selling to buyers who saw things the way you did.”

  Jack replied, “No kidding—I wish my clients could buy from salespeople who were practicing your approach.”

  Something clicked. It was a chocolate-in-the-peanut-butter moment. Could these two great tastes taste great together?

  The historic relationship between buyers and sellers has progressed as a corporate arms race. The vendor employs a sales force; the buyer creates a purchasing group. The vendor hires
a sales consultant; the buyer gets a procurement consultant. Tactic A drives Defense 1; Selling Trick B triggers Buying Trick 2. Eventually, each side takes on too many casualties. This antiquated style of selling might make you think of the old Stephen Wright joke: “I bought a humidifier and a de-humidifier. I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.”

  Getting on the Same Side

  Picture a salesperson sitting down with a prospect in a meeting room. Where is the salesperson seated? Where is the prospect? If we asked you to draw a diagram of this meeting, it would almost certainly have the buyer and seller on opposite sides of the table. (OK, maybe not, if you’ve carefully noted the title of the book and the subhead above!)

  This book is devoted to changing that picture so that the buyer and the seller are on the same side of the table. Same Side Selling will be helpful to you if any of these thoughts sound familiar:

  • “I’ve got great things to sell to my clients, but my message seems to fall on deaf ears.”

  • “I’m tired of wrestling with my prospects.”

  • “I hate feeling mistrusted.”

  • “I can’t figure out why my clients are reluctant to share information that would allow me to help them better.”

  • “My prospects are trying to convince me that everything we need to know is in the RFP, but we both know that’s not true.”

  • “Why is it that every discussion seems to be focused on price, not value?”

  The adversarial trap makes selling harder and more time-consuming, and it gives salespeople a bad reputation. We will address these frustrations throughout Same Side Selling, and we’ll present an alternative approach that may fit better with your personality and ethics.

  But the goal is not simply to feel good. The goal of Same Side Selling is to solve important challenges for clients, resulting in business for you and positive outcomes for them. (And if you want to call that “selling,” we’re OK with that.)

  A Different Type of Book on Selling

  What makes Same Side Selling different from any other book we could find on this topic is that it is co-authored by people on both “sides”: a salesman (Ian) and a procurement and expense management veteran who intimately understands how companies buy (Jack). The buyer’s perspective is baked into every sentence of Same Side Selling, along with the seller’s point of view.

  What may come as a surprise — but probably shouldn’t — is that Jack’s buyer perspective and Ian’s seller perspective rarely conflict, and what will feel better as a seller will also be more effective with buyers.

  Terminology

  Note that we will use the terms buyer, customer, client, and prospect to mean essentially the same thing: someone with whom you are doing business or hope to do business. Likewise, we will use the terms challenge, problem, and issue to refer to the matter with which you can help the buyer. We don’t want terminology to distract from the main focus of using your offerings and expertise to help people and companies move ahead with their goals.

  How the Book Is Organized

  Same Side Selling presents a tactical approach to escape the adversarial trap at each step of the sales process and throughout the client engagement. These steps might all be covered in a single thirty-minute conversation, or they might unfold over months, depending on the context of the sale. Following is an overview of what you will discover in each chapter of Same Side Selling.

  Chapter 1: Stop Playing Games

  Whether you like it or not, buyers and sellers get caught in adversarial games that pit one against the other. Even the terminology and tactics take their lead from war and battle metaphors. In contrast, the Same Side Selling mindset puts the buyer and seller on the same side of the table. Instead of contemplating a battle, think of selling and buying as two people working together assembling a puzzle.

  Chapter 2: Be Unique

  For a salesperson, trying to be all things to all buyers is a losing approach. The foundation of collaborative selling is differentiation. You can be unique in the value you offer, even when you are selling something that many others sell.

  Chapter 3: Narrow Your Market

  Too many sellers spend far too much energy pursuing weak opportunities. Effective qualification begins with understanding why a prospect would buy. Discover tools and questions that will help you get to the why quickly.

  Chapter 4: Get to the Truth

  A seemingly hot prospect can become a lengthy, costly pursuit when the seller fails to uncover the truth about the buyer’s urgency and readiness. To shorten the sales cycle, get to the truth efficiently and in a way that makes the buyer more likely to take action.

  Chapter 5: Be an Educator

  Amid oceans of information, sellers often fail to effectively educate buyers. Discover how to educate buyers, learn tactics for sharing information successfully, and learn the difference between providing information and giving free consulting.

  Chapter 6: Focus on the Fit

  When you’re educating buyers, details can sometimes overtake the message and distract from the overall value of the process. Follow a few simple principles to keep the discussion in the right place.

  Chapter 7: Don’t Force the Fit

  Too many sellers push a deal forward even when it is not a great fit, causing short-term pain and slowing long-term growth. Restraint is the best long-term strategy and can even be a useful selling tool.

  Chapter 8: Sell Value, Not Price

  Despite good relationships and processes, sellers often find themselves combating a “low bid wins” mentality. You can free buyers from a fixation on the purchase price by helping them see value and total costs.

  Chapter 9: Deliver Impact

  In the sales role, it can be easy to forget that a contract is not the finish line. The deal is not done until the client has realized the outcome he thought he was buying.

  * * *

  Whether you are selling products, services, or some combination of both, following the guidance in this book should ensure that you and your client or prospect are working together on the same side of the table.

  That is the whirlwind tour. Every chapter ends with suggestions for taking action, and we have provided chapter summaries at the end of the book. But please don’t miss all the words in the middle. That’s where you’ll find stories, examples, scripts, and explanations that we believe will help you achieve extraordinary success with your clients and prospects.

  If you agree that effective sales should be about collaboration, not about winning a battle, then let’s go!

  —Ian and Jack

  CHAPTER 1

  Stop Playing Games

  Bighorn sheep will often charge each other at full force until one of them either runs away or loses consciousness. Dueling antelope rush head to head with sharp, pointed horns to demonstrate their superiority over others in the herd.

  Too often, buyers and sellers engage in a similar adversarial dance. Each party positions their business to defeat their perceived opponent. While this approach might make sense with respect to competition, it can also prevail when businesses relate to customers. Though neither buyer nor seller is likely to lose consciousness, a combative posture causes headaches, produces inefficiencies, and rarely results in a positive outcome for either party. Whether you are a buyer beating up the seller, or a seller trying to get the buyer to purchase something his organization doesn’t need, you are positioned for failure.

  Even if you are not guilty of these evil practices, the dastardly people who came before you have already poisoned the well. As someone with a sales or business development role in your organization, you may have experienced the following:

  • A new acquaintance rolls his eyes or makes an awkward joke when he learns that you have a role in sales.

  • A prospective client is suspicious of the questions you ask and refuses to answer.

  • You get caught up in the blame game when something minor goes wrong with a client.

  From a
buying perspective, many of us have endured at least one of these situations:

  • The sales guy sells one thing to the customer and then tries to deliver something different from what was purchased.

  • A vendor presents alleged expertise on a project, but you later learn that the company has no relevant experience.

  • A company increases prices after it’s too late for you to switch vendors.

  • A vendor’s results fall short, and the vendor says it’s your fault.

  These experiences and others like them are all symptoms of a problem that we call “the adversarial trap.” The adversarial trap causes buyers and sellers to work against each other instead of collaborating. If you have spent any time selling, you have probably found yourself in this form of business purgatory. Not only was it uncomfortable, but it probably also resulted in a less-than-ideal outcome.

  Fortunately, there is a way out of the adversarial trap. It starts with changing the traditional mindset of both sellers and buyers. Then you can stop playing games.

  The Old Metaphor: Selling Is a Game

  Traditionally, the sales profession has attracted a competitive personality. To some extent, that is to be expected given the nature of the job.

  Selling is more readily measurable than other business disciplines, such as management or customer service. In many circles, the sales function is viewed as “a numbers game” for which both inputs and outputs are easily tracked quantitatively: prospects, cold calls, meetings, demos, customers, projects, revenue, and so on.

  It’s no surprise that a field that is so numbers-focused attracts people who are numbers-oriented. What other parts of our society are dominated by numbers? An obvious connection is to the world of sports. In fact, the most common metaphor for selling and negotiating has been that of the game. How many of the top sales books of the last half-century feature the words close, game, or win in the title? How many coaches and athletes have written books about business success?