The Advisor’s Corner

Strategic Selling: The Big Surprise About Motivating Your Business Developers

October 26, 2015/in Extraordinary Customer/Client Service/by Tom Doescher

I will definitely be providing some suggestions for motivating rather than demotivating your business developers in my blog series related to best practices for obtaining new customers/clients. For now, in my final post based on The New Strategic Selling, by Miller, Heiman, Tuleja and Marriott, I will provide another direct quote from the authors. In listening to business owners/CEOs for years, I believe this quote will come as a big surprise:

“In every survey we have seen, the researchers reach the same ‘surprising’ conclusion that what really turns good salespeople on is not their six-figure commissions but job satisfaction, recognition and challenges. The popular belief that the top salespeople are in it just for the money always turns out to be a misconception.”

I would suggest this may even be a controversial conclusion. What do you think?

Strategic Selling: Hucksters

October 19, 2015/in Extraordinary Customer/Client Service/by Tom Doescher

As I continue my series, here’s a quote from The New Strategic Selling, by Robert B. Miller, Stephen E. Heiman, Tad Tuleja and J.W. Marriott: “If you are to be successful in strategic selling, you’ll have to leave the old-time huckster philosophy where it belongs — in the past — and learn how to dig for a real fit between what you have and what your customers need.”

The authors provide the following common-sense advice:

The only competitive strategy that can bring you success is a strategy in which you keep your eye on the customer.
A Hollywood agent’s advice to his actor client was, “We’re in Tinseltown. If you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.” The authors’ response is, “Maybe in Tinseltown, but not in the world of selling. Not if you want to build a reputation for credibility — which, as we’ve said, is the one thing you cannot do without.”
By establishing low-pressure relationships with numerous buying influences, you’ll be positioning yourself to capitalize on them when they’re ready to buy.

If you’re responsible for business development, is this how you think and behave? If you’re an owner/CEO or a sales manager, is this the advice you offer to your new-business developers?

Strategic Selling: Competitors

October 12, 2015/in Extraordinary Customer/Client Service/by Tom Doescher

I have commented on this subject before. In my May 13, 2013, post, “Talking Down About Competitors,” I recommended not bad-mouthing your competitors. Then, in my April 23, 2012, post, “Create Your Own Path,” I recommended the book Blue Ocean Strategy, by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, and the concept of listening to your customers/clients and providing them with something new and different to meet their needs.

Here are two quotes from my newest favorite book, The New Strategic Selling:

“We have long held that one of the commandments for losing in business is to concentrate on the competitor rather than the customer.”
“The alternative is to think far less about what the competition is doing, has done, or might do, and more about what selling is about in the first place — the providing of customized solutions to individuals’ problems.”

My question is simple: “Where is your focus — the customer/client, or the competition? What would I hear if I listened in on your Leadership Team meetings?

Strategic Selling: The Big Surprise About Motivating Your Business Developers

Strategic Selling: Hucksters

Strategic Selling: Competitors

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