6 assumptions all sellers must

8/8/2019 6 Assumptions All Sellers Must

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1©2009 Huthwaite, Inc. www.huthwaite.com

SALES SKILLS SALES STRATEGY NEGOTIATIONS PROSPECTING SALES MANAGEME

When a market goes through the kind of convulsions

that the global market has, you rightly worry about

all of the uncertainty. Will there be budget to buy my

products and services? How many of my customers

will still be in business? Is what I am selling seen as

discretionary in this market?

All good questions that you should spend much time

trying to address. But how many other questions

should you be asking yourself but aren’t because you

are making assumptions based on history or perceived

strength of customer relationships. The past is no

longer prologue. We are in a whole new world where

you need to revisit and revalidate all of the things you

believe to be true.

On January 26, 2009—Bloody Monday— more than

71,000 jobs were lost in the United States. Through

no fault of their sales organizations, many Fortune

500 companies have been forced to participate in the

carnage. The economy is wreaking havoc on even the

most stalwart companies. According to the CEO of

a venerable manufacturing firm, “The job reduction

is a step we have to make in order to meet our goals,

remain competitive, and adapt to the uncertainties

in the marketplace. We’re facing fierce competition.

We’re not in this industry alone. Our competition is

not standing still, and neither can we.”

Successful businesses constantly revisit every aspect of

the way they do business to ensure that they are in

step with the ever-changing dynamics of the market.

As Jack Welch once said “Face reality as it is, not as

it was or as you wish it to be.” Now is the time for

you to adopt the same discipline. There are 6 distinct

assumptions you must question to ensure that you

face reality as it is and position yourself for success in

a tough market.

ASSUMPTION #1

“I know how to sell; I have been a top-

performing salesperson for many years!”

Ok, so you have exceeded quota every year for the

past five years. In fact, you have sold for a number

of different companies in different market segments

and each time you have come in, learned the products

and services and blown your numbers out. Let’s face

it, you consider yourself a top performing salesperson

and you have the track record to prove it.

6 ASSUMPTIONS ALL SELLERS MUSTNOW QUESTIONBy: John Go lden

“Face reality as it is, not as it was or

as you wish it to be.”

“ IT A IN ’ T WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW THAT

GETS YOU INTO TROUBLE. IT ’S WHAT YOU KNOW

FOR SURE THAT JUST A IN ’T SO.”



©2009 Huthwaite, Incwww.huthwaite.com

6 ASSUMPTIONS ALL SELLERS MUST NOW QUESTION

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The first thing you need to do as you work through yourreality checklist is to ask yourself a simple question:

“How many of my deals did I really sell by uncovering

needs, developing them and clearly aligning customer

needs to capabilities and outcomes?” Be honest with

yourself as you review them and identify how many of

them were opportunities where the buyer was already

in the “evaluation of options” stage of the buying

cycle (see our white papers Rational Forecasting and

Selling to the C-Suite for discussions of Huthwaite’s

Buying Cycle™) and you could focus all your efforts

on simply proving that your solution was the bestoption. You may be highly skilled in this phase of

the buying cycle. But in a contracting market where

fewer and fewer prospects are evaluating options and

instead are in “denial of needs” or “we’ll make do with

what we have,” how confident are you in your ability

to really do core business development with a budget-

constrained and risk-averse buyer.

The solution to this is straightforward; you need to

go back to the fundamentals of selling and revisit

the underlying sales methodology you are using. Your first reaction may be “but I have been using

it for years. I don’t need to go back and relearn and

practice it!” Perhaps so, but are you sure you have

been using it properly? Or do you really remember

every aspect of it? It never ceases to amaze me that

whenever someone does a refresher in any discipline,

how much they discover they have forgotten or even

more telling, how much they didn’t really know to

begin with. Again it all comes back to assumptions—

don’t assume that just because you learned something

years ago that a) you remember it and b) you havebeen practicing it. There is an old adage about success

hiding many things and the kind of robust market we

have enjoyed over the last number of years is likely

to have hidden some of our selling shortcuts or even

shortcomings.

ASSUMPTION #2

“I may not have had to prospect much in

recent years but I still know how to!”

Over the past few years, in an era conspicuous for

consumption, prospecting has taken a back seatto marketing and a lot of salespeople have gotten

somewhat spoiled. They’ve gotten used to waiting for

the hot leads generated by flashy campaigns. Times,

not to belabor the point, have changed. You no longer

have the luxury of waiting for business to come to

you. It won’t. And the prospecting you used to do

years ago will unlikely meet your need in the current

environment.

Prospecting in uncertain times is not just a matter

of good research and good messaging; it is a matterof great research (which we shall explore further in

Assumption #4) and great messaging. In a turbulent

economy, the very short window of opportunity

with a prospect—either by telephone or email—

can be literally startling. All of your prospects are

getting dozens of emails that are warning of dire

circumstances in the marketplace. Frankly, it gets old.

To have any hope of capturing his attention, you have

to hit a prospect square between the eyes; you have to

bowl him over; you have to make him at least wonder

whether without your product or service all is lost.

The message must first provoke interest; it must then

persuade the prospect that you know something he

doesn’t that it would be in his best interest to learn;

and finally it must propose action on the part of

the potential buyer. And all this in just a few pithy

sentences.

Fewer and fewer prospects are evaluatingoptions and instead are in “denial of needs”

or “we’ll make do with what we have”...



©2009 Huthwaite, Inc. www.huthwaite.com


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The key to it all is the persuasion piece, and like theselling process as a whole it must provide real, buyer-

focused value. In an age of massive availability of

information, value is no longer found in your product

or service—all of the information about which is on

your website. Rather it is found in your knowledge

and expertise as a seller. To bring value to a customer

now you must uncover an unrecognized problem;

offer an unanticipated solution; share an unseen

opportunity; or act as a broker of capabilities. Offer

any of these and your prospect will leap to your side.

Send anything that smells like a brochure and he willdismiss you outright.

ASSUMPTION #3

“At least I can rely on my current book of

business!”

As I mentioned earlier, past is no longer prologue

and therefore you need to resist the temptation

to make assumptions about your current book of business. Your existing customers may have been very

predictable in their buying patterns, you may even

have mapped out multi-year engagements, and as you

stare at a tough year ahead you want to believe that

these pieces of business are solid. If you take one thing

away from this paper it should be: “assume nothing!”

Systematically go through your current client list

and question every aspect of it. For example, is your

decision maker still the ultimate decision maker?

Does the line VP now need to have everything signedoff and approved by the CFO or CEO or even both?

If that is the case you are no longer just selling to the

VP; you need to equip him to sell to the CEO and

CFO. That adds some complexity to your strategy

and also means you need to consider that the VP is

acutely aware of his or her need to not put themselves

out there in front of the CEO/CFO unless they are

100% sure they have a compelling business case to justify the spend. This means you might find them

to be a much more demanding and hesitant customer

than previously. So if you haven’t established that

the approval process has changed you run the risk

of trying to sell to the VP in the same way as you

traditionally have without addressing his or her need

for such things as more explicit detailing of results

and cost/benefit analysis.

Furthermore, the drivers for purchasing your

products or services may no longer be as importantto the customer as they were previously so you need

to go and realign what you have sold them to the

current drivers in their business. If you don’t you run

the risk of them abandoning your product or service

because they no longer see it as critical is this market

environment.

ASSUMPTION #4

“I know my customers, prospects and

suspects pretty well!”

Let’s face it, during the good times the amount of

research you had to do about your target list was

pretty manageable. You used an online resource

which gave you a lot of standard information; you

reviewed their website and read their annual reportsand filings. So you were able to do your situational

research and engage with the prospect intelligently

and knowledgeably. Even with your existing

customers you relied a lot on your contacts to give

you updates on their business. It was all pretty neat

and tidy and relatively straightforward. Fast forward

to today, now with changes to the market landscape

happening at warp speed you can’t be sure how good

“Assume nothing!”





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or up-to-date your information is. Even your prizedcontacts at your customers/prospects may be unable

or unwilling to keep you apprised of changes that are

coming.

So what can you do to overcome this? Well, now is

the time to learn how to really research and pull all

the different threads of information together to help

understand what is happening to your target accounts.

For example, track what is being said on the business

news channels, check those channels websites and do

keyword searches on the companies you are interestedin and then look at the articles and video clips where

experts are discussing them or their market segment.

Scour the financial and business newspapers, again

looking for external expert commentary on the market

segment or the company itself and start pulling a

profile together. This will help you avoid the surprise

of a sudden takeover or merger or worse, the closing

of the division you were focused on.

Set up online news alerts for your target companies so

that anything that comes across the wires pertainingto them instantly hits your inbox. In this environment

there is no such thing as too much information and

being able to deploy your time effectively is key. For

instance, if all the news is pointing to one of your

prospects being bought and possibly downsized, you

may want to focus elsewhere until it shakes out. This

allows you to be strategic by being informed.

ASSUMPTION #5

“I am sure our marketing department has

adapted its messaging for this market!”

Have you engaged with your own Marketing

department to understand what work they are doing

to realign your products and services to the new

market realities? They may have focused on efficiency

or productivity before as the core advantages of theproduct/service whereas now messaging around cost

savings and the ability to do more in a resource-

constrained environment may resonate. Don’t assume

they have already done this.

Go and question them on what analysis they are doing

on the market and customer buying patterns. Find

out what overt or nuanced changes they are making

to their messaging and integrate that into your talk

tracks. Find out if there are particular benefits of

your products or services that they are seeing as morerelevant to your target customers today.

Now more than ever it is critical that sales and

marketing are aligned and that the information

flow between the two is constant and of high value.

The last thing you can afford is your marketing

messages to look out of sync with the realities of your

customers; it makes you look out of sync with reality

and undermines your offering.

ASSUMPTION #6

“I have a talk track that works!”

Have you simplified your own messages to make sure

that they are tailored to people with exceptionally busy

schedules who are struggling with fewer resources

and who are distracted by the shifting sands of the

macroeconomic environment and their own internal

business issues?

The reality is that they no longer have the time to

have pictures painted for them in the sky— they need

something tangible, easily deployed that will deliver

results quickly. You need to show how you can deliver

fast return and demonstrate why spending money

with you is critical at a time when they are trying not

to spend money with anyone.



©2009 Huthwaite, Inc. www.huthwaite.com


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6 ASSUMPTIONS ALL SELLERS MUSTNOW QUESTION

Do you focus too much on the long term systemicimpact of your product or service—are you now

tempering that with some tangible and realizable

short term outcomes that will give a buyer much

more confidence that they will be able to defend their

purchase internally if they can show some results

quickly?

CONCLUSION While the current layoffs and economic trends may

continue, the sellers who will survive this market

and even grow during a recovery will be the ones

who assume nothing and question everything. Your

competition is not standing still….and neither should

you.

1. Have I really been “selling” and do I have a methodology that works and that I practice?

2. Do I really know how to prospect effectively?

3. Have I revalidated all my assumptions about my current book of business?

4. Do I really know what is happening to my target accounts and their industries?

5. Has my marketing department adjusted its messaging for this market?

6. Have I altered my talk tracks to reflect the new realities of my customers/prospects?

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