The Selling Newsletter December 2004

The Selling Newsletter
from Best@Selling

A free monthly newsletter of ideas to help make your selling easier.
Selling is the easiest job in the world…Just ask anyone who is NOT in sales!                                Best wishes for YOUR successful selling—Maura

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The year is almost over.  As you look both backward and forward, you can incorporate what Seneca, the ancient Roman, speaks about.  If this year was a challenge, perhaps next year you can make the commitment to try new things. Were there some aspects of your work that you were afraid to try this year? Maybe a new presentation? Was it calling on a different type of customer?  Selling higher end products?  Whatever it was, next year challenge yourself. Accept that you might fail– and then again, you just might make things easier.

Back from the Brink

You would have unique insight into what prevents a company from being successful if you turned failing companies into successful ones.  With 30 plus years of experience, Charles Bahr, founder of Bahr International (www.Bahrintl.com), has expertise in business that will not only prevent sales professionals from failure, but will help ensure their success.

Find out what’s important.  Mr. Bahr is a believer in the Pareto distribution, more commonly known as the 80-20 rule.  The 80-20 rule says that some things are more important than others.  You must find out what the most important things are in your business and focus on them.  Mr. Bahr suggests you find those 20% by understanding a variety of sales responsibilities.  Mr. Bahr asks, “Who is a sales professional responsible to? Only to the guy that pays them? To the customer? To greater society? To themselves?  Truly successful salespeople don’t even think of responsibility because it’s automatic.  A salesperson should be able to reach a balance where everyone benefits and the transaction gets done.”

What’s also important to selling is in the Bahr Sales Quadrant.  The quadrants include what a customer thinks he wants; what he really wants; what he thinks he needs and what he really needs.  The effective salesperson can answer and address the most important issues in each quadrant.  Mr. Bahr points out that what customers need can be different from what they want.  In his business, his customers want some ‘magic’ to make the tough stuff go away.  What they need is very different.  Sales professionals must help their customers recognize what they need.  The salesperson’s job is to help reconcile what customers need with what they want.

It’s hard to say no.    What gets some businesses into trouble is that they are unable to say no.  SEC investigations are evidence of this.  Mr. Bahr says that healthy organizations are very comfortable saying no when it’s appropriate.  What makes it hard is knowing when to say no, why to say no and how to say no.   His advice is when you have to say no make the decision early without deferring or delaying it.  He suggests being graceful, clear and leaving a door open.  You can do this by attaching an option to the no.  He says, “That’s where a good salesperson comes in.  You can say ‘No we can’t, however…”

Honesty is the best policy.  Mr. Bahr has found in his work turning around failing businesses that a little non-truth can only grow into a bigger non-truth.  He has seen how inaccurate sales forecasts cause businesses to fail because so many other critical management decisions are made from those forecasts.  Mr. Bahr says, “The entire existence of a company depends on accurately forecasting the sales.”  This is something to remember as you work on your annual sales forecasts.  He advises not to be too optimistic or pessimistic as you are doing your forecasting, but to be a realist.

Decisions… decisions…  Bahr has found that not making decisions gets businesses into trouble.   The first thing to do is recognize your discomfort with decision making.  While not making a decision is a decision, Mr. Bahr says, “You always make a decision with imperfect data.”  Avoid intellectual laziness in the process of making a decision and try to get enough information so that the probability of success goes in your favor.  To make a decision, Mr. Bahr says to ask yourself if you are so inexperienced that the decision would be better left to fate.  That’s usually not the case.

Mr. Bahr is a person who when called early when things aren’t right in a business can help get it back on track.  He says, “We’re here to have some fun, make some money and do some good all at the same time.”  Applying what he knows to your selling will have the same results in your business, too.

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*Written by Maura Schreier-Fleming, president ofBest@Selling,  www.BestatSelling.com. Maura works with business and sales professionals who want to sell more and be more productive at work. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results.
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