Executive Summary:
To be effective at their jobs, even IT pros need to understand the fundamentals of sales. The success of an IT project hinges as much on selling the project as it does on the technology. Relationship building and persuasion form the foundation of selling. Hear what the customer is really asking. Sell an experience or benefit related to the product rather than the product itself. Eliminate all the reasons a customer might choose an alternative to what you're selling.
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As Blake, the quintessential real estate salesman, scolds a group of underperforming
colleagues in David Mamet's brilliant movie about the art and war of sales,
Glengarry Glen Ross, he says, "Put that coffee down! Coffee is for closers
only."
Sales is a different beast altogether from the land of routers, servers, and
Ethernet cards. In fact, many of us went into IT specifically to get out of
sales. But that's not to say we never have to sell. More than we might like,
even in IT we have to sell our solutions and services to other business groups
and IT consumers in our organization. Whenever you need something from someone
who might not be inclined to give it to you, you'll benefit by understanding
how to sell.
In the world at large, sales is about getting a customer to
pay the most he or she is willing and able to pay for a good
or service. In IT, sales is more about convincing a business
group to replace an old line of business (LOB) application
with a new one, getting a manager to sign off on a new rack
of servers, or even persuading another IT group to use a
different process or platform. Like it or not, the success of
many IT projects hinges less on the technical quality of the
solution than it does on selling the project to those who will
implement it. As Blake later tells his cohorts, first prize in the
sales contest is a Cadillac, second prize is a set of steak knifes,
and third prize is "You're fired." Here are four essential tips
for unleashing your inner salesperson.
Tip 1: Master the Basics
Sales is one part relationship building and one part persuasion. Relationship
building is the art of acquiring potential customers and warming them up for
the pitch, and persuasion is the science of closing the deal.
In the relationship phase, a good salesperson builds a foundation of trust
and credibility. Salespeople generally build trust by finding things they have
in common with their customers and progressively exchanging more information.
For instance, upon finding out that a customer is from an area the salesperson
is familiar with, the salesperson might share an anecdote about his or her experiences
there, thereby starting a relationship around a common geographical area or
culture. Before moving to the persuasion phase, an effective salesperson also
establishes credibility with regard to the product he or she is trying to sell.
The most common way salespeople do that is by reciting specification details
for the product they're selling and demonstrating the benefits. If the salesperson
can't establish credibility as a source of information, the buyer's doubt will
likely prevail.
In the persuasion phase, the salesperson concentrates on the benefits the
product. The objective is to make the customer feel so good about deciding to
buy the product that he or she can't wait to sign on the dotted line.
In the relationship building and persuasion phases, you need to be energetic,
assertive, and relentlessly positive. You're priming the customer or stakeholder
to make a big decision, and if he or she isn't excited, empowered, and smiling
inside and out, you probably won't close the deal. If you don't believe—and
clearly project—that your product or idea is the greatest thing since
the integrated circuit, you certainly can't expect your customer to think so.
Tip 2: Hear What the Customer is Really Saying
Customers always have questions. They want to know what they're getting, what
they're not getting, and how the solution will perform for them in the ways
that they'll want to use it.
The catch is that customers rarely ask the questions that they really want
answered. You need to listen carefully to what the customer asks and answer
not only the stated question, but also the real question that underlies it.
For example, when considering a new LOB application that your group has developed,
a business manager might ask you how many transactions per second your application
can achieve. The technical geek in you will be tempted to say something like
"on a fiber-optic network, the server can do up to 1,500tps." But that
response, while informative, doesn't answer the question the business manager
really wants answered.
Although the business manager asked about transactions per second, she actually
wants to know whether your application will have the performance that her group
needs. The answer you should give to this question (if you truthfully can) is
that your application can scale to whatever throughput her business can generate.
If business doubles in capacity, you can double the transactions per second.
If her business doesn't grow (which of course you could never imagine), your
application can be right-sized to meet the group's needs.
Tip 3: Sell the Freedom, Not the Car
A great salesperson doesn't sell the product but rather an experience or emotion
related to it. Cars are the best example of how this sales principle works.
One car is very much like another, but from watching automobile ads and listening
to car salesmen, you'd never know that. For example, if you're in the market
for a convertible, the salesperson sells sunny days, hair blowing in the wind,
and freedom. If you're shopping for a gas-electric hybrid, the salesperson sells
clean water, rainforests, and Earth Day. And if a luxury sedan is more your
style, the salesperson sells reputation, status, and country clubs.
Selling IT is no different. Say your company call center's legacy ticketing
application costs twice as much to manage as would the up-to-date version of
the product. You'd like the call center to upgrade the application, but the
call center managers might hesitate to disrupt business continuity.
Now you must become a salesperson. If you want the call center to upgrade its
ticketing application, start by finding out how the call center managers' performance
is measured, then sell the benefits of the application that relate to those
metrics rather than the application's benefits to your team. For instance, if
you find that the managers are evaluated on call turnaround times, sell the
speed of the new application. If they are evaluated on uptime, sell the application's
fault tolerance. The bottom line is that the call center is going to use some
application—you just want it to be the one that you want, too.
Tip 4: Eliminate Reasons Not to Buy
Alternatives are the leverage that buyers have in a negotiation: They can always
walk away because they have an existing solution that's good enough or because
they can consider other solutions. When you're selling, you need to eliminate
all the reasons that the customer might consider the alternatives. The best
way to do so is to create apples-to-apples comparisons in which your solution
is clearly competitive, then present apples-to-oranges comparisons showing that
your solution does things the alternatives can't possibly do. Whenever you hear
a business or IT manager give you reasons why he or she is unlikely to implement
your solution, make a mental note. At some point, you have to counter that thinking
before you can close the sale.
For example, if an IT executive is hemming
and hawing about the cost of a new rack of
servers, you'd first clearly articulate the cost
of not funding the servers. Then you might
create a compromise point by offering to set a
management target of reducing the cost of the
new servers by 10 percent.
A Shift in Attitude
A lot of great sales training is available free. Just tune into some late-night
TV infomercials and watch how the hosts use these four sales tips to sell everything
from kitchen appliances to cleaning supplies to exercise equipment. You could
almost substitute the product in one informercial with that in another without
changing the dialog or spirit.
Although at times you might feel that
becoming an effective salesperson requires
that you sell your soul to the devil, successful
selling is actually just a shift in attitude and
perspective. And remember, coffee is for closers only.
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