The Hindu Business Line : Selling is a contact sport

LIKE the big bad wolf in the Little Red Riding Hood story, your rivals are at your door, even as you cower inside your cabin. Yet, all hope is not lost if you can get hold of Randy Schwantz, because he'll tell you How to get your Competition Fired. The book, from Wiley (www.wiley.com) , reminds you that selling is a tough business. It's a `contact sport,' not a solo game like figure skating. Your prospect and your rival who has the business are `the home team' and you are `the visiting underdog,' please note. You win when you get the competition out, using the author's Wedge methodology, to drive a wedge "between your prospect and the incumbent" and bust the existing relationship.

Randy isn't talking about Selling 101, such as rapport, communication and so on. His is `Sales 401,' to look at what traditional selling ignores. "Conventional wisdom says a selling situation involves two parties — a seller and a buyer," writes the author, and refutes it, saying there's the third — the competition. The challenge before you is "to help your prospects see that they are being underserved by your rivals," and you don't have to badmouth in the process.

A golden rule is not to fire the competition when you can't deliver better. And the mantra for you to chant is: "My job as a salesperson is to proactively control the experiences of my clients, making their future more predictable." Because there's often little to beat in price, product and reactive service, while "proactive service offers the greatest potential for you to differentiate."

An interesting analogy is that selling is like flying. Just when you're about to land and close the deal, your rival — "waiting in the bushes beside the tarmac with a bazooka" — can match your price and keep the business, knocking you out of the sky. Gain altitude by differentiating yourself, therefore, advises Randy; for, "the higher you fly, the safer you are." Else, "you are flying around at 100 feet avoiding water towers and small hills," endangering your safety.

Many believe that prospects speak the truth. Watch out, they can tell `white lies' because they have "no serious intention of switching." They may pretend to be interested to get `free education' about your product, and "toss your business card into the wastebasket as you exit the front door." Remember that between you and your rival, he's better off because he has something that you haven't, `the relationship.' The customer is comfortable in a familiar environment, and you suffer the disadvantage of "introducing the uncertainty."

As perhaps with journalists who often get no story leads from some of their best contacts, so too salespeople can fall into the trap of developing "great relationships with companies that never end up giving them a contract." The fault lies on the sales managers who emphasise their reps to "stay busy, make a lot of calls and contacts, and keep pitching," rather than do research. Randy laments: "These sales managers cannot show their reps how to descend from 30,000 feet to the ground, and start winning in one-to-one combat." Antidote: research.

Learn also the seven rules of the Wedge that the author describes as what govern human behaviour. No two objects can occupy the same space at the same time; nothing is either good or bad except by comparison; it is easier to get someone to deny perfection than it is to get them to admit a problem; the easiest way to get someone defensive is to talk negatively about a decision they have made; the more you push people the more they will push back to get even; the best idea people ever thought was the one they thought of themselves; and to gain leverage never ask for the sales unless it is absolutely unavoidable. Elsewhere, Randy discusses five money-making activities of salespeople, four groups of a company, five-step change formula, and the six steps of the sales call.

To know them all, take the first step out of your room, which is when you'd realise that the big bad wolf vanished without your having to shoo it, after seeing you in combat fatigues.

BookMark@thehindu.co.in

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Selling is a contact sport