Posts Tagged ‘Media Insights’

The biggest mistake I see with inexperienced salespeople is talking too much.

They come in with the idea that to sell, they have to be the one talking. They don’t listen because they’re talking and not asking questions.

An effective salesperson is a detective. To be good at what I do, I need be Columbo. Some of you probably don’t remember the TV series Columbo, but it starred Peter Falk as the title character – an unassuming, humble detective with a keen eye for detail. The series was different from other detective stories because most episodes started by showing the perpetrator committing the crime. The show’s creator described it as a “howcatchem,” rather than a “whodunit.” It centered on Lt. Columbo figuring out who the criminal was by asking questions and examining overlooked evidence.

So the philosophy I impart to my sales team is to focus on being like Columbo.

I investigate an enormous organization and find the person whose business problems I can solve. When I identify the prime suspect, I go in and discover the evidence to see if I can indeed really solve his or her problem.

Telling the potential customer what I think they need at our first meeting is no more beneficial than it would have been for Columbo to tell a suspect his theories before he had asked any questions. There is no humility in that. It would be arrogant to assume I know how to solve problems before I even know what those problems really are.

Instead, I ask potential clients about their businesses, their challenges. I follow up with questions like, “When that happens, what does your department do then?” and “Is there a financial impact?”

A good salesperson’s job is to ask tons of open-ended questions to understand the client’s business – to collect the evidence.

“What’s the impact on your company if you’re not listening to what your current customers are saying? Is that a risk to your business? What kind of risk? Have you had anything bad happen? Have you ever used information like that to improve? What strategies do you have to grow your business? What types of things have you tried?”

On the flip side, when I’m asked a question. I offer massive transparency. Ask me a question, and I’m here to publish it for everyone to see.

Therein begins our relationship, a relationship built on honesty.

To find out how Biz360 can power your insights, visit us here, or get started here. Thanks for visiting!

Eric M. Israel, VP of Sales

In short, my answer is yes.

After 17 years in sales and seven with Biz360, I’m now the VP of Sales and have been working on developing within my team the trust equation idea – the concept that we should be focusing on things that are not necessarily good or bad for us, but are genuinely good for our clients.

Frankly, it can be scary, but I truly believe that is the basis for a long-term business relationship and in this economy, relationships are more important than ever. Having a sales team that focuses only on generating revenue destroys your relationship with the client and breaks the trust equation from the very get-go.

Instead our goal is to truly understand how our clients’ businesses work. We should strive to understand their challenges and how those challenges impact their companies. That’s really nothing new – it’s pretty basic research. But then I guide my team to go even further. We should be finding out how the clients’ challenges are affecting them personally. How do these challenges affect their workload? Their careers? Their stress level? Even their families.

We help because it’s the right thing to do — not so Biz360 gets another deal. It works the other way around. The more you do for the client, the more those clients enlist your help. Those clients develop the longest relationships with you and they end up being the most profitable.

Each and every time we meet with our clients, our goal is to figure out more about their business, and how we can help them get further down the path toward their own success.

For the next few weeks, I’m going to use this forum to tell you how the sales department works here at Biz360. I’ll be honest. I want potential clients to compare the experience they have had with our competitors, and hopefully, decide they’d rather work with our team.

And I welcome feedback. As you’ll find out in my next post, feedback is essential.