Practical Eloquence

When I first learned about The Art of the Sale last Friday, I knew I had to read it. I downloaded it immediately to my Kindle and finished it on Saturday morning somewhere between California and Florida. It’s that good.

There are three key messages in this book:

The overlooked importance of selling in business and life

The book is useful for sales professionals and non-salespeople alike. I wish everyone in business who is not in sales would read this book, because it explains why nothing in business would happen without the special talents, tenacity and hard work of salespeople. Business is fundamentally about two things: a) producing goods and services and b) selling them. Guess which one of those two is almost never taught in the typical MBA program? “All over the world, from the most basic to the most advanced economies, selling is the horse that pulls the cart of business.”

In spite of this, “Many supposedly well-educated people in the business world are clueless about one of its most vital functions, the means by which you actually generate revenue. The absence of knowledge about sales has opened a class division between salespeople and the rest of business.” If you want to contribute to closing this class division, give copies of this book to your leadership team.

And it’s not just business; in life, you are always selling or being sold to. Unless you’re a hermit, most of what you do in life has to be done through others, and selling is the vehicle of interpersonal relationships.

Examining the dilemmas and tradeoffs of selling

Broughton also helps to put into perspective and clear up some misconceptions about the motivation and integrity of those who sell for a living. Of course there are dishonest and pushy salespeople, and there are those who see customers only as instruments of their own commissions. The same could be said for any other profession. Broughton examines the balance and sometime contradiction between trying to sell a product and being paid to sell it.

Selling is neutral; intention makes the difference. When you sincerely believe that what you are selling will improve the life of the buyer in some way, there is nothing wrong with trying hard to sell them on it. In the end, it’s much easier to be really good at something when it aligns with your values and your sense of meaning, and as Broughton tells us, “…the best salespeople see themselves as the means by which customers achieve their purpose.”

Portraying the qualities of great salespeople

If you’ve been in sales for any length of time you won’t learn anything new in this book, but you will be inspired and recharged by the stories of some remarkable individuals who portray the great virtues that all of us could use more of: optimism, resilience, lifelong learning, and work ethic. When you read about the pace kept by Memo, the Mexican immigrant who has created a successful construction business, you realize that you don’t work near as hard as you could. Majid in Tangier reminds you about submerging your ego, keeping quiet and learning. Although I’m not sure what its lesson is, the story of Ted Turner’s pitch to the New York advertising agency is worth the price of the book. It’s not a story I can repeat on a PG-rated blog, so you’ll have to buy the book.

The common thread in most of these stories is that selling is the “great leveler”; when you can sell, when you can apply these virtues in sufficient quantities, you can make what you want out of your life.

Ditch the Pseudo-Science

The book does contain one annoying flaw. The science parts feel as if they have been bolted on to please a marketing manager; whenever it seeks to inject science into the discussion, it’s forced, superficial and inaccurate. For example, he tries to explain one salesperson’s success using a technical explanation involving fluid intelligence and working memory that mostly points out ignorance of what those terms really mean. In another chapter, he throws in a few pages about the evolution of cooperation and altruism, and tries to connect it to the use of Salesforce.com. (May I just don’t have the fluid intelligence to understand the connection.)

Despite that last complaint, I strongly recommend this book. If you’re in sales, you will want to read it; if you’re not, you need to read it.

As an avid reader of military history, I’m very aware of the saying that: “Amateurs study strategy; professionals study logistics.” What this means is that it’s very easy to get caught up in the fun and interesting stuff, but if you want to really get things done, you have to master the detail and the boring day to day stuff such as processes, measurements and structures.

It’s the same with sales. Amateurs concentrate on the interesting stuff such as motivation, mental attitude and messaging. These are all important, but the reason we never run out of things to say about them is that the basic, boring stuff is being ignored.

Dan McDade is a professional. His book, The Truth About Leads,  focuses on the stuff that only professionals care about, so it probably won’t become a runaway success in the sales world—and that would be a shame.

Sales and marketing are always pointing fingers at each other. Marketing complains that salespeople don’t follow up properly on the leads they give them; Sales responds that the leads are worthless. Both sides are right and both are wrong. The solution is for a separate group to provide fully nurtured leads, track their progress closely, and make salespeople accountable for following up.

Everyone focuses on lead generation, but they should work instead on lead nurturing. If you don’t care about quality, it’s easy to generate leads. But if you don’t care about quality (and programs that measure marketing’s contribution only by cost per lead send the implicit message that only quantity counts), those leads aren’t going anywhere when they hit the salesperson’s desk.

Salespeople are under tremendous pressure to produce short term results, so they’re not going to spend much time on activities that don’t have a high chance of paying off this quarter. According to McDade’s figures, 70% or more of leads are not being followed up by the sales force.

But if marketing focuses on only providing short-term leads, only about a third of those are “hot”, because often the buyer has already made a decision and just needs additional quotes as column fodder, or because by then it is too late to influence the decision process.

According to the book, 45% of qualified leads will buy within a year, but only 10% will close within three months. Time-pressured salespeople will not do what needs to be done to nurture the other 35%.

What does “fully nurtured” mean? Each lead had already been contacted at least eight times through various touchpoints and has graduated from unknown to near-term decision status. In addition, the salesperson received a complete contact history, overview of the decision process, timeline, budget and pain points. That type of qualified lead can’t be produced by low-budget telemarketers who are measured only by quantity or cost per lead.

His recommended solution is a group that is separate from marketing and sales that will specifically focus on identifying, nurturing and tracking qualified leads. That group can be internal, or you can outsource it to his own company, PointClear. (I have absolutely no problem with an author using his book to sell me on his company. In the best traditions of challenger selling, he is educating people about a real and significant problem that they only vaguely know they have, and most companies don’t have the ability, resources or the time to build their own internal lead nurturing capabilities. Besides, McDade is not “in your face” about it.)

While the first half of the book details the problem, the second half tells us what to do about it, and this is the part I really enjoyed. I took away some lessons and ideas for my own marketing efforts. He tells us to pay close attention to an integrated effort he calls M₂O, or market, media and offer.

The market is one area that is definitely ripe for clear definition, segmenting and targeting. Quality leads are more apt to come from a smaller market that is tightly defined than one that is overly vague and broad. Again, quality counts.

Regarding media, the best approach is multi-media, multi-touch and multi-cycle. Most database marketers give up too soon and don’t avail themselves of multiple touch points. One surprising statistic he tells us is that senior level decision makers are 2.5 times more likely to return voice mails than are their subordinates. And, if you’re worried about leaving too many messages, think about how often it takes multiple phone calls just to set up lunch with a friend.

If you do leave a voice mail, your offer should talk as little as possible about your own product or solution and as much as possible about the prospect’s business goals and challenges. And, any marketing message should tell in clear English so that the recipient knows exactly what you sell and how you can help them.

There is one quibble I have with the book: a lot of his argument rests on the validity of the eye-opening statistics he provides, (such as the one about the likelihood of senior executives responding to voice mails) but he does not reference his sources. When an author tells me that “experts say” and does not identify those experts, I get a little nervous. I’m not questioning his figures, but I look at references as Reagan did the Soviets: “Trust, but verify.”

Despite that minor complaint, I recommend this book to anyone who is in a sales position of enough authority to influence the decisions that are made with regard to lead-generation efforts, or to sole practitioners like myself who  can benefit from some of his very useful prospecting suggestions.

This book, by Brent Adamson and Matthew Dixon, comes very highly touted, especially by Neil Rackham himself, who calls it “the most important advance in selling for many years.”I’d restrain my enthusiasm a little short of that description, but overall it is an excellent book, with provocative insights and useful information for salespeople looking for ways to break out of the pack, especially in difficult economic times.

The key to a really good book is that it makes you say, “I never thought of that before,” and to use that insight to improve your life in some way. Interestingly, that’s also the key to a really good salesperson, as well. (more…)