My family and I were at Murrayfield Rugby stadium yesterday to watch Scotland take on Australia.  

On paper it’s a tough game, The Wallabies are giants of the game with a strong heritage and a world class stable of players.

They came to Murrayfield high off the back of 5 straight wins against serious pedigree international teams.

This would be a tricky one for Scotland.

What happened was interesting on a number of levels…

Scotland shut Australia off, closed them down, held them up and didn’t allow them to play.

They out strategized the other team and made sure they weren’t allowed to do what they wanted to do. It caused frustration and Australia’s rigour and structure began to crumble.

Scotland had also focused on fitness. Making sure that when an opportunity presented itself, that the team were fit enough to take advantage and make it count.

So, Scotland were physically and mentally fit for this match. The management team has selected the players that would do the job and played an entirely different game to the one they played the previous week.

Are your team match fit for 2022?  

Let’s look at Sales.

What is your Sales Methodology? Not your process…your methodology?

We all have them, it may have changed shape over the years and no doubt you moulded it into your own version and style, but we all started somewhere with training or mirroring experience.

"Our Sales methodology outlines how we approach each phase of our Sales process".

The process plots out the sequence of stages, our methodology brings the discipline & techniques, the principles & best practice.

You may have subscribed to a particular method; you may even have invented your own

In practice, a Sales methodology is your Sales team’s DNA. It equips them with a practical, scalable and repeatable framework for delivering results.

When I first moved into B2B sales, I was trained in the Miller Heiman process and methodology of ‘Professional Selling Skills and Strategic Selling’. 

Whenever I mention this people usually joke…. ‘THE BLUE SHEETS!” I used it for quite a while and an put it to good use, but I found over time it began to feel old, so I looked for something new.

In 1985 Sales consultants Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman released the book “Strategic Selling.”  The book delved deeper on the need’s satisfaction approach of PSS (Professional Selling Skills) developed by Xerox in the 1970s, equipping sales teams with a methodology for managing complex sales processes.

It was a fine piece of work and resulted in Billions of dollars of Sales transactions across the world

Since then, there have been thousands of Sales methodologies developed, just type sales into Amazon books.  

Some target specific areas sales some examine the whole Sales landscape, you might recognise some of these...

• Relationship Selling: such as business-to-business selling.
• SPIN: an approach to Relationship selling
• Customer Centred Selling: similar to SPIN
• System Selling: Selling systems to systems.
• High Probability Selling: Targeting the best customers.
• Buying Facilitation: Facilitate the buyer's system.
• Gap selling: Challenging assumptions and exposing the problem
• The Challenger Sale: Making clients really think.

The Challenger Sale really hit home with me. I used to have all my sales teams read it a discuss it. 

The Five Sales Rep profiles model always interested me…

(….and it fits for this blog as it looks like a team sheet!)

Of course, it is not hard and fast that you are either one of the other but, research has shown that a strong sway towards one single channel is a cause for concern: Its about balance.

This really helps when looking at the dynamics of the people you have out in the front line.

I often found that even the act of talking about how we set up as a team was helpful and brought out some good discussion points.

None of these methods are the be all and end all and, none of them work exclusively or in isolation.

My point is the craft of Sales has been officially evolving for over 70 years. It doesn’t really matter what process or methodology I prefer, or you prefer, as long as we are learning, trying new things and looking to get better at what we do. 

We must accept that methods grow old, lose effectiveness and others take over. New views, different methodologies, new ways of thinking new standards are all blossoming around…the only thing standing still in this picture is us.

Unlike our colleagues in HR and HSE, Sales is not regulated.

We don’t have to pass an exam to become a Sales professional, we don’t have to prove our competence. 

Our colleagues in HR or HSEQ have to regularly train, top up CPD and prove competence, Sales don’t. 

Of course, we should, but we do not have to. We self-regulate, it’s up to us to keep abreast of the latest, the greatest and the new.

The 'now' for us is Social Selling & Influence, sometimes called Digital or Virtual Selling.  It’s the art and science of using digital means to create relationships and create space for conversations with prospects. Its efficient and effective.

It’s the latest evolution of our trade. If you are in Sales today and haven’t gotten up to speed with Social Selling & Influence, you are behind.  

It’s that simple, it’s not a question or a debate. Recently I saw a comments from a Sales leader on LinkedIn responding to a question about Social Selling, their response “I’m still not convinced…"

…mind boggled.

I can imagine the same voices in 1992 saying "I don't think this email thing is going to last"....

Social Selling isn’t Selling on Social. What has happened over the last 10-20 years, with the arrival of the internet, is that the buyer is now able to go online and do research into your products, your services, and your company culture.

That means they don’t really need to talk to a Salesperson anymore. If they do, they only really need them to close the deal. They have done all the research on you, your products and services and your competitors...and didn’t need you.

What you need to do if you want to engage with these prospects is actually be online and engage with them...online.

Every week I meet with more and more Sales professionals who tell me that the old ways of selling aren’t working any more. 

These are those who are being honest, not clinging onto a romantic vision that cold calling and email campaigns can achieve a Sales forecast 2020’s.

Surely the fact that old fashioned methods don't work is not a shock?

The world moves on and gets smarter, things change – just look at mobile phones.

 The way we've worked for the last 20 years was all built on 'interruption marketing' – ads, emails, cold calls – We are all smarter in this digital age and we know what we like and don’t like – We don’t like being interrupted....so why would our clients?

The scales of power have well and truly shifted in the favour of the buyer

In my line of work I speak to a lot of leadership teams. One common theme that comes up is the preconception that Social Selling is really for large businesses – Social Selling is absolutely for small business as it allows you to scale. Social Media closes the distance between buyers and sellers regardless of your size or industry. 

Social Selling isn't a quick-fix, flash-bang, short-term solution. 

This evolution of our trade requires a mindset shift, a definite alteration of our habits and behaviour. It’s all change for our internal language around Sales and Marketing, all change for our metrics and the very fabric of the way we work.

Social Selling needs patience and commitment. It’s not the single-minded pursuit of that Purchase Order. Our buyers are smart so we must be smarter, they have powered up so we must power up.

This is all about building influence. Providing relevant content and insight to your prospects and customers. 

The 2021 LinkedIn-Edelman B2B thought leadership impact report is an excellent report which saw Edelman and LinkedIn collaborate on the fourth annual B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study to examine how thought leadership influences perception and buying behaviours among B2B decision-makers (link below).

The report says…

"64% of buyers say that and organisation thought leadership content is a more trustworthy basis for assessing its capabilities and competency than its marketing materials and products sheets".

Hold that thought for a second and think about how you are creating demand for your products and services today….

Another recurring theme is that people tell me they tried Social Selling and it didn’t work or that they are currently doing it.

When investigated, in every case the organisation has confused the simple act of posting content as Social Selling.  

Posting something on Social Media is Marketing in the 2020’s – what you do with the interaction is Social Selling – engage, interact, discuss, relate, converse….

All Sales professionals must be trained in Social Selling & Influence in the 2020’s, it’s a given.

Organisations must be insisting upon demonstrable Social Selling Skills and Maturity when hiring in Salespeople these days.

The conversation about whether this all works or not is over - dead - in the trash.

The question now is if your organisation has the culture to accept change, the mind to accept alternative perspectives and the hunger to win...

Always happy to take a call on this on any other Digital transformation related topics.

Oh, and p.s....Scotland beat Australia.

Live Social ‘22

Eric Doyle

Crux / DLA Ignite