Looking for Cinderella?

Posted on March 16, 2009 by

March Madness: Take a look at Radford University

One of the delights of every NCAA tournament is the little or little-known school that makes its way into the “sweet sixteen” or even the final eight. Even if I weren’t a professor at Radford and didn’t know some of the fine young men on the team, I would keep an eye on them. RU has a cool story — a 6’11′ 260-pound center who has only played B-ball for 5 years and spoken English for 2 and a 55 year old rookie coach. Check out the story on USA Today:

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/bigsouth/2009-03-12-radford-cover_N.htm

Or the local press coverage:

http://www.roanoke.com/sports/mcfarling/wb/197116

The bad news? The #$%@ seeded them 16th, so they play game one against North Carolina, who ESPN says is the most talented team in the country and who the NYT said is the favorite to win it all. As noted in the USA Today story a 15th or 16th seeded team has never gotten to play Cinderella… 

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Adaptive selling: adjusting to customer styles

Posted on March 6, 2009 by

“Morphing” online

In my professional sales class I present the social styles approach that creates four categories of prospect styles (driver, analytical, amiable and expressive) from two scales, assertiveness and responsiveness (Merrill and Reid 1981). The social styles matrix approch provide ways to quickly categorize potential customers and adapt the presentation to their style. A JPSSM article made the case that such adaptive practices improve sales performance (Sujan, Weitz and Sujan 1988).

The sales textbooks I am familar with include the social styles approach (and sometimes the NLP learning styles) to adaptive selling.

A forthcoming Marketing Science article (Hauser, Urban, Liberali, and Braun, forthcoming) provides compelling evidence that the use of partially observable customer categories based on simple binary scales can increase sales.

In an experiment on a website selling broadband services, “morphing” the website — changing the way data is presented — based on assumptions projected from a few customer clicks produced a 20% increase in intent to buy.

To limit fatigue from too many probing questions, potential customers were classified into 16 “cognitive categories” using four constructs after 10 clicks. The four “cognitive” scales used in the experiment were:

  1. Leader vs. Follower
  2. Analytial/visual vs. holistic/verbal
  3. Implusive vs. deliberative
  4. (Active) reader vs. (passive) listener

#1 closely approximates the assertiveness scale from the social styles matrix. In any case, this paper presents evidence that changing the presentation of data to fit a quickly estimated customer categorization can lead to significantly increased purchase intentions.

(If you have access, see Marketing Science, articles in advance.)

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You are always selling service

Posted on February 9, 2009 by

Salesperson as product benefit

In my other blog (on service innovation) I posted an article about Rolls Royce’s experience in selling service rather than product today.

Rolls Royce now sells “hours of thrust” instead of aircraft engines. This example is part of a pattern: all products are now service.

Something for a salesperson to think about: a part of the “serviceness” of the product is the salesperson. When someone goes wrong or there is a need for a change, an problem/opportunity can always be bumped up to the salesperson.

Customers are not being irrational — or choosing by affect instead of cognition, as academics might say — when they favor an offering from a salesperson they trust. That salesperson is a part of what they purchase. And as the “serviceness” of the product increases, that consideration may become even more important. As the sales process moves from transactional to relational to consultative to partnering the salesperson is always selling herself (himself).

To see the posting about Rolls Royce go to:

http://servicecocreation.com

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Social Networks and B2B vs. B2C Selling

Posted on February 4, 2009 by

In his site on networking applications, Chris Brogan made the argument that there is no difference between B2B and B2C Selling from a social network point of view.

Certainly it is true that under the relationship model of selling, B2B selling is personal. I point out to my students that emotions and positive affect have are as important in B2B as B2C selling. And Brogan, himself,  points out that B2B tends to be longer term and may involve more analysis.

I suspect that the better divide is between major purchases and minor purchases as suggested by Rackham as well as consumer behavior research. In minor purchase decisions habit and emotion may crowd out analysis while in major purchases, the buyer — whether respresenting her/his company or his/her household — needs to understand how the product meets the need.

This blog includes B2B Service in the title, but I am just as interested in a financial planner who sells her service to a household. I suppose I could have used “Major Service Purchases” but “B2B Service” sounds better. If you wish to take a look at the blog and comments that inspired this posting go to:

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/the-b2b-vs-b2c-thing/

Also see the prevous posting on this blog for more about social networking and B2B sales.

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Social Media in B2B Sales

Posted on January 29, 2009 by

Online networking and social media are being hyped for B2B as well as B2C sales. It will happen, but not immediately. Purchasing managers at Boeing are not 19-year-olds, addicted to Facebook (Another decade and they will be in that role, though: God help us). A more fundamental issue is whether business buyers and their salespeople would naturally be in the same networks.

For a well-reasoned discussion of why the social media era for B2B may be a while in coming, as well as links to proponents of the connected age, see Dave Stein’s Blog:

http://davesteinsblog.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/social-media-in-b2b-sales-is-the-time-right/

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SPIN Selling

Posted on January 23, 2009 by

There can be a problem when an idea or term is ubiquitous: it becomes almost generic or commonplace. EVERYONE in sales has heard about SPIN questioning and everyone who has had a sales class — at least mine — can list the words that comprise the acronym. But it is valuable to return to the original source for insights.

It was a pleasure to recently re-read SPIN Selling. Rackham does a fine job of summarizing the results of a massive sales research effort. Anyone who has been a salesperson or has taught professional selling must be amused by his anecdote on p. 25 about a salesperson who diligently followed the closing procedure that he had been taught: (see if you can identify each type of close attempted!)

…..

Salesperson: So, Mr. Robinson, you can see that our product is clearly best for you — if you just sign here.

Mr. R: Just a minute — I don’t see…  I haven’t decided.

Salesperson: But Mr. Robinson, I’ve shown you how we can improve the efficiency of your office and save you trouble and also money — so if you can decide when you’d like delivery…

Mr. R: I’ll do no such thing.  I’m not making a decision this week.

Salesperson: But as I’ve explained, this model is in great demand. I can let you have one now, but if you wait for next week, there could be a several month delay.

Mr. R: That’s risk that I will have to take…

Salesperson: Would you prefer a month’s trial installation, or would be better for your budget to buy outright?

Mr. R: I’m going to throw you out of my office.  Tell me, would you and your friends in the corner prefer to go of your own accord, or would you like me to call security.

…..

There are good stories and insights on every page. It is fascinating to understand how SPIN questions evolved.

This book should be on the shelf of every student of sales.

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Death of the salesman

Posted on October 12, 2008 by

 

In my research I focus on user collaboration. Social networks are a fascinating phenomenon that expand the definition of collaboration. 

Does the spread of social networking mean the end of the sales function? I doubt it, but if you are interested, another blogger makes that case:

http://nickpoint.co.uk/2008/06/26/the-death-of-salesmen-and-power-to-the-people/

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