Warning: Sales Tips are Hazardous to Your Wealth
In the case of sales tips, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing
How many salespeople do you think regularly seek out tips about selling on websites, in magazines and books and newsletters? If the number of available resources out there offers any indication, a whole lot of them.
What’s wrong with regularly skimming sales tips from those sources? Same answer: a lot.
What’s wrong with sales tips?
Many salespeople think that these “tips” are all they need to win. Read enough articles and books and digest enough of these tips, they think, and they’ll never lose another deal. For other sales folks, it’s that ever-elusive silver bullet that they seek. They scour book after book, website after website, anxious to unearth that single gem that will transform them into a winner. (Just imagine how many copies of this book I could sell…)
Don’t get me wrong. I think that many of the hundreds of sales experts out there have something valuable to say. I certainly felt that way when I wrote How Winners Sell, in addition to dozens of articles aimed at helping salespeople sell more.
Sure, some self-proclaimed experts shamelessly copy what others have done before them. And sales tips that other so-called sales experts are writing or speaking about have been proven ineffective years ago (like asking your prospect what keeps them up at night—these days you’re expected to have learned that by they time you meet with them the first time). But all in all, I’m not questioning the advice contained in the sales tips available today. Most of those tips make sense, and if used at the right time and in the right way, they can be quite effective. That’s not the issue.
Tactics alone won’t support consistent sales performance
This issue is that these self-paced sources of learning (websites, articles, sales books, e-zines) focus almost exclusively on tactics. Sales reps need tactics. Tactics are required to win. But tactics alone won’t get your people where they need to be. The more tactics a salesperson reads about in the form of tips, the further he or she gets from the real key to winning—developing and executing a strategy—a higher-level, overall plan to win. Your salespeople have to be able to zoom out to that higher level. Sales tips focus them on zooming in.
If they don’t support the execution of a strategy to win, sales tips are high-fructose corn syrup—the empty calories of professional selling.
There is another problem with collecting sales tips. Since many salespeople don’t have the knowledge and experience to determine what works and what doesn’t, and no one is providing them with a curriculum, or testing them on what they’ve learned and applied from these tips, they generally choose only the tips they perceive are easy to accomplish. And, if they try a tip once and it doesn’t work they’ll likely reject it—without giving themselves an opportunity to perfect that skill or technique. As a result, they aren’t even availing themselves of what might be the best tips for them and their circumstances. 
Learning-by-sales-tip is one of the reasons why sales people struggle, year after year, to achieve mastery.
Sales tips are hazardous to your wealth
How do I know I’m right on this issue? Books and articles about sales tips have been around for a generation, right? So why, according to ongoing research, do only 50 to 60% of B2B salespeople make quota? There are certainly other factors at play here, but it’s clear that the companies that have a formal, institutionalized sales methodology (read: strategy for winning) consistently sell more effectively than those that don’t. These are the facts. Jumping from tactic to tactic doesn’t win deals unless they are easy formulated to support the execution of a strategy and therefore integral to an overall plan.
To the point
So, if your salespeople swear by those valuable insights from their favorite sales experts, do your reps, your company, your customers and yourself a favor. Integrate the best, most relevant tactics into a strategic, documented sales approach. It’s harder than trying trick after tip after trick. But you’ll be glad you did.
Filed under: sales process, Sales Strategy, Sales Tactics
Dave,
I am fully with you on the danger trying to find the silver bullet, be it through sales tip, books , webinars or whatever else is available on the topic of sales. The silver bullet simply does not exist. I agree that this behavior leads to a very tactical fad of the day approach.
So why do all the sales gurus out there publish this stuff. Primarily for making their voice heard and trying to differentiate themselves from the other fellows also offering sales advice/training. The high number of trade marked terms on the topic of sales methods is a good illustrator for this phenomenon.
I tend to disagree with you that an institutionalized sales methods (usually from one vendor maybe based on a book) is getting you away from a tactical to a strategic approach. What a sales method usually does is hopefully provide you with a coherent set of tactics. Yet even this is not assured. I have seen big organization tampering on their own on an institutionalized sales methodology and thereby ending up with an incoherent set of tactics.
Once one has understood the nature of the typical literature on sales , all this advice can though become useful again. If you invest time and brainpower, to distill “invariants” out of these texts- basically calling a spade a spade even if the author wants to name it differently for marketing purposes – and put these invariants into a coherent meta methodology which is much more robust and can get you to a strategic level.
Admittedly this is not something you should expect a sales person, nor a sales manager or sales ops manager to do. But it is a way for sales experts to contribute to the body of knowledge on sales.
I used this approach in a course on complex sales methods that I recently taught at the ESB Business school at Reutlingen University Germany. The students really loved the fact that they did not just have to take my word that the meta methodology I taught them will work. I gave them the opportunity to verify the approach by having them read 3 of what I consider of the better sales books available today and thus discover some of these invariants themselves.
Hi Dave,
This is advice you can not give too often!
Sales Tips do not work!
Learning a new phrase in a different langauge does not mean you can speak the language.
Sales Tips are just phrases, nothing more!
Thanks, Brian.
When you think about it,it’s the peddlers of the sales tips that are making the money (from books, speeches, tactical training events), not the reps who need real guidance.
Hi Christian,
Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
What are the three books you recommended? And can you provide examples of how the students verified the approach?
Dave
Dave,
I am actually planning a series of blog posts on the experience of this course.
Here a short explanation how it worked. It started by presenting to the students a simple 4 phase circular buying process.
Then they read the books, SNAP Selling by Jill Konrath, Slow down sell faster by Kevin Davis and selling to the C-Suite by Nicholas Read and Stephen Bistritz.
So we conducted basically a comparitive literature study. I could give them evidence that my model wasdevised before the books were published. What they then found out that the Slow Down proposes a buying cycle of 4 main phases subdivided into 2 sub phases each. The four main phases corresponded exactly with the model I presented to them. From SNAP selling they could see that the 3 transitions between phases proposed in the book corresponded to the first 3 transitions in my model. Finally they concluded that Selling to the C Suite was also implicitly proposing a closed loop process and given particular evidence how important the early phases and the latest phase of the process were for gaining customer loyalty and competitive advantage. From Selling to the C-Suite they derived the concept of the dynamism of the Value proposition depending on the buying phase, and from Slow down sell faster they understood the importance of the buying center analysis. Essentially students found that different sources independently of each other (although Selling to the C-Suite is cited in Slow down sell faster) came to similar concepts (invariants) making the theory more robust and credible. They also realized that only the combination of the books though provided a holistic strategic meta method. The students really appreciated the elegance and the simplicity of the puzzle that we put together.
Three good books, Christian.
I see the whole sales process, skills, strategies, tactics, planning, etc., model a bit differently. I’ll do a series of posts on it one of these days.
Dave
Dave,
I am curious to see your ideas. I have a more complete model on this too.
What I showed here was only a reaction to your post. There is evidently more to it.
Looking forward to compare notes.
Christian
Dave,
I read somewhere once about how to distinguish between Experts, Professionals and Guru’s.
Experts are people who have deep knowledge and tool-kits from working in different situations and environments, they take the practical but creative approach in finding solutions to new problems.
Professionals are those that have put the hours in and have gained mastery and continue to use that mastery as a profession or living.
Guru is typically someone who is self appointed and took the fast track to a perceived level of mastery, methods, results and testimonials are questionable and once a level of wealth has been generated, they retire!
If I can add a book suggestion that I think should be in everyone’s library then it should be Claude Hopkins – My life in advertising. A very old book but gives deep insights into how people make decisions. I’m lucky to have copywriters for friends, you learn new sales insights from these guys.