SUPER SALESMANSHIP: IT'S ALL ABOUT INFORMATION

Selling in every industry and every size business is changing so radically, every month makes a difference. In effect, what's happening is so revolutionary that it's totally discontinuous from all existing selling practices. Here are two examples of the changes taking place in sales today:

It was 120 days before the lease on my car was up for renewal. The telephone call was professional, sincere and low-key. What were my plans for the car? Would I be keeping it or getting a new car? Far from intrusive or offensive, the questions were framed to obtain information. When I expressed frustration over a problem with the leased car, I was told that the caller had made a note of the difficulty and it would be followed up.

I asked about upcoming leasing details. "They're posted on our web site," the caller reported. "Be sure to visit it. If you have any questions, please contact me."

The call came from the automobile manufacturer, not a dealer. I was impressed. GeneralMotors was clearly taking the initiative with the customer. With the information I provided, a program would be crafted to make sure I would be driving another General Motors car.

But that's not all. GM was putting me in the driver's seat by making certain I had the information I needed to make a buying decision and they had equally important information about my expectations.

It all added up to a powerful sales strategy: personal contact in advance of the replacement date, gathering information about my plans, empathizing with me about a frustrating experience and providing the customer with helpful information.

From this experience, there is indication that General Motors not only wanted me to buy another car, but was making an effort to make sure I was a satisfied customer.

Not every company sees it this way. For years I was a regular customer at a national book retailer, making weekly trips to a nearby store. Then, about three years ago, those trips became less frequent and eventually stopped all together over a period of 12 months.

There was a database of information since my purchases were charged on my American Express card. They knew when and what I bought and how much I spent. Yet, to this day, not a word has been heard from the bookseller. Did I die, move away, stop reading or start buying books elsewhere? They never bothered to find out. Today, I'm buying more books than ever...from amazon.com.

The retailer knew my name, the amount of my purchases and my buying behavior including the frequency of my visits and type of books purchased. With all this data at its disposal, nothing was done with it to keep me informed of new books or to attempt to retain me as a customer.

These experiences suggest that selling is different because the customer has changed. One company makes it easy for the customer to do business with it, while another fails to take advantage of available information to retain the customer's business.

Here are a few thoughts about the role information plays in the sales process today:

• Giving the customer a satisfying experience is what satisfies the customer. A couple of hours before a speaker was to present a seminar, he discovered that he had forgotten to pack the a/c power supply for this laptop computer. Even though it was 6:45 a.m., he found a local store in the Yellow Pages and dialed the number. To his total surprise, the call was answered on the second ring. After hours, the owner uses call-forwarding to his cell phone. The missing part was located and delivered by taxi before the laptop's batteries gave out.

The owner of the Apple computer store in Virginia Beach, VA understands what his customers require. He focuses on making sure they have a satisfying experience. To him, making the sale has nothing to do with "establishing a relationship" with the customer, but it has everything to do with creating a satisfying experience by giving the customer access when the customer needed it and providing the necessary information.

Jim Bezos, the founder of amazon.com, notes (The Industry Standard, June 28, 1999, p.55) that "in the old world, the right thing to do was to spend maybe 30 percent of your time, energy and dollars on creating a great customer experience, and 70 percent spouting about it. Today, you want to invert that." Sales hype, so-called "salesmanship" and all the selling techniques are gone.

• Personal contact is not nearly as important as personalized contact. It's easy to understand why this statement drives many sales executives and their representatives into a frenzy. They fiercely defend their contention that "good selling depends on good, personal relationships."

Merrill Lynch is attempting to deal with this problem. It appears that the company recognizes that the future of selling stocks is on the Net, and the future of company's 14,800-member sales force is shrouded in doubt. Real estate brokers should take note because they are the next group slated for "significant downsizing" and eventual extinction as customers are empowered by the Net to buy only those services they need at a competitive price, rather than paying a difficult-to-justify sales commission.

Cyberloan is an excellent example or the dramatic change toward "personalization." This is a digital loan pre-qualification, analysis and routing system used by more than 500 lending institutions nationwide. It allows borrowers to electronically submit loan applications to multiple lenders, reducing the usual two-week process to 30 minutes.

The system matches financial information found in the loan application with a database detailing each institution's underwriting criteria. It then automatically routes the application to the "most likely" lending institution, branch and loan officer. Currently, between $30 million and $50 million in loan applications pass through the system daily.

Cyberloan is another instance of the power of personalization: the right information in the right place at the right time. This is the test for making any sale. But it has nothing to do with establishing personal contact.

• Talking to the customer is not nearly as critical as communicating with the customer. Selling is generally based on lots of talk but little communication. An amazon.com customer purchased a book by the "e-economy" author Evan Schwartz. A year later, he received an e-mail message from the Net bookseller, "As somebody who has purchased books by Evan Schwartz in the past, you might like to know that his newest book, "Digital Darwinism" has hit the shelves. For the next few days, you can order your copy at a savings of 40% by following the link below..." One click and the book was ordered!

Good selling is proactive in the sense that it reflects exactly what the customer wants, when the customer wants it and by communicating this message in ways that are acceptable to the customer. In other words, customers don't need more lunches or golf outings; they need vendors and suppliers who can anticipate their requirements.

Those salespeople who sit around and ask, "Well, what can we sell them?" are asking the wrong question. Such lack of communication is the cause of lost sales.

Based on these three basic guidelines for selling today, here are several implications for improving the sales process:

1. Concentrate on the customer's experience, not on what you want to sell the customer. The usual sales approach is to decide what you want to sell a customer and then build a plan to make it happen. While this made sense in the past, the approach doesn't work today. In spite of this fact, many in sales continue to race down the same old road, failing to realize that it's a dead end. It's time for a difficult, and somewhat painful, 180° change: focus on what the customer wants.

2. Let information guide and direct the sales process. Contrary to the view that a good salesperson can sell anything, it's what you know that controls your sales. Although cleaning equipment is getting high-tech, the drycleaning business is still mostly a mom-and-pop industry. Yet, a drycleaning chain with nearly 40 locations assiduously maps each store's customers to determine where they live and their travel patterns. As a result of the data, each store has its own individual marketing plan and no two locations are alike. It's information such as this that should guide the marketing and sales process.

3. Never allow anything you sell to become a commodity. According to a recent study, the insurance industry receives a solid "D" when it comes to customer satisfaction and barely earns a "C" on performance. This is the second year that the industry has received low marks. "The Quality Scoreboard," published by the Risk and Insurance Management Society and the Quality Insurance Congress will come as no surprise to millions of "insureds," as customers in the industry are known. Repeatedly, insurance salespeople commodify their product when they say, "Insurance is only bought because it's a necessity."

The insurance industry has allowed its products to be promoted as commodities that can be purchased off-the-shelf by engaging in an endless quoting frenzy. Customers have learned how to play one broker against the other to drive the price down, without much concern for fundamental information issues such as product quality, exposures and coverages. The insurance industry, in its insatiable drive to sell, sell, sell, has subverted its sales by debasing its own products.

The basic issue in sales in the years ahead has little or nothing to do with selling techniques. That was 30 years ago or more. The critical element in the sales process is information. What we know about customers, how well we understand them, and the extent to which we are committed to finding ways to give them the experience that satisfied their needs makes all the difference.

All this has nothing to do with getting appointments or making cold calls. It has everything to do with understanding and using data.