Writing White Papers

Communicating Value Is Not Enough

How to effectively sell services

Over 30 years ago (it feels like a lifetime ago!), I accepted my first job in business as a salesperson. During my first two weeks of orientation and sales training, I learned what “professional selling” meant. My job was about making lots of sales calls, asking a few good questions, explaining the benefits of our offerings, managing resistance and closing the business. The main emphasis was on “communicating value” — getting in front of potential buyers and emphasizing our benefits. If I could do that well, I would be successful.

Figure 1 below is a sales management checklist from those days that shows the knowledge and skill requirements of good sellers.

Figure 1. Professional Selling Checklist: Requirements of the Value Communicator

Believe me, achieving competence in these areas took much training, practice and perseverance. Take a minute, grade your services sellers on these requirements, and see how they do.

The problem is that, although still a necessary foundation, these competencies are not nearly enough to be successful in selling complex services and solutions today. My research clearly proves that only 20 percent of the 157 services executives surveyed believed their salespeople were selling the right offerings to the right people the right way!* In the last 12 years, I have yet to work with a services organization in which selling effectiveness was not one of its top three critical issues.

The sales evolution

Today’s selling game has changed dramatically because buying has changed dramatically due to: ease of getting information on the Internet, more complexity in addressing business issues, more sophisticated buyers at higher levels and so on. But the salesperson’s role and competencies still fall under the old rules of selling.

Primarily, selling has evolved from a role of communicating value (acting as a talking brochure) to the desired role of creating value (allowing the customer to see enough benefit to pay for the sales call). This is quite an evolution. Figure 2 below demonstrates the additional capabilities required.

Figure 2. Professional Selling Checklist: Requirements of the Value Creator

Knowledge required today

In addition to the core selling knowledge in Figure 1, today’s strong sellers need to know your company’s services and solutions. They need to know your company’s talent pool. When they know your employees’ capabilities and availability, they can sell to customer expectations appropriately. For the same reason, they need to know the same things about your partners.

Selling complex services and solutions impacts the client’s business at multiple levels across functions and geographies. Top sellers understand business and the issues and challenges of different people in different roles with different responsibilities. They link their recommendations so prospects see and understand the potential business impact. Furthermore, the best sellers of solutions are system thinkers — they understand the connectivity and linkage of all the components (e.g., functions and processes) and the potential impact and ramifications of how everything fits together.

Finally, they understand that anything worth doing requires change, and clients must be willing and able to act in new and different ways. They expect and plan for resistance, and allow time to consider this very early in the selling process.

Perfecting advanced communication skills

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The core skills of Figure 1 need to be honed and built upon. Listening and probing must be performed at higher degrees to allow for deeper understanding of issues. By far, the most value can be created early in the buying process. Acknowledging client facts and feelings helps uncover the root cause of problems, create realistic options and weigh plusses and minuses while helping the client grasp concepts and potential choices and their ramifications — these are high-level communications skills. A very nice side benefit is that these also fast-track relationship building.

It is very common to have a dozen or more individuals from the buying company involved in selecting solutions. Hence, the ability to facilitate groups and guide them to a favorable consensus is a powerful capability. Often, mediation needs to take place to help individuals achieve their personal goals while allowing the organization to move toward positive action.

With very few exceptions (the Churchills, DaVincis and Michelangelos of the business world), no one can do it all. Hence, it takes a selling team to effectively meet the needs of the buying team. Someone must lead the charge and manage the selling process by bringing in the right people in the right way at the right time.

As you have probably seen, these are executive skills. Now, grade your selling of complex services and solutions in the capabilities listed on Figure 2. How did they do this time? Are your sellers mainly value communicators or value creators? Don’t be saddened if the scores are not that high, as most aren’t in the beginning.

Services sales points to ponder

1. Could sales staff do it with guns to their heads?
   I estimate that, on average, about 15 percent of salespeople are effective when selling complex services and solutions today.

2. Could they do it with good training, strong reinforcement, timely feedback and a combination of excellent rewards, but also firm negative consequences?
   This takes time and money and is not easy to do. However, about 45 percent of salespeople can change behavior enough to perform adequately.

3. Will they never get it?
   Face reality — the remaining 40 percent of salespeople will never be good (or even OK) at selling complex services. It is not their fault — they are just wired differently. Besides, that is not the job they were probably hired to do. After giving them a chance to succeed, either allow them to become a product sales specialist, find them another job in your company, or find them a job outside your company.

Effectively selling complex services and solutions is difficult, yet it can be done with proper problem identification, an understanding of what it takes and the fortitude to build, fund and implement a realistic plan.

* Alexander, James A. The State of Professional Services II: An Industry Comes of Age. 2004. Alexander Consulting and AFSMI. Fort Myers, FL.

Jim Alexander is the founder of Alexander Consulting, LLP, a management consultancy that creates and implements professional services strategies for product companies. Contact Alexander at 239-283-7400, alex@alexanderstrategists.com, or visit http://www.alexanderstrategists.com.

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