Expert Selling

A Blueprint to Accelerate Sales Excellence

Sedric Hill

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781630477172
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sales
• Index: Business

In today's business environment, advanced sellers must not only achieve sales quotas, but must also sell more and more complex products and services that drive profitable revenue growth. The road from journeyman to expert is not achieved through traditional behavior-based training that requires large amounts of dedicated time, but instead happens between the ears—through cognitive skill development. Science has proven that experts differ from novices primarily in the speed in which the right knowledge is accessed and through their ability to perform the basics consistently well. In Expert Selling: A Blueprint to Accelerate Sales Excellence, sales trainer and success coach Sedric Hill unpacks the elusive "windows of expert advantage" and wraps them into the professional selling and persuasive communication domains. He reveals insights to expertise by teaching you to understand and improve the supreme mental skill in selling, connecting, which involves detecting, interpreting, and responding to buyers' messages. You also discover the six essentials of persuasive communication—a roadmap to building excellent communication fundamentals (becoming brilliant at the basics). Finally, Hill introduces two innovative training approaches designed to accelerate selling expertise without requiring large amounts of dedicated training time. Expert Selling is not a typical how-to book. It's more of a blueprint, guiding you like a GPS to the next level of success. As sales quotas and the preponderance of complex offerings continue to rise, a burning platform is created hastening the need for good salespeople to become journeymen and for journeymen to become experts faster than ever before!

SECTION 1

EXPERT PERFORMANCE FOUNDATIONS: “HOW THE SAUSAGE GETS MADE”

Chapter 1 CONNECTING RECOGNITION AND SITUATION AWARENESS IN SELLING

A few years ago, I accompanied a sales team member, Kay Robertson, on a presentation at a large-enterprise computerconsulting firm in Los Angeles. During the dialogue, Kay detected that the buyer needed a ROI (return on investment) analysis. The buyer had not said it explicitly, but after being asked what the approval process would be to move forward, he said something like, “Well, we’ll need your proposal and then we’ll put our internal piece with it, and from there, it should take about a week to turn everything around.” Now, on the surface, this sounds like a typical buyer response. But Kay was listening beyond the words and heard something more that helped her avoid a major snag. Promptly she said, “Hey, you know what else I can do? Why don’t I include a detailed ROI so you have everything you need to make the best decision?” The customer flashed a big smile and replied, “Thank you. That would be great. Saves me a lot of time!”

Kay was able to secure the $150,000 order within her forecasted timeframe. This order was valued at three times her monthly quota. Two months later, during a follow-up visit with the customer, I asked about the ROI and how it helped with the buying process. The customer explained that it was a major reason the sale was approved so quickly—all purchases of that amount were required to include an internal ROI to justify the cost to Finance. He informed me that Kay’s ROI was basically used to meet this business rule. He basically applied the content from Kay’s ROI to complete his internal ROI requirement. We were actually shown the twenty-page document, which, in fact, mirrored the information provided by Kay.

This type of intuitive decision making (connecting) can be crucial to selling success because it is proactive versus reactive. For example, what might have happened had the implicit request gone unnoticed? Here are a few less desirable scenarios:

1. 1.The salesperson may never have provided the ROI data and thus become 100 percent dependent on the buyer’s internal analysis. The buyer’s analysis may or may not have been good enough to pass the standard required for the finance department’s approval.
2. 2.The sale may have stalled if the buyer did not follow through on creating his own ROI. At this point, if the seller detects the issue, she may offer to create it or the buyer may request her to do so. But all too often, the sales cycle is prolonged as a result.
3. 3.The sale may have never closed. Many times a sale starts off perfectly, with high buyer interest, but because of the loss of momentum, it can often fizzle.

As this example shows, the seller’s decision making plays an integral role in the sale. The takeaway here is that good decision making comes through recognition of the buyer’s implicit needs and concerns. Many sellers make the wrong decisions (or no decision when one is needed), as a result of missing key messages. Primed-recognition relates to factoring in the recognized message to make the right decisions. These connecting skills are critical to understanding and responding to various selling scenarios.

What Is Selling Intuitively?

Have you ever heard people say, “He just has a knack” or “She really knows how to think on her feet”? There are many factors that are involved with expert sales performance, everything from exceptional product knowledge to skilled negotiating. But when it comes to attaining the highest levels of expert performance, the difference lies within the cognitive (intuitive) actions, namely connecting. Novices who give sufficient effort to improve basic skills become journeymen within a short order of time. However, moving from the journeyman (advanced) level of selling to expertise occurs with experience and implicit learning. In this chapter and the next, we will examine two key subskills of connecting—recognition and situation awareness—and their role in expert selling performance.

The Science behind Connecting: The RPD Model

Connecting involves cognitive reaction skills that detect, interpret, and respond to the prospect’s messages. To better understand sales recognition, we draw from the breakthrough research resulting from the Recognition-Primed Decision-Making (RPD) model. RPD examines how experts make urgent decisions in naturalistic settings. Research scientist and psychologist Gary A. Klein developed RPD to describe how people actually make decisions in natural settings. Many business people have adopted these concepts in an effort to speed up expertise. The model represents the cognitive processes involved with decision makers who evaluate potential solutions by testing them against specific situational elements. RPD includes three primary elements of decision making: matching, diagnosis, and a simulated course of action. It’s a blend of intuition and analysis. The pattern matching (recognition) is the intuitive part and mental simulation is the conscious analysis part.

Recognition, the first stage of RPD, involves matching patterns from situations to those already experienced. The second stage, diagnosis, focuses on interpreting cues and information. Finally, the course-ofaction stage relates to evaluating the merits of a potential decision and acting on it. The model groups decision making into three levels:

1. 1.In less complex situations, a person might quickly recognize and implement a decision based on a previous match of knowledge.
2. 2.In other situations where more information is needed, the person will mentally test the solution and choose the first option that can work.
3. 3.In more complex situations where the situation may not be familiar, the person seeks more information and evaluates potential options until the best one is identified. To put it simply, decisions move through the decision stages either automatically or more deliberately depending on the situation and the level of experience.

Beyond the initial recognition stage, the model becomes much more complex and focused on cognitive decision making. Hence, the recognition aspects of RPD is where we center our attention in selling. It is also the most commonly trained part of RPD since it is much easier to reproduce for learning. In the following chapter, “Situation Selling,” we will examine more closely how RPD is applied to common selling situations.

With traditional sales training, the foci centers on action-oriented tasks that are executed preemptively. However, reaction-oriented tasks have shown to be much stronger contributors in expertise and expert performance. For example, a salesperson’s presentation skills are much less effective if he is unable to recognize the needs of the prospect. Notably, although reaction skills have more influence on expertise, the vast majority of sales training is geared toward action skills.

Recognition and intuitive decision making are mostly found in high-stakes domains where decision making has to be very quick and accurate. Examples include the emergency, law enforcement, and firefighting fields. However, selling is marked by dynamic communication interactions that require quick reactions as well. Throughout persuasive communication (PC), sellers have a very short window of time to detect and respond to the implicit messages that matter. The stakes for noticing these cues grow higher as the sale moves closer to the buying decision. Therefore, closing and negotiating prices and terms represents ideal windows for intuitive decision making.

The Role of Recognition in Expert Sales Performance

For several decades, researchers have sought to discover the specific aspects of performance that separate experts from novices. In so doing, subjects are observed in a laboratory setting for deliberate practice research in sports, music, medical, and other domains. Many studies strongly support the notion that recognition is at the center of the expert advantage. To pinpoint these window locations, researchers use expert/novice methods. For instance, an expert’s and a novice’s actions are observed when given the same visual and audio data under varying degrees of difficulty. These methods are also used to discover why experts display a perceptual advantage. A 2007 study by Dr. Peter Fadde revealed that experts tend to outperform novices in the earliest phases of the simulated tasks.

In sales, expertise is marked by the ability to quickly detect and correctly respond to messages from the buyer. We refer to this skill as connecting. During sales interactions, verbal and nonverbal messages flow to the seller, requiring rapid detection, interpreting, and decision making. Since these skills are implicit and fluid, we describe them as intuitive. Fadde, when referring to recognition, calls it “Spidey-sense.” Anyone familiar with the comic series can relate to Spider-Man using his special skill to detect trouble before it happens. Therefore, connecting focuses on the implicit cues and message intent of the prospect. Throughout this book, we break down connecting skills using several case stories and examples along with the supporting science.

Experimental Research versus Descriptive Research

The impact of Klein’s RPD model, Ericsson’s Deliberate Practice, and Fadde’s Expert-Based Training are highly regarded within academic circles. But many in the business community assume that all research is the same. We often accept the “based-on-research” claims of sales training gurus without much proof or explanation. It is therefore important to know what type of research people are citing. There are two prominent methods used in psychological research, each of which have different purposes, advantages, and disadvantages. They are experimental and descriptive.

Descriptive methods aim to describe a snapshot of the market and its environment. It’s considered easier to perform than experimental research but is limited in explaining how and why the results occurred. The vast majority of marketing and sales research involves descriptive methods. These surveys, case studies, and statistical analysis reveal what is occurring but do little to find out why people behave as they do. In addition, most surveys mostly use self-evaluations and self-reported data, which are subject to biases. In many cases where corporate sponsors of these studies have a direct interest in the outcome of a study, critics accuse them of sort of putting the thumb on the scales—manufacturing the need to advance their product or narrative. While descriptive research has merit and a place within the marketplace, salespeople are looking for clear answers on how to move their skills to the next level.

The body of experimental research on the acquisition of expert performance traces back several decades beginning with Adriaan de Groot’s pioneering studies of chess expertise in the 1940s. De Groot identified the most critical situations in chess and employed them in controlled laboratory settings. These experimental models have since been adopted and expanded throughout the research community. This includes theories such as the deliberate practice and naturalistic decision making. Empirical research on expertise relates mainly to lab experiments or observation of subjects within a psychological context.

Experimental research offers insights that expose the elusive expert advantages of expertise. Characteristics of experimental research include causality—specific and individual focused—and empirical design elements. Experimental studies are much more narrowly focused and require more time and effort. As a result, experimental research is widely held as the highest standard by which other research methods are judged. This type of experimental research is central to the sales concepts presented in this book.

Learning Implicitly from Experts

As they say, “You have to think on your feet in sales.” While this rings true, the problem is that it only addresses the “what you should do” part of selling. Thus, the “how to do it” part is often left to chance. This sort of explicit vagueness is a common error made by novice sales managers. The directive may be specific but the desired behavior is fuzzy. Everyone knows that you have to think on your feet, but people rarely can explain how to do so. Our goal now is to demystify the vagueness of sales recognition and bring into focus the thinking of the selling expert. Figure 1.1 is a conceptual representation of the core cognitive elements of selling expertise.

Figure 1.1 Core Cognitive Essentials of Selling Expertise

Many senior managers often ask, “How can we learn more from our top salespeople?” The logical answer is to simply ask the top performers, but experts typically miss up to 70 percent of their implicit processes when teaching a lesser-skilled performer. I learned this the hard way as training director during a major sales conference. I was asked to facilitate a talk-show-style interview panel of the company’s top performers. The goal was to uncover best practices that could be later disbursed to the sales force. Armed with a list of well-prepared questions, my goal was to ask the right questio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Preface
• Introduction: Expert Selling
• Section 1: Expert Performance Foundations: “How the Sausage Gets Made”
• Section 2: Mastering the Selling Essentials: Becoming Brilliant at the Basics
• Section 3: Accelerating the Development of Selling Expertise
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix “Honorable Mentions”
• Appendix A—Product Knowledge (PK)
• Appendix B Business Culture and Industry Knowledge (BIK)
• Appendix C ales Activity and Pipeline Management
• Appendix D Meaningful Sales Leads
• Appendix E Competitive Support Strategies
• Appendix F Consultative-solution selling versus insight selling
• Appendix G Business Acumen (BA)
• Appendix H Prospecting
• Appendix I CRMs in Sales, Creating a Win-Win
• Appendix J Recommended Books
• Appendix K Useful Tools and Job Aids
• References