Time is perhaps our most precious resource. Once we “spend” time we can never get it back! Much consideration is given to not wasting time.

In business this is most often reflected in the adage:

Time is money

 The assumptions embedded in the idea that time = money are so profound that they impact how we think about sales. The most significant impact is when sales are viewed as transactions – discrete or one time events.

With this way of thinking, a “good” salesperson is someone who is good at discovering these discrete events and making the transactions occur.  And it suggests these sales will be managed through a sales process that will track them through a series of defined stages, attach probabilities to closing the sale, attach an expected dollar value to the sale, and monitor or indicate due dates and actions steps to be taken.  A selling/buying cycle is created where the client/customer and the product/service are both seen as quantifiable units to be measured in the process.

Within the cycle, if an action can’t be assigned with a date put on it then that action doesn’t exist – it is a waste of time. When the cycle is completed, the sale is accepted or rejected. The client or customer may come back; however, they become a new event within a new cycle. And this describes most modern-day CRM systems, sales metrics, and sales management processes – they are built around discrete, separate, trackable events. More events are better. 

When sales as events are the measure of efficiency, time is not on our side. Time is “being wasted” if we are not adding clients/customers to the top of the funnel, creating new events or more sales. In this case time is our enemy as we want to spend a little time as possible on each event so as to maximize the total number of events or sales we can create. Taking too long on one event is a waste of time. Relationships are seen only as a means to and end to get to the desired outcome – the sale.

What if there was another way to think about sales.  What if sales weren’t looked at as a discrete or single event. What if they were looked at as a pattern of events? What if a sale was about a relationship, or a condition, or connections instead of a transaction? If this were the case we wouldn’t talk about selling individual events or transactions but building relationships and connections. Individual transactions would then to be seen as the measure of success of the relationship. Instead of being seen as the ends of a relationship, transactions or sales would become the means. When sales relationships are the measure of efficiency, time is on our side. Time invested in relationships and building connections will maximize sales revenue in the long term. 

For a lot of businesses, the transactional model of sales as one-time events works just fine. For any business where, generally, the customer comes to them, a short term, quantitative, transactional sales strategy is exactly what is needed.

However, for any business that needs to find customers or clients on an ongoing basis – businesses that provide professional and intangible services or high-ticket B2B sales – the reverse is true. Focusing on maximizing the number of sales events or transactions that can be created in the minimum amount of time is likely to lead to disastrous results. Instead, focusing on the longer term, qualitative sales strategy by building and improving meaningful relationships and connections will lead to repeat business, loyalty, and referrals.  This will generate the long-term revenue that these types of businesses desire and need.

It just takes some time

No matter what you are doing in your life – whether it is on a professional or  personal level, whether  you are a business owner, a parent , a doctor, politician, teacher  or any combination of these “titles” you are selling something.

The art of sales is all about getting someone to buy your product or engage your services.  First of all, we need to understand that facts don’t sell anything – at least not initially. Emotions sell!  Elmer Wheeler, once considered the greatest salesman in the world, proclaimed “Sell the Sizzle not the Steak.” This idea is as relevant now as it was when he wrote his book Tested Sentences that Sell, in 1937.

It is the emotional idea of what the steak represents that will create the sale – not the real steak. Now this doesn’t mean facts aren’t important in sales.  After all, at some point in time, a real steak will have to be produced and the facts of the steak: its size, its cut, how lean it is, how it will be cooked, etc. will be important to the customer. However, initially it is the idea of the steak that is important.

Selling an idea is quite different than selling the “facts.” People can accept facts and not like or accept the person presenting them. Facts can be verified independently of the person presenting them. Ideas, however, are quite different. Ideas require that you trust and believe the other person before you agree with them. So, what does it take to have the other understand and agree with you?  

Quite simply, people like people who are like themselves. Therefore, it is all about entering into and maintaining rapport with the other person. Rapport is the process of matching and mirroring someone so we become like them so that they will accept, uncritically, the suggestions we give them. It is the establishment of trust to achieve a mutual beneficial result. 

Now, all of us have had interactions with another person where we walked away feeling like we had known the person for all our lives – that we really got along well with them and really liked them.  Conversely, we have probably all had situations where we have walked away saying to ourselves – “wow that wasn’t enjoyable!” We had that bad taste in our mouth.  Both outcomes are indications of the level of our rapport with the other person. In the first instance, our rapport was deep; in the second instance we probably had little or no rapport. 

If we treat rapport as something that “happens” to us, then we stumble into interactions where we might have great rapport or we might not have rapport at all, or anything in between. However, if we treat rapport as a process, as suggested in the definition above, then we can learn and apply principles that will permit us to create and maintain deep and beneficial rapport with anyone at any time. Rapport doesn’t have to be something that just happens- it can be something we deliberately create.

When we are in rapport with another person, that person sees us as being very much like them. They understand and agree with us. Therefore, they will like us, understand us, and agree with us much more readily.  

Think about what the ability to create rapport at will would mean to your sales conversations. However, because rapport creates a trust and uncritical acceptance with the other person, how that sales conversation is conducted becomes of utmost ethical importance.

More later on how to use the power of rapport to move your sales conversation forward.

“Good people don’t underperform due to the wrong personality, the wrong behaviors or some Quixotic definition of culture fit or lack of intelligence or weak team or technical skills.”

Lou Adler in his post “Why Good People Underperform”, 20 Oct 2015 points out several reasons why he believes this is true:

• They’re not motivated to do the actual work required since the job they’re being asked to perform after being hired was ill-defined before they were hired.
• Being competent to do something is not the same as being motivated to do it.
• Being motivated to get a job is not the same as being motivated to do the job.
• The interview focused on assessing competencies, behaviors and depth of skills that only weakly map to the actual work required to be done.
• The hiring manager and candidate don’t work too well together.
• While actual cultural fit is very important, few managers or recruiters understand what this means and how to measure it properly.

He believes that the personality screening tests used by most organizations are flawed and ill-advised because they cannot adequately address any of these issues.

Within the limits of any psychometric testing instrument used for pre-hire assessment the result are accurate. However, if the limits of the instruments are not properly understood and the results are used inappropriately then problems, such as Adler points out, begin to arise. Very few, if any, psychometric testing instruments can help assess the points that Lou Adler has made.

There is, however, a technique available that does allow one to assess exactly what Lou Adler is speaking about. It can directly assess a candidate’s motivation needs and work environment requirements in relation to the position. Managers and employees can also be compared to determine where there may be points of friction and what might be needed to resolve these types of issues. The HR possibilities for this technique are almost limitless.

The technique is known as Language and Behavior Profile Analysis. It is not a personality test but, as the name suggests, an analysis of behavior. Thus, for example it is possible to determine what aspects of a position will motivate the candidate and what aspects will not. Statistical studies have shown that using this technique to map across to behavior is both highly accurate and predictive. When Language and Behavior Profile Analysis is incorporated into the hiring process along with the traditional pre-hiring personality tests, managers have a much more complete picture of the candidate and will be much better informed to make their hiring decision.

A business that incorporates Language and Behavior Profile Analysis into its HR processes can expect to see a return on its investment in better quality hires, a reduction in employee churn, and an ability to resolve employee relations in ways that will more often than not result in retention of productive, motivated employees rather than the letting go of disgruntled individuals.

Find out more about Language and Behavior Profile Analysis