I like these eleven sales tips from Ian Smith. They are clearly based on a wealth of practical experience.
Eleven Sales Tips From Ian Smith
In IBM’s Rometty Gets Blunt With Workers, Ian Smith offered 23 tips, here are my top 11:
3. Recognizing when you can’t solve a problem gives you a distinct advantage.
A commitment to providing value keeps you out of trouble.
8. Authenticity comes from telling stories that you have lived through. Share details of roadblocks got round and solutions that failed. Sound human. Sound real.
I think this is easy advice for founders since they are there from the beginning. But later employees may start out telling “second-hand” success stories that have been passed down from the early years. In this case, it’s base to make it clear who shared the details.
10. Understand both the decision making process and the authorization process. The latter process may contain a key person you need to influence but may not get to meet or even talk to.
It’s entirely reasonable to ask the customer to explain their decision process and the criteria they will use to make it after a successful demonstration of the product.
11. Always prepare an ROI spreadsheet document for the prospect to play with and use.
You should play with it first to make sure you have a good chance of providing value for a reasonable range of scenarios.
14. Understand your prospects world as well as you understand your own solution.
If you work from your prospect’s operating reality and focus on delivering value it’s hard to go wrong.
16. Create realistic expectations in the prospect’s mind about how the product will be used and the timetable for success.
B2B sales success requires successful project management and the key to that is managing expectations, understanding how the customer plans to use your product, and how they will keep score.
17. Time kills deals: Deploy reverse timelines. Explain that a Dec 1st delivery requires feet on the ground in October and a PO by the end of September type approach.
The key is to focus on when the customer will see value and then work backward from that. Too much sales advice is about securing the order when success is only assured when the customer has derived value from use in production.
18. Let the prospect define what success looks like, criteria, timing etc.
It’s legitimate to suggest possibilities that other customers have experienced but in the end the customer makes the call on acceptance criteria and implementation table subject to your ability to support it.
19. Use recap documents to summarize the exact solution, the timetable of deployment and the cost. Only once this casual document is agreed should you issue a formal proposal.
Plain English is superior to legal or contract language for achieving a meeting of the minds.
20. Build a sense of collaboration throughout the sales process not a combative, point scoring battle.
A successful software installation requires a collaborative business relationship. I think the challenge comes more from interactions with purchasing and legal staff, who take a more process-oriented approach to the deal, than from the actual users who know they will rely on you for support after the sale.
23. You are in the business of value achievement. Has your client achieved value from your product?
Unless the customer realizes value from your product you are unlikely to make a profit on the sale.
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- The Value Pyramid as a Way to Structure and Define Your Offerings
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- How Founders Can Learn Sales on the Job
- Q: How Does a First Time Founder Learn Sales?
- The Robin and the Cherries: Sharing Value You Co-Create With Customers
- Newsletter: Pricing to Value
- Newsletter: Early Sales
- Do I Need To Be A Supplicant In a Sales Call?
- Successful Bootstrappers Are Trustworthy Salespeople Committed to Customer Satisfaction
- Price Based On Your Value To The Customer’s Situation