Ahhhhh… The Great One, the great Wayne Gretzky. He still holds the record as the leading point-scorer in NHL history, with more assists than any other player has points! He is the only NHL player to total over 200 points in one season – a feat he accomplished four times. He was as talented at dodging checks from opposing players as he was at consistently anticipating where the puck was going to be, and then being there before anyone else. He is still the leading point scorer, and he’s been retired for how long?
There’s a lot that B2B sales people who strive to become elite at their game, can learn from those that are elite at their game. When you distill it down to those one or two ingredients that along with natural talent makes sports stars as exceptional as they are, you can usually learn a thing or two.
For the sake of this post, I would like to borrow from The Great Ones own pearls of wisdom and discuss his concept of playing to where the puck is going to be, rather than where it is, and how it relates to the world of B2B sales.
I feel confident opining on this subject, as I have been a B2B sales professional in one form or another for over three decades. In that time, I have worked with, done business with, coached, or trained more B2B sales people then I can count. When you have that kind of exposure, you get to witness the average, the above average, and the really exceptional sales people, and what makes them so.
For the first two groups what I see in general is many dogs wrestling over scraps. Scraps you say? Yes, scraps, let me elaborate.
Most average B2B sales people spend their months and years toiling away at finding a deal to do today, to do now. They work the phones, they network at events, and sometimes they send out email or direct mail solicitations. They bring themselves to the office each day, and secretly hope that their employer’s outbound marketing programs will have generated a tsunami of inbound new customer enquires, all queued up in their voicemail or email inbox.
They are, to be frank, instant gratification junkies, only interested in applying time and energy to opportunities in front of their noses, to those that are obvious. They are skating to the puck. They are not focusing on where the puck will be. It’s the big ugly scrum; arms, legs, and hockey sticks flailing away like a bunch of piranha feeding on a piece of meat.
At best, this most often makes for an average career in sales. Why? Because they, along with all the other “where can I do a deal today” sales junkies, are all running into each other in this deal of the day mosh pit, all grappling for that next client who has an obvious and declared need for their product or service. They’re all waiting for that next RFP, RFQ or RFwhatever, and all making the same old and tired out, dumb a** claims about how they can “save the client money”, or “we’ve done business with a major competitor of yours”, and so on.
All these sales people collide with one another, getting drawn into meaningless, “why my solution to your need is better” negotiations, constantly getting sucked into selling on price and discounts, instead of service, value, and most importantly, insight.
This type of salesperson spends all their time responding to a client’s known need, instead of creating a new need.
If we are going to take a feather out of Mr. Gretzky’s hat, then there is no better place to start than with his advice, that great hockey players focus their attention to where the puck is going to be. If you do that, you’ll be where you should be, and where everyone else would like to be.
For the B2B sales professional, being ahead of the curve, or adopting a strategic sales play involves spending less time fighting over the easy low reward business, and instead, devoting time to becoming better attuned to what the marketplace or customer may or should need. Being the one who provokes an interest in a new need, rather than just responding to an existing need. Make no mistake, this is hallowed ground you’ll be selling on, because you’ll likely be the only salesperson pitching the insightful opportunity.
Let’s say you’re a business machine sales person, and maybe you work for Xerox, or Ricoh. You have a territory, a quota, and managers pressuring you to produce numbers now. You need business.
The average to ok salesperson scours their client lists looking for customers who they suspect have a lease expiration looming on current equipment, or they know have just expanded into larger premises. They look for clients that have hired a bunch more employees, employees that could necessitate the need for additional equipment. Now, this sales guy or gal isn’t alone, because this is precisely what all their other average competitors are doing; going after the “easy” sale, the “quick” sale, the obvious sale.
Of course, this type of sale is never that easy, because like Everest, where there is a cast of hundreds at base camp, all clamoring for camp space and guide availability, so too are all the other average sales people pitching the same customer. On Everest, as the air gets thinner, the number of climbers, and those who reach the top, become fewer, which means there are way less people to bump into…
Now if you’re the great one, the truly exceptional sales professional, you’ve dug deeper, way deeper in your product/service offering, and anticipated what a prospect or client may benefit from. Advising them in an area that they didn’t know they had a need in or an area that could be improved upon, and that’s what you sell to.
If you take this path, you’ll become the sales professional that opens the door to a purchase the client had never anticipated.
When I pitch my business, First Approach ®, it doesn’t take me long before I transition away from discussing what a client thinks they need, or where they believe they have a gap, to a discussion that introduces and opens their eyes to concepts and needs they never thought of. In other words, I sell to where I believe the puck will be, by leading the play in that direction.
If you’re the business machine or technology sales professional, it’s a safe bet to assume your clients, and most importantly your prospective clients, already know what your basic offering is. They’re expecting your call, and they are expecting you to pitch the usual song and dance. What they probably don’t know is how technology around business machines is evolving, and why the equipment purchases they think they need to make may well be the wrong choice. They probably don’t know the extent of your services offerings vs. hardware line, etc., etc. In short, they don’t know what they don’t know, and that’s where opportunity lives.
Great B2B sales professionals never lead with “how can I help you”, but with “did you know?” If you want to be a truly exceptional sales performer, take note of The Great One’s advice, and discover the value you can offer for the need the client never knew they had.
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