In today’s world we are in tumultuous change and selling is one of the fastest changing parts of our businesses.
We are involved with selling from our entering cradle to grave.
In sales methods (as in products or services) we have a rate of diffusion and this is judged by how fast a new method of customer sales approach spreads from one sales organisation to another.
As we look at various companies, we see information on how the latest methods of sales are being made, this becomes accepted in one office and then acceptance flows across a company. Next it is offered to the movers & shakers, business leaders in a sector and then to the general population of smaller sales organisations.
There are five categories of sales method adopters:
Just as we will see in the products marketed, a new customer experience idea is also a service or product.
Company owners and sales directors are in these categories:
Innovators – venturesome sector market leaders, educated, successful entrepreneurs who know the value of being ahead of the pack;
Early adopters – regional business leaders, popular, educateded directors;
Early majority – deliberators, like to see others succeed first and like to get reports from business contacts;
Late majority – skeptical, traditional, lower socio-economic status and smaller businesses;
Laggards – one man bands, trying to survive, suppliers are main info sources, fear of investing money.
The rate of diffusion is influenced by:
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The perceived advantage or benefit to the business and its customers.
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Riskiness of investment.
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Ease of implementation – complexity of the training.
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Immediacy of results.
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Observability – is it based on fact
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Trial and risk reversal
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Price and cashflow constraints.
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Extent of behavioural changes required for other parts of the business culture.
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Return on investment and customer reaction
Some see changes aimed at their business sector and ignore it forever, others see a change in the market so they change early and lead the field.
Many fall somewhere in the middle and adopt with the majority.
In our experience the visionaries make the money.
At Airstream Consultants we believe you cannot intuitively know what a customer will say, we also know your sales staff are trained and yet say different stuff to that training.
To start a process at Airstream Consultants we engage world class researchers appointed by Professor Elizabeth Stokoe, hundreds of phone calls are recorded and sales meetings are recorded by video.
All recordings are anonymized, transcribed and have a psychologist do conversational analysis. Only then are we ready to do the workshop or rather Professor Stokoe, conducts a workshop for our sales client organisations.
The process is brainchild of Professor Stokoe and is known as CARM
Before racing off to meet me, booking research, having workshops, I can share some of what we do know already and this blog aims to share those ideas with you in this posting today
We find out exactly what takes place in (say) 100 phone conversation’s with all of your top performers and 100 of your under performing sales people.
Then we analyse those conversations and Loughborough University can host your sales teams meeting workshop.
The basics from sales of the olden days still stand today but have seen many changes since those early offerings.
Back in the 1950’s-60’s we saw TACK or Carnegie, in the 1970’s-80’s we saw Mr Rigby and his Pendle Consultants bring various sales pitches to the forefront.
The days Carnegie started
1912 – Dale Carnegie Training founded
man’s belief in the power of personal development to a global workplace learning and performance organization with offices in over 80 countries. We focus on improving the performance of companies by improving their teams’ performance.
The days of TACK started
1948 – TACK Training founded
Two brothers, George and Alfred Tack, established the original TACK Company in London in 1948. TACK Training was born out of the brothers’ first venture, a business called NuAire (air handling and ventilation). Alfred, a prolific entrepreneur, author and radio playwright, realised that to stay ahead of the competition they needed to train their sales team in the art of professional selling.
In the time of TACK,the factories had no sales staff, customers would instead contact a buying office and place an order. Imagine the revolution in sales when such staff were trained to think customer first and serving YOU was what it was all about, then they beat a great drum that WE could work together and I (sales person) will serve YOU (customer)
All cutting edge stuff in its day and of course TACK International cover the globe and give cutting edge training based on You-We-I
The days Pendle started
1977 – Pendle Consultants founded
During the 1970’s Greg Rigby spent several years as Managing Director for a group of
Car Dealerships before establishing Pendle Consultants Ltd to specialise in Sales Consultancy and Sales Training. He and Pendle became ‘household names’ in the high value UK retail sector where he introduced controlled sales procedures which are still known as ‘The Pendle System’. He grew the business into other sectors via recommendations and referrals
The Pendle system was based on early qualification, converting very ratio’s of appointments into sales and this system has placed a few business owners on the Sunday Times Rich List.
The founder sold up and retired to author such books as the God Secret and transcribe other biblical theories.
Due to client demand Greg Rigby, obtained and relaunched Pendle Consultants and no doubt his clients will once again do very well in business
The above are all great places to gain sales training and many more came behind these three examples above and I will cover these in a later blog posting.
CARM can be used within your current selling system or a bespoke customer experience can be designed
In the twentieth century some might say selling was more ‘one hit’ selling, we used the AIDA sales idea and can trace this back to Elmo Lewis whose sales funnel you can read all about online.
In 1898, E. St. Elmo Lewis developed a model which mapped a theoretical* customer journey from the moment a brand or product attracted consumer attention to the point of action or purchase.[1]
St. Elmo Lewis’ idea is often referred to as the AIDA-model – an acronym which stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action.
This staged process is summarized below:
- Awareness – the customer is aware of the existence of a product or service
- Interest – actively expressing an interest in a product group
- Desire – aspiring to a particular brand or product
- Action – taking the next step towards purchasing the chosen product and even a closed sale
The AIDA method did get tweaked as time went on..
IN THE SCENE BELOW, BLAKE (ALEC BALDWIN) IS CONFRONTING THE EMPLOYEES OF A TOUGH CHICAGO REAL-ESTATE OFFICE, SHELLEY LEVENE (JACK LEMMON), ED MOSS (ED HARRIS) AND GEORGE AARONOW (ALAN ARKIN) WHILE THEIR UNSYMPATHETIC SUPERVISOR JOHN WILLIAMSON (KEVIN SPACEY) LOOKS ON. IF YOU WOULD LIKE, THIS MONOLOGUE I’M SURE CAN BE EDITED INTO ONE INCREDIBLY LONG ONE, IF YOU WANT TO TAKE OUT THE LINES FROM THE OTHER ACTORS.
A-I-D-A. Attention, interest, decision, action. Attention — do I have your attention? Interest — are you interested? I know you are because it’s fuck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks! Decision — have you made your decision for Christ?!! And action. A-I-D-A; get out there!! You got the prospects comin’ in; you think they came in to get out of the rain? Guy doesn’t walk on the lot unless he wants to buy. Sitting out there waiting to give you their money! Are you gonna take it? Are you man enough to take it? Glengarry Glen Ross
written by David MametFind out more and email Richard@airstreamconsultants.co.uk