After a recent sales call, you had a strange feeling that you didn’t really connect with the buyer. You got all of your key selling points out, but they didn’t seem excited about anything but the collapsible Koozie with your company logo. You doubt if you’ll get a call back.

What went wrong?

In a tight economy so many businesses are infected with the “Quarteritus virus”; the halls echo with the mantra “show me the numbers.” Prospects, dials, appointments, closes, contracts fill endless reports and countless spreadsheets. Yet, simply measuring data from the sales “dashboard” without addressing the quality of the process will result in garbage in, garbage out statistics.

Traditional sales training programs teach selling cycles advocate some variation of the one below: 1. Identify Prospect 2. Initial Contact 3. Qualify 4. First Appointment 5. Presentation/Proposal 6. Negotiate 7. and Close. Note: all steps in this cycle fit between the gold dotted lines. They measure from the first call to the close – any other activity doesn’t matter.

Notice, there’s little to no attention given to activity before or after the sale. Yet, preparation should be the first stage of any prospect development plan. I call this the Research stage (the others are 2. Discovery 3. Outcome Building 4. Commitment and 5. Value Compliance (more on this next article)). Instead, in an effort to make their “numbers”, sellers fly out the door in hopes of dazzling buyers with their product/service knowledge.

Why is the research phase so important? In his most recent book, Re-Thinking the Sales Force, Neil Rackham says sellers have to create value, not just communicate value to clients/customers. Sales people who are just “talking brochures” are becoming obsolete. Rackham rightly claims that buyers can find that information out on the web in five minutes.

As buyers look more like the hamster on the wheel, wearing multiple hats with thin support staff, they rely more on sellers to help reframe problems and infuse insight. They look to sellers to work collaboratively with them to achieve the goals.

So how do you create value? Value creation is an ongoing process, but the good news is you don’t have to wait until you meet the buyer to begin (which continues long after the first sale).

Let me suggest three areas to research and what specifically to look for on that search:

1. Industry – What’s going on in their industry, for example what are the trends? Is the industry expanding or contracting? How are globalization, regulation, environmental and financial issues impacting their industry? What do prognosticators say about the industry’s future?
2. Company – What are their roots? What are trends in their company? Who just left and who just arrived? What are the CEO and other executives saying? What new initiatives are they driving? What kinds of suppliers do they use to service their needs in other areas? Where are they investing/cutting? What are their vision, mission, value proposition and other strategic statements? What’s their corporate culture?
3. Individual – What’s their work history prior to arriving there? What kind of power and influence do they have in the decision-making process? What can you discover about their interests outside of work? How do they tend to make decisions? Who’s in their sphere of influence? What’s their personality type?

Next, streamline your results through the filter of what you believe will be important and emotional to the buyer and or decision team. Once you meet with the buyer, you’ll want to explore that in more detail, but the fact that you did your homework helps create trust from the outset. It helps you become remarkable as Seth Godin suggests in The Purple Cow; critically more important than just being very good.

Consider the scenario both ways:

1. Traditional approach:

Seller: “…we’ve just introduced a new service that I think you’ll benefit from. It allows our clients/customers to capture spend dollars by department on a weekly basis. It even sends that data to your Blackberry. So you can disapprove any orders that you don’t want to go through the system. Isn’t that awesome?”

Buyer thinks: Does he have any idea what we do? Do I need to have more messages in my Blackberry? Another seller trying to make their numbers.

1. Using research:

Seller: “…from the article I read in American Lawyer, the industry continues to be concerned about going green. I noticed that your COO was recently quoted at the Legal Summit in London as saying your firm is “committed to an environmentally-friendly approach to every aspect of the firm’s practice by the end of 2008”. How has that impacted you and your department?

Buyer thinks: This guy cared enough to do his research and has a point of view. Yes, I’m dealing with turning this place green and need some help. I’d like to hear what he has to say, he’s different.

Warning:

Relationships aren’t linear. While a defined selling process designed to create buyer value from start to finish is an important part of the selling success, particularly in more complex sales, the overarching goal is to build a trusting relationship. The value creation process helps provide a roadmap.

Yes but, all this takes time. I recall a sales executive once said, “Strategy is what you do while your competition is out making a sale.” Let me be clear: the Research stage of the selling process is not a strategy planning session. It’s an essential step for each and every prospect that’s worth converting to a customer/client. It’s an investment that honors the buyer’s time; it signals to the buyer, that your interest lies in their best interest, not yours.

So take off your cape, slow down to make the sale.