Sales Basics, Prospect to Partner

By Ken Rogner

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Recently I had a call from the manager of a wholesale distribution sales center in Houston. He had a question, "Is there a ten-step program that I can teach my salespeople to take a customer from prospect to partner?" It got my attention so I probed into his situation.

His sales center is part of a large national chain of wholesale distribution centers and he has two full-time outside sales people, one very experienced and one new. There are three other locations of his company in that market. My caller had been traveling with his new salesperson for the first time and, as he watched and listened to the presentation made to a potential customer, he realized how it rambled and lacked a specific overall plan.

My caller has been in distribution management for a long time but some of his past training included exposure to sales training from well known authors and consultants. He knew that there was no systematic process involved in the sales call he had viewed and he was hoping for a simple set of steps he could share.

His question forced me to reflect on the history of sales training. I realize that sometimes we complicate things because we try to continually improve the process. My caller made me take a look into the past into what the basics of sales education really is. Here is what I came up with.

I have read Tom Sant's book in which he gives the credit for developing a process for selling to John Henry Patterson. In about 1880, Patterson had taken over the rights to a patent for manufacturing a machine called a cash register. His new company was called NCR (National Cash Register). Even though Patterson was a strong believer in this machine and its ability to improve retail businesses, he had serious challenges finding a method for letting the rest of the world know its value. When Patterson held his first national sales meeting in 1886 the company was stuck at a sales volume of about 12 cash registers every month. He shared with his sales people all of the features of the new models and then began questioning them to determine "tips and techniques" they were using to sell these units. He had invited his brother-in-law, Joseph Crane, to attend that first meeting and offer input. Later that year Patterson convinced Crane to join NCR and they soon realized that Crane didn't need to be technically strong at servicing the machines to be successful at selling them. Crane eventually recognized that he didn't need to point out every feature of these machines but rather to concentrate only on features that would benefit each specific customer and meet his/her needs. As Crane became the most successful representative for NCR, Patterson worked with him to uncover the "system" that Crane was using. Patterson soon recognized that it was not the script or consistent wording that Crane was using but rather his focus on specific needs of the customer. This was, in effect, the beginning of what we call the consultative approach to selling. Patterson then created a process selling book called the primer, that all of his salespeople were required to follow. The primer system consisted of four basic steps, Approach (identify customer's problems), Proposition (develop a proposal to show value), Demonstration (show the answer to the problem) and Close (ask for the order).

So there, for my friend in Texas, was the start of process selling, a simple set of steps to be used consistently as a system. I could share those basics but he was asking for more. After all, he wanted a road map to go from prospecting to partnering.

I had to expand my proposal to my new friend. Here is the "simple set of steps" as I presented them:

1. Prospecting: This is "digging" to know and understand the marketplace, evaluating the territory first to find where your sales people should focus time and energy. I recommend doing a formal SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) Analysis of your sales territory first.

2. Know and understand your customer: Learn everything about that target opportunity you can. Check with every independent and manufacturer's rep for input, use the internet, check with trade publications, pull out all the stops....know your target and as much about her business as possible.

3. Approach: Develop a series of questions that generate information about the customer's need and her definition of value. A well thought out and customized approach is key.

4. Proposal: This is step to create a response that comes from the results of the questioning and the matching to our products or services to address the customer's needs or value. I sometimes call this "marrying" the correct service with the correct need. Sometimes developing the skill that comes with writing good proposals is an additional necessity here.

5. Demonstration: This is where we must show that the product or service provides the hoped-for solution. It could be as simple as showing a new product that fills the customer's needs or as challenging as loading and demonstrating a new B2B software. Here is where product and service education within our respective companies becomes critical.

6. Close: This may be the most often taught and yet most avoided portion of every selling system. From trial closes, to dollarizing, to overcoming objections, etc. there are many approaches to this step. My recommendation was to ignore gimmicks; instead have his people develop a comfortable close that is honest and non-manipulative. In his case, as a wholesale distributor, everything is about long term relationship building, so sometimes a very successful close is making another appointment to bring in a specialist or for meeting with additional people on his staff.

7. Partnering: Success in sales definitely revolves around follow-up, continual contact and relationship building. This is where the relationship expands to one of trust and a mutual sharing of ideas, opportunities and information. This is the point where a sales person demonstrates to a customer that their loyalty is earned.

Obviously, I didn't end up with a ten step program...only seven. But these steps are the basics as I see them. The steps are somewhat simplistic but I hope they work for my friend in Texas. Developing a system for selling helps assure success, keeping it simple is sometimes the surest way of making that happen.

Token accounting in ancient Mesopotamia (Part 11)

The Mesopotamian civilization emerged during the period 3700–2900 BCE amid the development of technological innovations such as the plough, sailing boats and copper metal working. Clay tablets with pictographic characters appeared in this period to record commercial transactions performed by the temples.[10]  Clay receptacles known as bullae (Latin: 'Bubble'), were used in Elamite city of Susa which contained tokens. These receptacles were spherical in shape and acted as envelopes, on which the seal  of the individuals taking part in a transaction were engraved. The symbols of the tokens they contained were represented graphically on their surface, and the recipient of the goods could check whether they matched with the amount and characteristics expressed on the bulla once they had received and inspected them. The fact that the content of bulla  was marked on its surface produced a simple way of checking without destroying the receptacle, which constituted in itself an exercise in writing that, despite being born spontaneously as a support for the existing system for controlling merchant goods, ultimately became the definitive practice for non-oral communication. Eventually, bullae  were replaced by clay tablets, which used symbols to represent the tokens.



During the Sumerian period, token envelop accounting was replaced by flat clay tablets impressed by tokens that merely transferred symbols. Such documents were kept by scribes, who were carefully trained to acquire the necessary literary and arithmetic skills and were held responsible for documenting financial transactions.[15] Such records preceded the earliest found examples of cuneiform writing in the form of abstract signs incised in clay tablets, which were written in Sumerian by 2900 BCE in Jemdet Nasr. Therefore "token envelop accounting" not only preceded the written word but constituted the major impetus in the creation of writing and abstract counting.

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Token accounting in ancient Mesopotamia (Part 1)

Source : Wikipedia



The earliest accounting records were found amongst the ruins of ancient Babylon, Assyria and Sumeria, which date back more than 7,000 years. The people of that time relied on primitive accounting methods to record the growth of crops and herds. Because there is a natural season to farming and herding, it is easy to count and determine if a surplus had been gained after the crops had been harvested or the young animals weaned.



During the period 8000–3700 BCE, the Fertile Crescent witnessed the spread of small settlements supported by agricultural surplus. Tokens, shaped into simple geometric forms such as cones or spheres, were used for stewardship purposes in relation to identifying and securing this surplus, and are examples of accounts that referred to lists of personal property.[10] Some of them bore markings in the form of incised lines and impressed dots. Neolithic community leaders collected the surplus at regular intervals in the form of a share of the farmers’ flocks and harvests. In turn, the accumulated communal goods were redistributed to those who could not support themselves, but the greatest part was earmarked for the performance of religious rituals and festivals. In 7000 BCE, there were only some 10 token shapes because the system exclusively recorded agricultural goods, each representing one of the farm products levied at the time, such as grain, oil and domesticated animals.The number of token shapes increased to about 350 around 3500 BCE, when urban workshops started contributing to the redistribution economy. Some of the new tokens stood for raw materials such as wool and metal and others for finished products among which textiles, garments, jewelry, bread, beer and honey.



The invention of a form of bookkeeping using clay tokens represented a huge cognitive leap for mankind.[12] The cognitive significance of the token system was to foster the manipulation of data. Compared to oral information passed on from one individual to the other, tokens were extra-somatic, that is outside the human mind. As a result, the Neolithic accountants were no longer the passive recipients of someone else's knowledge, but they took an active part in encoding and decoding data. The token system substituted miniature counters for the real goods, which eliminated their bulk and weight and allowed dealing with them in abstraction by patterning, the presentation of data in particular configurations. As a result, heavy baskets of grains and animals difficult to control could be easily counted and recounted. The accountants could add, subtract, multiply and divide by manually moving and removing counters.

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Accountancy

Source : Wikipedia

Accountancy is the process of communicating financial information about a business entity to users such as shareholders and managers.  The communication is generally in the form of financial statements  that show in money terms the economic resources under the control of management; the art lies in selecting the information that is relevant to the user and is reliable.

Accountancy is a branch of mathematical science that is useful in discovering the causes of success and failure in business.The principles of accountancy are applied to business entities in three divisions of practical art, named accounting, bookkeeping, and auditing.

Accounting is defined by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) as "the art of recording, classifying, and summarizing in a significant manner and in terms of money, transactions and events which are, in part at least, of financial character, and interpreting the results thereof."

Accounting is thousands of years old; the earliest accounting records, which date back more than 7,000 years, were found in the Middle East. The people of that time relied on primitive accounting methods to record the growth of crops and herds. Accounting evolved, improving over the years and advancing as business advanced.

Early accounts served mainly to assist the memory of the businessperson and the audience for the account was the proprietor or record keeper alone. Cruder forms of accounting were inadequate for the problems created by a business entity involving multiple investors, so double-entry bookkeeping first emerged in northern Italy in the 14th century, where trading ventures began to require more capital than a single individual was able to invest. The development of joint stock companies created wider audiences for accounts, as investors without firsthand knowledge of their operations relied on accounts to provide the requisite information.[6] This development resulted in a split of accounting systems for internal (i.e. management accounting) and external (i.e. financial accounting) purposes, and subsequently also in accounting and disclosure regulations and a growing need for independent attestation of external accounts by auditors.

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