SELLING TOMAJORACCOUNTS

SELF-DISCIPLINEThe Key to Success

Listening to CustomersEarning the Right to Sell

MAY 13Th 2009 / ISSuE 23

NZ’s e-magazine for sales leaders

NZSM / MAY 13Th 2009 / 2

MAY 13Th / ISSuE 23

4 ThIS WEEK’S MuST READ

SELLING TO MAJOR

ACCOUNTS

Richard Gee on the art of

selling to the big players

7 SELF-DISCIPLINE

John Shackleton explains

why you can’t achieve

success without self-

discipline

9 NZSM CALENDAR

11 TWO MINuTE TOP-uP

LISTENING TO

CUSTOMERS

Some tips on how to really

listen to your customer and

earn the right to sell

13 BOOK REVIEW

THE NEW PARADIGM

FOR FINANCIAL

MARKETS: THE CREDIT

CRISIS OF 2008 AND

WHAT IT MEANS

Legendary financier

George Soros explores

the origins of the crisis

and its implications for

the future

14 SALES TRAINING

DIRECTORY

15 THE CLOSE

8

4

7

11

13

NZSM / MAY 13Th 2009 / 3

I’ve always been a firm believer that the results

we’re getting in life are a result of what we’ve learnt and

have put into action. Not getting the results you want? In my experience there are only two reasons for this…you either haven’t learnt how to achieve those results, or, you’re not doing the things you know you should be doing.

So when I was fortunate enough to attend the two-day New Zealand Sales Managers Summit in Auckland two weeks ago, I was open and ready to take away some key lessons and distinctions that could help me improve my results.

Consequently, by 10.40am on the first morning, I found my mind overflowing with ideas to help improve my career and businesses. Needless to say, after two days of learning from and mixing with some of New Zealand’s best sales and business minds, my brain was fried for the rest of the week!

Interestingly enough, when I’ve attended training or learning sessions in the past, there are always people who come away learning nothing, thinking it was all a

waste of time. “What’s going on here?” I would wonder… “I

know more about this stuff

than they do, so how come they learnt less than me?” The truth is that good learners learn lots from everything, and bad learners learn nothing from anything. No wonder training is often wasted on the ones who need it most.

Alarmingly, this inability to learn is seriously affecting our performance as a nation, with New Zealand plunging from third in the OECD for GDP per capita in the 1950’s to something like 23rd today. In other words, Kiwi’s now produce less value per hour than workers from almost any other developed nation – hardly the recipe for a strong, vibrant and financially stable country. The question is, how can we, as sales and business leaders, and managers of our workers, improve this result? What do we do when we have run out of workers, can’t work any harder, and have no money to invest in capital and infrastructure? To me there seems one obvious answer and it’s an answer that doesn’t cost anything except a change in attitude – quite simply we all need to become better learners.

And speaking of learning, hopefully you’ll have learnt by now that one lucky NZ Sales Manager subscriber per issue will win two bottles of delicious New Zealand wine, courtesy of our friends at Wineplus. Find out if you’re this week’s Wineplus Winner below!

ABOuT /

Short and sharp,

NZ Sales Manager is a free

e-magazine delivering thought

provoking and enlightening

articles, and industry news and

information to forward-thinking

sales managers, business

owners and sales professionals.

EDITOR / Richard Liew

GROuP EDITOR / Trudi Caffell

ART DIRECTOR / Jodi Olsson

ADVERTISING & CONTENT

ENQuIRIES /

Phone Richard on

09 523 4112 or email

richardl@nzsalesmanager.co.nz

ADDRESS / NZ Sales Manager

C/- Espire Media,

PO Box 137162, Parnell,

Auckland 1151,

New Zealand

WEBSITE /

www.nzsalesmanager.co.nz

nZ sales manager is a espire media Publication

Maria O’halloran

Richard

SELLING TOMAJORACCOUNTS

NZSM / MAY 13Th 2009 / 4

While the New Zealand business environment

consists of mainly small to medium businesses,

there is an important segment out there that can

be called Major Accounts and Major Corporates.

The art of selling to them requires a different set of thinking,

if you are going to be successful.

The traditional method of selling, which is highly successful,

involves the use of communicating features and benefits

about your product or service so that the buyer understands

the benefits and will therefore invest in the price to purchase.

But when you are selling and marketing your products

and services to a major account or corporate, this sort of

approach doesn’t work and is too basic.

Instead you require an intimate understanding of the major

account/corporate’s business, and the key elements that they

are interested in, plus a good relationship with the people

who are involved in the major account.

For the major account there are three levels of purchase

decision making.

Normal repurchasing is done by the repurchasing

buyer, major management decisions are made by the

management committee, and top level decisions are made

understand My Business!By richard gee//

NZSM / MAY 13Th 2009 / 5

by the board of directors.

With these levels in mind, understanding who the

people are within the business becomes very important.

The key element is to help the person on the level you

are dealing with look good to the person they report to,

who is interested

in understanding

why the purchase

decision was made.

If you are dealing

at the repurchase

level, then you

need to make the

repurchasing buyer

look good to the

management level,

who in turn want

to look good to the

board of directors

with the efficient

way in which they

are recommending new product or service purchasing.

usually the major account/corporate will have developed

some key performance indicators that they want from

suppliers relative to their own particular interests in such

areas as profit, return on investment, revenue gains, market

share, cashflow, and

various efficiency

levels to do with cost

savings.

It is the understanding

of these within

your major account

that becomes

important. Once

you’ve understood

the measurement

performance of the

corporate, then

you can tailor your

presentation about

your new product

Make your contact look good, and your proposal is more likely to be

successful.

or service to show

how it will meet

the cost savings,

return on investment, profit, market share, revenue

gains, or particular areas of interest that major account

or corporate has.

Rather than features and

benefits, ‘understand my

business’ becomes more

important. Any proposals

that are put to major

accounts for solutions to

specific problems need to

show how you will meet

the organisation’s goals,

but most importantly

need to show how much

cooperation there has been

with various levels within

the organisation, for example with the repurchasing

buyer and with the management team, in evaluating the

problem and the solution being proposed.

Senior management

committees and

boards of directors primarily ask, “have our people

examined this, what is their recommendation, and how

well has the supplier been working in with our people?”

before making major investment commitments.

Make your contact look

good, and your proposal is

more likely to be successful.

During these presentations

and consultation, you

will very quickly learn

about the many types of

people who exist within

the organisation. These

can be broken down into

two major categories –

influencers and decision makers.

Influencers ask lots of questions, do the research, find out

NZSM / MAY 13Th 2009 / 6

This article contributed by Richard P. Gee, marketing consultant, sales trainer, interactive author.

More details can be found on his website www.geewiz.co.nz.

what is going on, and make recommendations to look

good to the decision makers they report to.

Decision makers ask fewer questions, but focus on the

organisation’s key performance indicators, and want

to make sure that any decision they make has been

thoroughly researched, and that the information that has

been gathered is accurate.

In short, the person who asks the most questions is the

influencer and the person who asks the key pertinent

questions is the decision maker. Make sure that you deal

with both, particularly in a lot of New Zealand companies

where there is a family structure or a related structure

between the people who participate in the organisation.

In the New Zealand business market of approximately

248,000 businesses, around 200,000 businesses employ

less than 10 people, 1,500 businesses employ more than

50 people, and the remaining balance employ between

10 and 50 people, giving a substantial major account

customer base of around 47,000 for your representatives

to use to upskill their selling methodology when calling

on these major accounts and corporates.

As an exercise, have a look at your top five accounts

and see how much you understand about their

business, and identify where the gaps are so that you

can make a better presentation to help them make a

decision next time.

The person who asks the most questions is the

influencer and the person who asks the key pertinent

questions is the decision maker. Make sure that you

deal with both.

NZSM / MAY 13Th 2009 / 7

SELF-DISCIPLINEthe Key to success!By John Shackleton

If there’s one thing that my coaching and my own

participation in sport has taught me, it is this: You will

never achieve any modicum of success without being

self-disciplined. It would be ridiculous to think that

you could go to the pool once and suddenly become a

world-class swimmer. The acquisition of the skills and

the development of the necessary fitness require a high

level of consistent commitment over a long period of

time. In sport, champions often start before they are 10

years old, train most days of their lives and don’t achieve

their success until they reach their twenties or thirties,

by which time they have dedicated most of their life to

the attainment of their goal.

I believe the same is true for success in any activity,

however many people in business baulk at the idea of

repeating an activity that they aren’t very good at, over and

over again in order to perfect it. I’ve heard many people say

after a couple of small failures in their job, that they don’t

have what it takes to be successful. I wish I had a dollar

for every sales person who has said to me that they don’t

like cold calling or for every manager who says they hate

presenting to large groups.

Do you think a top athlete likes getting up at 5am on a

cold winter’s morning and putting their body through a

couple of hours of painful training? Do you think they

like going to bed early most nights and having little or

no social life? Do you think they like having to regulate

what they eat and drink so as to keep their body fat

levels as low as possible? What they know is that if they

want to win then they have to be disciplined in all the

areas of their life that affect their performance.

If you want to be the top salesperson in your company,

a world-class communicator or a great manager you

will need the same levels of self-discipline. You’ll need

to have a commitment to learning the necessary skills

and an extremely high level of consistent repetition of

those skills. You will need to experience many failures

in order to get good at something and then many more

to become excellent at it. You will need to perform the

things that you feel are painful until you perfect them

and then raise the activity level so that the new task

becomes painful.

An individual who has learnt self-discipline and applies the

skills to the attainment of their business goals is the type of

person that every company is seeking to have on their staff.

Now, let’s face it, everyone knows what self-discipline

is and how it can be achieved but as usual just knowing

something doesn’t ensure we can do it. Keeping ourselves

focused and disciplined often takes massive effort but this

ability is not restricted to the talented few; anyone can

achieve these levels of discipline. Perhaps the reason we

don’t stay focused is that we don’t understand what mental

habits top sports people are constantly striving to achieve.

NZSM / MAY 13Th 2009 / 8

1. COMMITMENT

An athlete will often decide on a 3- or 4-year training plan

to achieve a relatively small increase in performance. The

key to their success is the discipline to stick to that plan.

Commitment is doing what we said we would do, when

we said we would do it, long after the mood in which we

said it has passed.

2. A ‘DO IT NOW’ MENTALITY

A sportsperson knows that they cannot make up for lost

time. If they don’t go training, compete in the race or take

the action NOW, that opportunity is lost to them forever.

3. A BELIEF IN ‘PAYING THE PRICE’

Because of their commitment to training all athletes know

that there is no such thing as something for nothing.

Anything that is worth achieving will require hard

sustained effort. Instant success with no effort is either

cheating or it does not exist.

4. CONSISTENCY

A sportsperson keeps a training diary that logs every action

they take, no matter how small, and what result that action

produced. how else can they discover which of their

actions are working and which ones are not and therefore

what to modify in the plan?

5. CONTROLLING FEAR

You will rarely hear a sportsperson say something like

“That goal is too hard” or “I’m not good enough to

achieve it”. You will usually hear “What do I need to do

in order to get to my goal?” To an athlete there can be no

such thing as failure, only learning. If they have a poor

performance or lose a race then they MuST learn from

the event or they will never correct the mistake.

6. FAITH IN THEIR COACH

Every sportsperson will decide whose comments and

advice they will be using and whose words he will

ignore. There are many people in this world who seem

to enjoy finding fault in others’ efforts and achievements.

An athlete has to develop total faith in their coach and

in the coach’s training plan. Only then will they be able

to give 100 per cent effort.

7. CONTROLLING NEGATIVE THOUGHTS

how stupid would it be to stand on the start line and be

thinking “This is going to hurt” or “I’m not going to win

this race”!

8. FOCUS

how much mental focus does an athlete need in order to

perform at their best? What happens to their performance if

they get distracted and are not concentrating?

9. DECLARING GOALS

All sportspeople have stretching, well-defined, accurate

goals that are constantly discussed and modified with

their coach.

10. SELF BELIEF

how well does an athlete perform when their self belief

is low? how hard do the athlete and their coach work

on that self belief?

AS YOU READ THE LIST BELOW, SCORE YOURSELF OUT OF 10 ON EACH OF THE ATTRIBUTES.

Now add up your score and see what figure you get out of 100. Not only will this tell you how well you’d perform as

an international athlete, it will also tell you which attributes you’ll need to work on to become indispensable to your

employers or clients.

John Shackleton is an international speaker, coach, author and performance expert.

Visit his website at www.johnshack.com for more information.

NZSM / MAY 13Th 2009 / 9

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Thu 21 MAYWED 20 MAYTuE 19 MAYMON 18 MAY

FRI 5 JuNE

SuN 7 JuNE

SAT 6 JuNE

SuN 31 MAY

SAT 30 MAYFRI 29 MAYThu 28 MAY

SuN 24 MAY

SAT 23 MAY

SuN 17 MAY

SAT 16 MAY

FRI 15 MAYWED 13 MAY Thu 14 MAY

SuN 14 JuNE

SAT 13 JuNE

NZSMCALENDAR

Managing Difficult CustomersZealmarkAuckland

RSN Seminar # 3Rev Sales NetworkAuckland

Key Account ManagementDavid FormanWellington

Advanced Sales DevelopmentDavid FormanAuckland

Key Account ManagementDavid FormanWellingtonAdvanced Sales DevelopmentDavid FormanAucklandCustomer ServiceZealmarkAucklandColdcalling WorkshopTop Achievers Sales TrainingAuckland

Sales Skills Level 3EMA NorthernAucklandProspecting David FormanWellingtonAdvanced Serious SellingGeewizChristchurch

Sales Skills 1ZealmarkAucklandSales Basics SeminarGeewizChristchurchhit The Road Running Sales SeminarTop Achievers Sales TrainingAuckland

Professional Sales CoachingAchieveGlobalAucklandSales ManagementDavid FormanChristchurchSales DevelopmentDavid FormanAucklandLeadership With ResultsGeewizAuckland

Professional Sales CoachingAchieveGlobalAuckland

Sales ManagementDavid FormanChristchurchSales DevelopmentDavid FormanAucklandSales ManagementDavid FormanAuckland (25-28 May)

Sales ManagementDavid FormanChristchurchSales DevelopmentDavid FormanAucklandPresentation SkillsDavid FormanAuckland (26-28 May)

Sales ManagementDavid FormanChristchurchSales DevelopmentDavid FormanAucklandAdvanced Serious SellingGeewizAuckland

Professional Selling Skills CoreAchieveGlobalAuckland

Advanced Serious SellingGeewizWellington

Professional Selling Skills CoreAchieveGlobalAucklandKey Account ManagementDavid FormanChristchurchhit The Road Running Sales SeminarTop Achievers Sales Traininghamilton

Professional Selling Skills CoreAchieveGlobalAuckland

Key Account ManagementDavid FormanChristchurch

Sales PlanningDavid FormanAucklandNegotiationDavid FormanChristchurch (18-20 May)Sales Skills Level 3EMA Northernhamilton

Sales PlanningDavid FormanAucklandSales BasicsGeewizAucklandCold Calling & ProspectingTop Achievers Sales TrainingAuckland

Exceeding customerExpectationsGeewizAucklandWorkplace Coaching &MentoringZealmark GroupAucklandSales Skills Level 2EMA NorthernAuckland

Territory ManagementGeewizAucklandhit The Road Running SalesSeminarTop Achievers Sales TrainingWellingtonTelephone SalesZealmark GroupAuckland

Prospecting & NewBusiness DevelopmentDavid FormanAuckland

NZSM / MAY 13Th 2009 / 10

Toyota found a way of cost-cutting without compromising operational excellence. Since 1954 Toyota has been

committed to ‘continuous improvement in small steps’ - the KAIZEN (lean) way. Would you like to escape the

high costs of redundancies and later re-hiring again? You can save yourself all the expense!

Inspired by this success we have carefully adapted Toyota’s winning lean formula for SME’s! It’s called EZI-KAIZEN which we’re showcasing in a new, 40-minute presentation for you and your key

people. Now you can have these same (simplified) Kaizen strategies working for your business.

EZI-KAIZEN STRATEGIES FOR STREAMLINING YOUR BUSINESS:

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WITH CONFIDENT LEADERSHIP YOUR BUSINESS CAN FLOURISH IN ANY MARKET!

Learning from Toyota’s success, here’s a close up look at how continuous improvement in small steps can quickly

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All this is offered with our compliments!

This original presentation is for SME’s with 5 - 100 employees. It’s straight- forward, practical and illustrated. It details

strategies that you can begin to apply immediately to your business.

An EZI-KAIZEN handbook is also available for your reference.

Award winning presenter Clive Littin has been training and Coaching for

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Clive will meet you on your turf, for an initial, no-obligation discussion.

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Can your business

benefit from Toyota’s

success?

NZSM / MAY 13Th 2009 / 11

Don’t get caught not listening to your potential

customer. This is critical to your sales

success.

PARAPhRASE YOuR CuSTOMER’S WORDS

The customer is only sure that you have been listening

when you paraphrase what they have said and feed

it back in your own words. This is where the rubber

meets the road in effective listening. This is where you

demonstrate in no uncertain terms to the prospect that

your listening has been real and sincere. This is where

you show the prospect that you were paying complete

attention to what he or she was saying. Paraphrasing is

how you prove it.

Listening to Customersearning the right to sellBy Brian tracy

QuESTION FOR CLARIFICATION

When the prospect has finished explaining his or

her situation to you, and you have paused, and then

questioned for clarification, you paraphrase the prospect’s

primary thoughts and concerns, and feed them back to him

or her in your own words.

uSE ThE RIGhT WORDS

For example, you might say, “Let me make sure I

understand exactly what you are saying. It sounds to

me like you are concerned about two things more than

anything else, and that in the past you have had a couple

of experiences that have made you very careful in

approaching a decision of this kind.”

NZSM / MAY 13Th 2009 / 12

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leadership, sales, managerial effectiveness and business strategy.

FEED IT BACK ACCuRATELY

You then go on to feed back to the prospect exactly

what he or she has told you, pausing and questioning for

clarification as you go, until the customer says words to the

effect of, “Yes, that’s it! You’ve got it exactly.”

EARN ThE RIGhT TO SELL

Only when you and the customer have completed a

thorough ‘examination’ and have mutually agreed on the

‘diagnosis’ are you in a position to begin talking to the

customer about your product or service.

In general terms, this means that you can’t pull out your

brochures and price lists and begin telling the customer

how your product or service can solve their problems or

achieve their goals until about seventy percent of the way

through the sales conversation.

until then, you have not yet earned the right. until then,

you don’t even know enough to begin an intelligent

presentation without embarrassing yourself.

BE A GOOD LISTENER

The more skilled you become at listening, the better people

will like you, trust you and want to do business with you. The

more they will want to get involved with you as a person and

the more popular you will be with them. Excellent listeners

are welcome everywhere, in every walk of life, and they

eventually and ultimately arrive at the top of their fields.

NZSM / MAY 13Th 2009 / 13

B O O K R E V I E W

In the midst of the most serious financial upheaval

since the Great Depression, legendary financier

George Soros explores the origins of the crisis and

its implications for the future.

Soros, whose breadth of experience in financial

markets is unrivalled, places the current crisis in

the context of decades of study on how individuals

and institutions handle the boom and bust cycles

that now dominate global economic activity.

“This is the worst financial crisis since the 1930s,”

writes Soros in characterising the scale of financial

distress spreading across Wall Street and other

financial centres around the world.

In a concise work that combines practical insight

with philosophical depth, Soros makes an

invaluable contribution to our understanding of

the great credit crisis and its implications for the

uS and the world.

the new Paradigm for Financial markets: the Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it meansBy George SorosScribe Publications

$27.43 from Fishpond.co.nz

NZSM / MAY 13Th 2009 / 14

NZSM / MAY 13Th 2009 / 16

“HelIt is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

Sir Edmund Hillary

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Simply visit www.nzsalesmanager.co.nz to get a copy of NZ Sales Manager delivered straight to your inbox every third Wednesday!

IN ThE NExT ISSuE OF NZ SALES MANAGER…

Why do PeoPLe say yes? the 6 PrinCiPLes oF inFLuenCe

reWriting the diCtionary - Why is “seLLing” stiLL a dirty Word?

saLes ForeCasting Part one: Where to start?

PLus: WiLL you Be the next nZ saLes manager WinePLus Winner?

Find out in the next issue of NZ Sales Manager - Wednesday 3 June 2009!