Selling to Wisconsin companies — or any company in the country, for that matter — has changed more in the last three to five years than it has in the last 20 years, report sales experts.

“Old-school ‘show up and throw up’ sales tactics, which didn’t work that effectively in the old days, work even less effectively now. Major purchase decisions have been pulled back into the boardroom, away from middle and frontline managers,” says Michael Nick, president of West Bend-based ROI4Sales Inc., a sales software development company. He’s written three books on the evolving sales process and his most recent effort, “The Key to the C-Suite,” recently hit the top 10 list of Amazon.com’s books.

“To compete in the C-suite environment, you must quickly key in on how to reach and influence those high-ranking decision makers. The buying power of mid-level executives has dropped dramatically,” he says.

Nick cites how the vice president at a $1 billion company he works with oversees more than 1,200 people, yet only has the authority to make purchases up to $20,000. “For anything higher, he must get approval from the senior vice president, and he also says a finance person will be involved with each of those purchasing decisions. That’s why today’s salespeople must understand what’s important to C-level executives and how to talk with them.”

Chuck West, program director of sales, sales management and advanced management at the Wisconsin School for Business Executive Education, agrees. “The sales process is evolving. Today’s effective sales process has nine key components, he explains:

•    Gain access to the real decision maker
•    Demonstrate positive intent
•    Create instant interest
•    Adapt to the decision maker’s social style
•    Discover clients’ top priorities
•    Probe and listen your way to success
•    Sell payoff, not features and price
•    Positively resolve client objections
•    Consistently achieve desired client action

“Today’s successful salespeople will align their intentions with the needs of the customer. You must demonstrate positive intent, and you must adapt to their social style. As more financially driven people are involved in the buying process, you need to be able to understand their strategic intent and appeal to that,” he says.

“It’s mission-critical that you develop a provocative sales story that gets their immediate interest,” West says. “Customers’ employees have three or four jobs today; they are looking for ways to solve some of their problems, and they will prefer to deal with suppliers who help them solve problems, not sell product. Today’s good salespeople have business acumen. A business-savvy salesperson will be recognized by customers, and it will become a top priority to reach out to that person.”

West says companies presently get about 40 percent of their revenue from transactional sales, 50 percent from consultative or relationship sales, and 10 percent from C- or executive-level sales. West predicts that C-level sales will increase over time, especially for big-ticket items.
“In the next five or 10 years, transactional sales being completed by people will go away. Instead, orders will be placed through online systems; economic pressures will mandate it. That’s why salespeople need to continue developing relationship sales and learn how to orchestrate executive or C-level sales. Those who can make these C-level sales will truly be business specialists that can appeal to customers’ financial interests and help them reach their financial goals, not just basic ROI goals,” West says.

Dialing for dollars vs. keying for success
In the past, successful salespeople played a numbers game: The more contacts you made, the closer you were to making a sale. The experts agree that it’s different today.
“Through the Internet, companies are much more likely to go out and search for companies that provide the products or services they need, then contact them. Often, the company will know much more about you than they would have in the past,” says Nick.

However, the Internet is a two-way street for information, and savvy salespeople can use the Internet to their benefit. “There are many free and easy-to-use tools you can use to learn more about your customer and what their corporate financial objectives are. LinkedIn can help you find out if any of your present contacts know the potential customer. You can use Jigsaw.com to identify prospects and learn more about them and others in their company. You can set up Google Alerts on the top 10 company targets to stay on top of news there. It’s a great way to better align your sales proposals with C-level objectives and goals,” he says.

For example, one hospital client Nick works with is undertaking an ambitious fundraising program for an aggressive building expansion. Because he knows it’s an important strategic objective of the C-level executives, he gears his sales proposals to show how his software system can help them save money and, in turn, help fund the expansion plan.

Tighten your targets
“Part of the new world order for sales is developing a tight target list and then developing a provocative sales story that appeals to the specific needs of those companies,” says West. “The first companies that will get this done will gain market share, but the sales team must evolve and it’s an expensive process. You need the tools and then targeted techniques to reach and influence these sophisticated C-level buyers. In some instances, it may also mean firing customers that take too much time and return too little.” 



Case study
Nercon Engineering packages its product lines to match customer 
buying needs and greatly increase its sales success percentage.
About 15 years ago, recalls Dennis Buehring, director of sales and marketing at Nercon Engineering (www.nercon.com), the sales process for food processing conveyor systems began to change.

Until that time, the firm, based in Oshkosh, relied heavily on independent sales reps and regional and district managers to get connected with potential customers and make them aware of the company’s high-quality product line.

That was until independent sales agents started getting turned away at the guard shack.

“Customers weren’t willing to pay the margins needed to keep independent reps in the equation, because most of the information independent sales reps offered was becoming more available on the Internet. Customers increasingly demanded to deal directly with the company,” Buehring says.

Then it changed even more. Bidding and estimating custom conveyor lines became increasingly expensive and required Buehring and his staff to rethink the whole sales process.

“Today, Gen X and Millennium generation workers don’t want sales calls. They would rather find you than to have you find them. They will prequalify you by researching your company and capabilities on the Internet and with social media. They are big users of sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to learn as much about your company as you know about them,” he says.

In the past, tradeshows were one of the best ways to get new customer leads, says Buehring. “We are finding that we are better off upgrading our website capabilities so potential customers can learn more about our product line and our capabilities online,” he says.
Divide and conquer sales
Nercon Engineering further studied its types of customers and found they fell into one of three categories that became the template for its product lines.

The Modular Conveyor Express line, a value- and price-driven line, meets customers’ needs for an innovative, low-cost and no-frills conveying system. The Nercon Custom line best fits medium-sized national brand customers that want a quality equipment line customized to specific needs. Finally, the Nemco Design Group offers totally customized engineered solutions for customers who demand service first and customization second and are the least sensitive about price.

“We pair our customers up to which product line would best fit their needs and go from there. We have found that we can’t be everything to everyone, and by developing three distinct product lines, we can better align equipment and business management needs,” says Buehring. “It’s much more efficient than having our estimators quote every project as a custom job.”

When Nercon did that, it was only getting 20 percent of the business it quoted. As a $30 million company, the company was quoting between $200 million and $250 million in projects.

“We were doing extensive and expensive design work on 80 percent or more projects that we would never get. That’s a real cost burden to the company,” says Buehring, “With our sales development team first identifying which product line best meets the needs of a particular customer, we are now closing on 60 percent of the projects we bid. It has made the process more efficient. We have whittled away at the old method to increase our efficiency.”

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