Name: Michael
Posts by :
- Where are we going?
- What is expected of us?
- How are we doing?
- What’s in it for us?
- Where do we go for help?
Don’t Leave Good Business on the Table:
Five Strategies to Negotiate Win-Win Deals
November 8th, 2011
“Your price is too high.”
“Can you match the price your competitor is offering?”
“We need to have that service included in your price.”
How do your salespeople respond when they hear these kinds of statements from customers? Everyone wants to make the sale in this challenging economy, and it’s hard to resist the temptation to cut the margin, reduce the price, or give away “value adds” the customer really should pay for. Of course, everyone is being squeezed. Customers are pressured to control costs and limit spending, and salespeople feel they are forced to compete on price. It seems better to get something rather than nothing. The assumption is that if the customer takes a hard position, the options for bargaining are limited. The most likely outcome is that the salesperson gives up margin and profitability rather than negotiating effectively for a win-win agreement that benefits both parties.
Classic bargaining assumes that what is on the table is a “fixed pie,” and one of the parties will try to get more of the pie while the other gets less—the classic win-lose result. Traditional bargaining can even lead to a lose-lose situation, where the salesperson accepts a smaller deal with lower margins while the customer also loses out—the lowest price doesn’t always translate into the best solution. The perceived opportunities are too limited for either party to be satisfied by the agreement.
There is an alternative to this scenario, even under the present challenging circumstances. A robust principled negotiation process focuses on increasing the size of the pie and expanding the range of opportunities for both the salesperson and the customer. By following five simple steps, salespeople can engage their customers in a give-and-take conversation to explore the interests behind positions and expand the options. This means moving out of the mentality of “hard bargaining” based on firm positions, and into a mode of negotiating based on a handful of powerful principles first articulated by William Ury (business partner of Wilson Learning) and Roger Fisher of the Harvard Negotiation Project.[1] Applying these principles increases the likelihood of achieving win-win agreements that benefit both the salesperson, who is no longer leaving business on the table, and customers, who have more options for better solutions.
Five Strategies for Successful Negotiations
The discussion below provides an explanation of the five steps and how they can help salespeople better achieve their goals while bringing greater value to the customer’s business.
1. Separate the people from the problem.
In a traditional bargaining situation, the interaction proceeds based on positions and counter-positions. The discussion can easily turn adversarial as the customer raises objections about price or other difficult issues. It is as if the parties are sitting on opposite sides of the table, conducting a tug-of-war to achieve a “win for our side.” With a principled negotiation approach, on the other hand, the salesperson focuses on the problem and how to solve it. The idea is to be “hard on the problem and soft on the people.” The customer and the salesperson take the perspective of sitting on the same side of the table and, from there, work together to come up with alternative solutions that will benefit both. From this perspective, it’s possible to have a productive discussion of the customer’s concerns, and to offer answers and solutions rather than a counter-argument or opposing position that can undermine the relationship.
2. Identify the interests behind the position.
In a traditional bargaining situation, people tend to take a firm position and stick to that position. The focus is on “what I want,” and each side is intent on justifying their respective positions. In a principled negotiation process, the focus is on the interests behind the position—the range of issues that are at stake in the negotiation. Paying attention to interests helps uncover the “why” behind a position. While a position tends to be inflexible and fixed, interests open up different perspectives and opportunities to offer options. If a customer takes the position “I must get the lowest price,” interests may include “my boss will want me to show that I got the lowest price,” or “my company needs me to help maintain our cash liquidity.” The salesperson might say something like, “Now that I understand what is really important to you, if I showed you a way to meet your cash flow needs, would you be interested?”
Interests may also include political concerns such as accommodating other stakeholders’ wishes, or a business objective such as attaining a certain level of ROI. A customer may have a personal interest in minimizing risk in making a purchase; another may want to be seen as innovative and leading-edge. Whatever the interests, it’s critical to keep asking questions to find out what they are and align with them to smooth the path to mutual agreement.
3. Invent options for mutual gain.
In the diagram above, the path to a win-win agreement lies in creating a bigger pie—exploring ways to expand the available options. Knowing the customer’s interests will help achieve this objective. For example, suppose the offer on the table is a bundled solution at a certain price. The customer, however, has an interest in keeping costs low because of a company-imposed budget limitation. If interests are openly explored, the salesperson has an opportunity to help solve the problem. Options might be offered—a flexible financing or leasing arrangement might be put on the table, or the solution might be unbundled, allowing the company to purchase elements of the solution in smaller increments. The solution has now been altered to align with the customer’s key interests.
The point is, unless you understand the interests behind the position, you may not think of creative options that allow for an “expanded pie” solution.
4. Introduce independent standards.
Independent standards are another way to align with the customer’s interests. They represent objective criteria that can be used as a measuring stick for choosing among alternatives and defining some limits. Examples of independent standards might include accepted market value, industry performance benchmarks, other research, or credible third-party references. If the salesperson and the customer can agree on such standards, they provide a way to evaluate a proposal from a position of common ground. Both parties can now view the offers on the table from the same perspective.
If you suggest an independent standard, it should be something that is important to the customer. Independent standards should never be used to show the customer that he or she is wrong; rather, the intent should be to help reinforce or support a customer interest. For example, if the interest of the customer is to demonstrate to a manager that the price for the deal is a good value, then an independent standard such as market value/price can be used to justify or reinforce the customer’s choice.
5. Know your BATNA.
In traditional bargaining, negotiation can reach an impasse when either side becomes inflexibly committed to a particular outcome; for example, when the salesperson cannot accept a price below a certain amount, and the customer is determined not to pay above a certain price. It is very important in situations like this that a salesperson has a BATNA—a Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement.
Before engaging in a negotiation, salespeople should clarify their overall interests with respect to the account as a whole. Besides closing business, these might include ensuring possibility of future business, expanding relationships with a range of contacts, getting referrals to other customers, or establishing a beachhead with a smaller offering. Any or all of these interests—which are outside of the current negotiation with a particular customer—help inform the salesperson’s BATNA. If the customer doesn’t agree to all the features of a proposal at a price that is still good business for the salesperson, the BATNA, carefully considered ahead of time, can come into play. The salesperson can negotiate from a position of strength and still walk away with a win—achieving an acceptable outcome while maintaining customer satisfaction and building a trusting relationship with the customer.
It is important to reiterate that the BATNA is an alternative outcome that is acceptable to you and still constitutes a win. Having a good BATNA eliminates some of the pressure to achieve just one ideal outcome, and prevents the feeling that you are losing if you don’t win that one outcome. In short, the BATNA takes emotion out of the picture and increases the likelihood of rational and effective decision making.
If the salesperson can make an educated guess or find other ways of anticipating the customer’s BATNA, it is highly useful, since it helps the salesperson in offering options that are aligned with interests and may even include the customer’s BATNA.
If there is a key takeaway for salespeople it is this: a “negotiation” focused only on bargaining over the final price or the features of a contract is limiting and likely to result in an unsatisfactory outcome, for at least one and maybe both parties. To avoid leaving business on the table, salespeople need to move away from a bargaining approach and toward engaging in a principled negotiation process by developing the confidence and skills to “separate the people from the problem,” identify and respond to customers’ interests (not just their positions), generate options to expand the pie, use independent standards for objective evaluation, and know their own BATNAs. If they are able to master these five strategies, they can increase both the probability of win-win outcomes and the likelihood of more—and more profitable—sales.
Leading for Sales Performance: Can Your Managers Answer These 5 Critical Questions?
August 4th, 2011
Would you ask the best violinist in the orchestra to take over conducting without any preparation to Read the rest of this entry “
What Sales Managers Need to Do—The Five Questions
July 22nd, 2011
Would you ask the best violinist in the orchestra to take over conducting without any preparation to be a conductor?
Probably not.
And if you did, you wouldn’t have very high expectations for the orchestra’s performance. Yet this is exactly what most organizations do. They promote high-performing salespeople into management roles without preparing them to be confident and competent in the critical areas of coaching, motivating, and developing their people.
It’s not that companies don’t recognize the value of the manager’s role. When a group of sales executives was asked what was most important to improving sales performance, 88% answered, “making sales managers more effective,” a finding consistent with a Sales Executive Council survey. At the same time, over 50% indicated that their organizations were not preparing sales managers to lead effectively. Given the sales manager’s potential impact on performance, these companies are literally leaving money on the table in the form of smaller ROI for sales training, weak sales productivity, and higher turnover costs.
For a relatively modest investment, sales managers can be provided with the tools and knowledge to drive sustainable high performance. To target the handful of essential skills sales managers need, prepare them to answer five simple questions.
What Sales Managers Need to Do—The Five Questions
Despite all the differences in sales force deployment, products, industries, competitive environment, and customers, sales teams share some core needs. When those needs are fully addressed, salespeople demonstrate higher levels of motivation and commitment, and greater effectiveness in working with their customers. Ultimately, well-managed teams will deliver more sales at higher margins than those who are poorly managed or simply left to their own devices.
To achieve top performance from his or her team, a manager needs the skills and tools to provide clear answers to five simple but profoundly important questions:
Taken together, the Five Questions offer a roadmap for effective management and a guide to the key skills needed by a high-performing sales manager. In fact, our research shows that when a company’s sales managers are able to answer these five questions, sales performance increases on average 29%.
1. Where are we going?
It’s a given that salespeople have targeted objectives, in the form of their own assigned quotas and possibly awareness of the overall revenue goals for the team. But like most employees, salespeople want to believe that they are part of something important. Unfortunately, they are often left in the dark about how they fit into a larger picture, both in terms of the organization’s business-critical issues and goals, and the direction and expectations for the entire sales force. Companies pursuing strategies of customer engagement, for example, need a sales team that is also engaged and ready to execute effectively at the customer interface—configuring solutions, delivering the right messages, etc. If the sales force is not connected to the overall business direction, they feel out of the loop, and are less able to carry out their role in achieving the broader business goals.
By communicating the company’s vision, strategy, and challenges and how the sales team fits into the big picture, managers provide their teams with a sense of belonging to a larger whole and ensure their salespeople are able to make a meaningful contribution to the success of the entire enterprise.
2. What is expected of us?
It is easy to assume that once salespeople know what to do (i.e., “make your numbers”) and are properly compensated, the rest will take care of itself. But to fully succeed, the organization needs the kind of performance that leads to strong customer relationships, a continuous flow of referrals, and steady expansion of the business.
To achieve this level of performance, salespeople need to know not only what they are aiming for—the number they are expected to reach—but how they are expected to reach it. How should they be interacting with their customers? How do they access and use sales support resources to follow up on the sale? What is the quality of the experience customers should be having with the salesperson and the company? How can they make it happen?
Managers should be able to articulate and communicate both quantitative results and qualitative expectations reflecting longer-term outcomes of the overall sales effort. To do so, they must be able to articulate expectations for the team and for each individual, and know how to communicate those expectations clearly and effectively.
3. How are we doing?
Almost every sales leader acknowledges the high value and core importance of coaching and feedback for salespeople. And almost everyone recognizes that these essential activities can easily get pushed to the back burner as managers juggle conflicting priorities. While lack of coaching is often attributed to a lack of time, many managers also lack the necessary confidence and skills to provide effective, timely, and useful feedback.
To build a high-performing team, sales managers must be able to reinforce behaviors that lead to success, develop the skills of less-experienced salespeople, and strengthen areas of weakness. Does the team, or an individual, need to do a better job of discovering the customer’s real issues and requirements? Is a new salesperson having problems qualifying prospects? Is there an issue of call reluctance that needs to be addressed?
Unfortunately, many managers are uncomfortable giving what they regard as “negative” feedback, so avoid giving feedback altogether. Some provide the occasional “attaboy” type of general encouragement or praise that is not targeted to a specific situation or detailed enough to reinforce specific behavior.
To support, reinforce, and stretch performance, managers need to be confident and capable of having effective two-way conversations about what is going well and where there are opportunities for improvement. They also need to make specific suggestions for developing and strengthening needed skills and capabilities.
4. What’s in it for us?
Even if they don’t have any other help or support, most salespeople are provided with incentives in the form of bonuses, commissions, and other special awards for outstanding performance. These kinds of rewards certainly provide one kind of answer to the question of “what’s in it for me/us.” Whether it’s a trip toHawaii, a financial reward for a big sale, or a plaque on the wall, providing some kind of tangible benefit is usually seen as both necessary and sufficient to motivate high performance.
There are, however, intangible rewards that can have an even greater impact on motivation, and provide the sense of personal fulfillment that keeps salespeople energized and committed. The most important thing a manager can do in this regard is to provide meaningful recognition that is personal, specific, and timely.
Since what individuals find meaningful varies greatly from person to person, managers can be most effective when they understand sources of individual motivation and customize recognition and rewards accordingly. Managers who can do this see the results when their salespeople are inspired to deliver the “above and beyond” effort that raises performance from “good” to “great.”
5. Where do we go for help?
Most companies provide resources for the sales force, including sales tools, internal sales support, marketing materials, and the like. Unfortunately, organizational barriers often get in the way when salespeople try to round up needed implementation resources, get help in responding to a customer RFP, or find technical support to answer a critical question from a customer. The sales manager can play a key role in helping his or her people deal with other parts of the organization, ensuring that sales team members are able to access the help they need. Successful managers are able to communicate clearly about how well the organization is supporting the sales function, and can work with other functional leaders to orchestrate the kinds of resources needed by their sales team.
An equally important resource is again something only the sales manager can provide—time and direct support in the form of coaching, mentoring, and assistance in solving problems with customers. Salespeople who know the manager “has their back” will feel more confident, loyal, and comfortable in their role. They are more willing to take risks, take responsibility, and act on behalf of their customers when they know they can count on help from the organization and from their manager.
The Five Questions may not cover every possible aspect of what effective managers must know how to do, but they provide a framework and direction for enhancing sales management effectiveness. A manager who consistently sets clear expectations, provides effective feedback and meaningful recognition, and ensures salespeople have the tools and support they need to succeed will be rewarded with the benefits of a competent, committed team that delivers superior sales results.
Sales Versatility: Connecting with Customers Every Time
August 8th, 2010
As a sales leader, you probably debrief sales calls, review sales campaigns, analyze prospecting activity, and ride along on certain customer calls to observe or assist.
No doubt you have noticed that each salesperson has some customers and prospects that they easily connect with, and others that they don’t.
And you might have seen cases where the same approach that succeeded with one prospect or customer caused another to become impatient and tense. Perhaps certain salespeople appear to waste time on social chit chat or having coffee with a customer– and yet they seem to succeed in closing good business. And some established customer relationships end up being downright difficult – fraught with tension and frequent communications issues and misunderstandings for reasons that are hard to understand.
It is difficult finding a common thread that explains which salespeople communicate well with which customers. The reasons for success seem as mysterious as the reasons for failure to connect. But the ability to consistently build productive, trusting relationships with many types of customers is the best predictor for getting second appointments, closing important sales, acquiring referrals from customers who buy, and avoiding the wasteful process of damage control in rocky relationships.
What is it that makes the difference between those successful communications with customers and the difficult interactions that lead to failed calls and sales campaigns?
The 75% Problem
At first glance, some salespeople just seem to have a knack for reducing relationship tension and quickly putting almost anyone at ease in any situation. They gain access to more contacts and enjoy greater customer loyalty, higher close rates, and more repeat business. They are often described as possessing good “people skills” — apparently inborn and hard for others to acquire.
But Wilson’s Social Styles research indicates that these fortunate few are so successful because they are using interpersonal versatility — the ability to understand differences in communication preferences and adapt to make relationship interactions more productive. Versatility is a skill that can be learned, and people who have it are measurably more capable of building and sustaining open, trusting relationships with a wide variety of different kinds of customers.
According to the Social Styles model, everyone displays a recognizable set of preferences and habits in interactions with others. These preferences add up to our social style. The four primary styles are labeled as Driver, Expressive, Amiable, and Analytical.
The Social Styles Model
©Wilson Learning Worldwide.
As the model shows, the four styles vary in terms of behaviors reflecting the dimensions of Assertiveness (Tell versus Ask) and Responsiveness (People versus Task orientation). Drivers and Expressives tend to be more Tell oriented, while Amiables and Analyticals are more Ask oriented. Analyticals and Drivers are more Task oriented, while Amiables and Expressives are more People oriented.
When salespeople find it easy and natural to communicate with a customer or prospect, the likelihood is that they share the same social style. But only about 25% of people fall into each of the social style categories this means they will likely share a social style with only about one quarter of the people they meet – and that there could be potential difficulties in communicating with the other 75%.
Think of the implications if a salesperson can only interact successfully with customers using their own style. If a salesperson is interacting with everyone in the same style, there’s a good chance there will be customers who, for example, will feel they are being given too much information – or too little. Some customers will find the salesperson to be overly friendly, while others might perceive him as aloof or not friendly enough. Other customers will want a lot of different options to consider, while others want to cut to the chase and know the bottom line right away. These differences create tension in the relationship and can become barriers to making sales.
Versatility: The Key to Improved Business Results
In the current uncertain market, it’s especially difficult for sales leaders to manage all the variables affecting the ability to increase sales. You may have little control over the external factors affecting the business, or the strategies adopted by executives in response. You can, however, act to help your entire sales team become more versatile in how they interact with prospects, customers, and the internal support team and their own peers. Imagine the results if your whole team could connect successfully with 100% of the prospects and customers they meet.
The good news is a sales team can experience dramatic, measurable improvements in performance when salespeople learn how to adapt to others’ social styles. In one study, building the versatility skills of the sales force yielded a 53% improvement in market share. To illustrate the impact of this kind of result, consider a company with 6.29% market share. Suppose it has 1,000 customers, each purchasing $1,000 in product, making each one-percent increase in market share worth $158,982. In this example, an improvement from a 6.29% market share to a 9.65% market share (or 3.36%) is equal to $534,179 in increased revenue. For the pharmaceutical firm involved in the above study, improving the versatility of their sales force brought a highly profitable return on investment.[1]
Depending on your company’s industry, product offering and market, increased versatility may make different kinds of contributions to the improvement of business results. What are the critical issues that are most important in your organization right now? Sales organizations challenged by the erosion of their existing customer base and price cutting competition can expand their opportunities by building stronger relationships with current contacts and developing a wider range of new business partnerships. If the company is seeking to expand into new markets and increase prospecting activities to find new opportunities, versatility can make all the difference in establishing new relationships quickly and sustaining them to close sales and get repeat business.
Increasing Versatility
For most of us, interpersonal behaviors and preferences are habitual and largely out of awareness. The critical factor in becoming a more adaptable, versatile communicator is the powerful insight that we do have different styles and that each style has unique strengths. As salespeople come to better understand their own style and recognize style differences, they also learn how to respond to their customers’ styles in a way that makes it easier to exchange information, reach mutually agreeable decisions, and work smoothly for successful sales closures, implementation and follow up. Over time, as they develop higher levels of skill, salespeople become adept at recognizing the indicators of different styles and adapting to them. This adaptation becomes an integral part of how they communicate. A highly versatile individual is almost always perceived as a highly effective communicator – someone who has those “good people skills,” is a trusted business partner, and is a very successful negotiator.
While there are multiple ways to improve communication in a given situation, the single most important factor for enhancing communication effectiveness across the board is style versatility. As salespeople must work harder for every sale, building this kind of capability provides a real competitive advantage for the team the company as a whole.
# # #
[1] Michael Leimbach, Versatility: The Key to Sales Performance, Wilson Learning Corporation
Top Ten Survival Tips for Remote Work Teams
June 16th, 2010
As companies search for more productive and more cost effective ways of getting work accomplished, there has been an explosion of virtual work and project teams. As a result, it has become imperative for people to learn how to work together across boundaries of space, time, and yes, cultures. Driven by the need to leverage expertise located in different parts of the organization, companies are increasingly reliant on geographically dispersed virtual teams to plan, make decisions, and take action on critical business issues.
When such teams function at optimal levels of productivity and efficiency, they are actually a source of competitive advantage for their companies, bringing together a variety of different perspectives and experiences that have high value for innovation and problem solving. On the other hand, teams working remotely face unique challenges in communicating and collaborating efficiently and productively. Research conducted by Wilson Learning[1] a few years ago highlights this problem. Our research showed that the most productive teams are those with a high level of diversity and high levels of communication skills. However, if the communication skills are lacking, the highly diverse teams are the lowest performing teams. Thus effective teamwork and communication skills for virtual teams are even more important than for other teams. You can’t walk down the hall or into the next cubicle to discuss a problem if some people are in New York and others are in Santa Cruz or even Bangladore. As a result, without critical skill sets, virtual teams will fail to fully engage team members, establish clear goals and standards, and establish the processes necessary to get things done.
Here is a “Top Ten” list of strategies that will help your virtual teams perform at the highest possible level and take full advantage of members’ varying skills, knowledge and capabilities.
Tip #1. Build trust and rapport.
Team performance depends on a foundation of trust. Without it, team members are reluctant to share information, offer support, and may hesitate to rely on others to keep commitments and follow through on tasks.
To build a sense of trust, virtual teams need opportunities to develop social rapport, especially in the early stages of the team’s work. Creating time for team members to identify common values, establish credibility, and foster a sense of trust is critical for virtual teams. For example, we have seen virtual teams engage in online games together as a way to establish relationships and occasionally hold meetings in “immersive” virtual environments such as Second Life, as a way to establish and build trust. The use of social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook can also be useful to help team members become familiar with one another in a way that fosters trust and confidence.
Tip #2. Create a strong team identity
Even more than co-located teams, virtual teams need a sense of “teamness” based on a strong belief in a shared purpose, common inspiration, and commitment to the team’s goals. In a dispersed team, there may be individuals who are working alone out of a home office or who are otherwise the only member of the team at their location. Under these circumstances, it is easy for them to feel isolated, not part of the team, and “out of the loop.”
The team’s cohesiveness will be greatly enhanced if their purpose and goals are clear and they have frequent reminders of why they are together and what they are working towards. Managers can also help build team identity by providing recognition for team and individual achievements and opportunities for team sharing and celebrating successes.
Tip #3. Develop communications technology know-how and support
Used correctly, contemporary communications tools can be powerful and effective—offering interactive, engaging ways to share information and stay in touch. Managers of virtual teams need to become familiar with three principle technologies. First, there are online meeting sites (such as GoToMeeting or WebEx) that allow virtual team members to do real face-to-face meetings online. Second, are online project management sites (such as SharePoint or LiveLink) which allow Virtual team members to share and store documents, plans, reports, etc. Third, there are emerging technologies, such as Google Wave which allows multiple people to work together on presentations and documents simultaneously.
To gain all these benefits, however, team members must be reasonably skilled and comfortable in using the tools, and the technology needs to be readily available and reliable. All team members should have opportunities for training and hands-on practice, and have access to technical support whenever they need help. If there are technophobes in the group, practice and feedback from an experienced mentor will help them develop a greater level of confidence and comfort in using the technology and increasing their efficiency and productivity.
Tip #4. Shared responsibility, clear accountability, team celebrations
Like any other team, virtual teams must develop a feeling that all team members bear equal responsibility for achieving the teams goals and have clear expectations for accountability for their individual tasks. While this will often come naturally for traditional teams, virtual teams need tools for tracking individual and team accomplishments. Of equal importance are periodic opportunities to celebrate and be recognized for team achievements. Non-virtual teams will often do this informally, in hallway meetings for example, but virtual teams have to build this into their scheduled activities.
Tip #5. Ensure strong team leadership
Team members in a virtual team—more than in other teams—need to be able to exercise effective self-leadership, taking responsibility for completing individual work and participating in all activities of the team. Nonetheless, an experienced team leader can be a critical resource in helping the team stay on track and serve as a liaison with the team’s sponsors. This leader can anticipate the challenges of working virtually and help make sure communications are clear and that all members of the team are fully “in the loop” and participating as they should be in team meetings.
Tip #6. Put task related processes in place
Research from the Sloan School of Management demonstrates that virtual teams using well developed task related processes to increase work coordination and task related communication tend to outperform those that do not.[2] Processes for tasks such as setting goals, making plans, solving problems, assigning specific work roles, and measuring results help the team function efficiently and effectively.
This can be especially important for cross-cultural virtual teams. Different cultures have different expectations concerning processes and procedures. Therefore, it is important that global virtual teams clearly communicate the process being followed and provide training and assistance when team members are new to the process.
Tip #7. Build social/communications skills
Social interactions are the glue that holds the team together as a cohesive unit. Although task-oriented processes are essential to the team’s effectiveness, members of a virtual team need to be highly competent in managing the give and take necessary to exchange information, provide mutual support, and make course corrections when necessary.
When non-virtual teams meet, it is very common that the 5-10 minutes before or after the meeting is spent in casual, non-work related conversations that build social relationships in the team. However, this is much rarer in virtual teams. Effective virtual team leaders understand that it is important to build this time into the process, helping team members understand and appreciate diversity in interpersonal style, model versatility in adapting to others’ preferred communications styles, and know how to give and receive feedback. Team leaders and managers should make sure team members have these capabilities and where needed, help the team build on and enhance their communications skills.
Tip#8. Establish processes for making group decisions
Every team needs the ability to make decisions and reach agreement as a group. For a virtual team this is even more critical, as the members may not necessarily share any established common practices and may have very different experiences with decision making. Team members need to understand the different ways that decisions can be made and know how to reach agreements on issues such as the right solution to a problem, how to break down a task and assign work. An established team decision making process and tools will help the team avoid getting stuck when a decision needs to be made, and ensure that decisions made are high quality and represent the best thinking of the entire team. Not every decision is made in the same way, it is important to communicate which decisions are collaborative versus which decisions are leader driven.
Tip #9. Create global awareness
Increasingly, virtual teams are dispersed not only across geographical boundaries within the USA or North America, but across international boundaries that span the globe. A lack of global awareness and cultural sensitivity can undermine almost every other aspect of the team’s work – making it difficult to establish trust, make decisions, and carry out tasks in a coordinated, efficient way.
To work productively and cohesively across cultural boundaries requires that team members have some insights into the cultural dimensions that can affect interpersonal behaviors and preferences. This might include awareness of differences in how various cultures perceive business relationships, view power and authority within business organizations, and value the role of the individual versus the community or group.
Team leaders and managers can help by paying special attention to how the team is interacting and providing opportunities for team members to discuss and resolve issues related to different cultural assumptions or values.
Tip #10. Build conflict resolution skills
Regardless of how well the team organizes its work or how well team members communicate, there is a high probability for occasional conflicts, either between individual team members or across the entire group. Conflicts within a virtual team can seem even more intractable and disruptive than they do when people are able to sit down together and talk through the issues.
Virtual teams present special concerns regarding conflict. Because much of the communication is through e-mail or over webcast meetings where body language is missing, there is greater chance that information or intention will be misunderstood. We have known cases when a team member wrote an e-mail with the expectation that it would be received positively, only to have other team members see it as negative and potentially offensive.
To make sure conflicts can be recognized early and addressed proactively, team members need to understand what kinds of issues can lead to conflicts and recognize how unresolved conflict can get in the way of achieving their goals. They also need to know how to separate the issues from the people and reach a solution without letting emotional responses become a barrier to mutually agreeable resolutions.
Whether your virtual team is dedicated to customer service or R&D, or whether it is dispersed across the globe or only across a single state, these ten tips can enhance productivity, team member satisfaction, and effectiveness. Even a team that is working remotely out of necessity rather than choice can become a powerful asset if the group has the tools, technology, and skills required to bring their varied experience and knowledge together to achieve outstanding results.
# # #
To learn more about the concepts shared within this article and how Wilson Learning can assist you in addressing these issues, contact Wilson Learning at 1.800.328.7937 or visit www.wilsonlearning.com/virtualteams .
[1] Leimbach, M. P. Meeting the Collaborative challenge: a study of supports and barriers to team effectiveness. Wilson Learning Worldwide.
[2] Frank Slebdrat, Martin Hoegel, and Holger Ernst, How to Manage Virtual Teams, MIT Sloan School Management Review Summer 2009
Sales Versatility: Connecting with Customers Every Time
March 19th, 2010
As a sales leader, you probably debrief sales calls, review sales campaigns, analyze prospecting activity and ride along on certain customer calls to observe or assist. No doubt you have noticed that each salesperson has some customers and prospects that they easily connect with, and others that they don’t. And you might have seen cases where the same approach that succeeded with one prospect or customer caused another to become impatient and tense. Perhaps certain salespeople appear to waste time on social chit chat or having coffee with a customer—and yet they seem to succeed in closing good business. And some established customer relationships end up being downright difficult—fraught with tension and frequent communications issues and misunderstandings for reasons that are hard to understand.
It is difficult finding a common thread that explains which salespeople communicate well with which customers. The reasons for success seem as mysterious as the reasons for failure to connect. But the ability to consistently build productive, trusting relationships with many types of customers is the best predictor for getting second appointments, closing important sales, acquiring referrals from customers who buy and avoiding the wasteful process of damage control in rocky relationships.
What is it that makes the difference between those successful communications with customers and the difficult interactions that lead to failed calls and sales campaigns?
The 75% Problem
At first glance, some salespeople just seem to have a knack for reducing relationship tension and quickly putting almost anyone at ease in any situation. They gain access to more contacts and enjoy greater customer loyalty, higher close rates and more repeat business. They are often described as possessing good “people skills”—apparently inborn and hard for others to acquire.
But Wilson’s Social Styles research indicates that these fortunate few are so successful because they are using interpersonal versatility—the ability to understand differences in communication preferences and adapt to make relationship interactions more productive. Versatility is a skill that can be learned, and people who have it are measurably more capable of building and sustaining open, trusting relationships with a wide variety of different kinds of customers.
According to the Social Styles model, everyone displays a recognizable set of preferences and habits in interactions with others. These preferences add up to our social style. The four primary styles are labeled as Driver, Expressive, Amiable and Analytical.
The Social Styles Model
©Wilson Learning Worldwide.
As the model shows, the four styles vary in terms of behaviors reflecting the dimensions of Assertiveness (tell versus ask) and Responsiveness (people versus task orientation). Drivers and Expressives tend to be more tell-oriented, while Amiables and Analyticals are more ask-oriented. Analyticals and Drivers are more task-oriented, while Amiables and Expressives are more people-oriented.
When salespeople find it easy and natural to communicate with a customer or prospect, the likelihood is that they share the same social style. But only about 25% of people fall into each of the social style categories. This means they will likely share a social style with only about one quarter of the people they meet, and that there could be potential difficulties in communicating with the other 75%.
Think of the implications if a salesperson can only interact successfully with customers using their own style. If a salesperson is interacting with everyone in the same style, there’s a good chance there will be customers who, for example, will feel they are being given too much information—or too little. Some customers will find the salesperson to be overly friendly, while others might perceive him as aloof or not friendly enough. Other customers will want a lot of different options to consider, while others want to cut to the chase and know the bottom line right away. These differences create tension in the relationship and can become barriers to making sales.
Versatility: The Key to Improved Business Results
In the current uncertain market, it’s especially difficult for sales leaders to manage all the variables affecting the ability to increase sales. You may have little control over the external factors affecting the business, or the strategies adopted by executives in response. You can, however, act to help your entire sales team become more versatile in how they interact with prospects, customers, the internal support team and their own peers. Imagine the results if your whole team could connect successfully with 100% of the prospects and customers they meet.
The good news is a sales team can experience dramatic, measurable improvements in performance when salespeople learn how to adapt to others’ social styles. In one study, building the versatility skills of the sales force yielded a 53% improvement in market share. To illustrate the impact of this kind of result, consider a company with 6.29% market share. Suppose it has 1,000 customers, each purchasing $1,000 in product, making each one-percent increase in market share worth $158,982. In this example, an improvement from a 6.29% market share to a 9.65% market share (or 3.36%) is equal to $534,179 in increased revenue. For the pharmaceutical firm involved in the above study, improving the versatility of their sales force brought a highly profitable return on investment.[1]
Depending on your company’s industry, product offering and market, increased versatility may make different kinds of contributions to the improvement of business results. What are the critical issues that are most important in your organization right now? Sales organizations challenged by the erosion of their existing customer base and price-cutting competition can expand their opportunities by building stronger relationships with current contacts and developing a wider range of new business partnerships. If the company is seeking to expand into new markets and increase prospecting activities to find new opportunities, versatility can make all the difference in establishing new relationships quickly and sustaining them to close sales and get repeat business.
Increasing Versatility
For most of us, interpersonal behaviors and preferences are habitual and largely out of awareness. The critical factor in becoming a more adaptable, versatile communicator is the powerful insight that we do have different styles and that each style has unique strengths. As salespeople come to better understand their own style and recognize style differences, they also learn how to respond to their customers’ styles in a way that makes it easier to exchange information, reach mutually agreeable decisions and work smoothly for successful sales closures, implementation and follow-up. Over time, as they develop higher levels of skill, salespeople become adept at recognizing the indicators of different styles and adapting to them. This adaptation becomes an integral part of how they communicate. A highly versatile individual is almost always perceived as a highly effective communicator—someone who has those “good people skills,” is a trusted business partner, and is a very successful negotiator.
While there are multiple ways to improve communication in a given situation, the single most important factor for enhancing communication effectiveness across the board is style versatility. As salespeople must work harder for every sale, building this kind of capability provides a real competitive advantage for the team andthe company as a whole.
Subscribe via Email
