SHORT CYCLE SELLING ——BEATING YOUR COMPETITORS IN THE SALES

SHORT CYCLE SELLING BEATING YOUR COMPETITORS IN THE SALESKasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page iSHORTCYCLESELLINGBEATING YOUR COMPETITORS IN THE SALES RACEJIM KASPERMCGRAW-HILLNEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO. LISBON LONDONMADRID MEXICO CITY MILAN NEW DELHISAN JUANSEOUL SINGAPORE SYDNEYTORONTODOI Page 6x9 4/1/02 12:33 PM Page 1? :D Q W W HR ; O H D U Q P R U :H K R S H R X H Q M R W K L V 0 F * U D Z + L O O H % R R N , I R X ? G O L N H P R U H L Q I R U P D W L R Q D E R X W W K L V E R R N L W V D RX U W K U R H UO D W H G E R R N V D Q G Z H E V L W H V S O FH OD L V FH N K H U HKasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page iiiI am dedicating this book to:My best friend, soul mate, and wife, Ginny.Thank you for your help, guidance, advice, inspiration, encouragement, and most of all, the countless sacrifices youve made in order for this book to become a reality.My personal hero and son, Todd Kasper, whose perseverance toward reaching his goals, words of encouragement, and keen sense of humor have always been huge motivators for me. Your mother and I are truly blessed to have a son like you.This page intentionally left blank.Kasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page vFor more information about this book, click here.CONTENTSAcknowledgments?ixWhy Short Cycle Sellers Win the Sales Race?xi1.Identify Your Sales Cycle: Champion RacersKnow Their Racecourses?1Compression Concept: Sales Cycles Have Stages?2Compression Concept: Not All Sales Cycles Are Alike?82.Size Up Your Competition: Identifying When and Where to Make Your Move?15Internal Competition?16External Competition?18Compression Concept: Competitive Analysis Based on Your CustomersPerceptions?193.Target Selling: Plan Your Sales Race?27Compression Concept: The Market Segmentation and Target Process?30Compression Concept: Do Your Homework Before You Call?33Compression Concept: Develop a Unique Selling Proposition?344.Get New Business More Quickly: Race on the Fastest Course?40Compression Concept: Customer Internal Opportunity Analysis?43Compression Concept: Account Management Plan?45Compression Concept: Your Customers Want to Help You?47vCopyright 2002 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.Kasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page viCONTENTSCompression Concept: The Five Steps to Take to Train Your Customers to Shorten Your Sales Cycle?505.A.R.E.B.A.! The Quickest Track to the First Appointment?55The A.R.E.B.A. Model?56E-Technology Will Save You Thousands in Literature Costs and Sales Cycle Time?626pression Objectives: A Big Key to Winning the Sales Race?65Focusing on the Wrong Sales Objective?66Conceding Control of the Sales Cycle to the Customer?67Compression Concept: The Compression Objective?67Compression Concept: The Customer Must Take Some Form of Action?70E-Selling and Compression Objectives?757.Let the Customer Tell You How to Win: Its Her Job!?78Compression Concept: The Race Winning Discovery Strategy?80Preparation Phase: Using Internet Technology?81Scenario Planning?83The Sales Interview?87Compression Concept: The Five Questions That Cut to the Essence of the Sales Process?88Compression Concept: Discover the Motivation Behind YourCustomersQuestions?92Compression Concept: Asking for Your Compression Objective?948.Familiarity Breeds Sales Race Winners?99Compression Concept: Understanding Your Customers Perception Is a Key to Affecting It?102Compression Concept: The Two Basic Buyer Personality TypesBottom Liner and Top Liner?103Compression Concept: Sell to the Behavioral Style That You Identify?113viKasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page viiCONTENTS9.Shorten Your Sales Cycle: Using Strong Sales Presentations, Demonstrations, and Proposals?120Compression Concept: Customer Involvement Cuts Time from Your Sales Cycle?121Phase I: Pre-presentation Involvement?125Phase II: Presentation Engagement?127Phase III: Post-presentation Connection?131The Virtual Sales Presentation?13310.Condense Your Sales Negotiations: Jockeying for a Better Position Near the Finish Line?137Compression Concept: Guiding Your Customer to the Negotiating Stage?138Compression Concept: Keeping Your Prospect Engaged in Negotiations?140Compression Concept: The Two Facets of the Negotiating Process That Encourage Short Cycle SellingTime and Information ?145Compression Concept: Get Something Every Time That You Give Something?147Compression Concept: Take Control of Your Sales Cycle by Negotiating Your Issues One by One, but Bring Multiple Issues to the Table?149Compression Concept: Speak to the Behavioral Style of Your Customer during Sales Negotiations?15011.Eliminate Road Course Obstacles: Control the Staller or Objector?156Compression Concept: An Objector Has QuestionsJust Questions?157Compression Concept: A Staller Will Try to End Your Sales Cycle?160Compression Concept: Six Steps to Isolate the Objection and Move On?162Compression Concept: Four Steps to Help You Get Commitment from a Staller?16612.S.A.F.E. Closing: It Means You Win?174Compression Concept: Closing Is . . .?177Compression Concept: Sales Race Winners Know When to Ask?180Compression Concept: Its S.A.F.E. to Ask?182Compression Concept: The “No Game Plan Restores Your Sales Cycle?185Compression Concept: Postclosing Analysis Compresses the Next Sale?187viiKasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page viiiCONTENTS13.Fastest Time Wins: Control Your Time and Shorten Your Sales Cycle?192Compression Concept: Overcoming the Four Skill Deficiencies That Prolong Your Sales Cycle?195Your Sales Cycle Is Your Sales Plan?196Getting Organized Means a Shorter Sales Cycle?199Short Cycle Sellers Find Ways to Delegate?203Call Reluctance Definitely Lengthens Your Sales Cycle?20714.Sales Technology and Automation = Shortened Sales Cycles?214Compression Concept: What a Good CRM System Can Do to Shorten Your Sales Cycle?219Compression Concept: Other Sales Technologies That Will Help You Shorten Your Sales Cycle?22515. Marketing Will Help You Finish First?231Compression Concept: Affect Your CustomersPerceptions by Positioning, Not by Product Features?232Compression Concept: Other Marketing Activities Should Be Aimed at Helping You Shorten Your Sales Cycle?236Compression Concept: Using Marketing to Attack the Market from All Angles?24116. Hone Your Mental Game: Put Your Racing Face On?245Compression Concept: Know Your Selling Self?247Compression Concept: Focus on Short Cycle Selling Success?249The 25 Sales Race Rules That Ensure Your Short Cycle Selling Success?259The Resource Center?261Index?265viiiKasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page ixACKNOWLEDGMENTSThis book was written in memory ofBernard James Fair, Loves Park, IllinoisKilled in action, WorldWar IIGeorge Nicholas Fanis, Loves Park, IllinoisKilled in action, VietnamTerry Lee Larson, Loves Park, IllinoisKilled in action, VietnamU.S. Navy Commander Dan Shanower, Phi Theta PiKilled in theattack on the Pentagon, September 11, 2001You fellows never had a chance to write your own books. This one isfor you!I want to thank and honor the three top sellers in my life:Jack Kasper, my father and best “shade tree salesperson in theworld. Your tenacity was my model.My late father-in-law, Charles T. Nelson, who always said I be-longed in a sales career. Your people skills are still unsurpassed. My friend and sales champion, Charlie Johnson. I learned so muchfrom watching you.A special thanks to my colleague Tom Rothrock for his patience andcommand of the English language, and to the new generation of top-performing Short Cycle sales “pros:Stacey BrownValeria KartisekAndrew KartisekJeffrey LewisTimothy Kartisek, Jr.Ive known all along that you all would have great sales careers. ixCopyright 2002 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.Kasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page xACKNOWLEDGMENTSA very special thank you to my mother, Lorraine Kasper, and mymother-in-law, Nell P. Nagle. Youve both battled and won! Thank youso much for your encouragement. Laurie Harper, thank you. Youre a real pro, great agent, and goodfriend!Jim KasperxKasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page xiWHY SHORT CYCLE SELLERSWIN THE SALES RACEI contend that my firms resource center library truly rivals any univer-sitys library in the country when it comes to reference books on salesand selling. The shelves are crammed with a multitude of fine booksincluding SPIN Selling, Solution Selling, Selling to Very Important TopOfficer, Selling to the Top, Collaborative Selling, The New Strategic Sell-ing, Conceptual Selling, 434 Fast Tips for Sales Success, RelationshipSelling, The Best Seller, Key Account Selling, Partner Sell, Secrets forClosing Sales, Integrity Selling, Guerilla Selling, and just plainSelling.Ive read each of them, some twice. They all profess to hone your al-ready proficient sales skills in their respective areas of sales expertise.Many of them do just that and more. Many of them fall short. What they dont do is address the hottest and most rapidly growingconcern in selling today, shortening your sales cycle. Why have the twotop professional sales trade publications, Selling Power andSales andMarketing Management, begun writing about sales cycle topics in almostevery monthly issue? Because they know from their research that in thecorporate boardrooms of today and global sales meetings of tomorrow, thesales cycle is where competitive advantage will be established. They knowthat the world economy demands more performance in shorter time. Of-ficers of top Fortune 500 companies know that in todays competitiveglobal markets, the sales cycle cannot afford to be prolonged. They havethe foresight to know that tomorrows sales cycles must be even shorter.The sales race winners of tomorrow will be the Short Cycle sellers.The benefits to you of shortening your particular sales cycle aremany:1.You will beat your competition to the punch.2.You will sell more in a shorter time.xiCopyright 2002 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.Kasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page xiiWHY SHORT CYCLE SELLERS WIN THE SALES RACE3.You will open many more new accounts.4.Your earnings will increase dramatically.5.Your proposals will be accepted more readily.6.Your customers will remain more loyal and appreciative of your ef-forts.7.You will be able to serve your current accounts in a more expeditiousand capable manner.THE ROLE OF TIME-BASED COMPETITION INSHORTENING YOUR SALES CYCLEIn the early 1990s, George Stalk, Jr., then a vice president, of BostonConsulting promoted a competitive differentiation concept known astime-based competition.The idea behind time-based competition is thatall of a companys operations departments must understand, control, andreduce the timeit takes to perform each departmental process activity.Process activitiesare defined as business functions such as, but not lim-ited to, order entry, shipping, production, invoicing, collections, and in-spection. The time it takes to complete these process activities isexpressed as cycle time. This can best be illustrated by example. Theactual amount of time it takes to price, input, print, and send one orderto the shipping department is called the order-entry cycle time. It is thetime required to complete one order-entry cycle. By mastering this no-tion and identifying opportunities to condense each business functionscycle time, companies have given themselves a tremendous competi-tive advantage over industry rivals. Therefore, they have provided su-perior reaction intervals to their customers allowing them to win the racefor their customersbusinesses.Time-based competition was conceived originally for the operationsside of organizations. After years of direct sales and sales managementexperience, and 9 years of studying and teaching sales skills, I have dis-covered that by applying time-based competition concepts to the salesfunction you will shorten your sales cycle. Your sales cycle, like any de-partmental process function, consists of the steps that take you from ini-tial customer contact to order placement. Each step affords you axiiKasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page xiiiWHY SHORT CYCLE SELLERS WIN THE SALES RACEwonderful opportunity to beat your competitors by condensing the salescycle (sales process time). After identifying the stages in your respective sales cycle, we willwalk you through the process that will shorten the time it takes to suc-cessfully complete your sales cycle. In this book, you will learn how to?Identify and analyze your sales cycle.?Shorten the time needed to complete your sales cycle.?Gain a competitive time advantage by utilizing market segmentation.?Recognize your competitors weaknesses and develop your competi-tive advantage.?Form a prospecting system that will yield more prospects in a shortertime.?Quickly get the prospects attention.?Make more appointments with your prospects than your competitorsever hoped to.?Establish customer objectives and learn how they affect sales cyclecompression.?Let customers tell you what to tell them.?Compress the time and hassles of sales negotiations.?Expeditiously turn objections into sales in seven steps.?Promptly disarm a staller.?Zero in your sales proposals based on your buyers behavior.?Get the order more quickly by using S.A.F.E. Closing techniques.?Find more time to spend in front of customers while your competitorsfiddle away.?Utilize sales automation to sell to your customers while your com-petitors sleep at night.?Develop a fantastic mental sales game plan that will keep your edge up. Shortening the sales cycleis a hot topic with both sales executivesand field sales representatives. Why? It means more income for both.It means more is accomplished with less expended. Psychologically,xiiiKasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page xivWHY SHORT CYCLE SELLERS WIN THE SALES RACEfrom the buyers standpoint, there is only a limited number of buyingdays in any given year. Compressing the sales cycleallows the sales pro-fessional to reach more buyers on their buying days. It means thatscaled-down sales forces can compete effectively and even grow theirvolume. It means the best salespeople will become better.Every day I hear sales managers and sales forces explain why theirsales cycles are so long and why their sales process is so much differ-ent than that of anyone else in the world. The medical supply sales rep-resentative tells me that doctors are difficult people. The fiber-opticcabling salesperson tells me about the endless engineering require-ments. The senior loan officers at banks tell me that they have so muchpaperwork to do that they can only make five or six calls a month. Everyone of them will tell me at least once, “You dont understand. Our salesprocess is so much different than any other. My general response is?A sales cycle is only as long as the sellerallows it to be. It is ulti-mately the seller who should control the sales process. It is the sellersjob! ?As far as the uniqueness of a respective sales method is concerned, Ioffer that the fundamental process in buying is very similar for allconsumer and business-to-business purchasing. All buyers gothrough the following steps, albeit some business purchase decisionsdo require a committee and some purchase decisions are impulsiveand routine:1.Problem recognition and identification2.Search for solutions3.Evaluation of alternatives4.Purchase5.Assessment of purchase satisfaction6.Alleviation of postpurchase dissonance (eliminate buyers re-morse)?My experience shows me that differing culture is the only real sig-nificant factor that affects the uniqueness or difference of a sellingprocess. The job of selling an environmental consulting contract con-xivKasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page xvWHY SHORT CYCLE SELLERS WIN THE SALES RACEsists of the same skills as selling a house or selling a plumbing job.If you sell office supplies, you can sell fiber-optic catheters for heartsurgery. The selling and buying principles are the same, and you canapply the concepts of Short Cycle Selling to both.Many of our clients, to whom I have introduced the principles ofShort Cycle Selling, are in mature industries. They sell paper products,fossil fuels, chemicals, signage, and financial products. Total market po-tential is expanding slowly, and if their sales are increasing, its at the ex-pense of a competitor. They have found that by practicing thesedoctrines, they are able to sell more new accounts in a shorter time pe-riod than their competitors. For some, it has been a matter of survival.Several of my high-technology clients are still in emerging automa-tion and data industries. Contrary to mature markets, they are operat-ing in growth industries and there are plenty of new applications andcustomers every day. Some of them are suffering from the latestwashouts in technology markets, and competitive pressures are lifethreatening to their organizations. Companies in both situations havefound that instituting a Short Cycle Sellingculture helps them capturenew customers and market share more quickly than their competitors.This new culture keeps their prospects and customers up to date with therapidly changing new technologies and market conditions. When reading this book, I highly recommend that in order to pro-vide a basic understanding of Short Cycle Selling, you start with Chap-ter 1, Identify Your Sales Cycle, and then you can go to any chapter thatpeaks your interest. All chapters illustrate distinctly separate approachesfor shortening your sales cycle, with representative case studies. Eachchapter contains Compression Concepts, which are ideas that explainproven sales practices that will compress your sales cycle. You will no-tice that throughout the book, Sales Race Rulesare presented as yourguidelines to Short Cycle Selling. There are 25 such rules strategicallyplaced throughout the book. Heed them and youll win the sales race. Ig-nore them, and your competitors will beat you. The 6view and the pay-check are always better for the winner.Today, you have taken the first step toward being in the top 5 per-cent. For you winners who are already in the top 5 percent, you havetaken the next step to being in the top 1 percent. I think that youll findxvKasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page xviWHY SHORT CYCLE SELLERS WIN THE SALES RACEthis book will be a tremendous resource that you can come back to, timeand again, as you progress throughout your sales career. Many of ourclients have used these concepts to break out of sales slumps and jump-start their careers. Try Short Cycle Selling. Practice it religiously for at least 30 days oruntil the principles become habit. It works, and you willwin many moresales races!xviKasper/Short Selling Final 4/1/02 11:38 AM Page 1If you want more information about this book, or would like to purchase it, click here.CHAPTER ONEIDENTIFY YOUR SALES CYCLEChampion Racers Know Their RacecoursesThe race is on! Its on every day of the week, and its a racebetween competing salespersons to be the first to get to theaccount and sell it. The results for the winner, and there isonly one winner, are tremendous psychological and mone-tary rewards.The concept of the sales cycle has enjoyed immense popularity in con-temporary business and academic circles. From board meetings to salesmeetings, sales and marketing executives have been wrestling with theimpact that their customers make on their sales cycles. I am offering anew concept to these sultans of sales: a race to shorten your sales cycleby the salesperson, who has the greatest impact on the sales cycle.The new