How many times have you thought you hired the right person, only to discover you were wrong? Underperforming salesmen are probably the greatest cause of financial loss to most businesses. The cost of hiring and keeping an underperforming salesman can range from six to seven figures annually. To make matters worse, many companies waste money by trying to train sales skills to people who will never improve. We've all seen the studies that show just how much time, money and manpower go into correcting a hiring mistake. The biggest problem most companies are making is that they are hiring just a salesman, when they should really be hiring a revenue maker.
The World Has Changed
In the era of Facebook, Google and Twitter, TripAdvisor and Yelp, buyers have as much control over the flow of information as salesmen do, probably even more. This has caused a significant change in the sales process. Buyers have more information than ever before and may develop that knowledge long before a salesman comes into the picture. In fact, Sirius Decisions estimates that the buyer's journey is 70% complete by the time they contact a salesman. Buying, once a one-way interaction between an informed seller and a curious buyer, has become a conversation between equals, and the process is still evolving.
To adjust to this change, companies need revenue makers who are a combination of a salesman and a marketer all –in-one. These revenue makers will be still be responsible for providing solutions to their customers, but they will also engage with their prospects and customers earlier on in the buying journey by using social sales best practices.
These days, customers create their own buyer journeys. They take many steps without the seller's involvement. They go forwards and backwards. And they may not always start at step one. A tremendous amount of action happens after the sale, especially when customers experience the brand and then share their experiences with others. Sometimes they will talk with a few friends and family, or perhaps they will Selfcast their thoughts to hundreds, thousands even millions of others through social media. It is the role of a revenue maker to engage his clients and prospects in all of these facets. In fact, social networks have become a key second step in the customer buying process. What was once a tidy funnel now looks like a spider's web in the middle of a tornado, and in order to acclimatize sales and marketing, they each need to forgo their traditional silos and align their processes to that of their customers'.
The Difference between a Salesman and a Revenue Maker
The buying process is changing profoundly faster than many salesmen can respond. Revenue makers focus on the buying experience, not just the selling experience. Revenue makers find out exactly where their customers are in their journey and what medium they are using (be it Facebook, Twitter, blogging or elsewhere) and advise them on the best way to get where they're going, not where a typical salesman wants them to go.
One thing hasn't changed: Customers have always telegraphed their intentions, and a revenue maker knows how to read these signals. A wink, a smile, a twitch, folded arms, or a steadfast refusal to make eye contact have always made the buyer's real feelings clear to a sharp salesperson. These customer cues are still there, and they are still as revealing as ever. However, they have moved into the digital sphere. Your customers and prospects are throwing off billions of digital buying indications every day. Revenue makers focus their time paying attention to these cues.
No Longer an Outbound Warrior
Whereas selling may have once been a lone-wolf activity by the road warrior, it is now, more than ever, a social enterprise. Revenue makers use all their allies to propel customers along the new buyer journeys to close a sale. To do this, revenue makers use both sales and marketing tools and work with customers to create solutions. The use of Social media allows revenue makers to create momentum and that aligns with the new buyer journeys perfectly.
Facebook, once a toy for teenagers and horny college kids, has emerged as a global colossus with approximately 500 million members and 130 million mobile members. However until recently, few people bothered to exploit its power as a selling platform. That's starting to change, and great revenue makers will be in the front line of this change, not lagging behind in the backseat. Follow-up activity and constant contact are the fundamental advantages that social media bring to a revenue maker for your organization.
In this changing world, the only way to sell is via a consultative approach. Revenue makers know this very well. They know that they have to roll up their sleeves, dive into their customer's business and understand the issues. Revenue makers harness the power of the information age. Information is the most important weapon for a revenue maker, and it's no longer how they look in a suit, but the quality of their relationship. They are helping their customers achieve a strategic advantage with technology and tools, such as marketing automation and social CRM.
Revenue makers are less of a product experts and more akin to a librarian, who may not have read every book – or know each product in detail – but knows where to find information or who may be an expert on a particular topic. Revenue makers work to propel customers along the buying journey to close a sale.
This is a pivotal period in the history of Marketing and Sales. Buying is changing dramatically, and we as sellers have fallen behind — so far. Our customers want us to catch up. They depend on us, especially as they try to navigate a confusing new world awash in more information than they can ever handle. Revenue makers understand this very clearly. They know that their customers/prospects are not hiding from them, hoping that they don't notice their confusion or their footprints as they search for answers. Quite the opposite. Revenue makers know that their customers/prospects are giving off their digital trails as transparently as a young single in a pickup bar, praying that we catch on. Revenue makers are embracing these changes and harnessing the power of the information to meet these challenges head on. The question I ask you is, are you a revenue maker or a salesman? A trust me, there is a big difference.
Andrew Hunt is the Founder of Inbound Sales Network and has over 15 years of senior sales and marketing experience, helping companies increase sales performance and efficiency by over 500%. Inbound Sales Network leverages the power of a "virtual" network of sales and marketing experts in order to provide world-class solutions at a fraction of the cost of traditional ad agencies. It's a new kind of marketing company for the new way companies do business.
Thanks to TheCustomerCollective
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