Print Solutions July 2006
strategic sales
By Dick Gorelick
The Point B Syndrome
There’s no let-up in the flow of seminars, books and magazines dealing with successful
salesmanship that could have been written in the 1960s. Mack Hanan introduced
the notion of consultative selling more than 30 years ago. The business world
gives the concept lip service but, unfortunately, old ideas die hard.
Let’s look at the old ideas. Point A is the idea that sales is a haven for the
ambitious, gregarious and articulate. The ideal candidate for a career in sales
was portrayed as motivated primarily by financial rewards, well-organized,
presentable and loving a challenge. The conventional wisdom was that not
everyone can sell, but those with sales aptitude could sell virtually anything.
Many writers, consultants and managers believed that salespeople are born, not
made.
If this description of the ideal sales rep sounds archaic, don’t laugh. These are the criteria used by many testing services in evaluating
candidates for sales positions. In any event, I consider selection of these
sales reps to be Point A.
The next step in the process can be labeled Point C. Here again, we have
platitudes and stereotypes. They include:
• You don’t know if you’ve arrived unless you have specific objectives.
• Any sales rep worth his salt wants to work on straight commission.
• You have to make the calls—the more the better.
• A sales rep doesn’t need to be told how he’s doing. He has a monthly sales report.
• There’s only one scorecard for a sales rep: today’s sales.
This logic suggests that, given the ideal personal attributes, a sales rep who
makes as many calls as possible every day, who is primarily motivated by
compensation and has a sales quota, is bound to succeed. You may say That's preposterous, but it’s the operational logic in many distributorships.
Why is this scenario preposterous? Because you can’t get from Point A to Point C without stopping at Point B. A commission of 101
percent of sales, subliminal Tony Robbins tapes, a doubling in the prescribed
number of sales calls, or a lesson in power dressing will not create more
competent salespeople.
Selling is not a game. One of America’s best-known trainers has written that success in selling is largely based on “reading” buying signals. He cites chin-rubbing and pupil dilation by buyers as keys to
successful
“closes.” The idea that there are secrets to selling or that there are a series of tricks
and short-cuts does not serve the sales profession well.
Point B is creating the conditions and perceptions that make customers want to
buy. That process, in turn, must be based on understanding the customer’s business, not simply the customer’s printing needs. Those needs differ from account to account. There are no
all-purpose answers or secrets.
On the 50th anniversary of his entry into the hotel business, Conrad Hilton,
founder of the Hilton chain, was asked about the secret of his success. He
responded that there was only one all-purpose truth:
“Always put the curtain inside the tub when using the shower.”
I see evidence every day of short shrift given to Point B. In the rush to go
from Point A to Point C, reps are asked to forecast their sales for the next
month, quarter or year. But the appropriate question should be,
“What can be done to make our products and services more valuable to each of our
customers?”
Point A is the objective. Point B is creating the conditions that lead to Point
C, the attainment of the objective. This selling process can best be described
as
“industrial dating.” It takes time, patience, listening as well as selling, information-gathering
and, most important, ongoing building of trust.
It’s wishful thinking to manage outcomes without practical steps to create the
perceptions and communication that lead to the outcomes. For a salesperson, the
operative question of Point B applies to every contact with a customer. That
question:
“What has happened to elevate this customer’s perceived value of my company?”
Skeptics respond to this philosophy by stating that salespeople need goals.
Without that, they say, sales reps lose focus. My response is that goals and
objectives are desirable, even necessary. But without Point B—a tangible, well-conceived plan tailored to the needs of customers—the goals and objectives are little more than wish lists.
This is not a theoretical reflection about the state of selling in our industry. The tragedy is that many companies do their best to
qualify the aptitudes of a job applicant. Upon being hired, that new employee
is typically armed with several days of training about capabilities, a list of
former accounts, business cards and instructions to make as many calls as
possible without taking rejection personally. That's not a formula for success.
The formula for success is Point B, systematically and consciously building
perceived buyer value. Having done that, Point C will be achieved.
Contributing Editor Dick Gorelick is an
award-winning authority on sales, marketing and business
strategies for the printing industry. As president of the
Graphic Arts Sales Foundation in West Chester, Pa., he travels
extensively, consulting, writing and speaking on sales
training. 
