Sales people fail for many reasons. Here is our list of the top three reasons for failure.

1. Understanding People

The world is populated by people with different personalities. There are four broad personality groupings, and sub groupings within those. The population of any given area is divided approximately equally into those four broad categories. Each of us tends to be strong in one of these areas, although we may be in another group as a “secondary” personality style.

From this you learn a most important lesson: 75% of the population is not in the same personality grouping as you are. And then you realize you’re in the minority. Seventy-five percent of the population does not think exactly like you nor process information exactly the way you do, or at the speed in which you do it. In addition, they have different learning “styles.” Some people prefer auditory learning, some kinesthetic. A small number of people prefer to process information by reading.

To be successful in sales, identify the personality of the person to whom you are talking. Then match your presentation to their personality, the manner in which they process information, and the level of detail they require in order to come to a decision.

People are different. Adapt your presentation to suit their learning style and the way they absorb information.

2. Be Quiet (i.e. Shut Up!)

The story is told in the Bible of a man, Samson, who killed a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Thousands upon thousands of sales have been killed by the jawbone of an ass.

One of the essential skills in any communication, is knowing how much information should be given. There is no golden rule; just some general observations.

Some people are detail people. They need lots of information. They need it in an orderly and structured manner. And they need it early in the conversation.

Other people, who may be detail people in the long run, do not need the detail early. They need the detail when they are ready for it. And that’s when the sales person needs to be on hand, or readily available, to supply the next snippet of information that this person needs.

3. Talking is Not Enough

Just as a sales person can talk too much, so they can talk too little. People do need information to decide. While this is something like a Goldilocks issue – “Ah, this amount of information is just right” – each person needs specific information to make an informed decision.

It is easy to confuse “talking” with “selling.” Good selling, however, involves listening and asking questions. It also requires answering questions. Perhaps more than anything, listening is the key activity in selling, because it gives the prospect the opportunity to tell the sales person what he needs to move forward from this point.

The key to good selling is not selling. The prospect really needs to sell to himself. You need to give him the right information at the right time until he has convinced himself he needs to buy. Then you can ask for the order.

Selling can be likened to peeling an onion. There are layers to be taken off, one or two at a time. Sure, you can take off many layers immediately and waste a lot of onion.

In sales you need to “peel” away the clutter in the prospect’s mind. Good sales people not only peel carefully, but they develop the skill of understanding other people so that they know in which order the clutter needs to be removed.

Conclusion

These three principles are essential to sound communications and salesmanship.

Attending a concert is an exhilarating night out. From the moment the hush falls over the audience once the Concert Master has ensured the orchestral members set their instruments to a common pitch, the excitement begins.

To hear the haunting qualities of the oboe, the flights of fancy on the piccolo, the rumbling of the double basses and tubas, the piercing brilliance of the trumpets, and the power and strength of the combined violins, violas and cellos makes a night out at the orchestra an event to be remembered.

But what about those musicians in the orchestra? These are the workers who produce the sounds the audience enjoys as music. They each contribute to the combined outcome of the orchestra. What does their job description look like?

Imagine the typical job description for an orchestral member. Turn up on time for rehearsals and performances. Dress immaculately in the performance, but at rehearsal blue jeans are OK. You work 35-hour week, and get three-weeks vacation. Such a job description is almost useless to the members of the orchestra and the paying public.

Here’s why. The job description has been abstracted from what they do. What do they do? They use tools — violins, trumpets, timpani. For what purpose? To produce . . .

And therein you begin to see that the real job description of the orchestral member is the score that is in front of him. It’s a changing job description. In this composition he must hold his violin bow slow and steady, legato. In the next, the demand for spiccato requires the employee to bounce the bow in different ways over all four strings.

In other words, the orchestral member needs to know how to use his instrument of work to produce different outcomes. In essence, the job description is a portion of the whole picture. It is an explanation of the particular part that the instrumentalist has to play, but it is not in isolation to everything else. His job description is play this score at this time, not that one. The job description is to obtain a particular result not just for each individual player, but for the orchestra as a whole.

Similarly, the carpenter’s job description is not “use a hammer”, but “complete this house to specification.” In the factory, the workers are not starting and stopping machinery, they are making automobiles, or heating units, or computers, or white goods, the myriad of objects we buy to enhance our lifestyle.

The job description is not “move the bow”, “blow into the mouthpiece,” or “swing the hammer.” It is “use these tools to produce this outcome, the final product”. You don’t improve manufacturing tolerances to create less friction: you improve them to make better automobiles. That’s a meaningful job description: make better automobiles, since it describes the expected outcome. It’s a job description that gives meaning and purpose to work, a standard and a goal to which people can aspire.

In this way, job descriptions are dynamic, not static. It is not “to make music”. Tonight Bach, tomorrow Mahler; next week Stravinsky and Mozart. Today this home design, tomorrow a different one. Today this model vehicle, next month a new model, with new demands for the tools of production and those wielding them.

But now you see that the job description is not employer/employee focused but rather customer focused. The job description should define the outcome for the customer, so that the employee knows what is really expected of him.

Too many job descriptions turn the employee inward, looking at himself in the mirror, maybe accompanied by his boss who similarly sees himself as the center of attention.

One of the mistakes in business is to isolate job descriptions and abstract them from the overall outcome of the business. This mistake is almost never made by the orchestra because all the other members of the orchestra are within hearing range, and it is the combined effort of all the musicians that brings the audience back again and again.

Why, then, do so many business owners demand job descriptions? “Our employees need job descriptions,” the business owner bellows.

“Why?” asks the business consultant.

“Because we need to keep them under control,” comes the stern reply.

When job descriptions are seen as tools of control rather than explanations of the part a person must play in the processes of production for a predetermined outcome, the employee is downgraded to near slave status, rather than established as an employee engaged equally in the success of the business.

And we wonder why we have productivity issues and unhappy staff.

In many instances, management has found it difficult to justify the employee’s salary. In many organizations it is difficult, if not impossible, for a firm to assess the true value of a worker. As they have attempted to determine costs and consider cheaper alternatives, outsourcing work to independent contractors has become a viable option. Since it is difficult for a company to assess the real value of its employees, it never knows whether it is getting value for its money. Nor does the employee know if he is being paid his true market value. By forcing staff to compete as contractors against all other suppliers in the marketplace, then, the business firm is better able to gauge the value of the people it hires. And the workers gain by being able, first, to assess the value of their contribution by comparing with their competitors, and second, by being able to take on additional contracts.

The point being: although it can be difficult for those out of work in the short term, unemployment is not necessarily bad in the long run. Provided business entrepreneurs are not hindered from starting new businesses, they will soon begin to absorb the unemployed into new ventures. Armed with intimate knowledge of his field, someone out of a job could bid for work at his previous place of employment, offering to supply services at competitive market rates. In doing this, he will need to be able to convince the potential buyer that he can deliver the required service at competitive rates. By doing this in such a way as to add value to the service, he can usually reduce the overall cost to the client. And through this new position, what his former company could not see in him as an employee will be much more apparent in his new role as a supplier.

In essence, the worker is starting his own business. He becomes self-employed. No longer does he depend on a fixed salary, but instead lives on his abilities to supply a satisfactory product in the marketplace. He will be rewarded accordingly. And in most instances, provided he learns the necessary skills, he will do better in his own company than he would on a wage or salary. In the end, then, the currently unemployed may be in prime position for future financial success.

More recently laws such as copyright, patents and trademarks are used to create monopolies not of political power but of economic power. Music writers sell their compositions to music publishers who invest time and money in print and marketing to create sales. The publishers and shareholders want a return on their investment. They are clearly not happy if someone gets access to the same product without paying for it. Book writers do the same.

So do hamburger makers.

If I want to buy a McDonald’s hamburger, I have no choice but to go to the licensed McDonalds monopoly somewhere and buy. As much as this might be an inconvenience, I cannot go to the Burger King outlet and buy a McDonald’s hamburger, just as I cannot buy Taco Bell at McDonald’s. They each protect their property by insisting only approved sales outlets can sell their food, for which the parent company receives a percentage of the sale. This is just as much a monopoly as is the publishing of songs, so the attack on the publishing industry for protecting its monopoly could be construed at the same time as an attack on all forms of endeavor to protect the fruit of one’s labor and capitalize on it by creating a monopoly selling outlet.

People want to get paid for their work. This is a natural desire, for to get rewarded is the means to buy other goods and services. Without such reward, composers, authors, inventors will need to create other sources of income, and when they do this they are not free to compose, write, or invent. There are a myriad of examples of how people protect their intellectual property. Publishers of electronic books may reserve the right to exclusive publication of paper editions. They want to keep this monopoly to themselves for whatever reason. Some music artists want to be able to sell their recordings exclusively through a monopoly selling channel. We can choose to participate or not participate under the artist’s terms. The current practice of taking the artist’s music, now matter what terms he dictates does not appear a good way of creating neighborly relations, or living out the idea that we should somehow love our neighbor as ourselves.

Thus, the debate over copyright has a much broader implication than just copying music. And the issue in music is not just over new technology. Deep down, it is the desire of many people who expect others in the world owe them a living. They just don’t want music via the internet. They want free music, no matter how it is delivered. If they could pick up a free CD in the store, this would suit just as well as downloading a file for free. They don’t care about the costs of creating the records, the hours of studio time to get the tracks completed and the editing to patch together several takes to create the “perfect” performance. All they want is free music, which is music at someone else’s expense

It is this desire for goods at someone else’s expense that is at the heart of the music copyright debate. Well might we complain about the price, but as economists love to tell us, the buying market, not the sellers, sets the price. So it seems that those who buy are willing to pay current prices, but the free loaders object to this. They would, as e-mails to me have confirmed, object to any price because at the end of the day they don’t want to pay anything for their music.

It is fortunate that there are enough willing buyers to keep the sellers in business, for without them recording, publishing and inventive industries would be starved for new ideas and an unwillingness to invest in something that could be taken away from them so easily. And our lives would be poorer for it.

For many people success is measured in tangible terms. The size and quality of the home, the car, the bank account, or the vacation location. Others, of course, add in more personal issues. Then there are less tangible things, such as quality of life, family, and other things that individuals assess are important.

But with that in mind, it is curious to see just how many people fail to meet their own standards of success in tangible things. It is this discontentment that keeps entrepreneurs dreaming and the rest of the population working for them.

It does not matter where you are in the success chain, whether you’re at the top, the bottom, or somewhere in the middle, there are only two roads to success. And they are these.

In order to be successful, you must contribute to someone’s life in some way. Either you contribute to their income in some form or else you help them lower their costs. These are the choices.

This is relatively easy to identify but not always so easy to do. How does the service or product help your customer? Does it lower their costs, making them more competitive in the marketplace, or does it contribute to their income by helping them improve their sales? (Someone might be tempted to put health care into a third category, but healthcare is a way of reducing people’s costs, so it still fits under the two categories).

If you’re wondering why success eludes you, or the level of success you crave eludes you, it might be time to reassess your contribution into the lives of other people. And if you cannot see how you can improve their income or lower their costs, and make that claim tangible to them, don’t be surprised if they also can’t see it and refuse to buy what you’re offering.

I can think of no topic that gets people’s backs up so quickly. The idea that people should actually own something and protect it by law is under challenge. Especially if that property is “intellectual” property.

Imagine for a moment that you wrote a song, a popular one at that, and you’re making good royalties from the recording company who had contracted with you to market the product. But there are some individuals who reject the notion that you and the record company should make such a deal. They think your song should be “public domain” and available free to everyone. In short, they don’t like the idea of you making a living off your song-writing abilities. They also don’t like the fact that the recording industry should be paid for its work in making your song successful.

It seems that many Spaniards think like this. According to an article in the July 2005 edition of Billboard, Spain was the ninth largest market in the world for recorded music. Yet according to EMI Music Spain president Manolo Diaz, Spain “has a street-level piracy that does not exist in any other civilized county.”

Unfortunately, it seems, there are many Christians who think the same way as the Spaniards. Piracy is rampant around the world. And it’s not just music that is at risk. Software also is freely copied, denying the original owner exclusive rights to sell his own property.

What is noticeable is the envy that underlies the piracy mentality. Envy is expressed in the idea that if I can’t have something then no else should have it either. It seems that if some people cannot make money from song writing, they are going to make sure that no one else can do it either, even if it means abandoning the idea of property rights to do so. Yet if those same people had their motor car or other items taken and used without permission they would soon cry out, “stop thief.”

The photocopier, the tape recorder and now computers and CD/DVDs are the tools that have allowed the challenge to intellectual property rights. Patent and copyright laws are under challenge in the modern wave of copyright and patent infringement. Communism, the idea that property is owned by everyone, is the popular notion in intellectual property. No one can own anything, and everything you have is to be available to your neighbor free of charge at his demand.

Long ago it was said, “Thou shalt not steal” and this is the basis for all property rights, intellectual and physical. Which is why freedom to own property of all kinds, a major contributing factor to the success of Western civilization, needs to be re-evaluated. 

Too often we associate the idea of psychopath with Anthony Hopkins brilliant portrayal of Dr. Hanibal Lecter. Lecter is a psychiatrist with an eating disorder: He’s a cannibal. So you see him on the screen apparently eating someone’s brains.

Now that picture is not one of a real psychopath. And neither is it a picture of a business consultant.

But . . .

There are number of identifiers of a psychopath, and his near-twin brother, the narcissistic personality disorder. They share common traits. One of the identifiers is a continuous attempt to manipulate people and outcomes.

But the most obvious identifier of the psychopath is anti-social behavior. Sound familiar? It should. It is common among people who insist that their understanding of life is the only one. Others must conform to their model of reality. And they undertake a number of activities to ensure this occurs.

Chief among these is manipulation. They want an outcome — their outcome. They will lie and cheat, use threats, violence and sex, and do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal.

And they will do it such charming way, that you don’t see the danger . . . until it is too late.

In the business consulting field, the psychopathic consultant is one who is supremely confident that his method of operating a company is the only one and you need to conform yourself to his management model. What are some of the signs of this personality disorder?

Maybe this is a picture of your consultant.

Or, it could even be a picture of your boss.

There is one response: run.

Undaunted, people launch themselves in various self-employment projects. But having found themselves on the self-employed merry-go-round, many find the journey tough going. This can lead to early retirement from self-employment and a loss of confidence in entrepreneur activity.

The mistakes many make, however, are readily overcome with a little planning and thought.

Here are five of the common mistakes made by startup businesses.

1. Lack of funds
Business needs money. However you look at a business, you soon find it does little else than consume funds. Business is, more than anything else, an expensive item. How expensive? It depends on the kind of business. But every business consumes capital at an alarming rate.

The business needs to provide a source of income for the business owner, not as profits to the owner but as a wage or salary to an employee. Nearly every small business I have been in (including my own in the early days) fails to pay the business owner a market wage. Not paying these kinds of expenses hides the true cost of running a business. While owners may forgo income in the short term to get the business rolling, most business people do this because they don’t have the funds.

Insufficient cash, however, is a symptom, not the disease. The real problem is either not enough sales or too much spending. Or both.

2. Too Much Debt
To solve the funding problem many business owners borrow to get the business going. But borrowing money can lead to some unexpected results.

Borrowing large sums of money when you have not learned to manage such sums can easily lead to disaster. One business I know exhibited this problem. The new owners obtained a $50,000 loan to start up the business, and spent a huge portion of it leasing prime office space and furnishing it to a very high standard. Rather than apply the funds to marketing and sales, they spent it on appearances. They lasted about three months before they shut the door.

3. Poor Pricing
The way many businesses get started is by pricing themselves at the lower end of the market. This pricing strategy has nothing to do with pricing for results. It is just that the business owner really does not have the courage to ask the higher prices that established businesses are charging.

The under-priced business owner soon finds that his customers really don’t appreciate him or the fact that he’s so cheap. He finds that his customers soon drift off to do business with the higher priced people in town, leaving him to find a new customer to replace the one he has lost.

It takes a year or so (sometimes a lot longer) of operating like this before the business owner decides he has little to lose if he puts up his prices. So he timidly asks the next customer to pay more, finds he gets no rejection on the basis of price, and finds now he can afford to offer a better quality service or product to the customer.

Since people do not buy on price but on value, the business owner is beginning to learn that his price is not as important as the value he brings to his customer.

Those businesses that don’t learn this lesson die a slow and lingering death.

4. Poor Sales and Marketing
Business is only produced when a sale has been made. Yet many attempt business without the skills of finding customers or making a sale. Somehow they believe that customers will walk in the door and all will be well.

Often the lack of marketing skills is tied with the lack of funds. Somehow business owners have to find a way to tell people the business exists and why they should do business with it. This might be done through radio, TV or newspaper advertising, telephone calls, direct mail, or personal calls. But however, it is done, it will cost money – lots of it.

5. Poor Management and Leadership
The common mistakes listed above all fall under a general heading: poor management and leadership. This, above all determines the success of the business. And while it is not necessary to get every step in business right, you have to do enough right things to make the business work properly.

Startup businesses are driven by a vision of the business owner. Too often that vision cannot be articulated clearly and translated into economic results (profits) for the business. Unless that vision is translated in goals and activities in the business, failure looms higher on the horizon. Management practices are needed to bring the vision to fruition.

This means giving appropriate time to planning, implementing appropriate accounting systems that accurately reflect the status of the business, hiring staff that will share the owner’s vision, then getting busy locating clients and creating happy customers.

The failure rate of small businesses is high because of the kinds of mistakes listed above. Don’t let your business be one of the failures.

1. Failure to Identify Customer Needs
Given that our goods and services are purchased to satisfy some need, it is surprising to see just how much advertising fails to meet the test of telling customers how this particular product or service will meet a perceived need.

The needs of customers are not that many, so it is difficult to understand why so much advertising fails to tell prospective buyers how a product or service can meets the needs of quality, performance, safety, convenience, or savings. If you want your advertising to work more powerfully for you, make sure it tells the reader how it satisfies some need in their lives and why it does it better than the competition.

2. Direct-Response Advertising
There are many kinds of ads we see in print or on screen. Some are informative. They tell us what`s available in the marketplace and where we can get it. And that`s where they stop. It makes no attempt to get the immediate buyer to do anything else than remember where to get a particular item or service.

Another kind of ad, however, does the same thing but goes one step further. It asks the reader or listener to pick up the phone or a pen, and respond immediately to the ad. This is direct-response advertising, and it has two important advantages over other kinds of advertising: immediate results and measurable results. It doesn`t take much to generate immediate sales, perhaps some time-limited special offer if people “act now”. And if the offer is genuine and of real value, then people can be expected to respond immediately to an ad.

Direct response advertising also allows for measuring the responses from the ad. This is important if we are trying to determine if an ad is producing sufficient business. By measuring response, we can also try other ads to see which produces the best results, thereby getting maximum value from our advertising dollars.

When cash flow is tight and sales are needed immediately, direct response advertising holds out an opportunity to bring immediate sales and therefore immediate cash to the company. Big companies can afford to waste money on advertising that does not require an immediate response. Smaller businesses don`t
have that luxury. Every advertising dollar must be made to work more powerfully, and direct-response advertising is the way to ensure this result.

3. Testing Advertising
Advertising needs to be tested, and there are many elements that can be tested to see where improvements can be made. A good headline is worth everything, because if it does not capture the attention of the reader or listener he won’t read or listen to what follows. A good headline, therefore, can significantly increase the response. Headline testing is an ongoing battle to capture the minds of readers and
listeners.

The copy of an ad should also be tested. Get a good headline and stick with it, but experiment with changes to the copy. Find improved ways to offer your product. Capture the imagination of the prospect so that he sees how your particular product will meet his needs better than any other products in the marketplace.

In newspapers or magazines it’s important to test the position of the ad. Many publishers will charge a premium to have an ad placed on the top portion of the right-hand page. They can do this because ads in this position tend to get read more often. Whatever you do, test the position- left-hand (verso) or right-hand (recto) page, top or bottom.

In radio or TV commercials, the way to test position is by time and the placement of other ads around yours. Insist your ad appears before or after different ads. Try a different time of day and night. Find out which works best for you. It goes without saying that an ad should be tested in small quantities before you
undertake the full rollout. One of my friends in marketing once insisted that twenty people was enough to provide a reliable sample, a point he had proven to many of his clients. So it is not necessary to test large numbers, but it is necessary to test. Then, when the full rollout occurs, the advertising will produce the best possible result at the time.

4. Closing the Sale
All advertising sells. Some ask for an immediate response. But in the end, all advertising sells.

As a result, it is important in advertising to use genuine proven sales techniques. Many people have a misconception about selling, an idea fostered by bad salesmen in the automobile, computer, or other industries. For many, sales means pressure to buy. For the professional salesmen, however, sales means providing people with the best information so they can make an informed decision.

Having informed the prospective buyer, however, it is then necessary to ask the customer to buy. This is called closing the sale, and there are many ways that this can be done in a conversation.

In written or spoken advertising, it is just as important to close the sale. You must ask the customer to buy, and ask him to buy now. That this needs to be done sensitively, without pressuring the buyer, goes without saying. But an awful lot of advertising fails the test at this point.

It is surprising to see just how much advertising fails to close the sale. The advertising copy can be brilliant, explain all the benefits, have a catchy headline to get people to read the whole ad, then fail to ask them to buy.

Make sure your advertising has a close. Ensure that it asks the prospect to make a decision now to buy the product or service. There is perhaps no better way to waste advertising dollars than failing to ask the prospective customer to “buy now”.

These four simple areas of emphasis can make all the difference in your advertising. Follow them diligently and they will give you a huge advantage when people read your advertising. And if your product or service is as good as you think it is, then those prospects who become customers will thank you for the extra effort you made to help them in their buying decisions.