The Best and the Rest
Ryals and Davies identified seven behaviors, of which only four were actually related to sales success. By mapping how salespeople relied on each behavior, they discovered eight types of salespeople. But only three were consistently effective, and they only made up 37% of the sample. The remaining five types of sales people — the other 63% — fell short.

The Effective Minority
Here’s a visualization of the skill-sets of the three effective types of salespeople — Experts, Closers, and Consultants. The closer each corner of the polygon is to the edge of the circle, the more effective the salesperson is at the corresponding behavior. Experts (9% of salespeople) are good at all seven skills; Consultants (15%) listen well and are good problem solvers; and Closers (13%) can pull off big product sales, but their smooth-talking style doesn’t work as well for selling services.

Ineffective Salesperson #1: The Socializer
Despite the reputation most salespeople have of being socially gifted, it turns out that Socializers are the worst-performing when it comes to making the sale. Notice how small their polygon is compared to the dotted line, which shows the average skill set of all salespeople. Socializers tend to chit-chat at the expense of actually making the sales pitch.

Ineffective Salesperson #2: The Storyteller
Storytellers also talk a lot, but at least their gab focuses on how other clients used the product or solved the problem. Ryals and Davies found that some storytelling could improve sales performance, but that too little or too much is counterproductive and turns customers off. The danger for storytellers is that pay too much attention to these past customers, and not enough on those sitting in front of them.

Ineffective Salesperson #3: The Narrator
Narrators hew too closely to their prepared marketing materials and their rehearsed sales pitch. If the client throws a curveball, they stick to their script and their marketing collateral instead of responding artfully.

Ineffective Salesperson #4: The Focuser
Focusers, like Narrators, desperately cleave to their pre-meeting prep and to conveying all of the technical aspects of their offering. They often insist on detailing every product feature, and may not hear customers’ needs.

Ineffective Salesperson #5: The Aggressor
Aggressors can be effective in the right setting. They approach every sales meeting as a pure negotiation on price. While some customers dislike this combative approach, and while aggressors aren’t very successful overall, every now and then they can score big wins. And they rarely concede too much.

Fixing the Problem with Sales Training
Ryals and Davies found that a disproportionate amount of training is allocated to presentation and rapport skills, as well as the actual sales pitch. Since everyone gets this training, these skills have been commoditized. Adding training on the key skill of rising to the challenge – that is, overcoming customer objections on the fly, the skill that all three of the “good” salespeople excelled at – would be a smart reallocation of training budgets.

All of us have at least one disruptive skill — a capability that we are uniquely good at that sets us apart from others. You may have been honing yours for years, or you may be so innately good at it that you don’t even notice it. Here are three ways to identify your unique skill:

1. Watch your reflexes. You may instinctively do what you’re good at without even noticing. Ask yourself: when I feel most successful or invigorated, what am I doing?
2. Look for confluences. A distinct skill may not be one thing, but an unusual intersection of ordinary proficiencies.
3. Listen to compliments. Peers, managers, direct reports, and even spouses are often good mirrors of your inherent strengths. Don’t habitually dismiss compliments, but mine them for your unique skills.

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Installing a sales system, one that everyone involved in selling in the organization operates, is the fastest way to improve overall marketing results. (I’m assuming you’ve also narrowly defined your ideal client, created a significant way to differentiate your business, and are consistently building trust through educational content.)  The end result with every business I’ve ever worked with was that we dramatically reduced the number of leads they were chasing (decreased expense) while also dramatically increasing the number leads they were converting to customers (increased revenue.) I’ve seen lead conversion rates go from 3% to over 50% when all of the parts of a total marketing system work together.  If you’re moving prospects logically through what I call the Marketing Hourglass you will see that by the time they get serious about a buying decision they’ve already sold themselves. This approach almost makes selling a non issue and delivers stunningly high conversion rates.  Below are the essential ingredients needed to operate your lead conversion system.

Discovery – You must have a planned response when a lead asks for more information. I know this sounds obvious, but few businesses do more than react. In order to move prospects you must have a call to action, education plan, and filter that helps qualify and direct leads to the next step. This is a significant step and one that can help you stop chasing the wrong leads while also giving your an opportunity to create a unique experience. Interrupt the norm for your industry here and you’ll help further cement how you’re different.

Presentation – Once a prospect determines they need to know more about your specific offerings, either by way of a demo or sales call, it’s important that you have a set way to present your organization. This is a point where many sales folks go out and try to answer the questions that prospects have. The problem with this approach is most prospects don’t know what questions they should have; so it’s really up to you to start adding value in the relationship by presenting what you know is useful, while also discovering their unique challenges. This is part scripted, part art, but it should be practiced consistently across the organization.

Nurturing – Depending upon the buying habits of your ideal customer or sales cycle for your particular industry, you will need a systematic approach for keeping leads that are starting an information seeking process warm as they move towards a buying decision. This is a place where technology can certainly help you make automated contacts via email or snail mail. Creating planned education events such as online seminars and peer-to-peer panel discussions is also another very effective way to nurture leads and continue to educate.

Transaction – For many in selling, the game ends when the customer says yes. Your lead conversion system must be created in a way that delivers the same experience once a prospect becomes a customer as was delivered throughout the courting period. The best way to do this is through a planned orientation process where you continue the educational approach by teaching the customer how to get the most from what they’ve agreed to buy. This can be through simple training video or a more elaborate new customer process, but this important step leads to a smooth transition from prospect to customer and often sets the tone for additional purchases and referrals.

Review - Your selling system won’t be complete until you create a process that allows you to measure and communicate the results your customers are experiencing. One of the best ways to do this is through some form of a planned results review process. By setting the expectation for this process up front you send a very strong signal that results matter, but you also get the opportunity to address issues that didn’t go as expected and collect client success stories and testimonials from your happiest clients.

If your company has the Premier Edition, you will have access to additional services and support functions. You can also sign up for the Standard Edition with many basic features for free if you choose.

The control panel is where your admin will manage all users and groups within your company’s account. To get to the control panel, visit www.google.com/a/yourdomain.com where ‘your domain’ is where you enter your company’s domain name.

Control Panel: Here, you can manage all users, set up services you want to use, contact support, manage billing and add domain aliases.

From the control panel, here is how you set up Google Apps:

1. Domain Verification

You will have 14 days to verify that you are the owner or admin of your domain. The sooner you verify it, the better or else Google will revoke your domain from Google Apps.

To verify, you have two options:
a. Upload a CNAME record, this is the easiest option
b. HTML, your web host

2. Add User Accounts

To add users, go to your administrative control panel. From there, you will see the option to add users. You can also upload them in bulk, which is easiest if you are migrating many users.

Here, you can also cluster users into groups to better manage them in the system. You can also add in nicknames that users want to go by or add in their aliases so they can receive work emails through other domain names that they may already have set up.

3. Change MX Records to point to the Google servers

This process changes your email flow to now point your company’s email to Google’s servers. It is easiest to change the MX Records of all employees and bring everyone over all at once. This ensures a timely transition and no problems with the transition later on.

4. Activate Email

In the control panel, you must now click to activate your new email system. The screen on the control panel will have a full set of instructions on how to do this.

Essentially, you must log in to your domain host and make the MX record change to point to Google. From the control panel, once you click to activate, your new Google Apps system will be active in 1-2 hours, or 24 hours maximum.

5. Set up email clients and mobile devices

Aside from accessing Google Apps from the web interface, you can also access it via Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird and more. Google suggests accessing it from the Google web interface for the best Google Apps experience since all new features are pushed here first, but use what you are most comfortable with.

Aside from adding desktop clients, you can also add Google Apps to your Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Phone and Android.

6. Data Migration

This feature is only available for Premier Edition users. If you have this edition, Google Apps will seamlessly migrate all of your mail, calendar content, and contacts from your old system(s) to Google. They have tools that pull your data right off the server. Another option is for Google to upload local data right from your computer to the Google server. You can choose either option.

There is a Setup Guide in the control panel which gives you a whole set of detailed instructions to clarify any steps for you.

Google Apps also has a Help Center that has both administrative and end user focused articles to bring you through this process.

If you are Premier Edition user, you will have access to 24/7 global support via email or phone.

As you probably know, all of Google’s existing services are quite easy and simple to use. Google is striving to make the user experience and interface for Apps as easy as possible too.

To get started with Google Apps, visit setup.googleapps.com.

The big question for many companies today is whether they should move to Google Apps to integrate all their business tools in one centralized place. While your personal company email system or Gmail alone may provide you the services that you need, optimizing and integrating many other tools with your email system can save your company more money and time than you may think.

Aside from the standard Google Apps plan which integrates Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Groups, Sites, and Video, there is also the Google Apps Marketplace where, as TechCrunch reported, “third-party apps can deeply integrate their products within Google Apps, which already some 25 million people are using. That also includes over 2 million businesses ranging from startups, to small businesses, to Fortune 500 companies.” This essentially allows for a one-stop shop for all your business needs from accounting tools to productivity management.

Why is Google Apps right for your company?

1. Transition between applications is seamless and very simple, allowing you to integrate different tools without wasting company time or money.

2. A one-stop shop for a variety of applications that your company can use.

3. Strong and extensive security system within Google Apps where you can comfortably store all your critical data in the cloud. In Googles’ blog, they explained, “We store customer data in fragments across multiple servers and across multiple data centers to both enhance reliability and provide greater security than can be achieved by storing all data on a single server. When only fragments are kept in any one place, the chance that a possible physical or computer-based compromise could result in the loss of meaningful information is greatly reduced.” We find this a very compelling case for moving to Google Apps since it almost completely ensures that you data is safe and secure.

4. Google Apps helps users migrate their data from Microsoft Outlook right into Apps with a seamless integration. The great benefit of this is that, “office workers can migrate thousands of e-mails, contacts and calendar data in just three clicks without any assistance from their IT administrator. This will prove useful to small business users that don’t have or require large IT staffs to help them manage their data.” The Google Apps Product Manager,Abhishek Bapna said of this, “We’re making it a lot easier for many end-users to move their old data themselves if their administrators aren’t planning server-side data migrations.” This move shows Googles’ aggressive stance in the cloud storage sector and their devotion to giving customers everything that they need in the easiest way possible.

5. Compelling price with superior benefits. Plain and simple: you pay only $50 per user per year for access to 25GB of online storage, 50 times more storage than the industry average. There is no hardware or software requirements and little to no administration needed to run it. This results in a huge time and cost savings for your business when you move to Google Apps.

6. Google has massive economies of scale. Their engine is solid, collaborating is incredible, and they can handle huge volumes of data very efficiently. Simply put: you don’t have to worry about many issues with data integration or slow servers since Google is more than prepared to process everyone’s data.

7. Google has a strong reputation for creating stable, efficient and easy-to-use products for little to no cost to the user. Although Google may be seen as the underdog in the applications market right now with Microsoft holding a steady 81% of market share with Office 2007, Google is gaining market share traction and has user loyalty as an advantage.

8. Collaborating is easier than ever. Google is ahead of Microsoft by miles on this one. Not only are all the applications closely integrated, but users can also access their apps right on their smart phones.

9. Soon there will be capabilities to search across all your Google applications in one spot. Jason Kinkaid, writer for TechCrunch said, “there’s a good chance that we’ll soon be able to enter a search query into, say, Gmail, and see not just matches from Gmail, but also results in Google Calendar, Docs, and Wave as well.” Google hasn’t officially announced this, but hinted at it before the May 20, 2010 post.

The principle is reciprocation: the psychological phenomenon in which we feel drawn to repay what another has provided for us first. An obvious idea, but understanding its nuances can enhance your ability to build stronger networks, create more trusting relationships, encourage long term collaboration and become more influential over others.

What is particularly fascinating about the way reciprocation works is the order of the exchange. Unlike a traditional “if you help me then I will help you” transaction, reciprocation requires us to take the lead and be the first to give in the hope that the recipient will play by the rule and respond accordingly. This isn’t as naïve as it sounds; numerous studies have in fact shown that if we give first, those we invest in will very often live up to their obligations — often even more than when we demand the initial move.

A series of studies conducted by my Yes! co-authors Robert Cialdini and Noah Goldstein show how this played out in a business setting, looking, for example, at how hotels asked customers to reuse their linens. The study showed that when guests were informed that the hotel had already made a donation to an environmental organization, those guests were 45% more likely to reuse their towels and linens. This was compared to a standard approach in which guests were told that the hotel would make a donation only if they reused their towels first. Compared to this standard incentive-based message, the”give-first” strategy resulted in a more desirable change in guests’ behavior, more environmentally protective outcomes, and increased cost savings for the hotel.

The same holds for other situations that require an element of persuasion. In another series of studies, researchers sought to persuade business executives to complete health and safety questionnaires about their organisation. They found that the inclusion of a $5 gift doubled the response rate compared to the promise of a reward of $50. Not only did the gift trump the reward in terms of response, success came at a tenth of the price.

However, the key to the reciprocity approach lies in your response to the message of thanks for the initial favor. How you phrase your “you’re welcome” can determine your footing for your own request down the road.

Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting that “Yes I did help you out and now you owe me” is the right way to go; of course you’ll just be branded as someone whose help is best avoided in the future! But the much more common response —”Hey, it’s no problem, I was happy to help.” — isn’t quite right either, because it fails to take advantage of the very moment when you are at your most persuasive: the moment immediately after someone has thanked you.

Instead, you should highlight the help and assistance you have given in a specific way that will increase the likelihood that it will be reciprocated fully in the future. For an individual, that means “Happy to help — I know how valuable it would be to get your help if I ever need it.” Or, “No problem — I know that if the situation were ever reversed, you’d help me.“

And in a more formal business setting, if you’re looking to secure future business opportunities from your currently satisfied customers, it’s: “You’re most welcome. It’s what we at XYZ Corp. do for our important customers” or “I am glad that we were able to resolve this issue. It’s the sort of thing you can be assured of when you deal with ABC Inc.“

The key to optimising the principle of reciprocation, then, is a two step approach: give help or assistance first and then be sure to position your help as part of a natural and equitable process of give and take.

And by the way, if you found this article helpful, please let me say: “I am delighted that you found it so useful. It’s the sort of thing you should expect from wilmerdon.com.“

Credit: Steve Martin, Director of Influence At Work, UK.
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