Why Companies Have Revenue Problems - Ram Charan's Book On Selling by Joe Murphy

I blogged earlier about Ram Charan's book called "Profitable Growth." If you haven't read it , I would recommend doing so, as soon as you can.

It's really a book on growing the revenue. It is full of ideas, ideas that are contrarian to the thinking of most managers and executives. I was always taught to go for the homerun. But as Charan points out, it is really the singles and doubles that count.

As I thought about it, the best sales people hit singles and doubles, a lot or . . . most of the time. It's the big homerun deals they won every so often that put them into the stratisphere.

What can we learn from this?

My take away is:

Too often we aim for the fences. When we do this, we swing hard and because of the natural laws of sales, the client avoids making a decision because the deal is too big and therefore too risky. So, we have no sale.

Second, when we aim for the fences, we tend to put all our time into this one sales, the equivalent of all our eggs in one basket. And we know the "all our eggs in one basket parable."

Third, when we swing for the fences, we swing hard. Sometime trying too hard causing us to fall down when we swing (like one baseball great often did) . . . the equivalent of making mistakes. We force the ball. Sometimes, baseball, like golf, like selling, is about finesse. You have to hit through the ball, and not hammer it. Like sales, espeically in consultative type selling, you have to act somewhat aloof, not starved, and not trying to go for it all.

My point here is this. One of the worst sales people I knew, changed to become one of the best, by hitting singles (in some cases he hit bunts to get on base (really small deals)). Now he is a major hitter for Bearing Point - viewed by many as their top sales person.

But you wouldn't know this 10 or 15 years ago. How did he get so good? He hit singles. A lot of them.

He learned the art of the small deal. He learned it by seeing the small deal so many times, it became instinctive. Now he is hitting grand slams. He is the Barry Bonds of Bearing Point - without steroids!

Hit singles. Crawl before walking. Walk before running. Practice before heading to the marathon.

Best of luck! Visit my web site http://www.josephbmurphy.com/

Winning Business By Preparing & Sitting Where The Client Sits

This may sound a little trite. But I am telling you, a little meeting before the big client meeting is key. When you have project team members coming in from across the country, they all aren't thinking like you, or even thinking about the project.



I am a big advocate of a meeting before the meeting. It needs to be long enough so everyone understands the objective of the client meeting the next day. The objective is of course more than just a successful meeting, because that's too obvious. Any one can say, "The objective of the meeting is too have a good meeting." Duh.



The objective is to build confidence in the project team. The project team's perceived capabilities, experience and the ability to get along with the client could be great objectives, because those are the thing that lead to a successful meeting.



Discussing the objectives and getting agreement is job number one. The key leader must facilitate this discussion to get everyone thinking about this.



The second critical aspect is getting everyone to sit in the chairs of the client tomorrow and think about how would these objectives be proven. A good discussion should ensue hear.



Last, great preparation means again, sit in the chair of the client and ask the question, "What if the client asks you this?" When you get the people to respond to the question it forces their brains to work. It also gives you as a facilitator of the meeting whether your message has sunk through all the stuff they have been wrestling with that is unrelated to your meeting tomorrow.



There is a great quote; "Your statement makes you think. Your question makes me think." Not only that, it makes your mouth connect to your brain.



By the way, your preconceived answer could be usurped by their answer, because it may be even better than yours (surprise, surprise).

The most important fact here is - to meet. Meeting insures a better outcome. Prepare, prepare, prepare. Being casual, brings about casualties.

Good Luck!