I presented this couple of years ago at my company HelloSoft, to get some sales orientation into the FAE, engineering teams.

1. Sales Process & Communication
Rajesh Sengamedu
01 August 2006

2. Presentation Objectives
• Who is a sales person?
• What is the generic sales
process?
• Communication pitfalls
• Improving
communication
• Summary

3. Disclaimer Statements & Request
• I BELIEVE, contents of this presentation is NOTHING NEW to
any one of you
– I will only reinforce what each one of know about how to win more
customers, gain customer satisfaction
• Listen to this presentation with your gut-feel /instincts
– This is practical & common-sense approach
– I use it consciously most of the time
• My objective is to share my experiences in sales
– I am NOT intending to teach /preach
– Anybody who wishes to take vigorous ‘notes’ is going to miss my point
• REQUEST: Time is short, BE INTERACTIVE
– This is NOT a one way traffic

4. Let’s begin with SIMPLE QUESTION
• What business is your company into?

5. SIMPLE QUESTIONS, SIMPLE ANSWERS
Making Money!

6. HOW?
• We have to find ‘somebody’ who will give us money
• In exchange for ‘something’
– They would value
– They need
• NOT in exchange for ‘something’
– We have
– We can give
• ‘Somebody’ = Customer
• ‘Something’ = ?
– Tough to define!!
• Our Product?
• Our Service?
• Our Reputation?
• Our Roadmap?
– Usually it is a combination of all that wins us customers

7. ‘EXCHANGE’
• Exchange is a sale
– Customer signing the PO!!!
• SALE is the most important step
– To get customers
– To make money
VIRTUOUS
– To get our salaries
– To invest in new products
– To get more customers
– To make more money
• Ignore SALE
– Reverse of the above!! VICIOUS

8. ALL OF US HAVE TO BECOME SALES GUYS!!!!!
RIGHT / WRONG?

9. Who is a sales person?
WHO ?
ACCOUNT MANAGER
FAE
CUST. SUPPORT
ENGG./ MKTG.
GM / CEO

10. Who is a sales person?
ACCOUNT MANAGER
FAE
CUST. SUPPORT
ENGG./ MKTG.
GM / CEO

11. Everybody is a sales guy!!
• Degree differs
• Everything we do should focus on customer
– Not engineering
– Not technology
– Not product
• Winning and growing customer base is like
– Playing football OR 4x100m relay race
– Teamwork & Coordination is the key
• Focus on ‘outside in’ rather than ‘inside out’

12. The Generic Sales Process: AIDA
• Attention
• Interest
• Desire
• Action
• Questions:
– Is AIDA the responsibility
entirely of a ‘sales’ guy?
– How can the team contribute
in the sales process?

13. Communication
• Our only tool for AIDA
• Methods
– Email < Telephone < IM <F2F
– Other methods: web,
tradeshows etc
• (this is not focus of this
presentation)
• Understand customer needs
by listening / active
participation
– ‘Outside-in’ approach
– Helps in presenting our value
appropriately
Customer Your company

14. Six Critical Relationship Skills
• Presence
– Communicate Energy, Interest
• Relating
– Build rapport, use ack, empathize
• Questioning
– Will talk in detail in next slides
• Listening
– Will talk in detail in next slides
• Positioning
– Demonstrate value and apply by customizing product knowledge to
customer needs
• Checking
– Get feedback
– Validate Assumptions
• ASSUME: Remove ‘U’ and ‘ME’ and you will become one if you assume

15. Common pitfalls in communication
• One-way traffic
– ‘I will dump all the info I have on to the customer’
– Let him sort, collate and make sense of the info
• I have a short meeting, but SO MUCH to talk
– Dump, dump, dump!
• Not listening to what the customer is saying
– No attempt to understand his problems
– No attempt to understand seriousness of his concerns
– Customer saying that he is going to be in a soup if we do not deliver
that bug-fix by 3 days!
• Not sticking to our simple committments
– Ex: Customer expects response in 2 days and we don’t
– Ex: Calling customer later than agreed time
– Ex: Promising a customer he will receive our email by end of the day
• Not communicating value appropriately
– Value implies, solution meeting customer needs, not product that we
have

16. BALANCE & SEDUCTION
• Build
– Personal Equity
– Organisational Equity
• People buy from people they respect
– Attention to small things will increase
their respect for you
– Call customer when you don’t need him
• Emotional bank balance
– Debits /credits keep happening all the
time
– Trick is to increase credits for winning
respect
• Seduce your customer to go to bed
with you!

17. Why are we afraid to ask questions?
• No time
• I will lose control
• Customer may think I am not prepared
• Customer will object
• I risk offending customer
• I have to answer
• Worse of all, I know all his problems!!

18. Improving communication
• Remember Ganesha!
– His ears are bigger than his mouth
– Listen twice over: Talk Once / 2:1 rule
Ask questions to understand
customer needs
6 WIVES, 1 HUSBAND
Use Open Ended Questions beginning
with
WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY,
WHICH, WHO, HOW
Information sharing
Each one of us knows some but not all
aspect of customer needs
Customer knows his needs better
We have to team-work to learn his
needs

19. KEY MESSAGES
• LISTEN, LISTEN: TALK
• TEAMWORK ALONE CAN SCORE GOALS
• DELIVER YOUR SMALL COMMITMENTS
• SET UP TO SCORE GOAL
– PLAN, TIME IT, PASS THE BALL, SCORE THE GOAL

20. Call for Action
• Request your feedback
– Just email me your ‘A HA’: One liner, good enough
• Jot down in a piece of paper
– What are the top 3 things you would do
differently?