Four Secrets to Selling More

by David K. Williams and Mary Michelle Scott

It's time to forget everything you thought you knew about sales, because the down economy is challenging traditional rules. At our company, we've grown through the recession by relying on four counterintuitive sales tactics: We've avoiding hiring hotshot sales stars. We've eliminated the prizes and incentives most companies use to motivate sales teams. We've invested more money in customer support. And we've refused to offer big discounts to drive sales.
Does this sound like insanity? Maybe, but it's worked for us. And our philosophy actually meshes nicely with advice that consultants Mathew Dixon and Brent Adamson offered in the pages of HBR last fall.
1. Pass on hiring hotshot sales gurus
You know the "superstar" who always hits top results, while everybody else in the department is compared and measured in reference to this competitive star? It's the wrong strategy. We've worked hard from the beginning to avoid hiring Lone Wolves — the all-star players who resist bringing in a second team member to help complete a deal. They're too determined to win or lose the entire commission on their own. In contrast, we hire participants who are prepared to thrive in a team environment.
To make it clear to everyone that we value teamwork, we never manage one member in comparison to another, i.e. "Nathan is our best sales consultant, so can you model his behavior and 'fix' your approach?" Holding one person up on a pedestal to another is less effective than encouraging and rewarding individuals for the way they rise up and respond as a team. This is even more important in any kind of complex sale that requires a consultative approach.
The dog-eat-dog sales management strategies of times past will not work in a down economy. Salespeople need to work with each other, from the perspective of the customer's point of view. They need to be great presenters and even better listeners. So the hotshot salespeople your competitors are perpetually trying to hire away? Let them go.
2. Lose the incentives.
In the depth of the bad economy, our own sales VP, in an effort to avoid cutting commissions, went to his team in full candor and told them the traditional sales incentives — the flat screen TV's, the iPads, the trips and prizes — were going to disappear. He didn't know what to expect — people in the industry told us we were insane to consider this option, and in honesty, it could have been the death of our sales. However, we found the reverse.
The salespeople respected our dedication to protecting their commissions. They sold harder and better. In turn, we wrapped our support around them, doubling down on the money we expended to generate leads. We all knew that in a bad economy, it would take more leads to produce an equivalent level of sales.
The results: Our sales held even in 2009, grew 40% in 2010, 60% in 2011, and are on a 77% run rate for 2012. The sales incentive rewards never came back, but the salespeople's incomes and commissions have steadily grown. They became stronger and more determined to find the customers our products and services could help. Today, they are our partners (and the company's owners as well, as we move to enact our company stock option plan). In an environment of mutual respect and trust, they appreciate the investments we make in lead generation, customer support, and the other mechanisms we provide to help them succeed. In return, they prefer to forego the traditional incentives.
3. Your Best Secret Weapon for Sales: Customer Support
Here's a non-intuitive secret: Your next level of new revenue may come from renewals, add-ons and upsells. All of these are forms of revenue you can drive from redoubling your focus on after-sale service and first-rate customer support.
It's tempting to cut customer support teams to a minimum when economic conditions are hard. Don't. Train those teams to keep those hard-won customers — provide them with additional options in a consultative relationship. When these newly discovered "salespeople" we call Customer Account Managers can work as a team to make customers as happy as possible, revenues soar. In these cases, we do provide sales incentives, but not to individuals. When teams of 5-7 employees supporting several hundred customers achieve new revenue goals, we give the prize (such as new iPads) to the entire team. For a small business in particular, service is the classic competitive advantage and is especially key.
4. Hold the Line on Prices
During a down economy, we advise companies to resist the classic tendency to agree to profit eating sales and discounts. Don't give your product away. You should compete with service, quality and uniqueness. Create a specialized niche (such as inventory control) and reinforce your competitive advantage.
During the recession, we held strong on our prices and even enacted a price increase. We didn't flinch. While our competitors desperately slashed prices in an effort to boost revenues, we realized we couldn't afford to be disingenuous to the customers we already had. We held the line. For us, it was a winning strategy — and in hindsight, we believe it was a costly mistake that caused several of our former competitors to fail or to severely contract.
We have tested and proven these principles for several years. While our approach flies in the face of pervasive sales philosophies, we would hold that a challenging economy is the ideal (and even vital) time to question and discard traditional sales rules.
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