Time Really Is Money Managing Your Customers’ Time To Win More Orders

Your Prospects Are Giving You Their Time. What Are You Giving Them in Return?

I read a blog posting recently about what asalesperson could do to increase sales. The title was something catchy like "A Billion and One Tips to IncreaseSales." It was hard to argue with the premise of the post. Everyone insales can use good advice on increasing sales. There’s always something new tolearn.

In this case, the author's tips were all aboutcreating more sales activity. He asked, What should you do if you haveprospects but they aren't moving forward fast enough? His answers were designedto create such a flurry of sales activity around prospects that they wouldengage and move forward with the seller.

But is random sales activity the same as selling?And, if a prospect is not yet fully committed to the buying process, is randomsales activity the way to get them engaged?

Nothing is sometimes better than something

I once had a salesperson named Arte who hadconfused activity with selling. He came into my office one day and told me thathe had invented his own method of selling that he called SWARM. The acronymstood for Surround With Activity to Regain Momentum. His idea was to envelophis prospects in a constant swarm of sales activities—phone calls, visits,emails, voice messages, invitations to webinars and seminars, and productdemonstrations—in the hope that eventually something would stick and theprospect would relent and engage.

How'd that work for Arte? Not so well. But hegot high marks for creativity.

Unfortunately, many salespeople fall into thetrap of believing that doing something, anything, with a prospect is betterthan doing nothing. This happens all the time when the prospect has gone radiosilent. There are lots of reasons why this occurs, and it is the job of thesalesperson to determine why and respond appropriately and with content thathas value for the prospect. But rarely is the correct response to bombard theprospect with trivial, time-wasting requests and interactions.

Keep in mindthe customer's objective

In a sales situation, or a buying situation, itis important to keep in mind that the goal of the customer is to gather theinformation they need to make an informed purchase decision with the leastpossible investment of time. This is not to say that customers won’t spend theappropriate time to purchase a product or service. This just means that theydon't want to invest a minute more than they have to.

Create anddeliver value each time you talk to your prospects and customers

If you are selling, all of your interactionswith a customer should have a defined purpose, deliver clear value, and supportthe customer's goal. Instead of taking up his or her time with trivialrequests, consider the opposite approach: make sure that every interaction youhave with a prospect or customer achieves Maximum Impact in the Least Time(MILT) possible. It requires planning and thought to make certain that in eachinteraction you are providing information that will bring them closer to theirgoal of making an informed decision. The result is that you will bring value tothe customer through your selling. If you want a customer to engage, createvalue for them through your actions. Wasting their limited time with"sales activities" does the opposite.

Selling has a purpose. It is not the goal ofyour prospects or customers to spend time with you. In fact, the opposite istrue. They want to accomplish their job, which is to buy a product or service,while spending as little time with the salesperson as possible. The winningsalesperson will usually be the one who knows how to make that happen.

Key Takeaway:  Create value with each interaction. Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing something.

The Economics of Attention

Shouting louder isn't the key to being heard

In 1971, Herbert Simon, a professor atCarnegie-Mellon University and a future Nobel Prize winner in economics, wrotea prescient description of the upcoming information revolution and the impactthat the ready availability of seemingly endless quantities of informationwould have on our ability to process and use it. Although Simon wasn'tspecifically addressing the selling and buying of products and services, theconclusions he drew apply to today's sales environment.

The following is a quote from a paper Simonpublished in 1971:

"In aninformation-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of somethingelse: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What informationconsumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hencea wealth of information creates apoverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficientlyamong the overabundance of information sources that might consume it." (Simon, H. A.(1971), "Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World", inMartin Greenberger, Computers, Communication, andthe Public Interest, Baltimore, MD: The JohnsHopkins Press,ISBN0-8018-1135-X. pp 40-41)

What Simon was describing was a situation basedon the laws of economics—namely, that the supply of any commodity, in this casethe attention span of any consumer of information, is limited, and that marketforces will efficiently allocate that scarce resource among the variousinterests competing for it.

Let's apply Simon's lesson to the sellingenvironment. Your prospects and customers are, by definition, consumers ofinformation. They seek information from different sources, such as theInternet, social media, and salespeople, in order to make fully informed decisionsabout purchasing the right products and services for their needs. However, asSimon pointed out, prospects and customers have a limited supply of attentionto divide among the information sources requesting a piece of it. At some pointduring their buying process, they have to decide how to allocate theirattention to vendors, administrative tasks, management responsibilities,meetings, making phone calls, returning emails, updating their Facebook status,and texting with their spouse, kids, and friends.

Your prospects and customers make an economicdecision about how to prioritize the allocation of their attention bandwidth.Sellers that provide the greatest return to the prospect on the time investedin them will be given more time to sell the prospect. In other words, sellersthat create value for the prospect and customer just by not wasting their time will have the inside track. And sellers thatwaste the prospect's time will not get responses to their emails and voicemails.

In my book, Zero-Time Selling, 10 Essential Steps to Accelerate Every Company's Sales, I discuss how your prospects calculate an economic return on the time they invest in you as a seller. I call this the Return on Time Invested (ROTI.) Your prospects judge every sales interaction they have with you by whether it provides value. If you waste the precious minutes of attention the prospect has allocated to you, then they will make the perfectly rational decision to invest their time with another seller. Again, are you wondering why your prospects aren't listening to you? Now you know.

How can you effectively cut through the welterof information your prospects confront and become an asset instead of aliability on their attention balance sheet? The key is to Sell with MaximumImpact in the Least Time (MILT)™. Selling with MILT requires you to beresponsive. In sales, responsiveness is the combination of information contentand speed. Quickly provide all of the information the prospect needs to make aninformed purchase decision with the least investment of their attention(otherwise known as "time") and you will be rewarded with all thetime you need to make your case. Help your prospect get their job done morequickly and they will allocate more of their limited attention to you becausethey have learned that you provide a better value and enhanced return on theinvestment of their time than your competitors do.

Selling with MILT requires planning. Eachinteraction with a prospect has to create value for them. Whether it is a phonecall, email, text, video chat, or sales call, planning for the next prospectinteraction has to answer the question: what information does the prospect needfrom us today, or what questions do they need answered today, to move to thenext step in their buying process?

Increase your prospect's ROTI by ruthlesslyeliminating the time-wasting "check-in" and "touching base"calls from your sales repertoire. e sure to also eliminate the "getbacks" from your selling.  ("That'sa great question, Mr. Prospect. Unfortunately I don't know the answer and I'llhave to get back to you with thatinformation.") Make absolutely certain that the person talking to yourprospect can answer whatever question arises.

Use the Economics of Attention to youradvantage. And keep in mind that the ROTI is a two-way street. Maximize theprospect's return on the time they invest with you and you’ll earn the maximumreturn, in the form of orders, on the time you invest in them.

Key Takeaway: Sell with the Maximum Impact in the Least Time (MILT) to maximize your customer’s ROTI.

Are You Worth Your Prospect’s Time? 

Veryearly in my sales career I made a cold call on the CEO of a large homebuilderin my territory. I was selling accounting systems for what was at the time oneof the larger computer companies. I was freshly trained in sales and computers,a newly minted sales rep ready to go out and conquer. Shoes shined and redpower-tie straightened, I marched into the lobby and asked the receptionist tosee the CEO. I fully expected to be rebuffed. so I was completely taken abackwhen the CEO, Bill, came into the lobby, shook my hand. and escorted me back tohis office.

Billwas very polite and completely old-school, even for that time. Silver hair,nice tan, expensive 3-piece suit. He took me into his office, which was emptyexcept for his massive wooden desk with a phone on it. He motioned for me tosit down opposite him. Bill asked for my business card. I reached over theaircraft carrier-sized surface of the desk and handed him my card. He took it,slowly turning it in his hands, examining it back and front, and laid it on thedesk in front of him. "So, young man, what can I do for you?"

Itook a deep breath and launched into my pitch. Just as I had been trained todo. Bill let me talk for about a minute or two and then raised his hand for meto stop. He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a stack of businesscards bound with a rubber band that was literally two inches high. "Theseare all the computer salespeople that have been by my office in the lastyear." He spread the cards across the top of his desk. There were cardsfrom nearly every sales rep in my company, as well as those of every competitorI could think of. "Tell me, how are you different or better than any ofthose folks?"

Theanswer was...that I wasn't. Yet.

Give your prospect a reason to buy

I learned later thatBill talked to nearly 50 salespeople just like me every year. Outwardly therewas no question that his firm would benefit from upgrading its computer andaccounting systems. Bill knew that and had simplified the task for everysalesperson, giving each one an opportunity to speak to him directly. Therewere no layers to go through, no BANT qualification to process because theywere talking to the ultimate decision-maker. And yet, no seller had ever gottenpast the first call with Bill.

Why?Because Bill was waiting for someone to give him a reason to buy. That reasonwas not going to be a new feature or its associated benefits. He was patientlywaiting for a salesperson to create some value for him by providing a simple,cogent reason for him to invest his time and money in a new system. In short,he was waiting for a salesperson to step up and differentiate his products fromthe rest.

Thelesson Bill taught me continues to grow in relevance for salespeople, both newand experienced. Today more than ever, how you sell is as important as what yousell to create value, build trust, and differentiate yourself from yourcompetition. It isn’t enough to show up at a prospect's office or on a salescall and expect the buyer to fall in love with your product or service solelybased on its features and benefits. It also isn’t just about playing thenumbers game. You could make a million cold calls, but if you don’t give theprospect something of value, something that provides them with a return on the timethey invested in you, then you are never going to earn their business.

Ask yourself a simple question

Beforeevery prospecting call, sales call, or existing account review, ask yourself:What value are you creating for the buyer? What content are you providing thatwill enable them to move further along in their buying process and perceivethat the time invested in you was time well spent?

Inthe formative years of my career there weren't as many resources available asthere are today for salespeople to research industries, companies, andindividuals, and to develop a better understanding of your prospect’srequirements for the products and services you sell. We didn't have access toan Internet full of white papers, articles, and blogs to help prospects makemore informed purchase decisions in a shorter time. (There were no poweroutlets on the covered wagons and no Wi-Fi on the Oregon Trail.)

Theapproach I took to creating value on a first call was to tell stories thatillustrated how customers were using our products how our products provided theunique value they needed.  Simple storieshelped my prospects envision how they too would benefit by using our products.By using their time wisely I earned the right to more of their time.

Alittle over a year and more than 50 salespeople later, I went to see Billagain. I was a bit wiser and more experienced. We started all over again. Butthis time with a different conclusion.

"Please Don't Make Me Repeat Myself"

An inescapable fact of selling is the inelasticityof the time available to your prospects and customers to perform their jobs.They are trying to increase their productivity and accomplish more in theirbusiness, with the same number of poeple, or fewer, and fewer resources. Justlike every company out there.

Of course, the same applies to your company and your business. If you are tasked to sell more with the same resources, then time becomes the most precious commodity you have. Right? If you are given a higher quota and you divide that number by the number in that song from the musical Rent ("five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure, measure a year...") it means that you have to sell more dollars per minute this year to meet your objectives. You don't have time to waste. And your customers don't have time to waste.

It is important to examine each salesopportunity you are currently working to determine if you are: (a) consumingtoo much of the prospect's time; and thereby (b) decreasing your chances ofwinning their business. These two go hand in hand.

Here is a simple metric you should use todetermine if you are frittering away the prospect's time (and with it anypotential order.) Answer this question: How many times has your prospect had totell you their story? Their story includes their requirements, their budget,their timeframes, their decision-making process, and whatever other backgroundinformation you need to support them through the buying process.

The more times a prospect is forced to tell youtheir story, the less likely you are to win their business.

If you make your prospects tell you their storymore than once, then it means one or more of the following time-wastingsymptoms are present in your selling:

1. You’re notlistening to the customer. How can you be responsive to the customer andprovide them the information they need if you aren't listening and documentingwhat they are telling you?

2. You’re toodependent on others to sell. This means that your salespeople don't haveenough knowledge and expertise about your products or your prospects'industry.  Each new person that isbrought into an account invariably wants to hear the customer's story with theirown ears.

3. Yoursalespeople are too reliant on management to win the sale. It is myexperience, both as a salesperson and sales manager, that if you introduce asales manager into a sales situation the first thing he or she will do is askthe prospect to their story. The manager does this because he or she doesn'treally trust the version provided by the salesperson.

Keep in mind that your prospects want to makeinformed purchase decisions with the smallest investment of their timepossible. Forcing them to repeat their story to multiple people from the samecompany wastes time that they could be spending on other productive activitiesand will lead them to conclude that working with your company would not beefficient or wise.

Key Takeaway: Don’t make your customer repeat himself.

One last point. If you are wasting thecustomer's time you are also reducing your own sales productivity. Spend toomuch time with one customer and you’ll have less time to spend with otherprospects and customers.