BOOMOLOGY!™ is a unique sales language and selling methodology that empowers business leaders and sales people by transcending the simple nature of selling in a transactional manner, and instead promotes fundamental success values, such as: insight, empathy, collaboration, creativity, efficiency, integrity, trust and loyalty, and of course - optimum sales performance!
Our language is unique, so too is our approach to selling. To wet your appetite, below is a quick snippet from some of the terminology we use in our sales training workshops.
Unique Selling Proposition
A Unique Selling Proposition [USP] is a clearly defined statement your sales team passionately communicates to best describe how your business and its products or services, adds value and serves your customers. A USP isn’t just an internal positioning definition; rather it’s a succinct, well thought–out and crafted statement that subjectively connects to your customer’s fears, frustrations and aspirations, to assist sales people to deliver what your customer’s need and really want.
Empathy Selling
Empathy Selling is a compassionate understanding of the thoughts and feelings of your prospects and customers. Empathy; quite simply, puts you into the hearts and minds of others. Some refer to this state as vicariously walking in another man or woman’s shoes, we call it taking the time to genuinely consider the thoughts and feelings others. Empathy is one of the most important and fundamental elements to successful human interaction. Just as selling, in its various forms and guises, is one of the most important elements developing success in life and indeed business. A sales person or business that lacks empathy generally does not posses the capacity to truly understand and connect with its prospects and customers.
Value Component
A Value Component is a core sales function performed by one person, or a group of people, in a predetermined and highly efficient manner. In sales value components can include: sales leadership, target market research, prospect generation and appointment setting, relationship development/conversion/replication, project and account management, administration etc and so forth. To maximise the potential and output of a value component, a specialist usually performs a small number of value components only, and delivers value at a more advanced level than any single person, group, or entity could achieve by performing multiple value components concurrently. Value components promote specialisation and the perpetual development of skills, behaviours and efficiencies through repetition.
Value x Time = Output
In BOOMOLOGY! a sales person’s time is best spent on core activities that promote the most value per time spent to achieve maximum output. [V x T = O]
Business Friendships
A Business Friendship is another term we use for a Customer. A Business Friendship is no dissimilar to a social or personal friendship, the same rules apply, such as; commonality and camaraderie, adding value, listening and understanding, trust and integrity and let’s not forget good old fashioned manners. In a business friendship the monetary exchange for a product or service is merely a formality as part of the relationship development process, but it’s not the basis of the relationship. The relationship is rooted in solid foundations that transcend merely a ‘buying or selling’. This type of customer connection supersedes a price comparison transactional based relationship. Business Friendships promote loyalty and loyalty promotes a healthy, profitable and sustainable business.
No Cost Value
No Cost Value [NCV] is the value and services your sales people create for your prospects and customers that require little, if any, financial investment, other than, time, a bit of creative thought, and innovation. In markets that operate with fierce competition and minimal differentiation between companies, products and service offerings, the extra value your sales people create becomes crucially important in capturing the hearts and minds of prospects.
Retro Service
Retro Service is achieved via two modes: passionate People and the unique and memorable Experience they create for your customers. Retro Service is the form of service our parents and grandparents experienced back in the day. The form of service they not only received, but expected. Such as, having your petrol pumped at the local petrol station, or the manager at a restaurant knowing you by name and ushering you to your favorite seat, and even remembering the wine you ordered previously. Although times have changed – our intrinsic human nature has not. We all still desire to be loved, respected, appreciated and remembered - this is the essence of Retro Service.
Balance Sheet Business
A Balance Sheet Business, or ‘BS Business’, is a business set up solely for the purposes of generating money and extracting shareholder returns. In a BS Business the customer’s are essentially a means of which to generate a profit, instead of being the true nature and purpose of the business. This money making psychology takes precedence over all else, even at the detriment of team members and customers. When a business and its people exist in this type of self focused state - more often than what is attracted are people and circumstances, of a similar, if not, identical likeness. When a business is failing or refusing to service and add value to its customers at the required levels, the mirror soon appears, and serves the same consumption driven and self focused customers. Anyone who’s been in business long enough knows how hard it is to be build a successful business with these types of customers, it’s down right impossible.
Emotive Connections
Many believe humans are rationally motivated, and the decisions we make, are more often that not, logical and considered by nature. We may appear to be civilised and advanced intellectual creatures on the surface, however, when you analyse and really observe the world in which we all share and experience on a deeper level, it soon becomes profoundly evident, most, if not all, human behavior derives from the emotional region of the brain. The notion of Logic V’s Emotion is an insightful and interesting topic for discussion indeed. Equally as illuminating is the discussion, or better, ‘inquiry’ into what really drives and motivates your customer’s to take action and buy what you are selling.
Heart Listening
Often when a person believes they are listening to another they are actually listening to the sound of their own internal dialogue, and waiting for their own opportunity to speak next. Even when a person is actively listening to another, they are usually just hearing and responding to the words that are being spoken. The art of ‘Heart Listening’ transcends to a masterful level where not only are you hearing the words being spoken but a total focus on the other person allows you to gain awareness of their energy, emotion/s and attitudes and the underlying tone or impact of the conversation - where it is taking you and the other person. Heart Listening allows you to more accurately assess and guide the conversation and genuinely connect with your customer. It is at this depth of listening that your intuition will be most available to you and will provide you with the most possible amount of information about the ‘heart’ of the issue for your customer and the underlying impact in the moment.
People rarely buy what they need - if you sell them what they really want!
In parts of poverty stricken African it’s a very different story; people buy and barter in exchange for what they need to survive on a daily basis. In the western civilized world, rightly or wrongly, we are driven by consumerism. Our basic needs have been replaced with wants and aspirations. These wants defined [or redefine] who we are, what we stand for, and where we are going in life.
Telling - Selling
Telling-Selling is what most unsuccessful sales people specialise in. Telling-Selling focuses on ‘The Sell’ as apposed to a real customer conversation that helps the sales person empathise and understand what the customer needs and really wants. The philosophies fundamental to Telling - Selling were made famous by the traditional selling methodologies advocated through manipulation and persuasion.
Compounding Loyalty
Compounding Loyalty is created when loyalty for your products or services compounds as more and more customers advocate and refer your service and value to others, as a consequence of your business meeting and exceeding their expectations.
Social Evolution
Social Evolution [SE] is the term used to define the superficial evolution of modern society. SE dictates and predicts, the only thing we experience in life as permanent; is in-fact, impermanence. Charles Darwin once famously said; ‘It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. A business that embraces, adapts and harnesses change, but also understands the fundamental and impermeable consistency of human nature, will not only survive – it will prosper.
Sales Athlete
We call anyone serious about selling; a ‘sales athlete’. If you look at elite athletes, many if not all, seldom step outside the realms of what they do best. It’s very hard to achieve an elite level in life, sport or selling - multi-tasking. In particular if multi tasking requires a completely different or contradictory set of skills. To be an elite sales athlete you need focus, dedication, determination and an unwavering commitment to self improvement. Most elite athletes train, in some instances every day for several hours, they then rest, recover and rejuvenate, and then only compete at a very small percentage of the time in comparison. Business and sales people on the other hand do the exact opposite; spending most of their time working/competing – and doing little if any time training and developing skills and behaviors. Can you imagine a professional athlete competing 40 – 50 hours a week for 48+ weeks of the year? This is what the average sales person does. This scenario in athletic terms would lead to reduced performance, exhaustion, fatigue and injury, not to mention more than likely a mental break down.
BDM – Bad Decision by Management
The traditional Business Development Manager (BDM) role inherent in many sales models often turns out as a ‘Bad Decision by Management’. An undefined and unstructured BDM role promotes multi-tasking and de - specialisation. A BDM, by nature, requires a broader range of basic skill sets and a significant dilution of elite skills. A multi dimensional sales person or BDM will ultimately result in sales entropy. As a BDM becomes busier, cold calling, prospect generating, proposal writing, project and account managing, acquiring new business, and nurturing and growing a client list, etc and so forth, they become less productive and efficient as less time is spent per value component, resulting in the role becoming difficult to manage and disproportionately inefficient across multiple value components.
The above refers to some of the language and terminology we use in each BOOM Sales training workshop. For a full outline or free BOOMOLOGY! presentation please e- Mail or give us a Call to discuss how can assist your organisation.
We look forward to BOOMing your business!