Front Office Box

You’ll have heard the expression Six Sigma, and probably picked up it’s about quality. You may even have figured lots of b/s merchants use it in their marketing speak.

With the exception of the math graduates, most won’t know Six Sigma is actually a measure of a Standard Deviation.

So what does it have to do with selling?

In layman’s terms Six Sigma means what’s supposed to happen, actually does 99% of the time.

So Six Sigma Selling is about actually winning 99% of the deals we bid for.

That’s stupid, right.  Everybody knows we only win a third, or a half of our deals.

I have a friend who’s an absolute expert in his field.  He manages an insurance program which delivers a minimum of 30% savings in premiums for his target clients.  He knows everything about both the clients’ industry, and the way it’s treated by insurance companies.

If anybody should win 99% of deals it’s this guy.  But he doesn’t.  He accepts 30% of the renewals he bids won’t come home.

Why?  Because he’s an old fashioned sales guy.

Who in this world likes wasting time and money bidding business they aren’t going to win?

There are some I know who get this perverse pleasure from their own intelligence and prefer being right to winning business.  But most aren’t like that.  Like me they hate losing deals and worse, spending money losing them.

For these guys Six Sigma Selling provides the answer.

It suggests we view selling as a process.  In that process we plan what’s supposed to happen, act in accordance with the plan, and review the results to see what actually happened.

Then it suggests we review the process, fixing that which went wrong last time, and go around the loop again.

Engineers call this continuous improvement, but we sales guys might call it “doing a better job”.

Back to the example of my insurance buddy.  He loses the deal because the prospect actually buys his insurance from the brother in law.

If, before getting on the plane for the first meeting my buddy asked the prospect “where do you get your insurance from now?” he’d be able to calculate his chances of winning (in this case zero) and decide whether the opportunity is worth the cost.

Six Sigma teaches us the secret lies in improving the process and makes us better managers as a result.

September 7th, 2009 - Posted in Sales Manager  |  Add a Comment