Companies Dramatically Improve Sales by Adopting TIPS Selling Process
by Kathy Hoyt, S4 Consulting
For almost 25 years, S4 Consulting has focused the bulk of its resources on improving its clients’ critical business relationships. Thus, we approach account selling in a more systematic and mutually beneficial way.
Through the years, we have discovered that customers were looking for a sales approach that improved relationships, allowed for more in-depth needs investigation, generated more effective profitable sales and better sales management tools. Companies needed more than a “sales training event.” They needed a way to develop a common language for sales, a consistent way to interact with the customer and a process that could be repeated, sustained, and managed.
It became clear that our clients needed a new selling approach, so we developed the TIPS for Account Selling program. TIPS is an acronym for the four-step process it presents:
Trust Building
Investigating the Gap Between what customers have and what they what
Presenting Solutions and Closing the Sale
Supporting and Developing the Relationship
Over the last decade we have trained thousands of account salespeople. One company with whom we have been working, Ohio-based Worthington Industries, can attest to the sales impact of the TIPS selling process. Since we began working with Worthington Industries, we have trained over 250 Worthington people, from virtually all divisions, including some internal support staff. The training contains built-in refreshers and is reinforced once the sales people go back to the field. Recently, we asked some of those trainees to tell us what TIPS had done for them.
When asked how TIPS had changed his selling style, one Worthington salesperson said:
“We are all very good at creating and developing relationships with our accounts, but we never had a program to…help us dig deeper…. TIPS enabled this to happen….[and] provided structure and a roadmap to follow for each call you make.”
When asked how Worthington clients had reacted to the TIPS selling process, a manager said:
“They truly appreciate both the follow-up and that Worthington is actually listening to what they are saying and that they are willing to put a plan in place to improve their situation...ease their pain. [the TIPS follow-up letters are] a good way to separate yourself from your competitors as well as to provide salespeople with a vehicle to check their understanding of the customer’s situation before recommending a solution.”
Another salesperson said that he had faced a selling situation in which the potential customer was giving several dozen potential vendors 20 minutes each to give their sales pitch, and then a decision would be made later. The Worthington salesperson came in using the TIPS method and the account gave that salesperson an extra hour and twenty minutes, and then wrote the salesperson a check for the order! The customer said Worthington was the only vendor who worked to determine its needs. Keep in mind that this (like most Worthington sales) was six figures. Most of the salespeople interviewed felt that TIPS either had improved their closing percentage or that it had allowed them to more effectively manage their sales process.
A Worthington Steel Cylinders sales manager provided an example of one successful sale, saying:
We have an account that was at one time 100% supplied by Worthington. Over the past couple of years their volumes had dropped off and the majority of their cylinder supply shifted to our competition. We assembled an attack plan at 4 - 5 different account regional locations to regain business. [Because] the regional locations have a large say in who supplies their cylinders, [even though] the overall supply decision was at the home office executive level. Our Territory Managers met with all of the account Regional Managers and used the TIPS program to determine what problems they were having with their current supplier, our competitor. We found that the problems they experienced related to two things: the quality of the exterior of our competitor’s tanks and on-time deliveries. We shared this information with our Territory Managers and created solutions:
- Give an on-site presentation to all of the account’s Regional Managers and Sales forces, explaining the advantages of Worthington's cylinder exterior vs. that of our competitor.
- Create an inventory supply program wherein we keep a designated quantity of ready-to-ship product in our warehouses that will ship in 1 day’s time from order placement. Since implementing this program we have regained majority supplier status and increased sales at this account by $1.5 million.
Worthington’s customers were so pleased by the new sales process that they began to send thank you notes, a practice that many seasoned Worthington salespeople had never seen previously. Among the sentiments expressed in the thank you notes were how Worthington was so thorough in understanding the customer’s business issues and determining their needs.
