A Note to Your Inner Sales Person: Experience Doesn’t Necessarily Make You Better.

Posted by asharp on Nov 20, 2014 in Blog, Uncategorized | 0 comments

We sell sales training. An objection we hear at least once a day is “My people are experienced, I don’t have any new people.” When we hear a manager say this, we really want to shout “We’re experienced too, but we still make mistakes.”

We miss opportunities to be a source of value for a prospect because sometimes we sometimes don’t listen well, or maybe don’t ask the right questions. Maybe We’re not working with the decision maker. We want to say to this manager that sometimes experienced sales people get stuck in bad habits. Even experienced people lose business. There is always room for improvement and growth.

Does this sound like someone on your team, or maybe even you? If you have been selling for a long time, when was the last time you tried a new strategy or tactic with a prospect or customer? Do you do the same thing over and over hoping for different results?

We are often asked to give advice to new sales people. Based on ourselves and the experienced sales people we know, we think the advice below is helpful for experienced salespeople as well as rookies!

LISTEN

The most important skill a new sales person can learn is to listen to what not only what a customer is saying but what they mean. Don’t be afraid of silence. Silence is okay. Customers want to know you are listening to them. Take notes. Think before you speak. Check for clarification to make sure you understand.

WRITE AND CREATE ELEVATOR STATEMENTS

Create value statements about your company to use when leaving a message or sending a text. Practice saying them out loud. Really work on understanding the value your company offers not only your customers, but your customers’ customers as well.

ASK QUESTIONS

Invest time to develop questions that provide information to move the process forward. Before any sales call, write seventeen questions you want to ask the prospect. The first few will be easy. Sales people need to stop telling and start asking questions.

SELL VALUE

If you make a statement about how great your company is to the prospect, be aware the prospect is thinking, “SO WHAT!” Understand your prospect’s needs and pain points. Connect the dots for your customer.

GET WITH THE DIGITAL AGE

Use the tools available on the Internet to connect, stay in touch, and research your customers. The vast majority of sales people consistently use a fraction of what is available.

CHALLENGE ASSUMPTIONS

What you don’t know in a sales call may be more important than what you do know. Assumptions made prior to, or during a sales call, limit your ability to consider alternatives and impede the search for facts.

DON’T BE AFRAID OF AN OBJECTION

Ask questions to find out why the customer has an objection. Make sure you understand the reason for the objection. Think about the objections you most often hear. Plan ways to reduce risks for your customers. Ask your coworkers what they do when they hear specific objections.

RECOGNIZE CUSTOMERS’ STYLES

Determine if your prospect is task oriented or people oriented. Determine if they make decisions slowly or quickly. Don’t treat everyone the same way. Some customers need to build more rapport more than others. Some need to know the price first. Some need all the details and then more details! Be aware! Customers are not all the same.

UNDERSTAND THE FINANCIAL IMPACT YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES HAVE FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS

Spend some time and learn financial concepts and how to use them to uniquely cost justify your products and services. If you can, show a customer how quickly they can make a return on their money. You will close more business.

CLOSE

Ask for the business. Follow your gut. Closing should be natural. If closing is awkward or a struggle, then you are messing up at the beginning of the process, not the end.

It’s not just about your customer! It’s about your customer’s customers.

Posted by asharp on Aug 8, 2014 in Blog, Uncategorized | 0 comments

Here’s an easy quiz for you. Do it quickly. It’s not difficult. Name three of your most significant customers. If you are like most of us, you don’t have to go to your phone, computer, a written list or anywhere else to immediately recall your best customers.

Here’s the second question. You may find it a bit more difficult. Name three of your customer’s most significant customers? Better still, can you describe how your products and services impact your customers’ customers?

If you’ve been to any of Sales Concepts’ classes, you know we stress putting the emphasis on your customer, not yourself. We regularly see salespeople talking about their company and their products and services. We believe it’s about your customers, not you. People would rather buy than be sold. Most of us want our customers to agree with us, but what changes when we agree with our customers?

If you tell prospects something, their choices are to agree or disagree. There’s not much room for them to elaborate and be involved in the process. If you ask prospects about their needs, they are able to go on at any length. When you hear something that matches a solution your company offers, you can agree with them. Chances are this point applies to you as a buyer. No one likes to be sold, we all want buying to be our idea. So if that’s good for you, why isn’t it even better for your prospects?

Since you had no trouble listing your most significant customers, how’d you do when you tried to list your customer’s most significant customers? How about describing how your products and services help your customers help their customers?

Try it sometime. If you don’t know, find out from your customer who their best customers are. Who are the prospects they’d like to turn into customers? How can you help make that happen? You see, as wonderful as it is when you focus on your customer instead of yourself, it’s even better when you focus on your customers’ customers.

When you’re able to connect your products and services to your customers’ ability to win more business from their customers, your solution financially justifies itself. In the eyes of your customer you’re a critical resource, not a vendor.

When I think of the sales of which I am most proud, I almost always discover it’s because I helped my customer help their customer. It’s ironic, but the farther away you get from focusing on you and your company, the more rewards you receive.

Are your prospects MAD?

Posted by asharp on Sep 27, 2013 in Blog, Uncategorized | 0 comments

One of every salesperson’s most important responsibilities is to keep the top of their respective sales funnels full of potential opportunities. Some of the opportunities might be new. Some might be from existing customers. Either way, they both count based on the prospecting you’ve done to drive business.

Whether you are at a trade show, on the Internet, the phone or face-to-face at a customer’s facility, you must quickly determine a prospect’s legitimacy. Wouldn’t it be great if legitimate prospects wore buttons that said “I’m the Legitimate Prospect!” Of course, selling is not that simple and the challenge of identifying a legitimate prospect is part of the fun and excitement of selling.

We believe the best way to identify legitimate prospects is to question your prospects to see if they’re really MAD! No, we don’t mean that they are angry or crazy, although sometimes crazy can be helpful. We mean that they are MAD enough to be convinced of your specific value proposition. We mean that they believe what you are selling solves a pressing need they have.

The first part of being MAD enough is to determine if your prospect has Money. Is the project funded or budgeted? If not, it could be an uphill battle to acquire the funding; therefore your sale is in jeopardy. If the prospect does not have the Money, you’re probably not talking to a legitimate prospect, at least for the immediate time frame.

Even if funding is available, does your prospect hold the second key to truly be MAD…the Authority to approve the funding for the project? Are you talking to the economic buyer (the person who can approve the purchase without needing permission) or someone who reports to the economic buyer? Your biggest clue is the pronouns your prospect uses. If you hear something like “They will have to review this,” you are not talking with the economic buyer. Pay very close attention to the pronouns prospects use.

Lastly, is the prospect MAD enough to have the Desire to get this deal done! Is your ROI compelling enough to save the prospect significant capital or allow the company to grow revenues? If the prospect is MAD then you do indeed have a legitimate prospect!

Being MAD requires that your prospects have the Money, Authority and Desire to buy from you. Ask targeted, specific questions to determine if your prospects are MAD.

Handling Objections

Posted by asharp on Nov 8, 2012 in Blog, Uncategorized | 0 comments

What do you do when the customer says “No. Not yet.” Do you think when a customer or prospect objects to something in your sales presentation that they are rejecting you or your solution? Big mistake! Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, objections are usually a sign that a purchase is near. Think about it from customers’ perspective. When they voice an objection, they are essentially saying, “I want to buy, please convince me.” If they have made up their mind not to buy, why go through the trouble? So this begs the question. What do you do when the customer objects to something you said or offered in your proposal? First, don’t take it personally. It is easy to confuse an objection with rejection. At Sales Concepts, we offer a seven-step process for dealing with objections.
	1.	Be prepared.
			Unless this is your first day selling, you have probably heard most of the objections. Get prepared. Think about them before your call. Come up with solutions that are in your customer’s best interest and yours. Spend time thinking about solutions when you are not under the gun. Get creative. Ask management for help if necessary. Talk to other sales people.
	2.	Listen patiently for the true objection.
			Try to discover what the real objection is. Sometimes customers don’t particularly know how to articulate their objection. Slow down and ask about it.
	3.	Restate the objection as a question to confirm understanding.
			Avoid using the same questioning technique every time a customer objects. This becomes annoying and manipulative. However, you must verify that you fully understand the objection. Many veteran sales people fall into this trap and assume they have heard everything. Test your assumptions. Don’t get blindsided later.
	4.	Show empathy and understanding.
			We are not saying you have to agree with your customers. We are saying that you have to demonstrate you understand their point of view. This is how you build trust and credibility. To persuade customers or prospects, you must have their trust.
	5.	Ask questions about the objection to uncover the real issues and causes.
			Once you have established you have their trust, ask questions about what is causing the objection. Ask and be quiet. Let the customer do the talking. Your job is to listen and learn.
	6.	Convert the objection to your advantage based on what the customer is really saying.
			Now is when you have the opportunity to brain storm with the customer. This is a good place to ask what-if type questions and offer alternatives. This should be a two-way street where both you and your customer search for compromise.
	7.	Close. Confirm customer is convinced.
			You do know how to do this; don’t you? If not, we can help.
STAY TUNED. Next time will discuss ways to handle one of the most common objections customers seem to have. “Your price is too high!”