“If every unscheduled call is defined as a ‘cold call’ then your sales team are likely to end up out-of-work.”

~ Chandell Labbozzetta

Selling Strategies for a Changing World

As the world slowly regains it’s equilibrium many companies (from multi-national behemoths to smaller or medium sized) find themselves struggling to make the volume of sales they need and they’re calling me in to help them diagnose and solve the problems with their sales team. It’s been a fascinating experience because I’ve been shifting between strategic assessments, overhauling sales systems and processes, and hands-on training so I’ve really had a 360º view of what is going on.

The reality is that things have shifted during the pandemic your sales strategies need to shift to meet the new situation – or at least they do, if you want to survive and thrive.

Here are 3 areas of potential change:

  1. Your clients and customers’ circumstances may have changed meaning that your solution may now be too large or too small for their new needs;
  2. Your team membership may have changed as people retired, moved elsewhere, or came to work with your expanding demand;
  3. Your processes and systems may have changed – or they may need to change – to meet new circumstances;

All of this change means that you cannot take anything for granted, so it’s more important than ever to:

  • Nurture relationships,
  • Educate and inform clients as well as prospects about your services,
  • Assess your offerings and adjust them to meet demand,
  • Implement sales systems and processes that help you do all of those three things.

Over the past decade of rampant growth, many people have felt comfortable in sales roles because all they’ve needed to do is close leads that have been funnelled to them in almost endless supply. This meant that a 30-50% close rate was still acceptable, because there were always more leads to tap.

BUT… The math changes when the leads (and I’m talking about qualified leads here) dry up.

The Hungry Sales Professional

One of my most popular reports is “How to Talk to 10 Hungry Buyers this Week” (if you’re interested, you can download it HERE). It’s popular, but I’ve noticed that some of the sales professionals in my trainings turn up their nose when they are expected to implement its lessons to increase their close rate… they’ve become so used to the old world of sales that they’ve forgotten (or never learned) that Hungry Sales Professionals can create Hungry Buyers almost out of thin air IF they are willing to do one thing…

Get on the phone and call people.

Cold Calling has an Extended Definition These Days… And it’s Killing Your Sales!

Later in this series we’ll talk about the art of classic ‘cold calling’ and when and where you should consider using it.

Here, I’m going to focus on an attitude I’ve been addressing in many of the business owners (which is possibly expected) and sales professionals (where it’s inexcusable) I’m working with… The idea that they need to wait until someone else schedules a call.

In other words, the new definition of cold calling includes: “all calls which have not been pre-booked by a third party.” I’m extremely keen on attraction marketing and pre-qualifying prospects, but this approach is ridiculous, because it assumes that your prospects and clients know what they need and why they need it!

Let’s get this straight, once and for all:

Unscheduled calls to clients and prospects for the purpose of discovering how they are doing; what they need; and even letting them know about updated packages are NOT cold calls!

In fact, they are beneficial to you because they provide valuable feedback… And productive for the recipient because they have a chance to vent or celebrate.

These calls are extremely valuable opportunities for sales people to hone their conversation, communication, and listening skills, and they often end up yielding sales, referrals, and other opportunities.

The Qualifying Question

I believe that people should enjoy their work and find it satisfying, so… Early on in my sales training (after we’ve talked about the importance of sales skills in every area of life and looked at the way that skill benefits both parties) I ask this question:

Are you committed to changing people’s lives and future enough to step out of your comfort zone?

There’s no right or wrong answer – the choice lies with each person. BUT… If anyone’s answer to that question is, “No. I want to stay in my comfort zone when it comes to sales calls,” then they probably aren’t suited to sales or business ownership unless that attitude changes.

In Part 2, I’m going to talk about how you can use unscheduled calls with clients and prospects to do all that critical information-gathering and keep your organisation in the lead when it comes to service delivery and product offerings in any industry.

“The map appears to us more real than the land.”

~ D.H. Lawrence

What Does This Have to Do with Business and Sales?

In it’s most general term a ‘map’ is any tool that helps us understand and navigate the situation we are facing and the ‘territory’ is our actual situation.

In business and in sales, these maps include:

  • Sales processes, scripts, and tools
  • Business processes and protocols
  • Dress and speech codes
    Financial instruments
  • Lead generation and nurture

The territory would be the actual real-world conversations you have, the sense of rapport you do or do not have, systems glitches, etc.

Every day your business uses a map to function. Even the decision to ‘wing it’ and make up the rules as you go is a map… of sorts.

One of my favourite stories to tell with regard to following a map is about a sales rep named Bob. My friends know him as ‘Bob the photocopier man’. Bob’s map was detailed and fixed in his mind. He went from Point 1 to Point 2 to… Point X without any variation.

I encountered Bob on a day when I was short of staff and short of time. I wanted the answer to a SINGLE question and was ready to sign the purchase order as soon as that was answered. Unfortunately, Bob was so fixated on his map, that he couldn’t read the situation… And lost the sale!

This principle can make the difference between paying your bills… And not doing so.

Reality Check!

When you mistake your map for the reality you actually face, you can get into big trouble.

This is why, in business and sales, there is no such thing as a perfect process or structure. There are frameworks that apply when certain things are true, but if someone says, “Just do x, y, and z, and then you will 100X your profit this year,” then you should run away as quickly as you can.

There are many valuable online courses that promise to help you succeed if you have the confidence and motivation to work at implementing them. Most of them are genuinely effective, but you still have to bring your analytical skills and imagination to them. This is why we insist on pre-qualifying people for our programs: they are designed for people who have specific needs and there are some people whom we cannot help for one reason or another.

In business, your processes, theories, and understanding cannot be divorced from the reality of everyday life. If you try to ignore reality, your business is likely to fail… Fast.

In fact, one of the reasons people often contact me is that the financial reality of a business that does not have a strong sales process and supporting sales structures has become painfully evident. The truth is, you can have a fantastic product or service, but if you can’t actually close sales then you are at risk of failure.

Jumping to Conclusions

A map is like any other model. A quick glance may expose the similarities, but may not give enough information to highlight the differences.

That’s where both parties need to ask good questions to establish their suitability. I’m always rather wary of a high-ticket service business that lets me pay my money too easily, especially when they are going to deliver an outcome. It may be tempting when you need to make sales quickly to take ‘anyone with a pulse’, but it has a negative effect on your positioning and your own confidence in the results you deliver.

This is why the most famous and successful sales and business consultants have a very stringent application process and turn away as many applicants as they accept. Those they do accept are happy to pay astronomical fees because they know they will get results. These companies have set up a process that weeds out all the people who do not fit their profile.

There are other consultants and trainers who offer one-size-fits-all courses and deliver the same advice to everyone without digging into specific situations and needs. Frequently, these people are well-known, but their programs don’t deliver such stellar results and there is rarely any effort to pre-qualify applicants.

There’s a third group of consultants and trainers who offer customised interactive programs that deliver stellar results to members even when they are at different stages (within limits). These consultants and trainers qualify and evaluate candidates and they exclude those they can’t help, but their aim is to fully understand just what the prospect is looking for and where they are in the process.

Who Made the Map?

When it comes to sales training, specifically, it is extremely important to know who made the map you are following… And when it was made.

There was a long period in the 80’s and 90’s when sales training focused on what I call, ‘drag, batter, and kill’ methodologies. The idea was that when you see someone who was a potential prospect, you should corner them, beat them over the head with information, drag them to the desk, and close the sale – preferably on a long-term contract.

Some of these ideas are still practiced and taught today… And I find them out-dated, repulsive, and arrogant.

When you think about your sales strategies, my question is: if you used them to offer your service to your best friend, would you still be friends?

If the answer isn’t a resounding “Yes,” then it’s time to re-evaluate your sales strategy and discover how to tweak (or redesign) your map so that it is truly useful in today’s business territory because sales has never been a more critical skill to develop if you want to succeed.

“Finishing strong is an everyday occurrence as there will never be a race, goal, day, quarter or year that does not come to an end. This means finishing strong is not an act…it’s a habit.”

~ Gary Ryan Blair

What Does Closing have to Do with Finishing?

Michelle looked at me with hostility. I was training and managing the sales team for her organisation and her boss had asked me to have a talk with her. Based on her history, personality, and skill profile, she should have been a top sales performer, but her results were extremely average.

In response to my questions, she had just presented me with a litany of excuses for her uninspiring results that ranged from lousy leads to the economy to her marital problems. Then I had asked her a seeming irrelevant question “How many unfinished projects do you have in your life?”

That provoked another angry outburst culminating in her furious response: “What does closing have to do with finishing anyway?”

She didn’t quite add, “and how is that any business of yours?” But the unspoken words hovered in the air.

I wasn’t willing to back down, though. Her boss, Justin, had asked me to resolve the problem or let Michelle know that the company would be asking her to leave due to her poor performance. I didn’t think Michelle wanted that to happen, so I answered quietly… “The habit of finishing things and the practice of closing a sale are both tied to your overall wellbeing.

Research is exposing more and more the inter-relationship between unfinished tasks and projects in every area of life and people’s mental health and overall performance. It’s behind best practices in goal setting, project management, and task management and it’s part of the reason that many high performers practice daily meditation (the art of letting things go) and micro-meditation (the art of resetting as you move from one task to the next).

Michelle’s sales performance had been stellar. I was trying to discover what had changed – and this was indeed the key.

Judgers, Perceivers, and other Key Indicators

At first, Michelle hid behind the Myers-Briggs concept that she was a perceiver (P), so of course she was comfortable with open loops and unfinished business, but I knew that closing sales hadn’t always been hard for her so I kept digging through the excuses until we reached the root…

Uncertainty had become such an integral part of her life that she had developed the unconscious belief that everything was outside her control. As a result, she had developed a habit of blaming anything and everything on someone else and delegating as much as possible. Over the past few months that habit had spilled over into smaller and smaller projects and tasks until now, she acknowledged that closing a sale seemed to in the realm of ‘out of my control’.

“It’s easy for John,” she went on (talking about her colleague) “he likes everything neat and tidy, so he just won’t quit until he has closed a sale any more than he will quit before he wins an argument.”

I had to smile. She had summed up John’s judger personality perfectly, but the reality was that Michelle had always delivered a far higher number of high value sales than John – simply because she was willing to see the other point of view, read the situation, and circle back – either later in the conversation or on another day.

I was committed to working this through for her sake, not just for the organisation’s. It turned out, that once Michelle was aware of the shift in her belief and habits, she was also willing to address the issue and do the work required.

Why Does Everyone Get So Caught Up with Closing Sales?

Sales is far broader than simply the need to bring clients on board or sell produces and packages.

When you realise that sales skill are necessary to:

  • Get a job in the first place
  • Land a promotion or salary raise
  • Lead a team or organisation
  • Persuade friends, family, and children to take action
  • Shape beliefs and adopt habits
  • Communicate ideas and offer alternative paths…

You also realise that the ability to close sales is a very important skill that affects your happiness, opportunities, influence, and much much more.

There are many different ways to “close” and they are shaped by context and personality, but choosing not to close sales at all is a recipe for unhappiness and a deep-seated realisation that you have chosen to play small when you could have had a greater positive effect on your world.

That’s why I’m so passionate about closing sales…  For me, it’s about helping you to be, do, and have all you can be: to fulfil your potential in every arena!

YOU should also be caught up with closing sales!

  • That idea you had that would solve your business’s lead generation problems…
  • The lifestyle change that would enable both you and your partner to lose weight and become healthier…
  • That new prospect you know will experience total transformation if he buys…
  • That hobby that will help your son make friends and feel valued…
  • That restaurant you really want to dine at…
  • That credential you believe would create exciting opportunities…

They’re all sales you could close… If only you had the beliefs and habits to support you.

AND…

If you don’t close them?

You develop the habit of letting other people – other forces – control your life instead of taking the reins yourself and choosing your own direction!

Cultivating the Closing Habit

If there’s one thing that the pandemic has taken from many people, it’s that sense of control.

Robert, a successful CEO, said as much to me last week. “I used to believe and act with the confidence that if we went ahead, we could work things out. Recently, I’ve noticed that I’m saying, ‘Let’s wait and see about …’ disturbingly often. My habits have changed and so have my beliefs about what’s possible. I liked the old Robert better, and I think that there’s a new Robert inside me somewhere that would be even better than that one. Can you help me find him?”

We’ve only just started working together, but already things have started to shift – not just at work, but at home too.

In my program, Confident Conversion, we actually don’t spend very much at all talking about sales tactics. The focus is on your beliefs about yourself and your product, your positioning (and the tools to help you communicate the value you deliver), your qualifying process (so you never sell to anyone you can’t help), and several other important elements that increase your confidence and deliver results.

If you’d like to find out more, visit https://lifepuzzle.com.au/13-week-profitable-business-accelerator-program/

“Sales isn’t an activity, it’s an exchange of value: your money for my solution.

In addition, your money is also solving problems for my family.”

~ Chandell Labbozzetta

The Pricing Conundrum

Price may be one of the most studied and tested areas of product development. It’s certainly one of the first questions that most clients and students ask me.

I get questions like…

  • Am I charging enough?
  • Am I charging too much?
  • Why do some people say, “Is that all it costs!” And others say, “That’s way too expensive!”?
  • How much should I charge?
  • Should I feel guilty because my price is 2X what my competitors charge?
  • I can hardly pay my bills, can I raise my prices so I’m not working for $0?
  • How do I overcome objections to my prices?
  • What’s the perfect price point for my product or service?

If these questions are raging in your head… You’re not alone!

These same questions have been keeping economists up at night for centuries and have consumed billions of words, millions of pages and hours.

There’s a good reason for all that angst, too… Because the answer is quite simple
AND very disturbing for economists and governments…

It depends!

What do I mean?

Well….

Once Upon a Time...

Back in prehistoric times and in pre-currency days if you wanted something you had to trade.

So… You went to your neighbour with a dozen eggs and asked if you could exchange the eggs for a new blanket (which his family makes). Unfortunately, he keeps chickens too, so he doesn’t want any eggs, but after some probing, he tells you that he’d be happy to exchange the blanket for 2 litres of milk.

BUT… none of the people who have milk cows are interested in eggs, although one of them says he’d take a quantity of spun wool. Eventually, you are able to exchange your

  • Eggs for a basket of apples;
  • Apples for a sack of fleece;
  • Fleece for a bag of flour;
  • Flour for spun wool;
  • Wool for 2 litres of milk…

And hours later, you go back to your neighbour and exchange the milk for the blanket!

Phew!! (Lucky he hadn’t sold it to anyone in the interval.)

That was a complex process, wasn’t it?

A weekly market, made all that swapping a lot faster because you didn’t have to walk nearly as far to make those exchanges, but it wasn’t until money came into being that it became absolutely simple.

Because now…

The only thing you need to decide is how much ‘currency’ you are willing to take in return for your blanket. And, if lots of people want your blanket, you might be able to exchange it for enough currency to buy 3 litres of milk (or to save some currency for another day).

How this Affects YOU and Why it Matters

The reality is that ‘the perfect price’ depends on who you are selling to and how much they want a solution.

Think of some of the ‘Go Fund Me’ campaigns and look at the situations people are raising money for and the generous responses they receive.

I saw one person donate $100,000 to help a child get cancer treatment in the USA. Why? For that person the opportunity to solve the problem was worth that much money and, although they didn’t know the child, helping him out make them feel good.

Price | Value | Quality | Quantity…

They’re all heavily dependant on:

  • WHO you are selling to
  • HOW you are selling
  • The CONTEXT in which you are selling

… Far more than they depend on WHAT you are selling.

So the bad news is that there isn’t a single ‘perfect price’.

And the good news is that you can set your own ‘perfect price’.

The Price is Right!

Possibly you found the previous section depressingly uncertain if you were hoping I’d give you a formula.

The other way of looking at it, though, is that this opens a world of possibility for you.

Imagine that you know how much money you need, and how much time you are willing to invest to make it… So that you still have time for family, friends, travel, hobbies and other things that are important to you.

Now, you just need to find people who need and want the product or service you offer and are in a position to pay the price you have set… And let me tell you a secret:

“It is not 10 times harder to sell 1/10 volume at 10 times the price – in fact, it’s much easier.”

When you know how much you want to charge each client, then you simply find the people who will recognise the value you deliver at that price. Once you’ve found one person like that, it’s easy to clone them and keep the sales rolling in.

“Plant a tiny seed in the right spot and it will grow without coaxing.

~ B.J. Fogg

Confident, Congruent Sales in Business and Life

Sales is not just about money.

In fact, in many ways sales is hardly about money at all (see my previous blog: “The #1 Life Skill” to discover what I mean). I believe that failing to understand this important truth is one of the major reasons that many people have a visceral anti-selling response. I mean, I don’t know how many times when I tell someone, “I’m a sales trainer and speaker who helps people get more of what they want,” they just about step back with their hands up to ward me off and say with disappointment, “But you seem like such a pleasant person! I was looking forward to talking to you some more.”

The real problem most people have with selling (or at least with closing sales) is that they only know how to do it in ways that they know are not congruent with who they are and how they want to treat people. What I do, is to help people discover how to sell their ideas, plans, products, services, and dreams in a way that is comfortable and congruent with their values and goals so that they can confidently reach toward their loftiest ambitions and gain a horde of excited followers along the way.

Should I Repair, Renovate, or Re-build My Sales Process?

To some degree, the answer depends on what your current sales process looks like.

At the same time, I’m a big fan of using organic growth wherever possible… Especially when it comes to closing sales.

I remember one delightful woman who came to my Confident Closing workshop who hadn’t closed a sale in months! (Luckily, Jenna wasn’t dependent on her start-up to live or she would have starved.) On the first day, we worked through her client avatar and elevator pitch and by 1pm the next afternoon she had closed a sale for several thousand dollars just by rejigging her approach. Over the next week she closed 5 more sales – 2 had been pending for months and 3 came as referrals – just by making small changes.

As we worked together over the next few years, her pipeline grew, the channels that fed it expanded, and her sales increased in both number and value. Today, her sales process looks completely different from those first struggling efforts, but we never set out to rebuild the whole thing in one go.

The 1% Option

In many ways, sales are like habits. You can totally transform your life by starting from scratch and developing new ways of doing everything from brushing your teeth, to exercise, to food, to work… And sometimes that is forced on you by calamity or by a major change in your life. Most transformation coaches, therapists, and trainers suggest that you take more of an incremental approach if you want to create lasting change. That process lets you change one or two key things which lead to a significant outcome, and then slowly add or subtract other habits and behaviours.

I call this the 1% option – and it’s one of the most powerful concepts in many areas of life. In a sales situation (going back to Jenna, the woman I talked about earlier), this means setting sales goals that will help you build confidence along the way.

As I said, Jenna hadn’t closed a sale in months and her previous sale was $1,000 per month for 6 months. We talked about how much she wanted to charge and what her competitors were charging, but it was clear that she didn’t think she could make that jump. In the end, she decided that she could confidently ask for a setup fee of $1,100 + $1,100 per month for 6 months (meaning that her contract value jumped from $6,000 to $7,700).

Her subsequent sales over that week steadily increased in value and the last one of those 5 she closed was worth $15,000 over 6 months.

What Exponential Growth Looks Like

1% doesn’t seem a lot, does it?

Actually, it builds up quite quickly over time as an ancient Indian king discovered when he played chess with a visiting sage. The bet was that if the sage won, the king would place 1 grain of rice on the first square of the board, then double the number of grains on each subsequent square, which seemed like quite a modest wager.

However, when the king lost, he quickly realised that all the rice in the kingdom was not sufficient to pay his winnings and the sage made an agreement that the king would pay back the debt with interest to himself and his heirs.

Of course, that story represents 50% growth, and 1% growth is a lot smaller than 50%, but imagine that every week you added a 1% increase to each of the 7 key metrics of your business… In a week, you’d hardly notice anything, but in a year each metric would show substantial change and your total income and influence transformation would be dramatic – even though it had happened almost invisibly.

The Confident Closing Challenge

I run the 5-day Confident Closing Challenge regularly to help people see how easily they can dramatically increase both the frequency and value of their sales. In just 5-days, you can see the increase in confidence and optimism as sales flow in and participants realise that ‘confident,’ ‘congruent,’ and ‘sales’ really can coexist… And that the art of Confident Closing is something they can master and enjoy.

To learn more about the 5-day Confident Closing Challenge go HERE to sign up for out next challenge.

“Learning to sell effectively isn’t really about improving your income (although it does that very effectively), it’s mostly about increasing your happiness and satisfaction with your life, results, and relationships.”

~ Chandell Labbozzetta

What Do Life and Business Have in Common?

Maybe you’ve already guessed what I’m going to say, but let me tell you about two friends of mine…

Alison really does have everything she wants. She has a well-paid, flexible job in financial planning that is satisfying, her husband adores her, her 3 children are well-behaved and do well at school and basically her life has just the right blend of adventure and stability for her.

Matt is also married, is CFO of a major company but worries about getting overtaken in his position by younger men who seem to be moving ahead faster, an attractive wife who also works, and 2 children who never seem to be doing as well as he’d like them to do.

Both have similar backgrounds, but where Matt feels as though it’s always a struggle to get what he wants, Alison is confident that when she wants something, she’ll get it… including more money and responsibilities if and when she goes back to full-time work because she knows how to sell her ideas, skills, and products whether she’s trying to persuade her children to do homework or chores, her colleagues to pursue a specific course of action, or her husband to agree to holiday plans.

You can call it persuasion or influence – both marketing terms that put a gloss of sophistication on the subject – but really, what Alison has that makes every aspect of her life easier and Matt does not, is the ability to sell. This one skill has immense power not only to help you get what you want, but also to help other people get what they want as well.

That’s why I say that Sales is the #1 Life Skill that can make your life easier, more satisfying, and can also make the world a better place.

So let’s look at sales in a few different contexts:

Sales and Human Psychology

Psychological research tells us that people generally respond far more positively to their own ideas than to ideas that come from outside themselves, and they actively resist adopting ideas or actions that are forced on them… Even things that, in different circumstances, they might welcome (like food or exercise).

This is why prisoners sometimes go on hunger strikes or find other ways of asserting their independence. It’s why some children refuse to cooperate with teachers and parents, and it’s why some work-places have a culture of stubborn resistance to change.

Parents and teachers know that the best way to get children to cooperate enthusiastically, is to engage their interest and provide an appropriate level of challenge so that the children feel as though they are the ones deciding to commit to the project. They also know what happens when they fail to get that intrinsic commitment: every step becomes another struggle.

The art and science of successful sales in any arena involves piquing interest and creating a sense that the desire to be, do, or have any specific thing comes from within the person to whom you want to sell. After all, if you truly believe that your solution or course of action is appropriate, don’t you want other people to adopt the same perspective?

Sales @Home and in the Wider World

Here I’m talking about selling ideas and habits to your friends and family. Following are some common ideas or actions you might want them to adopt:

  • Doing homework in a timely fashion
  • Getting adequate exercise and sleep
  • Reducing the amount of alcohol or soft drink consumed
  • Making healthy snack and meal choices
  • Doing housework and cleaning up after themselves
  • Resisting bad influences
    Pursuing hobbies and interests
  • Serving other people
  • Limiting screen time
  • Developing friendships and having fun…

In any of these cases you have the option to force a pathway on others, or you can ’sell’ them the positive course of action in such a way that they feel as though they chose it themselves. If you make people do (or avoid) these things, then it’s only a matter of time before they go behind your back or openly rebel against the decree so selling creates far greater compliance and diligence and leads to better outcomes.

Sales @Work

From landing your initial role, to gaining promotions, and building your reputation and portfolio, your ability to sell your personality, skills, and experience is always a factor. You initially do this through your resume and interview, but often the person who gets the position is the one with the best sales skills, not the best technical skills.

It doesn’t matter whether you like that reality or not… But you do have a choice: you can wail about how unfair it is that you are being surpassed by people with a lesser skillset, or you can improve your sales skills and give yourself a chance to shine.

One of my clients was fed up at having her ideas ignored or passed over when she shared them, and then enthusiastically applauded when one of her colleagues put them forward. I pointed out that she could complain till the cows came home and nothing would change… OR… She could improve her sales skills so that people listened when she shared anything. She chose the latter course, and moved up the hierarchy at dizzying speed as her true capability and quality became visible.

The truth is that sales skills help you become more visible and valued and work and that brings along a host of other benefits like higher salary, more opportunities, and the satisfaction of seeing your ideas adopted.

Classic Sales Contexts

You can bludgeon someone into a single purchase, but if you want them to come back again and again and be a valuable lifelong customer, it’s better to use more subtle tactics.

Contrary to popular opinion, sales people are made not born… And that means that there is hope for everyone. I believe that anyone can learn to sell effectively, confidently, and congruently as long as they believe in the product or service they are selling to solve a prospect’s problem.

My own closing rate is over 100% (thanks to delighted clients referring me to others) even though there are times when I use my selling skills to convince a prospect not to buy. You see, desperation and ignorance are the two main reasons why people use selling techniques that make them feel uncomfortable.

  • Desperation or Neediness: is when you feel that you simply must make the sale even if you realise that it’s not the best course of action for your prospect. If that’s your sales modus operandi  then, of course you hate selling, and you hate yourself when you sell… And you should!
  • Ignorance: is when you simply don’t know how to sell effectively so you stumble around with no process or system. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but you have no idea why.

When you solve these two sales problems then suddenly your confidence grows, your sales pipeline and closing rates both increase and your job security and income increase (if you’re a member of a sales team) or your business grows in value, if you’re a business owner.

If sales is such an important skill, what are you doing to increase your mastery?

Complacency is the enemy of mastery.

  • I know enough;
  • I’ve done enough;
  • I’ve practice enough;
  • I’m good enough;

These are all the enemies of mastery. Yo-Yo Ma, the cellist, famously said, “If I miss one day’s practice, I can hear it; if I miss two days’ practice the critics can hear it; if I miss three days’ practice my audience can hear it. As a result, I do everything I can never to miss a day, and never to just go through the motions of practicing.”

Sales skill growth is a bit like that (but not quite so intense). If you don’t commit to investing time, resources, energy and money to improving your skills they grow cold. I make a point of investing every week into something that will help me improve my sales skills and hone my ability to teach others to do the same. I share these tips and learnings in my courses, challenges, and semi-weekly emails.

“When you lose sight of your objective, you discover hidden weaknesses in your systems… This can be a positive thing, but it can also be very dangerous.”

~ Chandell Labbozzetta

The REAL Problem with Distraction

There’s no denying that there are plenty of distractions around these days. In someways lockdowns and social distancing magnify distractions rather than eliminating them which makes it more likely that distraction will morph into mistakes.

The following story might be funny… if it wasn’t very nearly disastrous:

Angela had several sales conversations going on concurrently, each of which had multiple stakeholders and was in a different stage in her pipeline. Her company had also set up a strong lead generation system which was delivering her sales team more than 20 hot leads per week because her target market was feeling extremely vulnerable to IT security holes and wanted everything fixed yesterday. Her diary was full and she was running at full speed to take advantage of the opportunities being offered as were all the other members of the team.

On Monday she took a call from the project lead on a new client who had just signed their contract the previous week and had their on-boarding scheduled for Wednesday. The moment she picked up the phone she knew from his tone that she had a major problem brewing…

And she was correct!

“Angela, it’s Gavin here. We signed that contract in good faith last week. Today, I discovered that you have sent another, much cheaper, proposal to us. Can you explain the differences?”

Angela got the full story from Gavin, asked him to give her a couple of hours to look into things, and to send her through the two proposals, then she set up a call for later that day. It turned out that another sales rep had been talking to the same company and had also sent through a proposal for a much smaller project scope.

The sales team had been so busy that they hadn’t gone through things carefully during their daily standup and both Angela and her colleague had failed to follow the ‘Company Cross-Check’ Process that was designed to prevent this kind of incident.

During her call with Gavin, she was able to explain the differences in the two proposals’ scope satisfactorily and remind him that they had talked about the lower value project during the process of arriving at the contract they signed so that everything was resolved satisfactorily. Fortunately, they had a good relationship and plenty of trust already… But it wasn’t the way Angela wanted to start the delivery process.

Are Your Sales Systems Good Enough?

The real power of systems is that they provide support when humans are busy and distracted. The problem is that you have to follow them if you expect them to work.

Angela’s problem began when the team got busy and distracted and they set their sales management systems aside. Two of the important elements that they let slip were their daily stand-ups and their prospect cross-checks: even though Angela and her colleague were speaking to different people in the company, they could have discovered their mistake sooner and avoided any misunderstanding.

I’ve seen this kind of confusion happen even when there is only one person doing the sales. A business owner I worked with a few years ago realised that he needed to work on his systems when he provided two different quotes to a single company for the third time in a month – he was confused by the different representatives and, in the press of business, simply didn’t make the connection.

As well as setting up a simple tracking system for his sales (critical, since he wanted to hire someone for that part of the process), we refined his sales process in ways that increased each segment:

  • Lead flow increased by 5%
  • Conversion shifted from 35% to 74%
  • Average Sale value increased by 45%

… Resulting in a dramatic increase in revenue and profits.

It all came from keeping the objective front and centre – and ensuring that systems to support their process were in place.

Why Focus Affects Sales

When you’re talking about high-value projects, developing trust plays an important role in the sales process. Your product or service can be head and shoulders above those of your competitors, but if your sales process creates doubt about your level of organisation and integrity you can lose the sale.

That’s the cost of losing focus and not getting your sales process right in the eyes of your prospective customers.

But what about the cost when your sales people lose sight of the objective?

The hallmark of a well-run sales team is their laser-focus on the primary and secondary objectives of the business as well as their own personal and team goals. When you lose sight of that, there’s a strong probability that you will start to see the results at every stage of the sales process. It won’t necessarily show immediately, but 1-2% slippages compound over time and can make a big difference to your revenue and profitability.

Sales teams are particularly susceptible to this loss of focus because they are always results driven… And sometimes those results are affected by other parts of the business. This is why it is so important to have systems and processes in place to protect them from distraction and enhance their focus.

“Random sales techniques create desperation, desperation creates pushiness, and pushiness undermines long-term buyer-seller relationships.”

~ Chandell Labbozzetta

Do You Follow a Process During Sales Appointments?

Sarah called me to ask for some business advice. She was struggling to make her business profitable and a friend

had recommended my coaching program. At the start of our conversation she told me how much she hates selling and being sold to.

Later on she told me about the experience she had when she took her dog to the vet for an infected paw.

“They were just amazing! They treated Lucy’s paw and identified the problem and then they went over her history and suggested that she was probably deficient in some key minerals which made her susceptible to these infections. They suggested I change her food and give her a supplement when I give her worm and tick medication.”

It turned out that Sarah had spent nearly $200 over and above the bill for the vet’s service and she had signed up for a dog-food subscription plan.

BUT… she never felt that she had been ‘sold’ to, all they did was offer a solution to a problem.

When I pointed out to Sarah that the vet had simply followed a clear process that helped Sarah get what she wanted (a healthy dog), and the vet surgery get what they wanted (product sales and ongoing income) she was shocked at how comfortable she felt with the process.

“Could I do that in my business?” she asked.

The Danger of Random Acts of Selling

I love novelty and experience and I have a high tolerance for risk… otherwise, I’d probably be working for a corporation

BUT…

When it comes to sales (which I believe is too important to risk failing at on a personal or professional level)…

There is nothing like a clear process for creating profitable predictable outcomes without any pushiness or hard feelings. That’s where Sarah was confused.

When you don’t have a clear process that includes diagnosing whether the person you are talking to actually needs what you are selling, you easily slip into hype and exaggeration in an effort to raise the value of whatever you’re selling, and when that temptation is combined with a need to bolster your bank account you’re in big trouble when it comes to sales.

Here are some of the ugly things that happen when you don’t have a clear sales process:

  • You wind up trying to sell to people who don’t need your product or service;
  • You hear yourself exaggerating your results or even downright lying;
  • Discounting is your favourite closing technique (Piling on extras is your second favourite);
  • You avoid thinking constructively about your bank balance;
  • You are vulnerable to anyone offering an instant, shiny solution in exchange for your dwindling supply of cash or credit;
  • Every day you feel less respect and affection for the person you see in the mirror.

It doesn’t have to be like that and it’s never too late to regain your self-respect as you implement a clear sales process that works like magic.

Like it or Not, Sales is the #1 Life Skill

“But wait,” I hear you say, “I’m not a sales professional. I’m a [doctor, vet, accountant, IT consultant…] and I don’t like pushy sales people.”

That’s true.

BUT… I bet you

  • Have some great ideas that you’d like other people to adopt;
  • Would like a promotion or pay raise at work;
  • Need your children to develop good habits or work, exercise, and play;
  • Have friends, family, and loved ones you’d like to influence;
  • Want more business and greater co-operation from your employees;
  • Want to help your customers and clients get the outcomes they want.

And if you see yourself needing any of those critical things, then you can see why I believe that selling is the #1 Life Skill – not an unpleasant necessity.

In fact, the greater your desire to help others and your conviction that you have a valuable solution, the more urgent and essential it is for you to perfect your sales process.

A Brief Example of a Sales Process

We all want to find solutions to problems that are bothering us, even solutions to serious problems that we didn’t realise we had until someone kindly pointed them out.

Medical specialists are often very good at this sales process because they know that their patient’s life and health rest on prompt action in response to practiced selling.

The really good specialists… The ones you want to see have a process for informing you whether:

  • You need to take immediate action – or else!
  • Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.
  • Sorry, I can’t help you… And I don’t think anyone else can either.

In each of these situations they aren’t just winging it, they’re following a process that has room for personalisation built in.

They don’t need to be pushy. They just need to diagnose the problem accurately, help you see your options clearly, and make it easy for you to choose and proceed with the option that will deliver the most desirable outcome.

You can do this too.

In fact, if you do it effectively you’ll find your customers thanking you profusely and actively looking for other services you can help them with.

Confident Conversion: 90 Days to a Clear Sales Process (and other desirable outcomes)

I’m a big believer in empowering my clients to learn the sales skills they need to attract ideal clients and build unbreakable long-term relationships with them. The ability to sell with confidence and clarity is essential for every leader, and every business owner is a leader. It’s a bit like oxygen masks on planes: Until you have those skills, there’s very little point equipping your team; once you have them, then you can work on passing them on.

In my Confident Conversion: 90 days to More Cash, More Clients, More Impact program, the focus is on helping you put together a clear sales process for your product or service. What my clients discover, is that that same process can be applied to all the other ‘sales’ environments they find themselves in, so by the end of the 90 days they find everyone around them is paying greater attention to their words and actions.

Interested in learning more?

Book a Call with one of my team: https://www.scheduleyou.in/xFCUDhmP

“Plant a tiny seed in the right spot and it will grow without coaxing.”

~ B.J. Fogg

The Motivation / Willpower Problem

One of the principles I teach in my NLP classes is that your willpower is finite. This is important because it helps people understand why it’s so easy to break your exercise, diet, or productivity chain when you’re tired, unhappy, or otherwise under stress. It’s also why I periodically run courses and challenges on building habits because the more you focus on creating constructive habitual behaviours, the less friction there is between you and your goals.

Unlike willpower, motivation isn’t finite, and your motivation goes a long way toward keeping you focused, but motivation has to be supported too. One of the biggest ways of keeping your motivation high also comes back to creating habits – like reviewing your goals and reminding yourself why you care in the first place.

I’ve noticed that the biggest reason why people don’t sell is… They’re depending on finite (or exhausted) supplies of motivation and willpower and they haven’t developed the mindset, habits, and tools to help them sell effortlessly!

Why Did I Lose THAT Sale!

Have you ever gone through your sales process…

Seen the enthusiasm and buy-in in every line of your prospect’s face and every word they spoke…

Then waited… And waited… And waited for a “Yes, we’re in” that never comes?

It’s true, even I don’t get a 100% close rate if you count every appointment I schedule, but I do get a 100% close rate on every appointment with suitable prospects – and I can see those rejections in advance.

Effortless Selling is not about forcing people to do business with you, or only selling to people who are certain to buy (often people teach this practice and suggest you lower your prices) – it’s about understanding WHO will benefit and HOW they will experience that benefit and setting up a system that HIGHLIGHTS those things.

When you apply the Effortless Selling Formula you’ll be able to know without question who is going to buy now, who needs more time, and who will never buy – so you can tailor your follow-up accordingly.

This is critical information because it falls into the ‘trash-talk prevention strategy’ playbook. Sales people have exceptionally high burnout and turnover because every time they lose a sale, what I call the itty-bitty-shitty committee kicks in and tells them what went wrong (usually focusing on ‘what you did wrong’). This saps your motivation and your willpower.

The Effortless Selling Formula nips that trash-talk in the bud by providing a framework for assessing your process and specific tools to help you improve if you realise that there’s something you need to change.

How Habits Help You Sell Effortlessly

There are specific habits you need to incorporate into your sales process if you want it to be effortless, but in this article I’m going to focus on how these habits support your selling process. Your effortless selling habits address your:

  • Mindset
  • Preparation
  • Questions
  • Presentation
  • Close

When each of these becomes part of a process that is at once automatic, rigid, and flexible then your path from the start of the sale to the close is like one of those ‘choose your own adventure’ games. From the inside there are infinite options, from the outside everything is clearly programmed.

Since you are on the outside, you can see clearly what is going to happen next and one action or reaction triggers the next step in your process right up to the sale.

Effortless Selling is NOT a Natural Gift

The old adage, “Salesman are born not made;” is simply not true.

ANYONE can learn to be an effective sales person – if they choose to apply themselves – and it’s one of those skills (like riding a bicycle) that you never lose.

I could go over all the things that effortless selling is NOT (eg. Pushy, obnoxious, manipulative…) but I’d rather focus on why it’s imperative that you learn to sell effortlessly right now…

You see…

…In the Industrial Age selling was the province of sales people – that’s where the whole pushy, sleazy, manipulative idea came from, but in the Knowledge Age (now) it doesn’t matter what profession you are in, sales is a skill you must develop and integrate into every part of your life unless you want to be left behind and deprived of opportunities not just to succeed, but to contribute.

I talk about this extensively in my sales trainings because sales skills are now imperative in everything from IT to Banking, medicine to construction and that’s why it’s so critical that you learn to sell with effortless authenticity and skill.

“The biggest obstacle to making sales is confidence and the greatest confidence booster is the awareness that you haven’t seriously considered all the possibilities yet.”

~ Chandell Labbozzetta

IF 'Perception is Projection’ is True, THEN...

… it logically follows that your outcomes and results will be limited by your perception of what is possible.

But…

What if your current view of the possibilities is limited?

This would mean that you won’t be able to see past your current reality and shift your thinking, so you really will be trapped at your existing level. This is a real problem, and the saddest part of it is that it makes people feel helplessly trapped in whatever their current situation may be even when people outside can see things that can be changed.

It’s true that you can’t see what you can’t see, but what if there was a way to change the possibilities you can see, and open up your perception to a whole suite of new opportunities?

Do You Value Your Own Insight Enough?

Alden is one of my Confident Conversion: 90 days to More Cash, More Clients, More Impact self-study students and recently he sent an email with his take-away from one of the sessions. He realised that he was spending the bulk of his time and energies on low-value prospects and over-delivering to clients who didn’t value the extras he was adding.

Once he became aware of that, new possibilities opened up that enabled him to raise prices and also split off his products and services in ways that gave him more time, more money, and helped him solve problems for more clients.

That particular module includes an assignment that helped Alden evaluate all his activities and made decisions about which ones should be eliminated, which ones he could delegate, and (most importantly) how to discover the ones in which he should invest heavily.

Alden realised that he simply didn’t value his unique genius enough – it was something he’d been doing for years, and it was so obvious to him, that he couldn’t see how unique it was until he went through this exercise.

Are You a Victim or a Victor?

Whether you’re directly in sales, own a business, or are employed by another person (or even if you’re a stay-at-home parent or a student) you have a choice to make: will you react to whatever comes… or will you be resourceful and take control?

On the surface, it may not make a difference. You do the same tasks, say the same things, stick to the same schedule. Underneath, however, many things change. One you decide that you’ll be a victor and take control of the situation, your attitude shifts and you become much more aware of possibilities and resourceful about following your options.

I see it all the time in my sales trainings and in people’s actions during my courses. Nothing externally changes about people’s situation, but their results sky-rocket and they shape the demand and lead people where they need to go.

As Michelle put it, “Where have you been all my life, Chandell? When I listened to the session and decided that I was going to take control of my sales call rather than just listening, suddenly I was closing sales left, right, and centre – and even telling people that I couldn’t help them. I wasn’t rude, I just took control of the process and stopped being needy.”

Michelle’s example is not unique. Neediness kills sales, and nothing yells ’Needy!’ Louder than letting your prospects take control of the conversation.

It’s not that you don’t listen. Listening is vital if you want to learn what the market needs. But you also need to be ready to interrupt when you have the information you need and resourceful enough to guide the conversation.

Changing Your Outcomes

These three principles of action are just part of the journey to dauntless determination in life and sales on which I lead my students and clients.

You see, until you are aware of the possibilities that lie just beyond the horizon of your current visions it doesn’t seem as though change is possible. You can’t see or feel it, and you can’t even hear it calling you, so how can you respond?

Social media and sticking to just a few news sources or guides puts us in an echo chamber of both opportunity and tactics and this will always limit your perception of reality. That’s why it’s important to look outside your current experience for solutions when you want to change.

Expanding your perception of possibility also helps you identify where you are undervaluing the true contribution of your expertise and that helps you take control of your market, workplace, and family, and act constructively.

Confident Conversion

My flagship program, Confident Conversion has changed the lives and transformed the results and businesses of students. It’s unique because it focuses on mindset, sales, and business simultaneously providing a powerful context for personal and life transformation in the broader sense.

From C-suite executives and department managers to beauty therapists and sales teams in just about every industry and company size, this strategy has enabled people to increase their income and impact, while spending more time doing the activities they enjoy with the people they love most.

To learn more visit: https://lifepuzzle.com.au/confident-conversion-find-out-more/

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