Sales Process Archives | Page 3 of 4

#TuesdayTips

The elevator pitch is one of the essential business tools you need. It’s rumoured that the elevator pitch came out of the process screenplay writers used to get the attention of producers and directors in Hollywood. They were so hard to book time with that script writers would go to the movie office and wait for the producers and directors to arrive in their cars. Then they would get into the elevator with them, and spend the 30 seconds while they arrived at the floor to pitch the concept of their script.

An elevator pitch is not the only way to pitch your business, it’s not even the ideal way to pitch it, but it is an important way of getting your foot in the door.

Basically, an elevator pitch is your chance to describe your business and capture someone’s attention within 30 seconds. Often, when people are asked what they do, they respond with a job title, or a profession like, “Oh, I do SEO.” “I’m a finance broker.” That’s not really a conversation opener, because you already know (or think you know) what that means, so you lose interest.

An elevator pitch should be designed to capture a person’s attention and attract an emotional response because people buy on emotions and benefits, not on features. They’ll usually buy to solve problems too, so if you’ve got a solution to a significant problem that I’m experiencing, I will pay whatever I need to pay to get rid of that problem. People are far more likely to spend money to move away from pain, than towards pleasure. So your elevator pitch is a very elegant way of being able to present the problem you solve very succinctly.

If you were a mortgage broker your elevator pitch might go something like this: –

“You know how when you put an application in for a loan and you don’t actually get the loan but it goes as a mark on your credit rating whether you got it or not and that can influence how you get loans in the future?

Well, what we do is we offer a specialised consultative service whereby it helps people to ensure that when they apply for the loan, that’s the loan they’re going to get, not adversely affecting their credit rating and making sure that the product is right for them.

In fact, we just recently helped a solicitor to manage a situation with his client where he’d been to several brokers and had a problem with his credit rating. We were able to find the right product for him and save him around $2000 a month on repayments.”

What’s the problem, what’s the solution, what’s the evidence of each.

A florist’s elevator pitch might go like this: – “You know how a lot of wedding florists are out there arranging flowers that look fantastic when they leave the box, but halfway through the ceremony they’re wilting and going brown already?

Well, what we do is we make sure that we understand what the needs of the bride and the bridal party are and where the wedding’s going to be and actually provide a consultative service to make sure that they have everything they need and that the right suggestions of floral arrangements are made for the particular day and the look and feel that’s designed by the bride for her special day.

In fact we recently had a bride that came in and wanted red and white carnations. Here, let me show you the pictures of how beautiful they looked.”

Your elevator pitch is a fantastic tool to use at networking events, because it’s a conversation opener, rather than a closer.

Not many people actually know what a Life Coach does, or what neuro-linguistic programming is. So, if I go up to someone at a networking event and say I’m an NLP trainer or a Life Coach, they say, “Oh, that’s nice.”, If I follow up with “Have you heard of NLP?” they’re kind of stuck. Maybe they have, maybe they haven’t, but they don’t want to look stupid, and they’re not really interested.

But if I say,

”You know how sometimes people feel like they’re doing everything they can to increase their business and it just seems like they get rejection after rejection and that often makes them feel like they’re not very good at what they do?

Well, what we do is we actually make people identify where those belief systems are coming from and use hypnotic processes to allow them to make changes at the unconscious level.

In fact, I recently worked with a guy who had such a belief about money which actually stemmed from something his grandfather used to say, and he just used to hear him saying it in passing. We did a simple process that took around 10 minutes and that week he went and closed a $100,000 sale, one that he had been working on for about 3 months without any joy.”

I haven’t said I’m an NLP trainer, I’ve told you about a problem, I’ve told you about a solution and I’ve given you evidence on how I solved that problem.

People buy on problems and solutions, they don’t buy on features, and they don’t care what I call myself. Maybe if they’re interested in doing some business with me they might want to find out a little bit more about that. So the next question is, “Oh, how did you do that?” or “What hypnotic processes? Do you really believe in hypnosis?” It opens a conversation. Instead of engaging in a situation where they get stuck with a label, I’m drawing their attention to a potential problem that they might actually have.

Rather than saying, “I’m this and I can help anyone, tell your friends and family and anyone you know who has legs to come and see me.” I’ve told them the kinds of people I work with, and the problems I solve. I don’t work with everybody. There are NLP trainers out there who work with children – I don’t work with children, it’s not a specialty area of mine. There are NLP trainers out there that focus on holistic, I tend to look at NLP in the context of business, in terms of how you communicate with people, how you are having joint communications, how are you projecting yourself within your business.

Sometimes when I mention hypnosis in a business context people are clearly thinking that hypnosis has nothing to do with business. That’s actually why I like to put it in there, because it stops people in their tracks, and in the context of a $100,000 dollar sale it draws attention. Here’s a secret: It takes people to run businesses, and the people that run those businesses have emotions and sometimes they don’t know what to do with them, so you need to be able to resourcefully deal with your emotions in order to represent your business. Hypnosis helps people deal with the emotions that are stopping them from doing business really well.

If you sign up for our mailing list you will receive a special elevator pitch tool, but I want to lead you through the NLP way of phrasing your elevator pitch because it’s very purposeful and specific. It’s deeply rooted in the science of communication, so you’ll find these patterns under different labels all over the place. People use them because they are powerful and proven.

Opening with, “You know how a lot of people have XYZ problem …” draws the person’s attention to what you’re about to say next … it starts them searching their minds to find out whether that’s a problem for them and they try to think of times when they felt that way or when they had that problem.

Continuing with, “Well, what I do is …” frames the problem in terms of your specific solution and draws their thinking forwards from the problem to the solution.

And finally, “In fact, …” displays convincing evidence that your solution works, and cements the kind of people you help and results you get firmly in their mind.

So effectively you are answering several questions in your 30 second pitch:-

What are the problems that your service answers?
What are common solutions to the problem?
How do you solve that problem?
And then where is some evidence that you’ve been able to do that?

You may develop several elevator pitches that reflect different facets of your business, but each one should focus on a single aspect. If you are not sure about how to develop your elevator pitch sign up to our mailing list and you’ll receive our fantastic Elevator Pitch Tool.

Meta Description: A perfect elevator pitch is an essential business tool to gain the attention of your ideal clients, and help them refer others to you.

Book your complimentary 30-minute Discovery Session with Chandell.

By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

#TuesdayTips

“I really think you’ll love this skincare product, it’s 100% plant-based and all the packaging is environmentally-friendly and …”

“That’s not what I’m really looking for in my skin-care regime. I want quick, easy, and effective.” was my response.

“But …”

And she’s lost me. She didn’t listen. Yes, I care about the environment, I care about the ingredients and all that – but when it comes to skin-care I care more about how it makes my skin look and feel, and how easy it is to use. I’m busy, and every product I use needs to fit in with my lifestyle.

When you are selling something, listen to your prospect and ask questions so that you can work out what is most important to them, and discover why they would consider buying your product in the first place.

You can only sell if people are interested in buying from us, so why do people buy?

People Buy When They Know It Is For Them

One of the problems service-based businesses face is that clients have to buy your services before they can fully understand the benefits you bring to them. I hear this a lot from service operators and it frustrates me intensely.

If you think about it you understand exactly why prospects won’t buy into something that they know little about because you wouldn’t do it yourself. Savvy business owners stop complaining and start educating their prospects about the value of the service and what it will actually do for them.

I’d like you to meet Elizabeth, a Natural Therapies Practitioner who also offers Kinesiology, Emotional Freedom Technique and several other very valuable modalities. She charges $125p/hour for her sessions and all of the clients she has worked with have had amazing transformations in their health and well-being so she has some very convincing testimonials and case studies.

Like most service business owners, Elizabeth needs more clients but she had trouble getting people to buy an introductory session to learn how these modalities might help them.

That’s not just Elizabeth’s problem, it’s a problem for many of us! Why would anyone want to invest $125 just to find out whether something can help them? Most people have other things to do with $125 than just ‘try’ something out. Even worse, what if I decided to give it a whirl and didn’t get the result straight away? I would probably go out and tell others about how Kinesiology doesn’t work and label Elizabeth as a quack to some of my friends/family. Terrible, but it does happen.

Elizabeth and I discussed the importance of educating people about Kinesiology and those other modalities – and how they could help.

How Can You Educate Your Prospects?

Elizabeth could hold a free monthly information session. Say, the first Monday of the month you can run an education session for 5-10 people that tells them about kinesiology, explains the problems it solves and the conditions it treats. You might even provide a quick demonstration – but you mostly want to focus on the results it has given others. You might make it free, or you might charge a small fee – but your goal for this session is not to make money, it is to get people in the door, so you need to balance a perception of value, with a ‘no-brainer’ situation.

This gives people who would never pay $125 just to ‘try it out’ the chance to get to know you and understand what you do without spending money on something they know nothing about. You can really raise their value perception. But you can also talk about what kinesiology can do for your prospect. Maybe they need it, maybe they don’t. Perhaps they really need it desperately, but they might not know that. Once you’ve got them in the session you can talk about all these issues kinesiology and the other modalities address, and something triggers their response, “Oh, I see value in that now, because it will release this issue that I’ve got, can I come and have a session?”

Problem solving, and how your solution helps people is much more interesting than if you talk about processes like muscle testing. Most prospects won’t really resonate with the details of your process because they don’t care – but if I’m a chronic migraine sufferer and you say, “I’ve got this thing called kinesiology, it helps with migraines and here’s the proof, come and talk to me about it.” then that’s helping me solve a real problem. I don’t connect with the features of kinesiology, I connect with the benefits of it. So what’s the end outcome? Ask yourself that question and then talk about those things – the solution to urgent problems.

Create Opportunities to Educate

Look, I get the struggle to attract clients, but I work on the philosophy of empowerment – I’m all about empowering people to move towards the goals they really want. Complaining about the economy won’t change anything (although what we focus on does get out energy), but taking action to change will. I hope you’re starting to see how valuable this material is – if you understand yourself, and put yourself in your buyer’s shoes, you’ll find ways to help them understand the value of what you do.

You need to think creatively about demonstrating the value of your service – education does take effort, but it is much more effective than sitting around complaining about not having clients, or people being unwilling to pay your prices.

Meta Description: Understanding what is important to your prospect in their buying decision is a crucial factor in closing sales.

#TuesdayTips

I see sales people and business owners all the time who assume they know exactly what their prospects and clients want. Sometimes they are right. Sometimes not.

If you think that people aren’t biting on the bait you’re putting out because you’re not getting the words right, think again. That may be the reason, but what if it’s not? It always pays off to examine other possibilities.

Most people will tell you exactly what they need and are listening for if you listen carefully enough. Sometimes I do role plays with my clients where I actually get them to sell to me and it’s really interesting watching them just make assumptions about what my needs might be rather than spending some time asking me questions.

If you believe that you listen to others, then ask yourself how often do you actually hear what’s being said in response? That is the truly important thing, because often we think we’re listening, but we actually have a conversation going on inside our head while the other person is talking, “Oh my God, he said that! I must have to bring the conversation around to this other thing,” and before I know it I’ve missed half of what he said.

We make assumptions like this with our clients all the time – we assume what it is that they need, and what we think they want and what they should have and all that sort of thing. And we ignore the reality that we aren’t the one that needs to get them to the point of decision – they need to get themselves there based on the things that you’re saying.

When you’re selling you’re influencing and it’s the art of influence, it’s not the art of beating others into submission. So I use the metaphor that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink, and the way people sometimes go about trying to sell to their clients, it’s like they’re dragging the horses and they’ve shoving their head in the water – drown or buy! But a better way is to give your clients a thirst – feeding them salt so that by the time we’ve led them to the water they’re thirsty enough to drink.

If you were a Travel Agent in a situation where you’d looking to give people information about a holiday, you could make an assumption that they want to do some really great tours and that might not actually be what they’re looking for. Some people love tours, but when I go travelling, the last thing I want to do is get on a bus with a whole bunch of people and be tied to the schedule when it’s time to go to the next place, because if I’ve seen that then I’m done and I want to move on. Or perhaps I want to stay here a little bit longer and have a look for a little bit longer, I don’t want to be on somebody else’s watch.

If you asked the right questions, you’d work this out and you might suggest some private tours which I’d probably be happy to pay more for because I would enjoy myself a lot more than if I was being dragged around.

So if you ask me. “How is it that you decided you were going to visit America this year?”

I might respond “Well, I always wanted to see the Grand Canyon, there’s something about it that just kind of draws me there. I get caught up in the idea of going to this wondrous place and I imagine that the energy there is absolutely amazing and breath-taking and I just really want to be able to experience that.”

That gives you the opportunity to ask more questions, “So what’s important to you about the experience, or what activities do you really want to take part in? and, Do you want to do the Grand Canyon by foot or do you want to do it by helicopter? What sort of experience is important to you? Have you given any thought to that?”

The chances are I’ll respond, “No, I’m really not sure, can you tell me what people do there?” Then I’m inviting you to actually give me some more information.

Now, most people would jump in there and start to do their sales pitch, but we haven’t stepped up the value, or gathered anywhere near enough information yet to be able to pitch to them, so don’t jump in too quickly.

Motivation questions are really important because I’m learning what’s really important to them about that project and getting insights that I can’t get any other way. I can learn what information she already has, or what challenges she’s facing.

Once you’ve got information about what’s important to your client you need to demonstrate what you can do to meet those motivations.

If you ask somebody “What are the problems in your business at the moment?” They’re usually not going to give you a direct answer. They will probably be rather defensive, guarded and cynical about why you are asking that question. Any answer that they do give you will probably only scrape the surface of the problem. So if you want to uncover the problems they really want to solve you need to use indirect questions.

The answers to these questions help you to chunk down on the information because if the answer was, “I need some help.” you need to understand how they define help. As we discussed earlier, everyone’s language map is a little different, so this requires us to drill down and discover what the client means when he talks about ‘help’. If I just jump in and offer what I would consider ‘help’ I might mean something completely different.

So you need to find that out from the client, because if you make an assumption about what that is then you might potentially lose out on, or you could upset the client because they might have expected ‘A’, and you’ve delivered solution ‘B’ thinking that was what they wanted.

What this does is it helps you to identify the problems and that’s the key element of the questioning. When I have a meeting with someone, I like to take an interest in them, because I am interested in what’s important to them. If I go in and start pitching my product straight away in terms of what it could offer them, I then look like I’m trying to be interesting rather than being interested in how I can help them.

The more questions you ask before you start providing solutions, the more likely it is that your solutions will be welcomed enthusiastically. Your client will know that you have listened to them, and will see that you understand their problem, so don’t be too quick to put them in a box and write the label – keep asking questions until you are certain that what you assumed is really true.

Meta Description: Assumptions create misunderstanding. Questions create clarity. Don’t assume you know the answer, develop questions that help you find out what the answer really is.

#TuesdayTips

This is the final part of a detailed look at the 5-Step Sales Process. So far we have looked at the importance of :-

Building Rapport; [Link to #20]
Asking Questions; [Link to #21]
Establishing Need & Value-Add; [Link to #22]
Proposing a Solution; [Link to #23]

– and now we will look at Closing the Sale – the part that puts the money in your pocket and commits you to doing the work.

Closing the sale doesn’t happen in a vacuum. In fact, by the time you have completed step #4 you should know quite clearly whether or not you are going to make the sale. If you find yourself losing sales at this point then you need to look closely at what you are doing in the previous steps. Maybe you are not listening hard enough in the early part of the discussion, or maybe you are rushing ahead to the close.

I always love it when we get to this part of the Confident Closing workshops and participants share about their experiences with closing. We had one that was extremely fascinating with two participants who had the same results (low sales closure rates) for completely opposite reasons. One man said that he was surprised when he walked away without closing a deal because prospects were always very, very interested in his product throughout the presentation, but when it came to the final decision they weren’t buying. We went through his sales presentation process as a role-pay exercise and then I asked the group, “Why doesn’t he close more sales?”

The answer came back immediately, “He never asked for the sale.”

The participant was amazed. “You wanted the product. You could see it’s value to your business. You told me that all the way through.”

“Yes, but you never told me how I could buy it or asked me to make a commitment. I almost felt like a dog that was being teased with a treat.”

It took a few minutes to convince him, but he finally realised what his problem was. “Wow! I’ve wasted so many opportunities just because I assumed that it was obvious that people should buy.”

I met with this man a few weeks later and he said, “Chandell, Confident Closing was amazing – totally worth the 2-days I invested in it; but it was those few minutes after I presented my sales pitch that have really transformed my business. I’ve changed my close rate from around 15% to over 80% just by adding 2 sentences to my pitch. ‘Do you think that would be of value to your business?’ and ‘Would you like to buy this?’ I can’t believe how much money I used to throw away.”

Anyway, we moved from this man’s sales process to one of the other men in the room. My first impression of this second man was, “Why has he come to Confident Closing? Surely he is already a fantastic sales person.”

It turned out that his closing rate was terrible, and I found that hard to believe, so when we came to the demonstration I asked him to come up and demonstrate his sales pitch. The woman he was selling to had a hard time answering any of his questions – because he kept answering them for her – and he arrived at the closing portion within about 4 minutes of starting his pitch after totally missing the boat on every single one of the preceding 4 steps.

By the time he asked for the sale (which he did brilliantly), he had told her 15 generic reasons why she needed his service for her business (most of which did not apply to her); he had not discovered anything particular about what she did and he’d offered about 4 solutions that were clearly generic. She had no reason to buy, and no interest in doing so, but he spent quite some time trying to persuade her.

He accepted the feedback, but clearly didn’t understand what people meant, so I offered to show him what it felt like. I used his exact tactics to sell him one of my programs (not a strategy I would EVER use in real life). After about 8 minutes he turned to us with a hunted look in his eyes. “I see what you mean. I feel as though I’ve been bludgeoned with a blunt axe and I don’t ever want to meet you again. There’s no way I would ever say ‘yes,’ to your offer, no matter how appealing it was.”

It was a very enlightening process for everyone in the room. This second man came back to a later training with me and he had completely revamped his sales process. The biggest lesson he learned was that if you spend enough time on the first 4 steps, you don’t need to bludgeon anyone into buying at step 5. When you ask for the sale, your ideal clients will simply agree to buy, and the others will go away with no regrets.

Do you have a favourite selling process? How is it working for you? Tell us about it in the comments.

Meta Description: Your sales conversation went really well, and you were sure that your prospect was going to buy, but you walk away without a firm deal. What happened? How can you make sure it doesn’t happen again.

#TuesdayTips

At this point in your conversation you want to reflect all the issues your prospect has highlighted as being important back to them. You also want to discuss how your product or service addresses these issues and resolves the problems they are facing in detail. This is not the time for a quick 5 point summary, but is a serious presentation of value. Your specific solution is what the prospect will buy, so you need to remind them of the value that each part of the solution will bring to their business.

Price will enter the discussion, but if you have stacked the value up for them then they price will be seen in the context of the return on investment they can expect – and that return could be in many forms – financial, time, peace-of-mind. Most quality buyers won’t make their decision on price alone. Clearly price is a factor – sometimes a business just can’t afford your solution – but more often then not, if the value is stacked high enough and there is enough convincing proof that it works, then your prospect will find the money needed to purchase.

Pricing and payment plans are just one more way you can customise your solution to fit your prospect’s needs without diminishing your profitability. You’d be surprised at just what people can afford when the payments are split over a few months or some other installment option.

In our Confident Closing Workshops we go over the importance of stacking the value when presenting your solution and helping your prospect to really experience the benefits your product offers. After doing this exercise many of our students go away feeling that they are seriously under-charging their clients once they have stacked up the benefits. Some of them have doubled or tripled their prices and found that they actually get more people taking up their offers.

Have you tried stacking up the value and tailoring your solution for your clients? Did it change their responsiveness to price and their interest in your product or service?

Let us know in the comments.

Meta Description: A tailored solution that solves my problem is almost irresistible for most people. Generic solutions are harder to sell at all, and certainly don’t attract premium prices.

Presenting a Customised Solution

Now that you have built rapport, asked questions, and established your prospect’s need for your product or service it is time to propose a solution before asking for the sale. This is where many businesses fall down and lose their way – they offer every client the exact same options and solutions. This often comes from the excellent idea that you should ‘package’ your services so people understand exactly what they are getting.

The difficulty with this is that your prospect gets the feeling that you are more interested in off-loading whatever you happen to have in your wheelbarrow, than you are in solving their problem – and that makes them defensive and hard to convince.

The Goal of Your Solution

When you actually propose your solution to a prospect your goal is to for them to feel that you have just suggested the exact piece they need to complete their puzzle. You want them to feel that you are proposing something that is tailor made for them, rather than a generic one-size-fits-all solution. When you propose a solution that really ticks all their boxes and meets the needs they have pointed out to you, you signal that you have heard their problems.

It is still your pre-defined package, but you have matched it exactly to your prospects needs, and described it in their language. Now they don’t feel that you have just grabbed a box out of your wheelbarrow and are trying to get them to buy whatever it is that you have too much of – now they feel it is designed exactly for them. Perhaps you have swapped out some coaching sessions for a top-notch presentation they can use, or made another slight tweak that meets their need. Maybe you haven’t changed anything, but by listening and learning have simply described the package accurately in their own language.

Whatever you have done, they have heard you describe the perfect solution to their problem. Do you think people will pay more for a tailored solution that exactly meets their needs, or for a generic solution with more features and benefits in it? I can tell you that the tailored solution always appears more valuable in people’s eyes – just like people are ready to pay more for a meal at a restaurant than they are at McDonalds.

#TuesdayTips

Most people know what they want, but they are not necessarily so anxious for what they really need. Your job is to discover what they need, and make them want it. Is this evil manipulation? I would say, “No. Not if what they need helps them achieve their real goals. “

I’ve written about the entire 5-Step Selling process in another post [Link] and today I’d like to talk about where that process really takes you. You see, I’m a firm believer in creating win-win situations, and if you are effectively selling solutions to people who don’t really need them, then you’re winning, but your client might not be.

The five key steps to sales success involve:-

Building Rapport; [Link to #20]
Asking Questions; [Link to #21]
Establishing Need & Value-Add; [ Link to #22]
Proposing a Solution; [Link to #23]
Closing the Sale. [Link to #24]

So, you have established rapport and asked many questions (and listened to the answers they gave) and now you are talking to your prospect (or existing client) about a service or product you sell that you can clearly see would add value to their business – therefore it’s something they need.

The first thing you need to remember is that they don’t know your business as well as you do. It is really important never to assume your prospect will grasp the value you could bring to them. Even your existing clients may absolutely understand how valuable the services you already provide are, but might not see why they should purchase more. It is your responsibility to show them how much they could gain by purchasing it.

By the time we get to this step in the sales process I know what the other person’s goals and objectives are. I usually have a pretty good idea of their secondary goals, as well as their primary goals, and I have some insight into the things they value based on their responses to my questions, so it’s easy to stack the value for them.

Wants vs. Needs

Your prospect knows what he wants (a specific outcome) – but sometimes he confuses the outcome with the means of getting it. This might sound condescending, but it’s really just common sense. If I go to the doctor I know what I want – a quick solution to my pain or sickness; but he’s the one who tells me what I need to achieve that outcome. It would be silly for me to go in absolutely set on getting a certain prescription and to reject his suggestion that I try something even more effective.

A doctor can get away with that kind of switch because by-and-large we trust them. As a business owner we need to engender the same sort of confidence in our prospects so that they are convinced we understand their problem, and that our solution will resolve it in the most effective way possible.

At this point, I’m still asking them questions, but by now those questions are about the outcomes they are looking for, and the criteria they have for reaching those outcomes. For example, with my business coaching clients I help them to identify areas of their business where they are leaking resources because I know that once they see that by doing all these tasks without getting paid they are effectively working for less than they are worth. Once they find a way to charge for these things, they’ll be able to work less and earn more. Whether you are plagued by systems that take more time than they save, employees who aren’t delivering the services they ought, or prices that don’t reflect the value you bring to clients, once you can see the need in that area as well as the difference a solution will make, you are likely to find my services attractive – but it’s my job to highlight the value I bring.

If I’ve done a good job at highlighting how I can help you achieve the outcomes you really desire, and demonstrated my ability to deliver that value for others then you are almost certainly going to want to work with me. Then we can move onto establishing a price and concluding the deal. On the other hand, if you are still not sure whether you need my product or service – or whether I’m capable of delivering the service at all then there’s not much point moving forward.

The whole sale really depends on this question of establishing your prospect’s need for your service and demonstrating the value it could bring to them.

Meta Description: As a sales person or business owner it’s your job to find out what your prospects really need so that they achieve the goals they want – and then to help your prospects see that.

#TuesdayTips

This post is part of a series filling out details on the 5-step sales process [Link to #16]

Building Rapport; [Link to #20]
Asking Questions; [ Link to #21]
Establishing Need & Value-Add; [Link to #22]
Proposing a Solution; [Link to #23]
Closing the Sale. [Link to #24]

I’ve listed them sequentially, but of course you are doing many of these steps simultaneously. While you’re asking questions, you continue to build rapport … and you’ll keep asking questions as you move into establishing their need for your product or service and highlighting the value it brings to them.

Why Ask Questions?

The reason you want to ask questions is to learn about your prospect – to discover the things that are important to them about a product or service, the problems they are trying to solve, their decision-making strategy, and their level of interest. All of this information will help you:

Decide whether your product/service is suitable for them;
Understand which features and benefits are most important to them;
Determine how to present your solution;
See what time-frame you will be working with.

What Kind of Questions Do You Want to Ask?

Your questions should be directly related to the business of the person you are interviewing and phrased in the the language they use, so you’ll need to tweak the following questions for each prospect:-

What do you do? What are you interested in?
For what purpose do you want this?
What would be a successful outcome if we went ahead with this?
Who will make the decision on this matter?
How will you know if this product/service is right for you?
What is important to you about this?
When will you make a decision on this?

– these questions will help you learn about why the person is talking to you, and how seriously they are considering your product/service. In a business context, it is much better to disqualify a prospect quickly than to spend a lot of time talking to someone who is just getting information from you. Of course, you don’t want to be too abrupt about this because people move around, their circumstances change, and they may recommend you to others, but if you discover that they have no intention of buying at this time, you will modify your process appropriately. This is actually very beneficial, because you get the information you need, and you don’t force them into a situation where they are uncomfortable.

One key thing you need to uncover during this process is whether the person you are talking to is a key decision-maker or not. If they don’t have the power to sign off on the deal then you know that you’re dealing with either a gate-keeper, or simply an ideas-person. If you are dealing with someone who is just bringing ideas to the table then you don’t want to spend too much time or energy on them. If it’s a gate-keeper, then your goal has to be to get their attention and interest so that they can introduce you to the decision-makers.

Whatever the situation, asking questions brings clarity and help you get the outcomes you are looking for.

Meta Description: The quality of your life may be determined by the quality of the questions you ask, but the value of your sales certainly will be.

#TuesdayTips

The other day I was saddened to hear a parent say to their Scout leader, “I don’t want my child involved in selling items to raise money. My child is no sales person, he’s a good boy.”

I was even more startled to hear the Scout leader respond, “It’s OK. This year we aren’t selling chocolates, we’re just asking for donations.”

The parent was happy, but I was filled with a deep uneasiness. I understand the reluctance to have our children knock on neighbours doors and offer to do chores in return for pay, and I don’t necessarily think we want to be pushing chocolate on people, but do we really want our children to grow up thinking selling is ‘bad’, and sales people are some kind of pariah? I don’t think so! And I really hate the idea that it’s better to ask for a donation than to sell something that has value.

We Are All Sales People - and Always Have Been

The reality is that we are all in sales. We can call it ‘negotiation’, we can call it ‘sharing ideas’, or a million other euphemisms but when push comes to shove every one of us will spend a lot of our lives selling. We sell when we apply for a job, when we communicate and idea or suggest a project at work, when we go on holidays, persuade our kids to do their homework, decide which restaurant to eat at, and a million other times each day.

The real questions are, how well do we do that selling and how effectively do we attract support and co-operation from others? In my opinion, the better your skills and ideas, the greater your responsibility to gain the skills needed to sell them. It’s doing your colleagues, your employer, and your clients an injustice when you can’t communicate your powerful solutions effectively so that others can appreciate them.

Selling Effective Solutions

If you have an effective solution to someone’s real problem, then you should be embarrassed if you withhold the solution. Maybe you don’t think their problem is important. Perhaps you think they should keep suffering with that problem. Or perhaps you are just more concerned that they won’t realise how easily and effectively your produce or service can remove their problem.

Whatever is going through your brain when you decide this person isn’t worth helping, I’d like to challenge you to change it. Maybe your solution costs more than they are willing to pay – but that is their decision to make, not yours.

In my Confident Closing Workshops [Link here] I invariably have students who are worried about the price of their product or service. When we discuss this as a group and draw out the value any given product or service brings to its owners the consensus is usually that it is worth more, not less, than the price it is being sold for. Did you get that? I don’t recall ever having other people say, “That is way too much for anyone to pay!”

How much is your product or service worth? That depends on the size and severity of the problem it solves. Whether it’s solving logistics problems for a large company, helping small business owners become more profitable, or helping obese people lose weight to avoid insulin-dependence, the price people will pay for your solution depends on how painful their problem is.

Price and value are not fixed – they are relative. Your job as a sales person is to stack the value of the solution you are selling so high that your prospect says, (even as he sits down in shock when he hears the figure you set), “Is that all?”

If you are selling a real solution to a genuine problem then you are helping make your prospects’ lives better, not taking money from them.

Do You Still Hate Selling?

Maybe you’re not convinced yet. Try this exercise.

Make a list of all the problems your product or service solves.

List the time and money prospects spend on other solutions that are less effective.

How does your solution stack up? If you can’t find enough value in it, then dig a bit deeper. If you still can’t find the value in it then maybe it’s time to sell something else. But if you’ve come up with a substantial list in support of your product’s benefits (which I hope you have), then it’s time to hold your head high, get out there, and sell it for all you’re worth because of the value it will bring to users.

Meta Description: Selling is part of our everyday life whether we like it or not. The best way to deal with that reality is to become comfortable with your need to sell and develop skills that allow you to sell more effectively.

#TuesdayTips

I was about 14 when I started selling Nutrimetics to my friends at school. They were polite and sort of interested but I didn’t get many sales during lunch hour. A couple of them thought their Mums might be interested and held parties at home – and that was when my business really took off. I won sales awards, medals, and you name, it … but I also learned an important lesson – it’s much easier to sell to people who are thirsting for a solution, than to people who are just showing polite interest.

I took that lesson to heart and it helped me in all my later sales experiences – whether I was actually selling products or services, or sharing ideas. Polite interest just wastes your time, and the other person’s time as well. If you’re in a social situation then you can move on to other topics of interest. If you are in a business situation then polite interest just wastes your time, and robs you of other opportunities.

Don’t Be Afraid of ‘No’! - It Might Even Be Your Best Friend

It is far better to spend your time talking to people who have the problem your service solves and the money to spend on your solution, rather than with people who are just being polite – because after all, business is about sales, not just interest. That’s why it is always good to elicit a ’no’ response sooner rather than later if the person you are talking to is really not a good candidate for your product.

So, I don’t want to make people’s decisions for them, and I really want to give them the information they need – but how do I open the door so they are willing to listen.

5-Steps Sales Process That Works.

Establish Rapport. The easiest way to do this is to match and mirror their behaviour, or identify their preferred internal representation system and use that to communicate with your prospect. Without rapport, it’s harder to elicit the information you need to determine whether you and the prospect are actually a good fit, and if you don’t seem to be getting anywhere in establishing try to work out why.
Ask Questions. You can use questions to continue to build rapport but you are really listening carefully so that you learn about your prospect’s problems and concerns. You’ll be asking questions throughout the interview so that you can discover what they value, and what their decision-making process is, and trying to uncover their objections so that you’ve answered them effectively before you come to the point of closing the deal. These questions will help your prospect feel that they were heard, and they will help you know whether the person is actually a real candidate for your product.
Establish Value and Need. Your questions will have shown you whether this person actually need your product or service. At this point you are making some decisions on their behalf. If you realise that you can’t add enough value to this particular business for it to be worthwhile that’s okay – you can tell the other person how you feel and end the conversation. You never want to go into a deal so hungry that you need to get it at any cost. If you can’t add enough value to make it worthwhile for the prospect then you’re better off walking away. If you do make a deal under those circumstances neither of you will be happy with the outcome.
Propose Solution. Hopefully you’ve taken all the time you need to ask questions and listen to their answers, because by the time you get to this fourth step in the sales process you should be ready to propose your tailored solution succinctly and clearly. Your prospect should be nodding agreement at this point and demonstrating that they can see the value you are offering to them specifically. As you outline your solution the prospect should feel confident that it will solve their specific problem, not just be the package you happen to have in your cart ready to unload on them.
Seal the Deal. This is the final step in the process – whether it involves signing a contract or a verbal agreement. If you’ve done your job well, the outcome won’t be a surprise to either party because your will be offering your prospect a custom solution that will truly fit their needs.

I’ve taught this 5-step Sales Process to hundreds of people in corporate sales trainings and through my Confident Closing Workshops [LINK HERE] and I usually receive this kind of feedback: “By the time I actually proposed a solution I had all the information I needed to offer a tailored solution using my prospect’s terminology. Their ‘yes’ was almost instant and price became a non-issue.”

This 5-Step Sales Process is one of the easiest ways to move your closing rate from average (or below average), so astronomical – and it also takes the sting out of rejection. Most of the time, you’ve already determined that this person is not a good fit before they get as far as saying ’no’.

Meta Description: How to move your sale closing rate from average to astronomical with a simple 5-step process that doesn’t rely on scripts or programming

#TuesdayTips

Pricing – Value – Money … this is always one of the hardest things to determine. How do you set a value on your service? Most of my life as an employee there wasn’t much room for negotiation. In corporate sales, I was always paid a decent base salary plus commission that were pretty much set by the company I worked for. In one position, I was paid a very generous salary and achieved a great deal more than the target outcome, but then my employer decided I was too expensive.

In my own business, I come across people who will debate the price, then experience the value and tell me I’m worth more. I come across other people who walk away as soon as they hear the price – and never even think about the value. I know I’m not alone in this, because just about every business owner I talk to faces the same struggle.

Mindset is important because business is 80% psychology and only 20% strategy. Most of the business owners I work with have their strategy pretty well under control, but the psychology is where they get bogged down. I hear a lot of people saying things like, ‘I’m just not sure that I’m worth what it is that I’m asking,’ or ‘I always feel the need to discount,’ or ‘I feel the need to actually give more than I’ve agreed to’. Others use statements like, ‘I don’t know how to sell my product – I’m really good at telling them about it, but when it comes to asking for the money, I really struggle with that’.

The problem is not the product or service they deliver, it’s their understanding of the value they bring to the table. Mastering the mind-set of the confident closer gets rid of that procrastination, get rid of that overwhelm, and gets rid of that doubt about your value so you project confidence – and are received with confidence.

Your Perception IS the Reality You Project

When you present your business it’s really like a performance – and the purpose of a performance is to influence the audience and move them. The thing is that we don’t think about business presentations that way, we think about them as a means to an end, or more income, or reaching a target. You know, I’ve got this appointment today, I’m meeting this person and I’ll try to convince them to buy. We don’t usually see it as reaching out to influence people and they pick that up.

You see, the vital fact that you need to understand is that perception is projection. You may have heard that before, but I want you to really slow down and think about it. Perception is projection. … But you are unable to perceive behaviour in someone else if you are not capable of it yourself.

You’ll have heard the comment that when you point your finger at someone and call them names, there are three fingers pointing back at yourself. That’s because the faults we’re most aware of in others are the ones we are prone to, and it’s often the reason why parents are so hard on their kids – they’re projecting their own traits and so they’re hyper-sensitive to them in others.

What About Josie?

Remember Josie, the hairdresser I wrote about the other day [Link to Part 1] – she had fallen into the vicious cycle of discounting her services to attract clients. The problem was that this meant that she needed to see more clients to make the same money and every time she did this her perception of the value of her service plunged lower. I could see that before long Josie would have discounted her Salon out of existence.

I have to admit that I staged a scene to help her understand the value of her work. You see, Josie really was a great hairdresser, and she ran a great Salon but she was seeing her work as something people chose because of price. I sent a friend in who really needed to see a great hairdresser who would help her find a hairstyle that looked great and fit her lifestyle. I knew that Josie could help her, and I asked this friend to be really enthusiastic and pay more than she was asked IF (and only if) she was genuinely happy with the outcome.

Well, Sarah was delighted with her appearance once Josie had finished with her hair and shown her how to style it easily. She raved about Josie’s efforts, she admired herself in the mirror, and when Josie told her how much the service cost Sarah was (genuinely) outraged. “You can’t charge that little! It’s impossible!” she said. “You’re an artist and you should charge like one.” Sarah paid twice the price that Josie asked and as she walked out, she told a client who was just walking in, “I have just had the amazing service and the best value haircut I’ve ever imagined!” – and she meant it.

What Happened Next?

We’d already worked out what Josie needed to charge in our coaching sessions. The problem was that Josie was convinced that no-one would pay that much. Sarah’s comment gave Josie the courage to quote the price we’d agreed on to the client who had walked in as Sarah left. Her response gave her the courage to do it again … and again … and it wasn’t long before she really did discover the joy of owning a business.

The point of telling this story is simply that Josie is like many business owners – they can’t charge the prices they need to, because they don’t value themselves as they ought and Perception IS Projection!

Meta Description: Pricing-Value-Money – how your understanding of these can lead to success or failure and how they can turn your business around.

By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

#TuesdayTips

#TuesdayTips

#TuesdayTips

#TuesdayTips

#TuesdayTips

Presenting a Customised Solution

#TuesdayTips

Wants vs. Needs

#TuesdayTips

Why Ask Questions?

What Kind of Questions Do You Want to Ask?

#TuesdayTips

We Are All Sales People - and Always Have Been

Selling Effective Solutions

Do You Still Hate Selling?

#TuesdayTips

Don’t Be Afraid of ‘No’! - It Might Even Be Your Best Friend

5-Steps Sales Process That Works.

#TuesdayTips

Your Perception IS the Reality You Project

What About Josie?

What Happened Next?

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