Sales Process Archives | Page 4 of 4

#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

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

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

You probably know that not everyone shares your opinions about things, but have you ever thought just how often you make assumptions that lead to misunderstanding?

I’m convinced that most of our communication and relationship problems stem from the assumptions we carelessly make. Once a friend from Portugal came to stay with me. She was visiting Melbourne for a few days as part of her tour around Australia and she wanted to see the sights. So I planned to take her along the Great Ocean Road, into the Dandenongs, and the Mornington Peninsula up to Arthur’s Seat and see all the wonderful beaches and views because those are all the things I love!

My thought was, “What can I show her that’s really beautiful and uniquely Melbourne?” and I assumed that she would want to see and do the things I would like, if I were in her position. I was so busy making a program that fit my own assumptions about Melbourne that I completely missed the clues she gave me. In conversations before her visit, she talked about the shows she saw when she was in London and how much she loved the theatre and the arts. She even mentioned an Art exhibition that was going on at the National Gallery and all that sort of stuff but I missed it completely. So we started doing the things I had planned and she was miserable the whole time and I’m thinking, “How come she’s not enjoying herself? This is awful.”

The next day she asked, “How do I get to the trains and the public transport?”

I said, “Where do you want to go? I’ll take you.”

And she says, “I really want to go to National Art Gallery and see an exhibition that’s on there at the moment” and it occurred to me that I’d just totally missed all the cues of the things that she wanted to do, I was so excited about bringing her and showing her all these things that I thought were really cool that I forgot to find out what interested her.

I see sales people and business owners all the time who are so concerned that they won’t say the right thing, that they miss all the cues.

They assume that people aren’t biting on the bait they’re putting out there because they’re not getting the words right. In a lot of cases they’re so caught up on what they’re going to say next or what they’re going to do next that they don’t actually hear the buying signs from the clients.

Most people actually tell you what they need if you’re listening 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 could be rather than actually spending some time asking some questions.

This comes back to the part of the sales process we are actually finding out information from the clients. So the first thing that people who are not necessarily well versed in sales do is they go in and they’ve prepared all the things that they’re going to say to make sure that that client gets interested in what they want them to be interested in. In actual fact the best thing you can do when you go into a sales meeting is to ask some questions and then shut up and listen.

Then you listen some more – and if you open your mouth at all, it’s to ask questions about the things they are saying. If you do that, I can just about guarantee that you will learn what you need to know to close the sale. You would really be astounded to learn how many sales are lost just because we make assumptions about what the other person is looking for.

One of the most powerful tools of NLP is learning to ask questions and read the other person – not to manipulate them, but to hear what their problems and concerns really are. The techniques I learned have closed more sales, and resolved more communication issues than I can count.

Meta Description: How do assumptions kill sales and negotiations? Let me count the ways. Assuming you know what the other person is going to say is a very dangerous habit, and will kill sales faster than just about any other thing you can do.

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 am one of those weird people that sort of enjoys cold calling – within limits. My results have always been good, and that has given me the confidence keep going when I am rejected. But there’s a reason why my results have usually been so good, and that’s what I’d like to tell you about.

One of my early sales positions was in a highly competitive industry with very thin margins. Our performance was judged on the number of calls we made, not on the number of appointments or sales we got. I always thought that was a mistake because it put the emphasis on the action, rather than the outcome and it seems to me that if you expect really poor outcomes you’ll probably get them. Anyway, my outcomes were excellent and I ended up booked out for weeks ahead because I used this system.

People often said, “It’s all very well for you Chandell, you’re a natural salesman so it’s easy for you to get these results.” And I’d kind of smile and think, “Well, if you knew how hard I worked before I ever picked up the phone you’d probably realise that there’s not much natural about it!”

When I became sales manager I started to teach my teams the system I was using, and you know what? Most of them became ‘natural salesmen’ too!

So here’s my 7-Step Sales System – it works for cold calling, and helps you close sales in other contexts as well because it gives you confidence in what you’re selling. The one thing that makes it even more powerful – which I talk about in another post – is principles of observing your prospect and understanding what’s going through their mind. I learned those through neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and they supercharged my results because they also helped me identify prospects who were not a good fit for the product or service I was selling and to offer them an alternative (or suggest they just keep what they had).

A 7-Step Sales System That Really Gives Results

Become familiar with the core literature for your product or service;
List all the reasons it would be worthwhile purchasing it;
Uncover all the questions prospects might ask;
Find meaningful answers to those questions;
Create a script you can use to explain your product or service;
Make a recording of the script to help you learn it and listen it it often;
Practice the script and keep adding questions.

You’ll notice this is not an effortless process – it takes real work and thought. It is fantastic when you have a team of people who can brainstorm features, benefits, and objections way beyond the ones in the handbook, but it works almost as well when you do the process alone and then practice it on friends or relatives to refine your script.

Most Objections Fall Into 3 Categories

Handling objections is usually the hardest part of sales, but it’s much easier once your realise that no matter how complex an objection seems, it usually has roots in one of 3 categories:-

I don’t have enough money;
I don’t have enough time;
I don’t have enough resources.

Once you practice mentally identifying which of these 3 categories you’re facing, you’ll be able to answer almost any objection that comes your way, without much difficulty and that will give you added confidence in any sales situation.

It’s amazing how much difference this level of preparation gives to both your outcomes and your attitude. Several times each year I run a sales training workshop called Confident Closing – it has that title because I’m passionate about sales and I believe that everyone can learn to close more sales, but the ‘Confident’ part is just as important as the closing in my mind. It’s rather like going into an exam knowing you’re well-prepared – it doesn’t matter what the questions are, you are confident you’ll be able to deal with them – and as a result your answers demonstrate that confidence.

If you’d like to learn more about my Confident Closing Sales Training go to CONCLO.

Meta Description: A 7-Step Sales System that gives results even when you use if for cold calling – and which will help you close more sales than you ever imagined was possible.

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

How can you take advantage of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) to set off your sales in an upward trajectory?

In a sales meeting, you have to listen really well to your client. Not the distracted kind of listening that you do as you think of the right things to say next. You must give your full attention to the client. You must be attuned to him through matching and mirroring — words, tonality and physiology.

And you must find out what his frame of reference is. In NLP, a frame of reference is defined as how a person judges the results of his actions. This could also mean his standards. You can ask a client how they know they are doing a good job and you can immediately identify whether he has an internal or external frame of reference.

When the client answers, “I instinctively know I am doing a good job, I don’t need anybody to tell me so”, then you have someone who has an internal frame of reference. These people make good entrepreneurs. They don’t need a lot of validation from outside to go on with their work.

But when he says, “I seek other people’s opinion about my work”, then he has an external frame of reference. This kind of people is perfect for service-oriented businesses like salons. They would seek client’s opinion for them to find out if they did their work well.

A person with an internal frame of reference with an external check looks inside then outside. A person with an external frame of reference looks outside then inside.

Frames of reference have been used in the past for personality profiling and you can use this too in closing sales. Be sure to follow the 5-step selling process discussed in a previous article – 5 Steps Sales Process Works.

For clients with external frame of reference, you can use testimonials from satisfied clients/customers for your product or service. Tell them the great things other people have to say about your product or service. You can build your presentation around these testimonials. These will definitely catch their attention.

For clients with an internal frame of reference, you can emphasize the benefits your product can bring to them. You must do a good job of stacking up your product’s value. You must ask questions to find out if your solution suits his unique needs and problems. When you have done this, it would be like feeding salt to the horses and they would thirst for your product.

Selling based on a client’s orientation would then be natural and would require less effort.

To find out how you can harness the power of NLP in closing sales, come and join our 7-Day NLP Training!

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

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?

#TuesdayTips

#TuesdayTips

A 7-Step Sales System That Really Gives Results

Most Objections Fall Into 3 Categories

#TuesdayTips

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