confident closing Archives | Page 7 of 7

“The foundation of everything you go after (and you should have ridiculously large goals at all times) is simply… being a good animal.”

~ John Carlton

What’s Working in Your Sales and Marketing?

As a sales trainer and coach I spend a lot of time working with individuals, teams, and groups and the same questions come up quite regularly even from high performing business owners, sales professionals, and others.

As you know if you’ve been following me for any period of time, I’m not a fan of pushy sales techniques or forcing people to buy things they don’t need just so that you can meet your sales targets. My strategy is to help you get in front of people who do need what you are offering and showing them why it’s a good decision to buy… Or not to buy after all, if that’s what you see.

The problem is that if you can’t answer the question, “What’s working in your sales and marketing?” then you don’t know where to start.

Using Everything You Have to Achieve Your Goals and Meet Targets

You want to reach your goals, don’t you?

Of course you do, or else you wouldn’t be reading this page. There’s a lot of advice out there about setting goals (I’ve shared some of my favourite goal-setting and goal-getting techniques in other posts on this sites). But many goal-setters skip a key element even if it’s included in the technique and that’s like trying to cook a meal with one hand tied behind your back.

Here’s what you may be missing in both your goal setting and sales…

Your senses… all five of them!

Sight
Hearing
Touch
Smell
Taste

As anyone who has impaired (or abnormally heightened) function in any of these senses knows, the malfunction of our sensory inputs can make life very difficult and increase our stress and anxiety levels… And putting all of them to use can dramatically improve our communication and goals setting outcomes.

Are You Ignoring Obvious Cues?

Lets look at two important business applications of this reality:

Motivation: If motivation is a problem ask yourself how well you’re engaging all 5 of your senses in both your goal-setting and your daily action plan. With some quick sensory engagement you can transform your results and reduce the quantity of will-power and energy required to keep the wheels turning.
Conversations & Sales: Sensory awareness is crucial for the successful communication that is at the heart of long-term sales relationships. When you also engage with others on a multi-sense level you can seriously increase your close rate and decrease the anxiety prospects and new clients may otherwise experience.

There’s a reason why successful sales professionals like to visit prospects’ premises: they pick up a lot of sensory clues. And there’s a reason why many of them also like to bring prospects into their own professional environment if they’re on the fence about their investment (and why coffee shops and serviced offices are not the best choice for this interaction) that has everything to do with professionalism, reinforcement, and plain sensory control.

You see, at the end of the day, no matter how objective we pride ourselves on being, as humans we’re also animals who are susceptible to sensory inputs.

A Simple Practice

Here’s a simple goal setting and motivation practice for you to test (And don’t worry you can do it at your desk or when you take a bathroom break without anyone noticing.)

Here’s what to do:

Shut your eyes and take three deep breaths (In-2-3-4-Out-2-3-4);
Keeping your eyes shut listen carefully and notice any sounds that are around you starting very close and gradually letting your awareness extend to a greater distance;
With your eyes shut notice any sensations within your body – then notice the feeling of your body as it touches your chair and your feet on the floor etc;
Still with your eyes shut breath in deeply through your nose and notice any smells that are around you. You don’t need to identify them, just become aware of their existence;
Now, with your eyes shut open your mouth and taste the air as you breathe in and simply focus on your sense of taste (something we rarely do unless we are consciously eating or tasting wine);
If you’re setting a goal or seeking motivation for a task… Create a multi-sensory experience of the achievement you’ll feel when it’s finally completed (or when the next part of it is done);
Finally, just before you open your eyes notice the quality of light falling on your eyelids and then open your eyes and notice afresh the visual details of your surroundings. Really look at them with attention.

Now start your next task or continue what you were doing and notice how your approach has shifted. If you add some movement and a few quick stretches this quick reset will be nearly as effective as a nap or a workout and see you ready to leap into action.

Human Beings Have Sensory Triggers…

There’s a reason why real estate agents encourage owners to bake bread or cookies before an Open House inspection. There’s also a reason why truly successful professional practices choreograph their offices carefully and select decor, fragrance, reading material, and even snacks for waiting prospects. It’s not just because they have highly developed aesthetic preferences, it’s purely and simply to reinforce their message and help qualified prospects buy.

You can use sensory triggers to improve your own productivity and you can also use your sensory triggers to engage more effectively with your ideal prospects and clients by watching and listening to them carefully and by creating a multi-sensory sales process.

Sense, Cents, and Sales

Ready to Confidently Close more sales without discounting or eroding your margins? Yes, it does involve increasing sensory awareness.

The PBA Live Sales Masterclass is included in the 13-week Profitable Business Accelerator enrolment, but there are also a limited number of ‘Live Day Only’ seats available for individuals or teams who want to take their selling skills to the next level.

Book Now

Interested in the 13-week Profitable Business Accelerator program?

Learn More About the 13-week PBA Program

“What you focus on changes your behaviour – for better or worse.”

~Chandell Labbozzetta

The Angle Changes the Meaning

I love drawing and sketching. It’s fun looking at ‘ordinary items’ from different perspectives because the angle you are viewing from affects how you see them and changing your perspective can complete change their meaning.

It’s the same in our lives. When you take a different angle on a familiar situation or behaviour you often discover something completely new. This is particularly powerful when it’s a question of addressing situations or people which cause you frustration because an apparently minor shift can create totally new possibilities.

Shift Behaviour by Changing Your View

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) there is a simple technique that helps you shift your focus. Traditionally, it is used to help resolve inter-personal conflicts but it is also helpful in problem solving because it helps you look at your problem through new eyes which then opens up the possibility of new solutions.

Recently, I was at a personal development course and we were exploring our attitudes and reactions through a series of games that challenged us to shift our focus. The exercise forced me to look at my behaviour from different angles, and that simple shift caused it to change… in an empowering way.

What fascinated me most is that the change was brought about not by focusing on changing the behaviour itself, but simply by shifting my point of view.

A New Perspective Creates Unimagined Possibilities

Think about what this could mean for you (and for the world).

It’s a common aphorism that the thinking used to create a problem cannot also be used to solve it, therefore…

If you would like to find innovative solutions that may not require as much compromise, you need to step away from your current approaches and look for something new.

So, here’s a question for you: are there situations or behaviours you would like to change (or need to change), or so that in twelve months’ time you can look back and say, “Wow! I can’t believe how far I have come!”?

If so…

What Would It Take to Create a Completely Different Solution?

Here at LifePuzzle we believe that when a problem is created, a solution that is within your control is also created. Over the years we’ve worked with companies, teams, and individuals and helped them transform their outcomes… Even when change seemed impossible.

One of the characteristics of human beings is our ability to adapt and grow. When you realise that the reality you experience today isn’t something that has to be true tomorrow you are ready to take personal responsibility for change.

In our Corporate and Team programs we don’t just work with the group as a whole, we also work with individuals because each person has the potential to be the difference that makes the difference.

It all starts with a HOWTO Session that brings clarity and helps you focus on what you really want so that you can make the decisions you need to make. Book your session soon!

Book Your H.O.W.T.O. Session

#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

It’s a pretty consistent fact around the world that approximately 50% of small businesses fail within the first two years of operation and only about 8% of them make it to 10 years. Michael Gerber discusses the reasons for this at length in “The E-Myth Revisited”, but I’d like to discuss it briefly here and tell you a story to illustrate it.

Are You A Technician?

A lot of small businesses are started by ‘technicians’ who are very good at what they do, and angered when they think that their employer doesn’t value them enough. The accountant who leaves a big firm to start his own practice because he knows he’s being charged at $180 per hour, but only receiving $90, the chiropractor or physiotherapist who knows what each patient is being charged, but only receives a percentage of that fee, or my friend Josie, who is a hairdresser.

Josie worked in Angie’s Salon and she was paid $15 an hour. At the end of every week Josie saw that her income is far less than the total takings that Angie has in revenue. She worked out what each client paid for her services and compared that with her weekly wage and said to herself, “How come Angie gets paid this much and I’m only getting $15 an hour and I work much harder than her. I’m a much better hairdresser than she is and I see more clients!”

After a while Josie decided to start her own Salon. She knew that she is a really great hairdresser, in fact, she loves hairdressing so much she told herself that this would not be work! She worked really hard, put in long hours (all that administration as well as hairdressing!) and to encourage people to come in she started discounting her services. Josie was now working much harder now than when she was employed by Angie. When we sat down together and looked at Josie’s numbers in a Business Coaching session, we worked out that her new pay rate as a business owner was $1.20 an hour.

You see, what Josie didn’t understand were all the other tasks that Angie did behind the scenes. Things like rent, utility bills, doing the payroll, looking at how she’s actually going to get business walking in through the door, (Angie’s clients didn’t just show up with their money on the day she opened the Salon!), and managing stock levels. Josie only saw the big picture with all the zeros at the end of the week’s takings, she didn’t even consider the rest of the picture.

In this classic example of the standard Small Business Owner Josie went from scoffing over $15 per hour as an employee to buying herself a very stressful job for the bargain price of $1.20 per hour! Wasn’t that a great move?

Josie was down – but she was not out! She had signed up for a 2-day Confident Closing workshop that I ran because she was determined not to go back to being an employee. She was going to make this work!

We started by laying out all the bad news … the tasks she had to do, the bills she had to pay, etc – and then the good news … the clients she already had, the staff she had working for her and so on. The picture was pretty ugly, but with all the facts in front of her, Josie could see clearly why she was feeling so stressed and she could make a plan to get out of it.

Find out what happened next … Part 2

Meta Description: What many small businesses owners don’t consider before they start their business and how this leads to despair and failure.

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

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to get on really well with almost everyone, while others are constantly complaining about the way other people treat them? The answer probably likes in the flexibility of their communication system.

I used to have a very fixed idea about how people who liked me would communicate – it included smiles, positive words, and general encouragement (all good things, by the way). The problem with my inflexibility in this area was that if someone was pre-occupied and didn’t really notice me one day I’d think I must have offended them which made me feel bad, and try to make things right.

As I studied and practiced Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) I realised that the problem wasn’t that I had an overpowering desire to be liked – the real problem was that I had such limited flexibility in my communications that I couldn’t really distinguish between people who were pre-occupied and people who didn’t like me.

We all have some people around us who we genuinely dislike and disagree with, but we also have a much a much wider group of people with whom we just ‘don’t really feel comfortable’ – and this is mostly a question of flexibility in communication.

Glass, Perspex, and Rejection

Which is stronger: – glass or perspex? Most people in my Confident Closing workshops will say glass – although the engineering / practical types will ask questions about thickness and treatments. Theoretically it’s true – glass is the stronger substance, but it’s not as resilient as perspex. Resilience is a key characteristic in communication and relationships.

Because glass is brittle, if you put enough weight and pressure on it – it’s going to break. Whereas the perspex has got some flexibility and so it’s actually going to be able to withstand more pressure.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a business owner, or just want better social relationships you need to become more like the perspex than glass if you want to survive and thrive. You can guarantee that challenges will come your way at one point or another. If you’re flexible, you’re able to deal with the situation more congruently, more resourcefully.

Communicating So That Others Hear You

When you focus your communication on the other person, you’ll quickly realise the truth of the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) principle that says, “The person or the system with the most flexibility will be the one that controls the system.” If you want to control the outcome of your conversations and sales meetings then you have to able and willing to respond appropriately in any given situation. This means you have to be flexible in your use of communication tools – not tied to a script or even an outcome, but focused on the other person.

When you focus on your prospect, or your client and really listen to their communications – the words they use, their gestures, and tone of voice – you’ll pick up the cues you need to close more deals. In some cases you’ll realise that your product or service isn’t appropriate for them, or that they’re just humouring you and that’s fine too, because the quicker you pick that up, the faster you can get out of there, and the less time you’ll waste.

What Do I Mean When I Talk About “Flexibility in Communication”?

We all have a preferred style of communication based on our filters [Link to post]. It doesn’t mean that this is the only way we communicate, it just means it’s our preferred style – and that style includes our choice of words, the speed at which we speak, and the gestures and tones we use. The more we can use matching and mirroring to reflect the style preferred by the person we’re talking to, the more likely we both are to come away from our interaction feeling understood.

Flexibility involves understanding our own preferred communication style, and become observant when we are around others so that we can become aware of their preferred style of communication. The more we do this, the more we will find that others like and understand us, and we like and understand them.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) focuses heavily on recognising communication patterns, and it’s one of the things we teach in our Confident Closing Workshop at Life Puzzle.

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

Our brain is assaulted by over 11million bps (bits per second) of information, but it can only process a tiny fraction of that – 126 bps to be precise. So how do you decide which bits are worthy of attention? That’s the role of your filters. If you didn’t have filters, you would go into total overwhelm because of the differential between the volume of information that is coming at you, and the amount you can actually process.

You may be wondering what this has to do with your Professional Relationships … and the answer is that your ability to understand your own filters, and the filters other people use will dramatically affect your professional relationships and, therefore, your professional success.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) has a very clear and effective model that demonstrates how this works:

We interpret the external world through our five senses – through sight, touch, sound, smell, and taste. Then your unconscious mind takes over. It filters them through your memories, your beliefs about who you are, your values and morals that you have accepted from your parents or the surrounding culture, your language and whatever other filters you have in place, so that it can select the 126 bits that are relevant to you and group them in chunks of seven to nine pieces of information and make sense of them.

Therefore, your interpretation of those eleven million bits of information is going to be unique – completely different to any other person’s interpretation of the same information – and it will happen instantaneously and unconsciously.

Great … But how does that help me in my professional communications?

Imagine if you could instantly create connections with other people – connections and rapport that aren’t necessarily based on common interests, long-term interactions, or any other factors that you have no control over. Would that make it easier to close sales and handle clients?

It did for me, and it has for many of my clients. You see, our unconscious mind creates these filters so that we are able to handle the sheer volume of information that is coming at us, and we create a picture in our minds made up of just the information we decided to keep. In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) terminology we call this an internal representation. This is as unique to you as your thumbprint – no two people’s filters are the same – and it explains why two eye-witness can give completely different accounts of the same event. We all delete the information that we don’t think is relevant and we distort and generalise based on the filters we have developed so that we can reduce the information to manageable levels.

Your internal representation is basically a mental picture about what any given situation means to you. The details in this mental picture influence how you feel, which determines your physical response to the situation. Then you use that mental picture to form a response. If you are talking to someone your response will indicate what that picture means to you.

As a listener this means that if you pay attention to someone’s language, you can quickly learn about their filters. Thus, whenever you are talking to someone you can speak to them in a way that bypasses their filters.

Language, Learning Styles and Preferred Communication Models

In the ongoing debate about education, you may have heard some of the discussion about learning styles. I don’t actually agree with most of the discussion around this area. The prevailing attitude puts people in boxes, rather than opening up new options and making them resources and I think that’s a criminal thing to do to anyone – especially a child!

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) respects people’s preferences – and acknowledges that if we want to build rapport with others, we need to go over to where they are, not expect them to come to us. Communication styles are very similar to learning styles – we all have a preferred way of filtering the world – through visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic modes (and both our preferred learning style and our preferred communication style are usually linked). If we can quickly discover a person’s preferred style of communication, and use language that reflects it we can quickly build rapport with almost anyone.

The best communicators in the world – the people whose words everyone listens to, even if they disagree with their ideas – have very flexible communication styles. If you are speaking to a group, using language that resonates with a variety of communication models is ideal, if you are just speaking to a single person you will find it much easier to build your relationship if you identify their preferred mode of language, and use it with them.

Their pose will quickly change from resistant to responsive. When we teach this in workshops and our students go out and practice identifying and using the appropriate model we usually get an excited phone call within a day or two from people who say, “I can’t believe what a change this has made! I talked with X, who is usually quite stiff and resistant, and closed the deal we’ve been negotiating for 3 months.

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 firmly believe that each of us have all the resources we need to make a success of both our business and our personal lives – it’s just that sometimes we get caught up in ways of thinking and behaving that mess us up over and over again. I’ve seen it a lot in teams I’ve worked with, and individuals and corporate groups I’ve trained.

In my book, “Confident Closing: Sales Secrets That Grew A Business by 400% in 6 Months And How They Can Work For You!” I talk about the transformation Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) brought to my own life, and how quickly I was able to teach others so that they had similar transformations in their own areas of particular need.

Our Roadblocks May Look Different, But They Have The Same Root Cause

In a way, we hate to hear this because we like to think that our problems are unique and that’s why we can’t move past them, but if you think about it differently, this reality is quite comforting: – If others have found a tool that helps them change, then I can too. I don’t need to stay ‘stuck’ in my problem!

The root cause of all our problems is our unconscious mind, and the beliefs and behaviours that we store there. The real problem here is that they are unconscious so it’s very hard to pinpoint them and change them. When I attended my first Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) training I’d been seeing a psychologist to help with depression for months and going over the same pile of misery every week. It’s hard for me to believe even now, what a transformation a few days made in my outlook, but I’ve seen the same thing happen over and over again in other people.

The key is that while Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) doesn’t teach that your past isn’t important, it does teach that you are not bound by your past and it delivers the tools you need to release the chains that are holding you to your old ways. It is almost like magic!

Let me tell you about a couple of the transformations I’ve seen as people overcame the personal and professional roadblocks that had been keeping them stuck for years (I’ve changed names, but the stories are real):

Samantha is an effervescent extrovert

she is so bubbly that she scares some people. In a sales team this is great because it doesn’t matter how many rejections she gets, she’s always ready to get up and go again – on the other hand, she scares off some really great prospects. She was in one of my group trainings and we looked at ways to develop rapport and relationships. As she learned to read her prospect over the phone or in person she was able to tone down her effervescence and close more sales.

Samantha never felt as though this was ‘putting on an act’ because she was simply thinking more about what would make the other person comfortable than herself. She was excited about the fact that she was able to close nearly twice the number of sales, but she was even more excited by the fact that she was able to build a closer relationship with both her sister and her own son – both of whom were introverts. They’d always got on fairly well, but now they were actually enjoying being together.

Maybe you know someone like Clive

Clive has been moving ‘away from’ things his whole life. He didn’t want to be fat, or unfit, or poor. In the business context he didn’t want to fail – so every month he reached the acceptable target that he set for himself. The problem with this is that you end up on a see-saw. If you feel fat at 60kg (or 80kg or whatever) then you start to work on losing weight – but your only real goal is to be lighter than that point. So you lose a bit of weight, feel better about yourself, relax … and next thing you know your weight is right back up there (or even higher) – and that was Clive’s problem – he just got heavier and heavier incrementally.

It was the same with finances – he wanted to be ‘not poor’, so he’d make some good money, feel much better, relax and his financial situation would sink back to where it was. Fitness … Sales Targets … same story. When we uncovered the unconscious beliefs which were driving his behaviour and dealt with them, things started to slowly change for Clive. He learned to move toward genuine goals that he was passionate about, rather than ‘away from’ states which he didn’t like.

I could keep telling you stories about others who have been able to overcome their roadblocks, and achieve their personal and professional goals after years of frustration. But I’d like to invite you to experience it for yourself. Come along to my next Confident Closing workshop CONCLO and learn more.

Meta Description: Most people have roadblock – barriers they keep coming up against no matter which route they try. The good news is that NLP is a powerful tool that can help you overcome them and live resourcefully.

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

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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

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