Sales Motivation and Sales Training

Sales Negotiation Outcome: Is it Over Before it Begins?

TheSalesHunter — Mon, 21 May 2012 14:24:00 +0000

I’ve watched too many sales negotiations be nothing more than an exercise in futility for one simple reason.

The salesperson entering the negotiation was ready to concede anything to get the sale.

If you think this isn’t you, that’s fine. You’re entitled to your belief, but I’ll bet my description does actually fit you.

Why? Simple — far too many times we as salespeople will go into a sales negotiation thinking, “What it is going to take to close the sale?”

The problem is what we’re thinking is usually far less price-wise than what the customer is thinking.

We wind up with what I’ll call “pre-negotiation mindset” for any number of reasons, but mostly because we simply fail to believe enough in what it is we’re selling and our own sales/negotiating skills.

We believe we have to win the sale, but too often “winning” comes at a cost that translates into a huge amount of lost profit.

It is important to go into every negotiation with a strategy and a set of parameters you will adhere to. You can’t simply put these parameters on the table when the customer isn’t even expecting them. When you do this, you’re not giving any value to your own skills or any value to what you’re providing the customer.

Getting around this problem can be difficult, because it comes down to your own mindset.

It’s easy to say you’re not going to cave when there’s nothing on the line, but it’s another deal to not do it when you find yourself dealing with a customer.

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind. Nobody gets everything. Warren Buffet hasn’t made money on every deal he’s made, a baseball player doesn’t get a hit every time they are at the plate, and a salesperson doesn’t make a sale with every potential customer.

Don’t ever forget that one profitable deal is going to be worth far more than 10 unprofitable deals.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more about how you can increase your negotiation skills both with new customers and with customers you’ve had for a long time.

In the end, it’s not the number of sales you make, but the amount of profit you protect.

Do You Sell To Your Customers… Or Do They Buy From You?

TheSalesHunter — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:41:36 +0000

It’s not quite as thought provoking as the proverbial question — “What came first, the chicken or the egg?”

But the question I pose in the headline does indeed have a lot of implications for those of us in sales.

There are many who believe the key is to make your offering so clear that the customer will want to buy. There are just as many who say customers don’t buy anything until the salesperson makes the sales pitch.

My position is simple. It takes both.

The customer is not going to buy anything if they don’t know what it is they’re buying. The salesperson’s job is to help the customer determine in their mind what it is they’re really looking for.

It comes down to helping the customer understand what their expected outcomes should be. Many times the customer doesn’t really know they’re looking for. They may think they know, but until a salesperson can help clarify what they want or need, they really may not understand accurately what that is.

If the customer buys anything before understanding what it is they’re looking for, then most likely they’re not making an intelligent decision.

The reason I’m even asking this question is because too many people, including salespeople, don’t understand the important role salespeople play. The role of the salesperson is not to merely be the person who show the customer a product or service or answer questions the customer asks.

No, the role of the salesperson is to help the customer define clearly what they want or need, and then help them see options they never realized existed. This is true for both B2B and B2C, as well as for both physical products and intangible services.

Yes, customers can find just about anything they want to know about something by going to the internet, and that is really a good thing for the sales industry.

What this means is the role of the salesperson has had to move from merely being the distributor of information to now being the questioner of expectations. This is a huge shift, but one that reinforces the importance as to why the question I asked in the headline both are relevant.

The salesperson must sell and the customer must buy.

Telephone Sales Tactics: Do They Still Work?

TheSalesHunter — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:24:37 +0000

My telephone rang the other day, and on the other end was a voice telling me how I was at risk for something.

The problem is that what the person was claiming was a “risk” for me was something I couldn’t care less about.

Just another stupid telephone sales tactic that has not worked in years.

The number of old-school telephone sales tactics that people still try to use never ceases to amaze me. Unfortunately, when people try to use them, not only do they not work, but they also give everyone in sales a stained reputation.

It’s time we put a stop to stupid telephone sales tactics.

The biggest one is trying to use fear to gain attention.

Prospects are smart. Quit trying to think otherwise. The internet is the great equalizer in terms of leveling the playing field between customer and salesperson. The fact that prospects can find out nearly anything they want means this strategy of trying to shock the person on the other end of phone into taking action is simply no longer effective.

Conversely, another tactic that no longer works is trying to get the customer to believe what you have to say is so timely and so critical they have to take action immediately.

Sorry, but unless you’re a medical doctor I just saw, I’m not going to buy this one either. Again, the level of information available through other avenues simply makes the sales tactic of what I refer to as a “critical call to action” rarely effective.

It would be possible to list many more telephone sales tactics that no longer work, but I think you get the point.

The reason I’m sharing this is I want you to think about how to evaluate things for yourself.

Ask yourself, “Do my sales strategies still hold up in the face of how extensively the internet is used today?”

Ask yourself, “How do my customers find information? How do they evaluate information? How does all of this fit into their overall mindset and how they do things?”

The prospect of today is different than the prospect of even a couple of years ago, and I would imagine the prospect will continue to change in the years to come.

Never allow yourself to believe that you don’t need to occasionally change and refine what it is you do. I’m not advocating change for the sake of change.

What I’m saying is be prepared to change if need be. Your telephone sales tactics are yours.

Make sure whatever sales strategies you use fit your style and your market.

The Critical Mistake You’ve Made On-Line

TheSalesHunter — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:42:18 +0000

Well, maybe all of you haven’t made this mistake.

I know plenty of salespeople who have made it, though.

What is it?

The mistake of not being thorough in your on-line presence.

I realize some people are nervous about intentionally putting information on the internet about themselves. The reality is, though, that many potential buyers will use the internet to do research.

Wouldn’t you prefer that the information they find about you is accurate and positive?

What is key step you can take in that direction?

As a businessperson, you definitely can fill out your complete profile on Linkedin. As many of you know, Linkedin is the primary networking site for professionals.

Unfortunately, too many salespeople make the mistake of filling in the bare minimum as far as information goes — or they don’t even have a Linkedin profile to begin with. Yikes!

My recommendation? Take the time to complete your profile and make full use of all of the features on Linkedin. Even the free version is comprehensive and can demonstrate your experience, your professional interests and involvement in various industry groups.

My other recommendation about Linkedin is that you follow some of the key groups that would be of interest to the bulk of your buyers or prospects. In the B2B world, in particular, you can learn a lot about trends in the industries where your product or service is most used.

Another key profile worth completing is your Google+ profile. If you do not understand Google+, I recommend Guy Kawasaki’s eBook “What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us.”

For some of you reading this, these steps of being more thorough in these profiles is a no-brainer. You long ago did this and possibly even are active on the sites.

If, however, you are a salesperson who still thinks these are just fads or that it doesn’t do much for you professionally to boost your on-line presence, I’ve got news for you.

The internet isn’t going away.

Your potential buyers and prospects will continue to increase their use of it to research products, companies and yes, even salespeople.

Don’t make a critical mistake and ignore what you could be doing to present yourself positively on the web.

(And if we haven’t already, let’s connect on Linkedin, at my Linkedin High-Profit Selling group, and on Google+).

Are People Buying Your Credibility?

TheSalesHunter — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:47:08 +0000

Every few months, it seems there is news of another failure of credibility by somebody in business.

Most recently it has been the resignation of the Yahoo CEO, Scott Thompson.

What’s amazing is how and why it occurred. Call it hubris, or just plain stupidity — either way, it was a failure of individual responsibility.

It’s easy to point fingers and talk about somebody who is at the top of the business food-chain taking a nosedive due to their own stupidity. It’s much harder, however, to look at ourselves and ask the critical question about how we handle situations.

Sales is life, and life is sales. We’re all doing it each day, and each day people are making decisions about our own credibility.

I’ve always been a strong believer that if we can’t deal with the little things with integrity, then how will we ever be able to handle the big things? How many times have customers asked you a question and you’ve shaded the answer to put you in the best light?

Sure, the responses you gave may very well have been of zero consequence to anything other than your own ego. The problem I have with this is that it is indeed a big deal. If you struggle with this sort of thing, then there is an issue you must deal with.

The credibility you have with your customers and, for that matter, everyone with whom you come in contact is as the advertisement goes “priceless.” For those of us in sales, a better word to describe it would be “profitable.”

People want credibility and they will pay for it.

Saying you’re more credible than your competitor is not good enough. That’s like saying some slime is better than other slime. Sorry, but it all is still slime.

Credibility exists in everything we do, seen and unseen. Maybe we should keep a picture of Scott Thompson visible to us at all times to remind us what the lack of credibility looks like.

Sales Prospecting: Are You Even Focused?

TheSalesHunter — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:34:59 +0000

Prospecting for sales is hard enough, but it’s made even harder when the strategy being used is either based on hope — or worse yet something like spraying and praying.

I talk a lot about the need to have a very clear sales prospecting process.

Just as important the need to be focused in following it.

Too many salespeople at the first sign of something not going right get scared and change direction. No wonder so many salespeople cave to the demands of the customer when it comes to price. (We’ll save that issue for another day.)

The problem is you have to realize there will be obstacles. Things will arise that may give an indication of something not working correctly, but that doesn’t mean you should abandon the process.

Can you imagine Bill Gates in the early days of Microsoft stopping work just because he encountered a small problem?
I wonder if Steve Jobs would have stopped all work on the iPad just because somebody said something he didn’t like.

In both cases, we know that they did not stop.

Why then should you stop everything, go into panic mode or haphazardly come up with a new process just because a small issue arises?

Once you have your sales process established, then stick to it. You have to give it time. The amount of time needs to be at least 3x the length of the normal customer acquisition process.

If it normally takes you two months to prospect a customer and close the sale, then you want to use your process for at least six months before evaluating it. You can make tweaks along the way. That’s fine, but don’t go abandoning the ship half way across the ocean.

You’ll only be in a position to evaluate the effectiveness of a sale process after you’ve been doing it for an extended period of time. Don’t cop out on yourself. I find the reason salespeople are quick to throw up their hands about their prospecting system not working is because they want to have an excuse to not have to prospect.

Far more prospecting systems fail due to user than due to the system.

This message applies not only to salespeople, but also to sales managers, the marketing department and anyone else involved in the sales process. Things take time and the biggest reason is due to repetition. A new customer is not going to suddenly pop out of thin air based on one phone call or one email.

Sorry, but if it was that easy, we wouldn’t need salespeople.

Now, get out there and execute your plan. Stay focused and when you begin to waver, remember two words: stay focused.

Prospecting Emails that Suck

TheSalesHunter — Sat, 12 May 2012 18:14:18 +0000

It happened earlier again today.

Among the hundreds of emails I receive each day — both solicited and unsolicited — came what I’ll call the “stupid email of the day.”

If you’re going to prospect via email, don’t go putting out an email that says “just checking in.” Come on, get real and quit being stupid, thinking something like this is going to catch anyone’s attention.

“Just checking in” is not the way you address any email to someone you don’t know, let alone someone with whom you want to do business. The person sending it was trying to be both casual and not obtrusive, but failed miserably. It was such an inauthentic approach.

I am a busy person. I don’t have time for emails that say “just checking in,” and neither does anyone else. The only thing this person is going to get from me is a quick hit of the “delete” key.

Now before you think I’m completely against prospecting that includes email, you should know that I do think it can be a strategy that works well, depending on the industry, the person receiving the email, and so forth.

One thing that is imperative in all email prospecting campaigns is to have the prospect receiving information they will find of value.

Don’t send something that is of interest to you. It must be of interest to the person receiving it.

Second point to remember is this: Due to the number of emails that people read using their smart phones, you have to make the title and the first 30 characters of the email incredibly engaging.

If someone uses their smartphone as their preferred way of handling email, they see only a small portion of the email when they pull it up. They will decide quickly whether it is something they want to keep or delete — much quicker than when someone views an email on a laptop or desktop computer.

I’ve written a number of other blog posts regarding prospecting the last few months, and the reason is simple — it’s a huge issue for the vast majority of salespeople.

As you prospect, remember email is just one of your prospecting tools.

Don’t make it your only tool. If you do, you’ll find yourself with a pretty skinny sales pipeline.

Voicemail as a Prospecting Tool

TheSalesHunter — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:24:50 +0000

Let’s not kid ourselves. The vast majority of phone calls go to voicemail.

Because of this reality, if you intend to use the telephone to develop sales prospects, then you have to be able to use voicemail effectively.

The biggest mistake people make when leaving a voicemail message as part of their prospecting strategy is they leave a message that has zero value to the person receiving it. The prospect doesn’t want to know how wonderful you are and a bunch of other blather about what you and your company do.

Think about this for a moment.

Did the prospect wake up thinking about how great it would be if you were to call them? No, the prospect has things to do, and that right there is the silver bullet you need to have.

Your message can become the silver bullet when it contains a value statement that benefits the prospect. This means you need to be able to summarize in a single sentence one key piece of information they will find of value.

Here are a couple of examples:

If I sell insurance, I might leave a value statement that says something about how I have some new information from an employee survey showing how employee attitudes toward insurance have changed.

Another example might be if I’m selling computer services to businesses, I could say something with regard to a new study showing how companies are spending less on computer hardware due to changes in how they use what they have.

The idea with the value statement you leave with the prospect is to not detail what it is you do and how great your company is. The objective is to share one sentence that lets them know you have something of value that could help them.

The total length of the message should be no more than about 15 seconds.
You leave the value statement, your name and company, plus your phone number, and that’s it.

Will the customer return your call when you leave a message like this? Sorry, but the answer is “not likely.” But what they will do is hopefully begin to see you as somebody who is different from the vast majority of other salespeople.

Use the message you leave as just one part of the process of helping to show the prospect you can be seen as a valuable asset to helping solve their problems.

Your Attitude Drives Your Sales Prospecting Results

TheSalesHunter — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:49:51 +0000

It’s time for me to once again talk about the importance of you attitude.

Sales prospecting can be very difficult, but why make it any harder on yourself by having a bad attitude?

Too many salespeople fail to realize how much they’re destroying their sales prospecting results due to their attitude.

It starts by not letting stuff you can’t control to control you. There will always be people who will reject your phone calls or make quick off-the-cuff statements about how they feel toward you. The key is to not let these bother you.

The best example I can share with you is the late night hotel front-desk clerk. This person is subject to receiving guests who may have encountered any number of difficulties in their travels getting to the hotel. The clerk doesn’t know any of this and they certainly don’t have any control over them, yet the guest could still choose to treat the clerk with less than courteous behavior.

The guest isn’t necessarily doing it intentionally — it’s merely the culmination of a difficult day.

Same thing goes for the response you may get to your phone call or email. The prospect may simply be responding to you in a manner that reflects other things going on in their life at that moment. Don’t let their actions impact your actions. You’re better than that and certainly you have not had the same type of day they’ve had.

View each call you make, email you send or whatever communication you’re using as an opportunity to impact positively the person the message is intended for. The ability you have to prospect is a privilege, because you are creating opportunity to provide the prospect the same level of service or products you’ve provided to other customers.

Look for the positive, regardless of where it comes from. Use the positive as your springboard to pump your own attitude.

The more you pump your own attitude with what you see or hear going on around you, the more positive experiences you’ll find. It comes down to one thing — momentum. I’m talking about the momentum of others either impacting positively or negatively your own attitude.

Choose today to embrace that your attitude drives your sales prospecting results.

Validate Information… Or Pay the Price Later

TheSalesHunter — Wed, 09 May 2012 06:45:07 +0000

Any piece of information you receive from or about a customer needs to be validated.

No matter how long you have been in sales, you know that bad information can steer you horribly wrong and maybe even cost you sales and professional relationships.

If you receive information about one of your customers or about something happening in their company or industry, don’t automatically take the information at face value.

For one, the information could be flat out wrong. Or, it could have been presented to you in such a way that someone was trying to skew your opinion on a particular issue or industry-related matter.

Of course, there is the possibility too that someone unknowingly or innocently conveyed a piece of information wrong.

You get the point.

Of all the things you hear and see, a few erroneous pieces of information are bound to sneak through.

How do you validate information?

If it is information you have heard about a particular customer or something happening in their company, try to confirm the information with someone else in the company. Obviously, you need to be wise about maintaining integrity and confidences, but at the same time, clarifying something you have heard is just a wise way to do business.

You can also validate information simply through follow-up questions with your customer. It is not unusual through your follow-up questions to have the customer share vital information that reveals the bigger picture of what may be happening.

Another way to validate information, especially in the B2B world, is to stay on top of trends and current news in the industries of your particular customers. A key way you can do this is to follow the trade associations and publications your customers may be involved with.

Not only do these extra steps allow you to validate information, they also make you aware of opportunities you otherwise would miss.

I like to say that as a salesperson, you are your customer’s research and development department. The more information you have that is comprehensive and accurate, the easier it is for you to enter into meaningful dialogue with your customer at their point of need.

Now, if you would rather just blindly accept every little piece of information you receive, that’s an option too. But I guarantee that you will pay a price for this — maybe immediately, but definitely later on.

You won’t be able to best match your products and services with the genuine needs and wants of the customer, because you will lack an understanding of crucial circumstances.

Trust me on this: Validate information or pay the price later on.