From first glance, sales can look like a disorganized mess, akin to throwing darts blindfolded at a map and getting lucky by finding someone who wants to buy what you're pitching. While sometimes chance plays a large part in the successful conversion of a good number of sales, there is a method to organizing this madness that can improve anyone's chances of more effectively converting sales than just blindly throwing darts. This method is what is commonly known as the sales cycle or sales process and this week the Business Development Report is putting together an in-depth guide for you to follow so that your efforts are as rewarding as possible.
First, what is the sales cycle?
The sales cycle is a series of events beginning with the prospecting phase where leads are generated and ending in the agreement and follow-through phase. There are many components to each phase but the 5 major components of the sales cycle are as follows:
We will be going into each of these phases into more detail in future articles, but to start, you need to understand that the most important characteristic of the sales cycle is that it is never as effective in partial implementation as it is when all of the 5 major components are involved. That said, there are additional steps that one can implement to augment the 5 core components that may increase the likelihood of converting a sale, but even though conventional wisdom may dictate it sometimes more is not better, it is only more.
How does this apply to me?
For anyone who has practiced trying to hit a target blindly, you know that aiming and throwing based on intuition alone can produce results, but not nearly as often as if you were to look, take aim, analyze and then execute your pitch. In the same way, targeting sales by sizing up your clients is a better way to have more productive results than simply pitching away at every lead in the phone book. Application of the sales cycle, especially in the initial stages of any sales effort will save you time and resources and ultimately increase your productivity in terms of converted sales.
When does the Sales Cycle Start?
Luckily, as a sales photographer you have the advantage of receiving intelligently sorted leads that have already been filtered to a certain extent so as to target your efforts. Beyond that, the sales cycle is a constant process that does not follow a linear timeline per se. Once a client has been sold, they are not necessarily signing a lifetime contract or agreeing to always consent to the services that you promised. Furthermore, the services that are provided following the original sales process don't always occur as billed. So, if we define a "sale" as a mutual agreement between two parties to exchange goods or services for monetary reimbursement, the "agreement" portion becomes the dynamic component of that definition, meaning it is subject to change. As a sales person, you are responsible for guiding negotiations to that agreement stage, so even if the client initially agrees to purchase what you have to sell, you still have an obligation to ensure that the deal goes forward, and that a client renews as a result of the product being delivered as billed. In that example you can see how the process can jump around from contact follow-up rebook, to negotiation and back throughout the lifespan of the agreement, subject to changes in conditions of the service or good being delivered within the parameters of the agreed upon terms.
Sounds Complicated, I Already Give Up!!
Don't lose faith yet, even though there are many advanced explanations for the sales cycle, we're going to stick to the basics for your sake and give you a working guide to apply to real life situations. We will go into detail of each of the 5 stages and give you some important dos and don'ts to follow when you're acquiring clients above and beyond the techniques described in the FotoIllusion Sales Manual. As you go through your training, and even if you're already a seasoned veteran at sales, it is always worthwhile to practice identifying the 5 stages for any prospective relationship or deal you are developing. Think of the 5 stages as your roadmap to a sale and follow them. They will not lead you astray.
Whether you are trying to be the rainmaker of sales or the best in your department in production, you have to stay focused on the processes and not the overall goal of your endeavors.
The entire Sahara desert could be moved by a single man if only by picking up one grain of sand at time. Keep this in mind the next time you are faced with a daunting task that seems impossible, or if you are trying to overcome your own tendencies to be the best at something.
By keeping your mind occupied with each step of the journey, you distract it from looking too far ahead or only at the big picture. When you keep your mind on that which is right in front of you, you will not stumble over obstacles because you will see them coming.
Although many options are available to you to get your message across to the decision makers, the best way to decide how you should approach them is to put yourself in their shoes. When was the last time somebody approached you in a mall or called you soliciting a product or service? Chances are you were fairly annoyed if the product or service being pitched wasn't relevant to you, but maybe it was and you purchased it on the spot.
Establishing relevance is nearly impossible without some kind of existing need for a service. When trying to convince someone to change providers you need a different approach than you would if you were selling something new that the client doesn't already want. In both cases you need to approach the decision maker differently.
The best approach to selling a new idea is the direct approach, like the person in the mall who walks up to you with a widget that you may have never seen before, nor thought to look for. That product needs to be in the customer's face to survive.
When it comes to making a client change from one provider to another a more passive approach is necessary, but not always the most effective. When you are selling something that is new but similar to what a client is currently receiving you need to employ a combination of the "in your face" tactics of the new product and the passive cold calling approach.
So try to think about those two examples when you approach a client with your pitch. On one hand you want to show them the relevancy of what you are selling, on the other, you can't be too aggressive or pushy since the client is already working with someone. The best approach is to take the middle of the road and combine the two so that you don't scare the clients away.
Persistence in sales is one of the most highly praised values you can have. However, when a client becomes evasive even after he or she has expressed an interest in hearing what you have to say, it can be extremely frustrating and confusing.
Rather than completely change our approach by calling every single day to follow up on this seemingly hot lead often running into gate keeper receptionists and voice mail road blocks and losing confidence, you need to know that what you're doing may not have any impact on the decision that the client is making.
Knowing the truth about what motivates a client to seek a vendor's service over another is a dicey game to say the least. As sales professionals we often become excessively filled with the hubris of thinking that we alone control whether that decision is made by virtue of our outstanding sales skills and that further implementation of them is the only surefire way to convert a sale from a reluctant client who has already requested more information.
When a roadblock like this happens it shouldn't change the way you feel about your skills as a sales person, or the effectiveness of your pitch, product, or service. Sometimes, the truth is the client just doesn't want to reveal why they can't make a decision. Sometimes it is out of a complete lack of courtesy that phone calls are not returned, emails are ignored, and the receptionist is told to relay that the client is not available, nor will he or she ever be available.
So what should you do? We've already established that continuing to call and make your pitch makes no sense, but the client was at one point ready to make a decision and might be at that critical juncture at a future date. You need to stay in their face, but in a more subtle way. Phone calls and direct contact might result in you hearing that the client is definitely not interested and you can move on to another prospect. But the truth is they might just be saying that to get your voice off of their voicemail.
So be creative. Send information in emails or letters or reminder cards. Don't be too aggressive, but passively let your client know that you're still there for them. They will appreciate you for it and it might just be the difference in getting a sale
Have you ever sold a complex product or idea that the person you were selling to was not at all interested in the technical facts about why it was better than a competing product or idea? Perhaps you had a comprehensive set of facts and impressive charts that depicted why the thing you had was better and badder than anyone else's was on the market.
To your dismay the client most likely listened to your pitch with that glazed over look in their eyes that reminded you of a gold fish you had in the third grade. Your facts might have been dead on, your enthusiasm might have been high, but for some reason the client just missed the whole point and your pitch missed its mark.
What happened, you might ask? Most likely your pitch focused too much on the product or idea and not on the results that the client could expect from its implementation in their business; big mistake. Although the marketing material and the people who created the idea are rife with statistics and charts detailing esoteric numerical comparisons between your widget and the next one, the client sitting on the other side of the table wasn't interested in how your widget was better. They don't know widgets, they know what widgets do and they don't want to either. Take for example a man who walks into a hardware store to buy a drill. He has a problem; he needs a hole in his wall. In order to get the hole in his wall he doesn't go to a store to buy a hole.
He goes to buy a drill. At the store he is greeted by a clerk who knows all of the specs of every drill in the store by heart. The clerk shows him the drill with the highest rotation velocity and goes into a 10 minute pitch about the virtues of that drill over the others.
While that drill may be the best, it doesn't necessarily tell the man what kind of hole he can expect to see in his wall when he uses it. In the end, the man goes with a cheaper drill, not because of the specs on the box, or the clerk's facts, but because he isn't worried about the drill itself, he wants to get a hole drilled as quickly and cheaply as possible.
So what can we learn from the clerk who obviously didn't help the man buying the drill with his decision one single bit? The more complexity you incorporate in your pitch, the less you actually convey. Focus on results, and don't overwhelm your clients with the marginalia. When you relate your pitch to what possible feelings of satisfaction, happiness, and comfort they will experience as a result of the complicated statistics you omit they do not get lost in the wilderness of distraction from too much information.
Your challenge is to humanize the experience of being sold to, and that means your pitch has to resonate with the client's real goals. They are not interested in how great the cameras, photography, backdrops or products are; they want to know that their customers will be happy. That may be a result of the aforementioned traits, of our company, but if you don't focus on the happiness of the clients you're going to see a lot of glazed over gold fish eyes. And you don't want that.
Being new to a particular industry or job is a difficult time of transition and can be very frustrating. You know less than your coworkers, financially you've got a long way to climb the ladder and you might think you'll never make it.
To help keep perspective and not quit too soon, should you consider it I offer this advice. Keep in mind the first day of school when you were 5 or 6 years old and you were dropped into a brand new environment. There were even more unknowns back then weren't there? You had to start somewhere and you didn't know anything didn't you? And yet, somehow you made it and hopefully learned that you were capable of such an endeavor. So don't give up, the most difficult things in life to achieve are typically the most worth our efforts to achieve