This is a guest post by Paul Archer.

Here’s a tale that many parents will relate to and gives some thought to help next sales meeting.

It was rush hour and I was travelling on a packed intercity train and in the opposite seat was a young couple with a toddler who was causing all sorts of commotion. The poor young couple were very embarrassed. The carriage was stony quiet except for the toddler and everyone was staring at the young couple.

Along came the conductor to check tickets and to the rescue she came. She soon realised how uncomfortable the couple were so offered to head back to the buffet car where they had some special toddler packs containing colouring pencils and picture books.

The couple were even more self-conscious being asked a question until the elderly chap next to me said “Oh can I have one as well please?” He laughed followed by everyone else and the icy tension quickly thawed.

He had rescued the situation with some quick thinking and humour.

This made me think about sales meetings and the need to have one or two questions up your sleeve as rescue questions. When the situation gets tricky – maybe your customer has said something that completely throws you or your laptop crashes right in the middle of the presentation – most of us can’t think quickly enough to come out with an appropriate response so have one preprepared.

It’s here that you can use your rescue question to get you out of the tricky mess.

Here are a few ideas:

“That’s a good point – can we park that and come back later”

“Tell me about your year so far”

“What major changes are you implementing this year?”

So memorise some rescue questions just in case – you never know when they’ll come in handy.

And the toddler? Sure enough the toddler pack did the trick but only for ten minutes. I felt very sorry for the couple but reached for a 21st century gadget to get me out of bother – my iPod and drowned out the noise.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

This is a guest post by Karen Andrews.

Believe it or not, the best way to make sales is not to talk about how wonderful a product or service is or how great the features are because your prospects and your customers simply aren’t interested.

If you really want to be a successful and professional salesperson the best way to achieve that is to master the art of consultative selling.

Consultative selling qualifies and listens to the customer to help them to buy what they need. It focuses on the needs of the customer and how to improve or benefit them in some way. It is the complete opposite to traditional methods of selling because it isn’t about what the salesperson wants to sell them; it is about what the customer wants or needs to buy.

It a common fact that most people dislike being sold to but love the feeling and power of buying so the easier we make it for prospects to buy, the easier it is to win them as customers.

People buy from people they trust and who understand their issues. If you can get customers to think about the needs of their business and to really think about current or potential problems or challenges they may face, they start to see you differently and understand the value you can add to them or their business. This leads to long term profitable relationships rather than short term sales.

There are many times when prospects and customers know what their needs are. However, it is more than likely that they are not only unaware of having any needs for your product but also insist they are perfectly happy with how they are the moment and the last thing they want to do is;

• Change suppliers
• Spend money or increase investment
• Try anything new

Your job is to help your customers and prospect uncover needs they may not already be aware of or to simply consider an alternative to what they are doing now and the way to do this, is through questioning.

Questioning is an important component of consultative selling and the goal is to ask intelligent, high level questions that helps customers to think about their current situation and identify what they are looking for.

Think of consultative selling in terms of a visit to the Doctor. When you visit a Doctor, one of the first things they will do is ask you questions to identify your symptoms (fact finding/uncovering the need). Even if you tell them what you think the symptoms are, they continue to ‘probe’ and ask more questions to ensure they have a full understanding of your problems.

Once the Doctor has all the critical information they diagnose your problem and provide solutions which may be in the form of a prescription or seeing a specialist (providing a solution and the next steps).

If the Doctor doesn’t uncover all the relevant and important information, they will mis-diagnose your problem and provide the wrong solution which can be extremely dangerous.

Imagine how you would feel if the Doctor didn’t ask you any questions or listen to you but simply started talking and assume they knew what was wrong with you. Would you consider them to be an experienced, trustworthy, professional?

Consultative selling is no different, if you don’t uncover the real needs and the real issues of your prospects and customers you run the risk of providing the wrong solution or one that has little to no value to them.

Karen Andrews is Director of Shine Sales Solutions, and a Sydney based Sales Coach and Sales expert who  works with businesses to increase their sales through strategy development, sales coaching and mentoring..

This is a guest post by Jill Konrath

I was recently asked, “If you were mentoring a new salesperson, what would be your top five sales tips and how did you learn those?”

Good question! It really got me thinking. There are so many things I’d like to tell a new seller. But what are the most important? What things could I recommend that would have the highest impact on success?

After serious deliberation, here are my thoughts …

1. Focus on making a difference.

Nobody cares about your product, service or solution. That’s the hardest thing for sellers to realize. All they care about is the difference you can make for their organization.

For example, today I sell sales training. If I’d call a VP of Sales and mention that, they’ll tell me their not interested. However, once I changed my focus to the tangible outcomes they’d get from using my sales training, the door opened wide. After all, they were extremely interested in shortening their sales cycle, reducing the ramp up time for new hire sales reps and driving revenue growth.

2. Slow down to speed up your sales.

This was one of the hardest things for me to learn. When I first started selling, I was so eager to be successful. I tried to wow my prospects with my great product knowledge. I closed often and early. But the more I tried to rush things, the more resistant to moving forward my prospects became. They’d throw out obstacles and objections that I couldn’t overcome. When I learned to slow down, parcel information out over multiple meetings, and simply advance the sales process one step at a time, suddenly my sales increased.

When you’re scared about not getting the business, your prospects can intuitively sense your fear. One of the major symptoms is rushing the sales process.

3. Pay the price of admission. Do precall research!

To get into big companies, you can’t make a 100 cold calls saying the same thing to everyone. Several years ago corporate decision makers stopped answering their phones and rolled all calls to voicemail. They delete most message within seconds because they sound like salespeople making their pitch.

I discovered that the only way to capture the attention of these corporate decision makers was to create a very personalized message based on in-depth research in their firm. Once I started doing this, I started setting up meetings.

4. Create an account entry campaign.

It takes 7-10 contacts to crack into a corporate accounts these days. Most sellers give up after 3-5 attempts. If you want to set up a meeting with a corporate decision maker, plan multiple touches from the onset. It takes a while to break through their busy-ness and register on their Richter Scale, but it can be done.

You can use multiple formats in your campaign too: voicemail, email, direct mail, invitations to teleseminars, and more.

5. Analyze your sales approach from your customer’s shoes.

It’s not important what you say. The only thing that matters is what your customer’s hear. For example, when I was trying to reach a decision maker a while back, I decided to leave the message on my own voicemail first to see how I sounded. When I listened to my message, I was appalled. I sounded pathetic! So I worked on scripting my message and kept calling myself over and over till I finally created something I would respond to if I were the prospect.

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com

This is a guest post by Paul Archer.

On holiday in France last year we spent many an evening in the local cafes sucking up the atmosphere enjoying everything that is France. Next to us on one evening was a charming British couple and, as you do, we got chatting. The chap talked about life back at home and mentioned excitedly about coaching his local mini rugby team.

Now that’s exactly what I do on a Sunday morning so I began to tell him, with equal enthusiasm, all about my coaching. I told him all about it, never stopped, talked over him and dominated the conversation.

That’s not empathy and rapport building…I blew it.

They didn’t stay in the café very long making their excuses and disappeared into the night. Afterwards I realized what I’d done and knew that if I’d listened to him and allowed him to talk openly about his hobby…we would have got on better. Instead I just got talking about the same subject.

It’s easy to do this when the other person mentions something that you can say a lot about as well. Sometimes we all fall into this trap. I know, I did.

This is useful in sales, coaching and any communication situation where you need rapport and a trust before you can do your job.

Do people a favour and just let them talk.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

Commodity Buyers
These buyers know exactly what they want and how to use it. They don’t need sellers to explain the details. Commodity buyers typically value:

• Low costs. They don’t want to pay any more than necessary. To be successful with these buyers, companies need to pull as many costs as they can out of their supply chain.

• No hassles. Make it simple, simple, simple to do business with your company. Give them an 800 number, send quick quotes, or allow easy online ordering and they’re happy.

We’re all commodity buyers at times. When I order things like contact lenses and office supplies, I just want good pricing and fast service. As a seller, there’s little you can do to create value or sell “value add.” I really don’t care. It’s up to your company to make it cheaper, simpler to order, delivered to my door and with easy returns if I need to send it back.

Strategic Partners
These people are looking far beyond the scope of your products or services. They want a strategic partnership. They’re looking at how to best leverage their organization’s core competencies in combination with another company’s core competencies. These buyers value:

• Intimate and strategic relationships between multiple levels within both organizations.
• Mutual investments in joint projects.
• Merging of systems to accomplish more than either organization could do alone.

Working with Strategic Partner buyers requires a major corporate commitment and is far beyond the scope of any one seller. If your company isn’t capable or willing to do this, these buyers aren’t interested in working with you.

By yourself, you can’t create the value they need. But if your company chooses to do this, you and your firm will become absolutely invaluable.

“I Need to Make a Sound Decision” Buyer
These buyers are either spending a lot of money on a decision or they don’t know everything there is to know about what they’re buying. Typically their decision process is complex, involves multiple people and takes place over an extended period of time.
If corporate decision makers are seriously considering your product or service, they assume it meets their basic requirements and that your organization is reputable. Having a decent offering gets you in the game, but does not typically provide enough value to win the business.

In fact, with these these buyers, the seller creates the value by what they personally bring to the relationship. These buyers value sellers who:

• Help them understand their problems in greater depth.
• Add additional insights into the challenges they face.
• Share relevant information regarding “best practices.”
• Develop unique, innovative approaches to resolving their business issues.
• Keep them up-to-date on trends in the industry and how others are addressing them.
• Help them find ways around the obstacles they’re encountering, and
• Propose new ways to do more with the same investment.

Becoming an Invaluable Resource
What makes a seller invaluable? The ability to contribute so much more with each and every customer interaction – so much so that they can’t imagine doing business without you.

Let me give you an example. Say your company handles direct mailing programs, a fairly non-differentiated service offering.

Here are some ways that you, as the seller could become invaluable to your customers. You could:

• Share ideas about other company’s direct mail programs – what works, what doesn’t.
• Help them find ways to increase the results of their existing direct mail programs.
• Show them how to reduce the overall costs of the program while maintaining its effectiveness and integrity.
• Let them know what their competitors are doing.
• Develop ways to increase the quality of their database.

If you keep thinking, you can come up with even more ways to become invaluable such as:

• Working collaboratively with related vendors (i.e. agencies, telemarketing firms) to smooth out the hand-offs.
• Helping them establish important criteria for their vendor selection process that they currently may not be aware of.
• Proposing ideas for new programs to help them achieve their desired marketing results.
• Acting as an advocate within your own organization on issues impacting the customer.
• Suggesting ways to improve the work flow between all companies and internal departments working on the project.

To become invaluable, you must bring more to the relationship than just your standard product or service. What you want to create is a situation where corporate decision makers can’t live without your ideas, insights, and knowledge.

Becoming invaluable doesn’t just “happen.” You need to invest in yourself. Learn more about your customer’s business. Figure out how to help them improve it. Be an idea generator. Become an expert in your field. It takes a real commitment on your part.

Only the best make that commitment. But it truly sets them apart from everyone else and literally makes them invaluable.

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com

This is a guest post by Jill Konrath

Of course, you don’t mean to do that! But the truth is that it often happens without you even thinking out it.

Case in point: You’ve just learned all about your new product or service offering. Tons of details. All its selling points. You’re so excited & can’t wait to share what you’ve learned with your prospects.

And when you finally get into a meeting, what comes out?

“We’ve just introduced a new complete system (methodology/process) that’s guaranteed to provide fully integrated communications for all your technology and non-technology needs as well as provide significant return on your investment with an ROI of only 9 months.”

Blather! I know you’re thinking you sound impressive, but from a prospect’s perspective it’s downright intimidating. Their eyes slowly glaze over and before long, you’ve lost them.

To be a successful communicator, you need to talk like a normal human being.

Here’s an interesting tidbit that supports this premise: A language monitoring serviced analyzed the recent VP debate. Palin spoke at a 9.5 grade level, while Biden spoke at an 7.8 grade level. (Full article here.)

Both candidates are focused on connecting with voters, not impressing them. I have no doubt that they could have easily spoken at a much higher grade level – which would have meant bigger words, longer sentences and more complex sentence construction.

However, they chose not to do that. They wanted to relate to us.

If we’re focused on impressing prospects with our vast knowledge, we’ll lose them. They’ll feel stupid. They won’t open up. They won’t ask questions.

And we won’t get the business!

Question for you: Have you ever caught yourself trying to impress customers? What happened? Were you able to recover?

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com

This is a guest post by Art Sobczak

One reason that most “cold” calls fail and result in rejection is that sales reps start their pitch the same way to everyone they speaking with, sounding like a talking junk mail piece.

A much better approach, one that stimulates interest, attention, and engagement, is to use personalized, customized information in your openings and voice mail, coupled with an on-target value statement.

How? First, there is an entire wealth of information online, found through search engines and social media sites. The other way is by simply talking to people other than your decision maker. This is called “social engineering.”

The term “social engineering” has been most widely used to describe unscrupulous behavior, such as misrepresenting oneself and lying to manipulate someone to provide sensitive information. However, we use it positively and ethically to gather intelligence for our Smart Calls™.  It can be done

-As a separate call before your first call to your prospect; and,

-Every time you call your prospect.

I find this to be the most underutilized tool available to salespeople – and the one that has the greatest possible payoff. All it requires is that you take the time to do it, develop a sense of curiosity, and cultivate some conversational questioning techniques. Completing all of these steps may indeed grant you a revelation that many of us have had: people are willing to give you amazing amounts of quality information if you just ask them.

Kevin Mitnick was one of the most notorious computer hackers in the world; and at the time of his arrest in 1995, the most wanted computer criminal in US history. After his release from prison, he wrote the book entitled The Art of Deception in which he shares precisely how he pulled off many of his hacking jobs. Mitnick claims that he compromised computers solely by using passwords and codes that he gained by social engineering; in other words, simply talking to people. Now a speaker and security consultant to corporations, Mitnick points out that the weakest link in any security system is the person holding the information. You just need to ask for it.

The Social Engineering Process

Of course, we are using social engineering in the positive sense: asking for information from people that will help other people and the organization as a whole. The social engineering process for Smart Calling™ is as follows: upon reaching a live voice, you:

1. Identify yourself and your company: “Hi, I’m Jason Andrews with National Systems.” This immediately shows that you are not hiding anything.

2. Ask for help. “I hope you can help me out” or “I need some assistance.” Most people have an innate desire to be helpful to others in some way.

3. Use a Justification Statement. This is the key that will unlock the most useful information. Some examples are: “I want to be sure that I’m talking to the right person there…” “I’m going to be speaking with your VP of Sales, and want to be sure that I have accurate information…” “So that I’m better prepared when I talk to your CIO, I have a few questions you probably could answer…”

4. Ask questions. Of course you want to ask about the basic, factual material for which you might not have information yet. This depends both on what you sell, and the level of person with whom you’re speaking. In general, the higher up you go, the better the quality of information.

The theory behind the success of these Justification Statements I suggest is discussed by Dr. Robert Cialdini — widely considered as one of the foremost experts on persuasion and influence — in his classic book (which I believe should be in every serious salesperson’s library) entitled “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.” Cialdini cites an experiment conducted by Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer where students let others cut in line in front of them at the copy machine simply because they provided a reason for their request—“because I’m in rush.”

Direct mail copywriters also employ this technique, often referring to it as the “Why” or the “Because.” For example, if a business is running a promotion, they know their response will increase if they give the reason for it. For example, “We need to make room for next year’s new models and are clearing out the warehouse, so we are dropping prices to move the current models.”

I recommend that you take the time to create your own Justification Statement — your “because” reason — and use it regularly.

Smart Calling™ Exercise
1. Prepare your own script for social engineering using the process above. Be sure you have a justification statement you are comfortable with.

2. Brainstorm for the questions you will ask at all levels of an organization, and write them out.

Use social engineering and you will make your prospecting calls much smarter, and successful.

(Art Sobczak works with thousands of sales reps each year helping them get more business by phone. His new book, “Smart Calling” shows salespeople how to eliminate the fear, failure and rejection from cold calling. To learn more about the book and get the free report, “The Top 10 Dumb Cold Calling Mistakes that Ensure Rejection” go to www.SmartCalling.com.)

This is a guest post by Paul Archer

Do you ooze confidence when selling and coaching? Last Sunday, whistle in hand, I was about to referee our Under 11.s Mini Rugby team against a formidable opponent in Painswick in the Cotswolds. It was freezing cold but suddenly I thought…“Ah, I.m not wearing my uniform”.

So I reached into my kitbag and put on my official Rugby Football Union ELRA Referee shirt. It’s bright yellow and blazoned with official badges of office. Yes I’m a qualified referee and boy does that jersey show it.

More importantly, what a difference it makes to the teams I’m refereeing. They see me and my official jersey and it acts like a uniform directing them to obey my every command. The 11 year old boys look up to me in awe…all because of my bright yellow jersey.

But you know it’s not the jersey that makes a difference; it’s my attitude and inner self belief that gets a boost when I put it on. It makes me feel good, in charge and gives me confidence to take control of the match. It’s my mind-set and manner that changes when I put the top on.

But what about you? When you’re selling and coaching, what uniform do you put on to give you the right attitude and inner confidence? And I’m not talking about a physical item such as a suit, but how do you set your inner self up for a day’s selling or coaching?

How do you ooze the right manner? Are you confident but not arrogant…do you project experience and knowledge but not smugness?

I’ve known salespeople to have a special suit that makes them feel first-rate. Many use visualization techniques to give them the right outlook and persona. Some are able to just switch on a positive approach at the flick of a finger.

Some, however, struggle to get going especially when times are hard, sales are falling or your sales teams. Motivation is tumbling.

Especially at this turbulent time when everyone seems to be panicking and worrying about the recession. Of course the recession will affect us all, undoubtedly, but life and business goes on. I honestly think the biggest danger to us and our customers is fear.

Fear comes from the media and I, personally, have stopped watching the news on TV as it’s just so full of bad broadcasts, depressing reports and doom and gloom. Of course you have to keep up which is why I subscribe to a weekly news magazine called “The Week” instead, which keeps me up to date in an hour on a Saturday morning with my toast and marmalade.

I was in the gym the other day watching the live Sky News on the myriad of TVs that were spread across the walls. After an hour’s running on the treadmill and cross trainer, I was close to manic depression by watching the news!

No, I choose to fill my head with positive news and enthusiastic bulletins so whilst in my car or out and about, I’m filling myself up with motivational podcasts from salespeople, speakers, trainers and coaches from around the world. I want to fill my head up with good news, positive vibes that can propel me during these turbulent times.

There are thousands of free Podcasts available on line. Subscribe to iTunes or make iGoogle your home page and sign up for the multitude of Podcasts by hitting the RSS buttons and choosing Google as your feeder. That way when you open up your browser iGoogle shows you all the new Podcasts that you can download…instantly.

Fear is the greatest danger to us all going forward.

So remember your uniform that you can put on when you approach your selling or coaching. What kind of outlook do you want to leak to your clients and teams? Choose your mood and wear your uniform with pride. And my yellow referee jersey…well I thought I’d try it at home this weekend to see if it had a similar affect on my family so I could be in control at home. Not a chance. My 7 year old Bethan’s first word was “So uncoooool Daddy” and my wife told me to get that silly jersey off now.

So it’s back to my Under 11 Mini Rugby Team– at least I’m in charge there.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com