Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Do you dive in head first into business speak with customers or coachees? Here’s a simple reminder for us all.
I hear suit telephone sales are up so are fountain pen sales. It’s all the extra business meetings we’re having. British Airways is even offering free business class flights to anywhere in the world to small business owners looking to export abroad.
It seems that in these tough times, we’re all out drumming up business with face to face meetings. And that’s a good thing. It’s heightened our awareness to go back to the basics of selling.
And with the pressure on we’re getting straight down to business talk and this couldn’t be more dangerous. This is a big mistake when you’ve never met someone before. No, we ought to be holding back on business talk even in these pressured times and become even more interested in them, become curious about them as a person. People like to do business with people they both like and trust. OK you may not be fantastic buddies but you like and respect each other and only then will business result.
Do you know when you are with a friend, you get along really well and you become like them, you match their personality, their mood, their pace, their body language, eye contact…everything. But when you are with someone who wouldn’t be a great friend and is not like you, naturally you are not going to become like them are you?
In telephone sales though, you need to become a little bit like them so as to build trust and some likeness. For example, anyone who knows me can see that I’m quite bubbly and excitable and energetic, I like to be positive. My wife thinks I’m quite loud!
So if I meet someone who is the opposite then I need to purposely become like their personality a little. I need to slow down, monotone my voice a little, speak like them, give them the same amount of eye contact as they give me.
I call it personality matching and it works. That way we will build a rapport, begin to trust each other and get on. Then we can start talking about business.
Mirror mirror on the wall…who is the fairest of them all? Not you, but the person you’re talking with, so let’s spend some of our attention on them and begin to match their personality before diving head first into business speak.
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 atwww.paularcher.com
Test closes are brilliant ways of testing the water with your customers. We all use them probably without even knowing it as it’s
something you always hear top performing sales people doing.
Tell me the difference between these three
test closes:
How do you feel so far?
How does it look to you so far?
What are you saying to yourself so far?
What are you hearing so far?
They all attempt to do the same thing, in other words, test the customers’ views and thoughts so you can continue with the meeting. Classic test closing. I wonder which one you tend to use with your clients or when coaching.
And I bet one of them really hit the mark with you, or resonated with you more, or was a question you could personally relate to.
You see the four test closes are carefully scripted to appeal to your thinking style. NLP gives us visual, kinaesthetic, auditory and digital thinking styles and everyone has a preference to think predominantly in one fashion although we’re quite capable of using all of them. We just prefer one.
If you can gauge your customer’s preferred style, then change your language to suit their favourite. Do start with one of the four test closes from above because it’s easy to do so, gets you into the habit and you could start tomorrow, couldn’t you?
The best way to calibrate your customers’ preferred thinking style is to listen to their language or keep an eye on their eye movements. There’s a great article on eye movements in our knowledge bank.
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, visitwww.archertraining.co.uk or his sales blog at www.paularcher.com
In Part I: We focused why asking the “How Can I?” question is the key to getting unstuck and achieving your objectives. Part II continues with more examples.
Creating an Entirely New Revenue Stream
Several years ago, I lost my two bread-and-butter clients when the investment community demanded better financial results. Both these firms immediately suspended all “extraneous” projects – which included all my work with them.
While in the process of rebuilding my business, I did some free consulting for a small magazine serving the entrepreneurial community. I became enamored with the vitality of these firms as well as their contribution to the economy.
But the failure rate was sky high. Good businesses being run by well-intentioned people were closing down because the founders didn’t understand how to sell. It about drove me crazy.
For months, I kept asking myself, “How can I share my expertise with these people and make some money doing it?”
It was a real conundrum. Entrepreneurs don’t have deep pockets. When they hire consultants, they want to squeeze as much advice from them in the shortest possible time. In short, despite the apparent need, I couldn’t figure out how to make a living.
But I kept the question open, choosing not to say ‘no’ yet. Instead, I kept researching and asking the question repeatedly – in multiple variations.
One day, the answer came to me: I’d create a website called Selling to Big Companies where I could give away lots of good sales advice for free. Plus, I could offer some premium content such as ebooks, emanuals and teleseminars. While doing this, I could still serve my corporate clients.
I knew I’d finally hit on a viable business model, and, as they say, the rest is history.
Trust the Questions
Over the years, I’ve come to trust this “How can I” strategy implicitly. Whenever I pose these questions to myself, the answers always come.
They’re better ideas than I could have ever thought of myself. While that sounds strange to say, it’s really true.
Right now, I trust the question again with the Sales SheBang – my online resource, conference and community for women in sales. I’m asking myself questions such as:
How can I attract savvy saleswomen to the 2008 Sales Shebang Conference ?
How can I fund this project so that I can make it bigger & better?
How can I make it an incredible value for the women who come?
The good news is that the ideas are already streaming in. The bad news is that I appear to be a bottleneck in my own system. Too much is on my plate right now, so I’m adding resources to help out. In truth, it’s really not a bad problem to have.
But it all starts with that “How Can I…?” question. Without a doubt, it’s the best strategy in the whole world for reaching your unreachable goals.
Invite others to help you answer your questions. Track down a top salesperson and ask for their insights: How can I be more successful? How can I close more business?
Ask an entrepreneur: How can I create the company of my dreams? How can I get more done in the same amount of time?
The answers are already out there. You just need to ask the questions!
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
Welcome to the most widespread objection today and its not price.
Apparently they’re starring at Glastonbury this summer. I’m talking about Status Quo the rock band whom my 71 year old father is going to see in concert later this month. That shows you how long they’ve been around.
But the status quo have recently become quite a problem for sales people and I’m no longer talking about the band – I’m referring to lethargy or not taking any action.
Apart from the Internet, it’s the status quo that is today.s newest and biggest competitor. Customers are inclined to take no action unless we allow them to see the danger of this course and maybe the cost of doing nothing.
This extra competition that we’re now up against, doesn’t allow us to use our traditional objection handling strategies as we’re not having to compare our product or service with the competitors or justify its value. Instead we have to make sure we let our customer see the problems of not taking our advice.
And we must weave this into our sales patter.
This is particularly important for financial services salespeople who sell an invisible product. There’s an old adage that life assurance is sold and never bought and this is even more prevalent today. Make your customer aware of the dangers of the status quo; ask them what might happen if they don’t protect themselves in the event of their partner’s death, the issues this might bring up in their lives.
Questions, questions, questions – that’ll help them see the perils on inaction.
Let them explore in their mind the consequences of doing nothing and treat the status quo as just another competitor that you need to avoid during your selling process.
And Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt from Status Quo can keep rocking all over the world until they’re ready to pick up their pension. I do believe Francis is 60 next birthday. Fantastic.
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, visitwww.archertraining.co.uk or his sales blog at www.paularcher.com
A few readers wrote to me just before Christmas asking for help. Both were struggling to get in front of new prospects to sell their services and products. Both had excellent propositions but found call reluctance to be as problem and prospects unwillingness to speak with them preferring to “weather the storm” and batten down the hatches.
Have you experienced this as well?
I think we all have to some degree and unless you’ve had your head in the sand, you’ll recognise that we are going through a downturn. Now I don’t sign up for the “business is better that it’s ever been, I’m busier than ever, what recession?” brigade; these people seem to be just massaging their egos when they print this stuff.
The plain fact is – we have to prospect more than ever before. Working harder and smarter at getting to speak with new customers, will help us succeed in this economy.
I think we’ve all got the phone sales skills but maybe haven’t had to use them so much over the last five to six years since there’s been plenty of business to go around.
So now’s the time to smarten up our prospecting tools, or client acquisition tools as this is now known as.
Examine your product and service and be crystal clear as to what problem it solves. Problems in recessions are all about saving costs and increasing revenue, getting invoices paid on time, preventing suppliers going bust and such like. Try to think like your customers and be totally clear as to what problems your product solves
What is your customer segment? Be as precise as you can as to which type of customer has the problems that your product or service solves and then focus on these customers.
Decide on your marketing to reach these customers. There are many routes to market that you can choose but the quickest and most decisive is still telephoning them to make an appointment to see them.
Dedicate specific blocks of time in your diary to make calls to prospects.
Aim simply for a face to face appointment nothing else. Don’t get into conversations, send out literature etc. These never work, although we think the do at the time, are easy to do, quite gratifying but divert your attention to the job of making appointments.
Be up front with your prospect on the phone about the problem that your product solves and ask for an appointment.
Don’t ask “if it’s convenient to call” you’ll lose sales if you do this. Instead say “if it’s convenient to speak right now I’d like to…” Subtle difference. And if you feel brave enough, don’t even ask, just launch into your opening.
Learn how to politely persevere on objections twice and then leave the prospect alone. Keep coming back to the objective of asking for an appointment.
Sticky tape the phone to your wrist and don’t put it down. Use the 60 second rule. This ensures you get onto the next call within 60 seconds, no longer.
Spend a maximum of 60 minutes making appointment calls.
Reward yourself when you.re done as making appointments is stressful, there’s no way around it. Yes alpha male macho types will tell you they enjoy it but you look at the burnout rate of call centre direct sales people.
It’s hard, full of rejection and people saying no, occasional rudeness and extremely easy to put off to-do another job.
We all need more prospects right now and making appointments via phone is the quickest and most effective method of doing so. Dig out all those customers that have connections to your company, old names and phone numbers. Those people who you never had the time to contact. Maybe buy some lists or leads and start to make those calls with the specific intention of making an appointment.
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
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, visitwww.archertraining.co.uk or his sales blog at www.paularcher.com
As sellers, we’re continually told to sell value and to let our prospects know about all of our value-added services. After all, that’s how we’re going to win the sales. Right?
Not necessarily. Value is relative. It’s in the eye of the beholder. So much depends on how the decision makers you’re dealing with perceive “value.” And even then, selling “value” may be totally ineffective – or not enough to make the difference.
To be successful in today’s business environment, you may need
to become invaluable to your customers.
Basically customers can be segmented into three different types based on their perceptions of value and what you can do to increase your sales effectiveness when working with them.
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
Everyone knows that in selling or coaching, it’s extremely dangerous to make assumptions about your customer or the person you’re coaching. It’s one of those principles that.s drummed into sales people on day one of their induction sales training. But we’re all guilty of making assumptions from time to time – I know I am. Read on to see how dangerous these can be.
Over Christmas I was talking to my three children about a fearful incident when I was about their age. The story shocked them at the time and they still don’t believe it was true. But I assure you it was.
My first pet was a cute golden hamster that I named Hammy – original I know. Now we didn’t live in a big house so I shared a room with Hammy and my two brothers who I hated passionately. We were constantly caught bashing the life out of each other, as brothers do.
It came to a head one evening when Hammy, being a nocturnal creature, kept us all up with his squealing exercise wheel. It was incessant. It was excruciatingly painful. Nothing we could do would stop him or fix the squeak. And the fighting with my brothers got even worse.
He had to go. The next day Hammy found his way into the garden shed. What a relief, at last we could get some sleep. We had solved the problem but only until that fateful morning.
It was freezing and pitch black at 6am. On my way to my paper-round, I popped my head around the shed door to look up on Hammy. I stared into his cage with a torch, he was motionless. I was devastated – my only true friend was dead and it was my entire fault evicting him to the bitter, murky shed.
Ignoring my paper round, I picked him up and took him indoors. This 12 year old boy was distraught and overwhelmed by it all. So I laid him on the kitchen table and went upstairs to cry my little heart out. Gradually the house woke up and I heard a banshee like shriek from the kitchen. My Mum had found a stone cold hamster on the kitchen table. Not that I could see at the time what the problem was, after all it was dead but maybe that was the point.
“Take it out immediately” screamed mum, so I grabbed Hammy and ran outside to bury him. As I took my old friend outside I laid him down on the earth next to the shovel ready to dig his grave, but then I saw his foot twitch. I thought I was seeing things so I dried my eyes and looked again. There it went again. It had moved and it wasn’t a muscle spasm. He was alive.
I rushed indoors and plopped him on the storage heater. With careful nursing and stroking, slowly and bit by bit he came back to life and I was the happiest little boy on the planet.
Hammy went on to live a normal life. I found out years later that he had merely hibernated that cold night. I still think it was a miracle. And he was within 5 feet of a living grave. So you see that making assumptions can critically damage your health – well maybe your pet hamster. Not assuming can literally save lives.
Seriously though, the next time you find yourself about to make an assumption about the needs of a customer, because you’ve heard it all before dozens of times or you think everyone wants the price to be lower or you assume the recession will gobble you up….just remember that devoted 12 year old boy bringing back to life his pet hamster, Hammy.
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, visitwww.archertraining.co.uk or his sales blog at www.paularcher.com
Clients use all sorts of objections, but sometimes I think this is their favorite. I mean, how can you argue with someone who tells you they don’t need what you have to give them because they already have enough of it?
Well, let’s face it, nobody has TOO much of anything, especially business, and while 80% of your competition get blown off when they get this objection, the top 20% know what to say.
After you read and adapt the three closes below, YOU’LL know what to say, too!
Response #1:
“I know that feeling; I do too! But for some reason, my boss wants to keep it that way so he thinks it’s a good idea to continue to market and introduce others to our products and services. And it’s the same way for you as well. Momentum is great, but if you don’t keep it going, it will first slow down, then it will stop.
Here’s what I recommend: Let’s get you started with the (package/solution) as it is, since we both agree it will keep your business coming. And then after the 6 month trial period, we can reassess. All we need to do to get your started is…”
Response #2:
“And ________ I know that the reason you have so much business is because you have the foresight to invest in (your kind of solution). It’s actually a pleasure to work with clients like you because I know you already understand the need for this kind of (product or solution).
And because you already know the value of this, I’m going to recommend you start with us on the professional level that allows you to leverage your way into our top position. That’s only (X amount). How do you want to handle payment of that today?”
Response #3:
“That’s a nice position to be in. And to make sure you stay that way, I’d recommend starting with our mid-level position. That way you’ll get X amount of (leads/results) and so won’t overwhelm yourself. If you find your other (companies offering some similar solution) starting to slip, then you can simply transfer that part of your business into your account here.
What I recommend is that you start with (X amount/position) and then increase it over time as you need to. What is the best way for you to handle this start up account?”
If you found this article helpful, then you will love my, “The Complete Book of Phone Scripts” which is packed with word for word scripts just like this one that you can begin using today to make more appointments and more sales. You can read about it here:
He’d frightened me to death with his automatic weapon and ferocious look. “There’s a problem with your passport” he alleged with a fierce voice and in broken English he continued. “You must come with me”
The next 30 minutes were spent in fear, trepidation and anxiety as I awaited my fate. You see I was leaving Iran following a sales speaking engagement and little did I know there was a problem with my Visa which is not a good habit to get into.
My traveling companion, Sandro, was clear of passport control and was making his way to the departure lounge but I was being kept in a windowless room whilst police and army scrutinised my passport and kept passing it from one important looking person to another.
“You cannot leave Iran – you must stay” the very official man said to me. He had a massive smile and was covered in stripes and insignia on his uniform to indicate he was a man of an elevated position. “You are in my country illegally” And he was quiet correct as it happened and just doing his job.
By this point, I was beyond rescue. However I began thinking it might be OK to live in Iran full time as it’s such a fabulous country. But think of Claire and my three smiling children waving to me at the airport. My daughter without a Daddy. How terrible.
But living in Iran full-time did sound pleasant. I could make a honest living training and speaking, pick up Farsi, get a chic apartment in the exclusive north of Tehran after all I had made some really good friends in the last week and we could party every night…..
No, I came to my senses. No I must get home to my family. They need me. “Please Sir, can you explain the problem with my Visa?” I grovelled at the official. I.d been taught to grovel at an early age and it usually worked.
“It says on the Visa that you can be in my country for 5 days…but you have been here for 6 days.”
Talk about detail and yes, I’d goofed big time. Hugely…what a mistake to make. And I promised myself to always attend to detail in the future. Never lose your attention to detail– it could take you away from your family.
In sales and coaching, we do have to concentrate on the detail and it’s plainly not everyone’s “cup of tea”. Contracts, marketing brochures, sales plans, sales meeting preparation, stocking your brief case ready for meetings, knowing the benefits of products, checklists for training courses, planning probing questions to reveal client problems, emailing actions, quarterly objectives….the list goes on.
Some people prefer to focus on the big picture and detest detail but others enjoy wallowing in the small print. But my lesson from Iran was to check the detail more often and if you don’t want to then hire or delegate someone to do it for you.
When they finally let me go through passport control I was the most thankful man on this planet. And I won’t make the same mistake again.
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, visitwww.archertraining.co.uk or his sales blog at www.paularcher.com
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