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 Paul Archer

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, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

This is a guest post by Paul Archer.

Here’s a sublimely simple way your company can take a small step to ride out the economic downturn. It hit me on Saturday whilst clothes shopping for my daughter.

The shop was empty. Just a few sales assistants wandering around looking trendy and checking the racks of fashion clothes. I guess it was the snow, the fact that it was 10am on Saturday and a retail slowdown that caused the shop to be empty.

I was shopping with Claire and my 8 year old daughter Bethan, for clothes and girls seem to take that job so very seriously, I can never understand why. At the checkout the girl behind the counter took the items. She was very pleasant, smiled fully and got on with the job, which I was keen to finish now having spent 19 minutes in the shop. Believe me; a man’s legs go wobbly after 20 minutes in a clothes shop, so I was keen to see the door.

“Do you want to enter a free competition?” she asked, and pointed to the brochure. As my wife paid for Bethan’s top, I read the brochure. Strewth I thought, now this is one fab competition. Totally free, as she said. But the first prize was £50,000 cash and the second prize a totally luscious Mercedes.

Wow I thought. This is a seriously good competition surely it would be easy to sell to customers. For a start she shouldn’t have said “Do you want to enter a free competition”. No, that’s a closed question asked so unenthusiastically too. She should have used a “yes tag” here. “You’d like to win £50,000 cash wouldn’t you?” and if she’d checked my name on the Maestro Card she would have been able to call me Mr Archer.

I was just about to give her a sales one to one training session to my wife’s horror…but then stopped myself.

The polite girl on the counter hadn’t ever been trained in sales and how many other customer facing staff have never had any basic sales training. Those fashionable types wandering around the retail floor, the people taking calls from customers that morning, the people at the checkouts, the staff that take orders from their online division, the people who take payments over the phone… the list goes on. They’ve never had even the basics of sales training.

As I left the store looking forward to watching England take on Italy in the rugby, a little bit of me thought…isn’t that a shame. Any company that gives every customer facing team member some basic sales tips, will certainly have a competitive advantage in this challenging economy.

So come on everyone who can change this. Give your guys just a few sales tips to help them sell us all through this temporary downturn.

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 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 Paul Archer.

Do you ever have to deliver presentations and include a question and answer session? Read on to discover the golden rules to make this

part of your talk shine.

I was at a conference recently and the speaker, who had done a pretty good job with his presentation, was about to take questions from the 50 plus audience. It was time for the dreaded Q&A Session. And you could tell this speaker wasn’t looking forward to it as his body language closed down and his voice demonstrated fear and trepidation.

As always, audiences want speakers to do well. It’s a human DNA thing. No one wants a speaker to bomb. And I was hoping this speaker would follow the golden rules of Q&As and do a good job.

Let me remind you the golden rules.

Question and answer sessions are excellent audience participation techniques which work really well with larger groups where spontaneous questions just don’t work. I mean for groups of 20 plus. They allow the speaker to demonstrate their knowledge orwisdom, they encourage audience involvement and they help the presentation to be linked to the needs and problems of the audience.

So you should run Q&As.

But you simply mustn’t leave them to the last moment. That’s a recipe for a damp squid close. Ending on a Q&A can be risky because you don’t know how many questions you’re going to get and it could all end rather meekly. No, you should plan to run a Q&A session about two thirds into the presentation, when content has been delivered and the audienceinspired and educated.

If you must leave the Q&A to the end, plan a finish to your talk – your call to action or summary or “bang” as I call it – but have your Q&A before this planned close. That way if you get few questions, then you just launch into your planned finish, to end on a high. If you’re worried about getting few questions, prime some audience members beforehand.

Alternatively display your mobile number on the big screen and get people to text you questions as the presentation is delivered. This works very well for younger audiences where mobile phones are their third limb. If you really want to be really clever, use an audience polling system using mobile phones. When this works it’s very smart and ignites audiences who love to hear what others think.

If you want the latest technology for meetings you will want to visit Corbin Ball’s site who is an expert in this area.

http://www.corbinball.com

When taking questions, follow this template:

• Repeat

• Respond

• Review

Hopefully you have a roving microphone, so everyone can hear the question. But it’s always good practice to repeat the question to make sure everyone can hear it. There’s nothing more frustrating than a question from the audience that others can’t hear. You lose interest.

Repeating also gives you valuable thinking time whilst you formulate the answer in your head. Respond, of course, although if the question is totally irrelevant, it’s quite OK to park it and suggest you have a one to one later. You might upset the questioner but you’ll please everyone else in the audience.

Respond quickly and succinctly. Don’t ramble on and on. This is a game of tennis with a both players involved in an exciting rally. Question, answer, next question, answer, next question and so on. Give the audience value by getting through a lot of questions if you can.

Finally review the answer. Ask the questioner, “was that useful” or “has that helped you”. And then move on to the next question. A little tip here if the questioner is hostile in any way – trying to catch you out or demonstrate their own expertise which some do, then don’t do the review. When you’ve answered the question say something like “I think we have another question over here” and move on.

A final Q&A tip for you is to focus your eye contact on the whole audience with about 30% of your attention on the questioner. This helps to keep the audience engaged. It also prevents you getting tied in with continuous questions from one person which is equally wearisome for the whole audience.

Keep to your timing that you allocated to the Q&A, thank the audience for their questions and move onto the grand finale that you prepared. And you’ve made the dreaded Q&A an integral part of your presentation.

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

Mind you, they would never answer it if they thought a seller was on the other end of the line. They’re likely right in the middle of a meeting and expecting a call from someone else.

Suddenly, instead of leaving your well-prepared voicemail message, you’re on the spot to say something intelligent and compelling. If you’re like most people, those kind of words don’t flow naturally from your mouth – especially when you’re under pressure.

When I was writing my book, one of my clients was actually working through it in real time, giving me immediate feedback on the strategies, processes and tips in it.

She had a great laugh at my expense when she read about my own major blooper when the vice president of sales actually answered the phone. I totally lost my cool.

My value proposition evaporated into thin air. I stumbled over my words, talked a mile a minute and blurted out this rambling, non-focused spiel about what my company did. It was horrible – totally unbecoming of someone in my position. In fact, I was embarrassed to be me.

I got off the phone as soon as I could before I dug myself into an even deeper hole. My only saving grace was that he probably wouldn’t remember who I was.

Alyssa thought that was really, really funny – that is, until the day it happened to her. She’d prepared this great voicemail script for a prospect with whom she was trying to get an appointment.

She was all set to leave her message at the beep, but it never came. Instead, Mr. Big answered the phone. Immediately Alyssa felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her brain locked and she couldn’t think of a thing to say.

On the other end of the line, Mr. Big was saying, “Hello, hello. Is somebody there?”

“Yes,” she finally said. “This is Alyssa. I’m with Anonymous Software Firm.”

“What do you want?” he said curtly.

“We specialize in (self-serving words to describe her offering). I’d like to talk with you about your sales automation system and how our software can help you improve it.”

He cut her short. “We already have that covered. I’m in the middle of a meeting and have to go.”

End of call. He hung up.

So what will you say after your prospect says, “Hello?”  Have you thought of it? Does it flow out of your mouth as easily as your voicemail? Or, are you getting ready to dig your own grave?

Here are several tips that will help you avoid sounding like a blooming idiot.

1. Keep it simple.  After you say your name, it helps if the next sentence you say is the same for both your voicemail and an actual conversation. That way your brain won’t freeze.

2. Focus on business. Corporate decision makers hate peppy, enthusiastic people who can’t wait to share things about their product or service.

3. Develop a provocative question. You want to engage the decision maker in conversation as quickly as you can.

4. Check to see if they’re busy right then and there. If they’re distracted, you’re wasting your breath.

5. Don’t focus on being nice. Instead, focus on being a business professional that has something valuable to say.

Most of all, plan ahead. You know how seldom someone actually picks up their phone. This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Make sure you put your best foot forward.

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 Mike Brooks.

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:

http://www.mrinsidesales.com/scripts.htm

This is a guest post by Paul Archer

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, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com