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Asking great questions should be a part of every sales call. But, there may be a difference between the questions you are asking and great questions. Great questions solicit candid, thoughtful feedback, which leads you closer to making a sale. Based on fifteen years of sales experience and countless hours of training and courses on the topic, here are what I believe to be the five best questions that you can ask while in front of a prospect….

1) Who signs the order or agreement?

I used to ask who the decision-maker is, but I have been burned too many times on that question. My experience tells me the following: (1) the decision-maker is commonly not the person who signs your deal and (2) the decision-maker likes to pretend they are in charge of the decision, when they are really not. These two points are especially relevant in strategic sales applications. I would argue that most sales people know who signs the order less than 50% of the time. Now, that does not mean that you will not earn the business, it just infers that you leave yourself open for the competition to align themselves with the correct person. I have never come across anyone who has not been truthful when I asked “who signs the order?” People who do not have the authority to do so, will not put themselves out there if they cannot execute the agreement.

2) What is my competition saying about me?

This is the quintessential assumptive question. If they are talking to others, this question will uncover who they are and what their positioning is. Or if they are not talking to others, this question will generally open up discussion around whether the buyer intends on inviting other companies to participate in the opportunity. You may be thinking, “Why introduce competition when there may not be any?” Again, my experience tells me that buyers will elect to include another vendor (or not!), whether you bring it up or not. Give this question a try, I think you might be pleasantly surprised by the discussions it generates.

3) Even though you want our product, what are the reasons why you would not be able to buy it right now?

This is a terrific question because it gets to the heart of several possible sales obstacles. First, while the person you are speaking with may want your solution, it does not mean that the organization is really committed to buying it. Your question will uncover the true obstacles to closing this sale. And it makes it easy for this person to defer the challenges to your sale to another person or department, if appropriate. Second, this question speaks directly to the timing of your prospective order. Sometimes this response will validate that this is a pressing issue for the potential buyer, but usually it will tell you the real timing of the opportunity. And yes, depending on what you are selling, your conversation may be one or two years ahead of their actual buying schedule.

4) After you say yes, what has to happen?

After experimenting with lots of different ways to ask this, the question above has proven to be the most effective at determining what the REAL decision-making and buying process is. I have found no other way to get to the heart of what happens next. The beauty of this question is that it includes the person you are engaged with as part of the buying process; yet, uncovers who else is involved and what other buying influences exist. The importance is not only in asking this question, but listening intently to the answer. This will reveal the keys to your success with regards to this order.

5) After we earn your business, what is the best way to encourage you to speak with others about your good experience with us?

This question addresses several relevant parts of your sales campaign. First, by starting off with an assumptive question, you can quickly qualify the buyer’s interest in you, your product/service or your company. If they did not want you to “earn” the business, their answers to this question would likely divulge that critical piece of data. Next, one of the best ways to grow your business is to cultivate a customer to an extent that they pro-actively tell others about you. This is no easy task. That is precisely why you ask the question before you close the sale. This way, you know exactly what you need to do in order to encourage this buyer to recommend you to others. Understanding the “triggers” to what motivates a buyer to talk favorably about you is paramount.

While there are many good questions to ask during a sales call, I have found these five to be the most beneficial. If you already using these, then measure yourself in terms of how often you are doing so and also what responses prospective buyers give you. If you are not asking these questions, then I recommend that you start right away. I believe that one’s ability to close business is often related to the quality of the questions he/she asks!

By Brian P Shannon

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In any business, story telling is a powerful tool, specially if you are in the direct sales industry. If share at the right time in the selling process, it can allow you to connect with your customer, engage with them and tell them why they need your products or services or why your solution will work for them as it did for others before.

A good story should possess the power to hold the attention of your customer. It should provide an entertaining experience for the listener and be easy to remember and retell, just like The little red riding hood story. Recreate the experience, make them feel like they would be in that situation by using sensory details, smell, taste and feelings.

The keys here is to relate the story to your audience. By having different stories for different scenarios, it will help your customers with their respective problems. In short, a story for each problem. A few example of stories would be like; “I had a customer with the same questions” story, “Somebody that didn’t want to change vendors” story. This is more powerful then any brochure or testimonials.

Listen very carefully to what your customer is telling you first, you will then be able to relate to him with the right story (like you help someone else in a similar situation story) to help him solve his problem or meet his needs. That way your customer will see that you care about him and want to help him. You will establish a connection with him and he will be able to relate to you.

Every story has these five elements in them;

1-A Hero (your client) and his situation(he is broke, he is lost, no job, no time,hungry)I know you get the idea here.

2-He has a reason to go on a journey, a quest(why does he want to change, why does he want something different, what are his goals)

3-A huge challenge was met (he doesn’t have the resources available now, does not know how to get the girl in the tour, does not know how to start his own business)

4-With my help the client overcome the obstacle(get the tools he needs to fix his problem,Just think about Donkey when he save Shrek with the Dragon at Fiona’s wedding, You are like Donkey but Shrek(your Client) is still the hero.

5-A powerful delivery (increase his gain, profit, money, bought a house,help more people, get the girl!)

Here you have it.Now it is time to Practice. Start with your family and friends, and ask them what tone, excitement, visual/facial expressions, they like best and why.

Relax and enjoy the story telling process just like you did when you were a kid. My Favorite is The three little pigs. The more I read it to my kids the more comfortable I am. I enjoy changing the expressions on my face, the pause in the reading (to see the look on their faces), the tone of my shaky or scary voice, the excitement it rises, it all become more naturally and more fun each time!

Story telling is an art and practice makes it better. Use it in your selling process to explode your business!

Want more cutting edge training in the Direct Sales Industry? Nancy give you access to a marketing platform that has assisted multi top earner in this industry; http://www.my250klifestyle.com

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Every effective sales training course teaches sales professionals to ask their prospects open-ended questions. These are the questions that start with who, what, why, when and how.

Open-ended questions are universally taught because they:

• Solicit great information

• Get the person talking

• Allow you and your prospect to find out if there is an opportunity

• Can show your expertise, IF you ask the right questions

All that sounds great, doesn’t it? Most of the time, open-ended questions really ARE effective, but not 100% of the time. When used incorrectly, they can make a needs analysis seem more like an interrogation – they can be leading, forced, narrow, product-focused and irrelevant. Sales pros can come off like militants drilling a suspect to get to the information they want so they can pitch their product. And this is definitely not the way to make a sale.

There is a way to demonstrate professionalism by using the 3 ‘I’s with open-ended questions:

1. Intent

2. Intelligence

3. Interest

Intent. We have seen sales pros launch right into a list of questions that might seem irrelevant to the prospect, and the prospect thinks, “What does this have to do with anything?” It’s essential to explain the intent of the line of questions so the prospect can put it in perspective and answer thoughtfully.

Sharing intent can sound like this: “We’re meeting to talk about your human resource needs. What we have learned is that understanding how HR fits into the overall company’s goals and objectives helps us give you a more accurate picture of how we can help as valuable resource for you. The first questions we’ll cover are focused on the broader picture and then we’ll get more specific into your training needs.” Once the intent is shared, we go into the list of questions with better understanding from the prospect.

Intelligence. Your questions reveal a LOT about you. Here’s how to raise your ‘perceived’ intelligence level:

• Explain the intent of your line of questioning and ask questions that broaden the dialogue to a bigger, more strategic discussion.

• Focus on the solution or value desired versus just the product.

• LISTEN once you have asked a question. When you ask intelligent questions, the person may need to think before responding, and this is usually a good thing. How long? According to research, they might need 15-25 seconds to think and respond. That’s a long time to wait, but it can pay off.

Interest. Your questions should be interesting to the person. How? Make them relevant to the situation and person. When it’s about THEM, it’s interesting TO them. Every aspect of the sales process should be focused on what’s in it for THEM – and this includes your questions!

Open-ended questions can make your needs analysis productive if you use the 3 ‘I’s to guide your line of questioning. And with a little forethought and preparation, you will be seen as informative and not an interrogator.

Sharpenz is dedicated to providing sales managers the resources and tools they need to energize, engage and equip their sales team to sell each week. Our 30-minute power sales booster meetings help companies increase sales by providing the right tools and training – fast. Designed with the busy manager in mind, Sharpenz ready-to-go sales training kits will give your sales team the opportunity to grow and earn more – all in a half hour of power. To learn more, visit http://www.sharpenz.com and sign up for your free ready-to-go sales training kit today!

By Alice Kemper

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There are two basic sets of questions with which a dedicated sales person should gain competence: questions to ask prospects and customers; and questions to ask yourself.

The questions we ask ourselves are just as important as those we ask our prospects and customers. The reason goes back to the ultimate power of a question – it directs our thinking. Just as a good question directs the customer’s thinking, so, too, does a good question direct our own thinking. And sound thinking is the ultimate success skill for a professional sales person.

An effective way to bring better results into your organization, make an impressive career for yourself, and provide for your family is by out thinking your peers and competitors. Thinking – good thinking done with discipline and methodology – is the ultimate competitive skill.

Few sales people, and few people in general, regularly engage in good thinking. Bertrand Russell said, “Most people would rather die than think. In fact, they do.”

Start with a simple definition of good thinking for a sales person, which is asking yourself the right questions, at the right times, and writing down the answers.

Sounds simple, and it is. The power is in the excellent and disciplined execution. Later we will discuss what it means to “ask yourself the right questions, at the right times” but at this point I want to make the case for “writing down the answers.”

Making a note, either on a computer or by pen and paper, is one of the disciplines of efficient thinking. The process of writing causes you to focus on the exact words which formulate your ideas. You can be vague and indistinct as long as the answer is just something you maintain in your mind, when you force yourself to write down the answers you must select the specific words to put on paper. Writing is a discipline that forces you to think accurately – one of the tenets of good thinking.

Putting things in print is an act of commitment. Once it’s written down, it is there for you to review forever. Not only does it serve as a commitment, but also as a reminder that you have already gone down this path before and come up with an answer. When you confront the question that prompted that answer again, you’ll save time by referring to your annotations.

Dave Kahle is a lifetime salesperson. He has been the number one salesperson in the country for two different companies in two distinct industries. Since 1988 he’s been president of The DaCo Corporation, focusing on helping clients improve their sales and develop their people. Dave Kahle is a specialist in B2B sales, and regularly holds sales training workshops

By David Kahle

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Assuming you have done a good presentation to a qualified prospect, gotten and used the prospect’s hot buttons throughout the presentation and gotten agreement on key points of your product/service, there should be no logical reason for the prospect not to buy now.

This is the point where fear and anxiety set in for the prospect, putting aside all the logic, agreements and positive reinforcements that were made during the presentation. It makes no sense for the prospect not to buy now…it’s just his fear (based on who knows what) to make a purchase. It is now fully up to you to bring the prospect back to the table and help him overcome his hesitation to pull the trigger.

Usually the prospect with “fear to purchase” will try to put you off and coming up with a generality (not a real objection) for not buying now with a statement like “I have to think about it“.

Here is one way to deal with this all too common prospect blow-off technique.

There are only two things to you have to ascertain from the prospect, which once answered and addressed, allow you to logically ask for the order again.

#1 is: Does the prospect like the service/product and does he think it will work for him?

#2 is: Does the prospect like the price?

If the prospect answers “No”, to any of the above, then you’ve found the objection or at least the area where the objection lies.

If the prospect answers “yes” to all the above, (he likes your product, he thinks it will work for him and he is okay with the price) then ask: “Then what’s stopping you from going ahead?” There is no logical answer at this point not to buy and you can help him overcome his irrational fear by gently coaxing him into making the right and logical decision.

He has nowhere to go at this point; he has confirmed that he likes your product/service and the price is right…CLOSE.

Example:

Salesperson: So, let’s place your order now.

Prospect: Umm, yeah, let me get back to you later in the week.

Salesperson: Okay…but is there any reason we can’t get started now and get this product out to you today?

Prospect: Umm, I just want to think about it, I don’t make snap decisions. (this is just fear)

Salesperson: I understand…but let me ask you a question. You like the product/service that we just went over, it makes sense to you and you think it will work for you, right?

Prospect: Yeah, it does sound pretty good.

Salesperson: Alright. And you’re okay with the price, right?

Prospect: Yeah, it seems like a fair price.

Salesperson: Good. Well if you like the product/service, you think it will help you (work for you, etc.) and the price is okay, then what’s stopping you from going ahead with this today?

You now have closed the only logical escapes the prospect had to get away. At this point you will either get a real objection that you can address or you just need to lightly push him to make the right decision (buy). This takes practice to master, but once you’re good at it, your closing percentage will increase.

Jamie Sene.

Jamie Sene has over 20 years experience in marketing and transactional sales from working in the private sector, public companies and his own businesses; he has a broad and proven track record both in marketing and sales. Jamie started his business career in sales in his early twenties, selling in various direct sales and telesales companies. This is where he learned the fundamentals of selling. Later on Jamie got deeply into sales management, becoming Vice President of Sales for a national consulting firm. After years of successful selling Jamie moved over into marketing where he established and successfully ran marketing departments for several publically held international companies (SmartForce, SmartCertify, Skillsoft). Today, in his spare time, he still works as a free lance marketer. http://www.SmartMarketingGuys.com is Jamie’s way of sharing his hard earned experience with those interested in learning more about the fundamentals of marketing and wishing to keep up-to-date with the latest proven marketing techniques

By Jamie Sene

The primary objective of any sales representative is to be able to entice and encourage potential customers and clients to avail the different products and services that are being offered by the company that they are working for. However, despite this common knowledge and the fact that companies provide them great commission rates for every product or service that they are able to sell, many sales representatives find themselves struggling to even make one sale in a month. The main reason for this is that quite often, they unknowingly commit a number of mistakes as they try to make a sale to a prospective customer or client that instead of actually being able to close the deal, they actually drive these potential customers and clients away.

Here are just some of the most common mistakes sales people commit to avoid.

Mistake #1: Failing to Establish a Rapport

One of the most common mistakes that many sales people commit when trying to encourage a potential customer or client is that they focus too much on trying to convince the potential customer or client to avail of the products and services being offered by the company that they fail to establish a favorable rapport with them. Part of being able to make a sale is to be able to establish a sound buyer-seller relationship by providing ample information about what sets the company apart and, more importantly, what sets the company’s products and services apart from other companies that offer similar products and services. Failing to provide this crucial information to the prospective buyer would help them make the decision to look elsewhere to avail of what they are looking for.

Mistake #2: Asking the Wrong Questions

Another common mistake many sales people commit when doing a sales pitch with a prospective buyer or client is asking the wrong question. In fact, in a recent survey conducted by an independent group, they were able to discover that 86% of all sales representatives ask the wrong questions to prospective clients and customer during a sales pitch. This common mistake can lead to disastrous situations where sales representatives eventually find themselves having to overcome with resistance and strong objections on the part of the potential customer or client, which could have been easily avoided if the right questions were asked to begin with.

Mistake #3: Talking to Much

In an effort to sound enthusiastic about the product or service being presented to a potential customer or client, sales representatives tend to do almost all of the talking during the sales pitch. Although being energetic when presenting a product or service to a potential customer or client is important when doing sales, talking too much also means that they spend lesser time listening to the questions that customers and clients ask after in order to help them make that all-important decision whether to purchase what you are offering or not. On top of that, talking excessively and dumping too much information to a prospective customer or client can make them lose interest on your sales pitch altogether. Add these two scenarios up, and you are left with a customer who is more eager in trying to get you to leave rather than make a purchase.

Grant has worked in the training and development environment for the past 6 years delivering a range of training initiatives within the areas of customer service, retail management, team development, sales training and call centre training throughout New Zealand and Australia. Visit Grant at http://www.zealmarkgroup.co.nz.

By Grant Shields

Motivational sales training as a discipline is highly suspect. Very often, no analytics are applied to these programs to determine whether they deliver ROI. Over the past few decades, some movements that began outside the sales management field have crept insidiously into sales training methodology and have given rise to the financial abuse that often passes for motivational sales training.

1. Human Performance Movement Deceptions

Long established motivational research has repeatedly pointed to the futility of extrinsic motivation and the dominance of intrinsic motivation. However, other movements in popular culture have largely determined the types of investments that sales training programs have made in motivational sales training.

2. Extrinsic Motivation Does Not Work

In place of a well thought out strategic process that incorporates everything from how salespeople are hired, to how well they are trained, managers opt for the bribe as motivation. While these may work in very short time horizons, the numbers show that over time, they are absolutely limited as means of motivating a salesforce.

Motivation that works and that lasts is based on a set of logical and mutually reinforcing beliefs and ideas on the part of the motivated person. For a salesperson who displays a relative lack of motivation to suddenly snap out of it takes a massive paradigm shift – or a major triggering event.

3. Paradigm shifts are multi-layered (Intellectual, emotional, psychological)

The sorts of paradigm shifts that bring about significant changes in a person’s motivational profile are not based on a “good seminar” or good “motivational presentation”. They take place block-by-block, step-by-step. They require some of the following:

a. A process based on robust dialog (sales managers often do not have that kind of time or training) rather than motivational training.

b. A process takes time, you sir, don’t have the patience (it requires slight edge coaching, and you are a sales performance administrator – sales managers don’t coach, and often don’t lead – they preside).

It takes a lot of coaching, counseling, training and monitoring for a person to evolve to the realization that fuels self-motivation. It is most often outside the scope of a sales manager’s job or ability. It can only be consistently achieved in a larger context of a culture that supports in-depth coaching and training as well as brutally honest dialogue.

4. Paradigm shifts and motivation are in the details.

The most successful coaches of all time all had an eye for the greatest detail, and coached the minutest corrections until the proper adjustments were made. This is how all great coaching occurs. Unfortunately, many sales managers have poor coaching skills and end up exacerbating an already trying situation.

5. Identifying and removing De-motivators is more effective than any motivational training.

As a substitute for the standard motivational sales training, I recommend a systematic review of your marketing and sales process. Does your core marketing message align with everything else you portray to the customer? Does it represent a beneficial value proposition to them?

Are the targeted clients and leads a proper fit? Does the sales process maximize the use of selling time instead of burdening down the sales professionals with outdated selling methods that trap them into low performance?

As you continue to work on identifying and removing de-motivators, you may find that you get more than a few improvements in behavior and in performance from formerly “weak” team members.

Gogo Erekosima, The Small Business Digital Coach is the CEO and Lead strategist at Idea Age Consulting – a Denver Marketing Consulting firm that promises to grow your small business by 24% or more in 24 weeks or less using their customized Business Growth Action MAPS.

Sign up today for a Marketing Opportunity Analysis. This consulting module uncovers strategic marketing and business growth opportunities. This Consulting Package is valued at over $1500 dollars.

Sales and marketing are essential if you want your business to grow, but sales isn’t bad or evil! There are ways to sell ethically, responsibly and with class and style! Here are some simple tips for small business owners who loathe sales and selling.

1. Listen!

When you set your own needs aside and listen an amazing rapport can develop between you and your customers. Ask them questions, genuinely listen and reflect and then ask a few more!

Build up a clear picture of your customer and what they are really saying to you. Once they have finished speaking, re-clarify what they have said and check your understanding.

2. Know Your Products

If you don’t know your products and services really well or you fail to match your customers’ needs to your products effectively, then you will fall down under the heat of a few probing questions and you could lose the sale.

Now you have understood your customer’s particular wants and needs you should be able to run through the products or services that would best suit them based on what they have just told you. Explain the benefits of the product or service specifically for them. Avoid generalisation and remember that you are serving an individual and working to solve their individual needs. If you do this, you are already 90% of the way towards a customer purchase.

Generally people are looking for reasons to buy, so if you just create a compelling argument, provide clear responses and cover all their questions adequately, your customer will open their purse or pocketbook and buy! Make it easy for them to make that positive decision.

3. Tell a story

Provide a case study or recount a real life event relating to another of your customers and your product or service.

People like to know about the buying decisions and buying patterns of others, so tell them how your product has helped Mrs Jones of Norfolk, East Anglia or Mr Smith of Fulham, London. How did s/he feel about that? What is s/he doing with the product now?

And, now this is very important, so take note:

How has the product or service made life better, easier, more pleasant or more productive for those customers that have purchased it?

Ultimately you must always remember that you sell a solution to a problem. Understand what problems your products or services really solve and you will have reached the very core of the sales conversation and this is about meeting your customers key need. Combine storytelling (point 3) and listening (point 1) for maximum overall impact.

4. Avoid the ‘hard sell’

Be real. Let your customers see you as a professional, but also as a human being. Speak plainly, be honest and cultivate trust. Steer clear of the grand gestures and outrageous claims that send people running. Simply explain how you know that your products work (see point 2) and which would you recommend to them having understood their needs (see point 1).

5. Speak from the heart

Do you speak with passion enthusiasm and commitment about what you do? If not, go back to basics and revisit your vision or business plan or remind yourself about why you are doing what you are doing to get yourself fired up again! Alternatively recruit someone who can sell your product or service with the enthusiasm and energy required, because if you’re not ‘into’ the thing that you are selling, no one else will be!

On the other hand when you are passionate and authentic, people will be drawn to both you and to what you are selling and they will buy.

6. ABC! (Always be closing)

Now, I hope you are thinking ‘I can do this!’ In that case, you are right, yes you can.

You need to continually be working towards the sale and gaining agreement and commitment from your customer. This is what will build the momentum for the closure of the deal. This is something that all competent sales people do and here is a way for you to do it naturally.

• Simply reconfirm what has been discussed. Cover what the customer needs and why, the products or services which match these requirements and why they are a good fit (make sure they are), remind the customer who else has bought the same thing and relate the conversation to a similar customer with a similar need remembering to describe how much they love and value the product

• Remember to stop and check for agreement at each stage (see point 1)

• Confirm dates, times, prices, fees, rates etc as is relevant to your field. Remember to mention any discounts or offers that are available to sweeten the deal

• Ask the customer if they are happy with what has been discussed and ask if they are ready to go ahead with the purchase

• If no, ask why and listen very carefully. Cover any questions and concerns as thoroughly as you can and ask if they are now happy to go ahead

• If no, listen again and if it is a matter of time-scales, take down contact details and agree a follow up date (which you will diarise. ) Take on board any other feedback that you receive

You should have your sale at this stage and if you don’t you will have projected an image of a professional, level headed individual that knows their product well and was pleasant to liaise with.

Remember that this is important and even if the customer does not buy today, they will be open to buying from you in future. They may tell others about your great customer service and make referrals to people that they know.

That wasn’t too painful, now was it?

Kemi Kukoyi BSc (Hons) AMAC
The Coaching Pyramid Company™
Personal Growth, Progress and Performance Coaching Specialists
E-mail: info@coachingpyramid.co.uk
Web: http://www.thecoachingpyramid.co.uk
Professional profile: http://tiny.cc/tqz8h
Twitter: @coachingpyramid
Tel: 07929 521 826

What passes for sales training in many selling organizations is hardly a laughing matter. Ask any business leader or executive what the most important part of his or her business happens to be, and they’ll say “my people”. But when you look into how little time, money and attention they invest into their training and development process, you’ll be left with a much different impression.

Far too many sales managers and business owners believe that they cannot afford to set aside the time or the money to get their sales representatives deeply and rigorously trained in a manner that is customized for their organization’s needs.

Instead, they send newbies on half-backed orientation sessions, stick a bunch of binders in their hands, and sending them out on “ride-alongs” with senior salespeople (internal selling mentors). While this may work here and there, the occasional success of this method when implemented alone has as much to do with dumb luck as with anything else.

The Downside of Relying Mainly On Internal Selling Mentors For Sales Training

In a large sales organization, there may be as much as a 2100% gap in productivity between the top performer and the bottom seller. This wide range of variation in productivity means that sales managers usually pick out the top performers to be the “victim” of a sub-par mentoring process.

Here are a few reasons why internal sales mentoring should never be relied on as a substitute for a more robust sales training system.

1. Without special preparation, and with no special incentive for doing something that could potentially interfere with their own productivity, many of these top performers come to resent what should be a profitable and practical team-building (and business-building) process.

2. Instead of a systematic process for capturing the knowledge, behavior and attitudes of the best performers, and then sharing it with the whole sales organization, this information is inefficiently dispersed one-on-one. The organization loses out on the aggregate power of this transfer of intellectual capital.

3. Bad sales habits of the hapless “trainer for a day” may get passed on to an impressionable sales trainee during these unguided “sales training” sessions in a way that is damaging to the long-term success of the trainee.

4. Many average or under-performing salespeople end up being assigned to mentor the new staff member because the top performers refuse to dent their productivity by doing a task for which they are unsuited and untrained.

5. Training business development professionals in this way is potentially disastrous for overall production because different trainees get exposure to different training. Such a system is not duplicable or systematic, and therefore cannot be incrementally improved over the long haul. It is not improvable… so when a problem arises, no sale manager, executive or consultant can fix the system. It will have to be replaced wholesale – from planning, to scripting, to behavior.

Conclusion

I am not against using more experienced sales professionals in your organization as selling mentors. However, this cannot take the place of a robust and systematic sales training process.

The most effective sales training systems are customized to the needs of your organization. They are built from the ground up to acknowledge the realities facing your business and your sales professionals when they knock on the doors of prospects. Such sales systems are integrated and into metric-based sales management systems so that you can improve on behaviors rather than relying on empty rhetoric (or even insults) to motivate.

Gogo Erekosima, The Small Business Digital Coach is the CEO and Lead strategist at Idea Age Consulting – a Denver Marketing Sales Consulting firm that promises to grow your small business by 24% or more in 24 weeks or less using their customized Business Growth Action MAPS.

Sign up today for a Sales Improvement Opportunity Analysis. This consulting module uncovers strategic marketing and business growth opportunities. This Consulting Package is valued at over $1500 dollars.

By Gogo Erekosima

And before you commit me to the happy home, I am not saying that sales is not about results and ideally overachieving them. So bear with me while I share a few concepts with you.

Many years ago while I was a sales manager (in nappies) one of my team of great sales staff said to me, “Aldo, have you ever wondered why we humans have two ears and one mouth?” Well, you get the message; in one word “Listen”! That set me on another excellent path of discovery landing me in a place that is all about listening and feeling, or putting myself in the customers’ shoes. I am so privileged to have worked and continue to engage with so many great people whose pearls of wisdom have triggered the ongoing awakening of my being.

We have so many times heard this cliche, “put yourself in your customers shoes”. But do we actually believe it? Do we actually truly listen to what the customer has to say? Or are we driven by the latest product launch and cannot wait to vomit this new found knowledge all over our prospect, totally losing them along the way. And I am not saying product knowledge is not important, it is vital.

I’ll tell you another thing that I have learnt along the way. Sales people who talk too much go through a process of unselling. In this mode, we impart so much information onto the poor unsuspecting prospect that they feel bewildered, inept and rather threatened by their lack of knowledge, preferring instead to politely exit the scene with a few brochures and “let me think about that”, undoubtedly never to be seen again.

A simple example is the person that walks into a car showroom and says to the sales person, “every day, I have been admiring that car, while on the bus to work, as we passed this showroom. I am here to work-out a deal”. Now, the sales person, sensing blood gets excited and start “up selling” (another very dangerous sales process if done recklessly). He takes the brochure and starts optioning-up, talking about V6, direct rail injection, turbo charged, after sales package, tinted windows, etc….. The excited customer is now totally overwhelmed at the complexity of buying a car and walks home needing a rest! Rather, all the sales person had to do is “work-out a deal” as the customer indicated.

Obviously, there was another option if one wanted to upsell, and that is to “step into the customer’s shoes” asking the right questions so that the customer gets engaged, starts talking and (as customers always do) tell the sales person those things that are truly relevant to him, for the sales person to upsell towards. So I agree with upselling but this needs to be done from an empathetic space and not a “let’s see how much I can get him to spend” space.

So stop selling and start listening.

Usually customers meet you or come to you because they are in the buying process and they are looking for the best value for their money. They might not always articulate it in this way and there are some that, try as you will, will never be your customers, as their value needs do not fit your business value-add. This heightens further the importance for good dialogue with your customer. If it is the case, be prepared to admit upfront that you are probably not able to meet their value requirement. Trying to deliver what your business is not structured for is a receipt for disaster, because even if you win the sale, you probably end-up with an unhappy customer.

On the other hand, once you have given the customer the opportunity to openly share his needs and let’s say, you cannot meet their value equation, and you are prepared to say so, amazing things happen. The pressure of the sale is gone and then usually the customer is perplexed that you are walking away from a sale and will ask why. This is the best opening for you now to talk and truly explain the intrinsic value-add of your business/product.

In some circles they call it “solution sales” which I find exceedingly humorous. As, are we saying that in the car case above, we were not selling a solution? Whether it is a car, a home, an iPad, or a corporate purchase, the customer has a problem or at least a need. If we are prepared to truly listen, we are able to hear from the customer what his needs and priorities are and this is where the product knowledge comes in (as well as the organizational and industrial). This is where, once we have listened and listened and listened, we are able to then articulate the vision of a solution as sometimes the solution and the value-add is beyond the product itself. Maybe it is financing, maybe it is the finish, maybe it is the customer service, maybe it is something that is so easy for you to supply that you would never have thought of promoting and is so critical to the customer that you have an easy sale on your hands.

Maybe you do not have the answer and are comfortable enough to tell your customer that you would get back to them once you have thought through their needs and have a tailored offer for them. Maybe it simply is that car in the showroom.

I cannot give you the answer and neither are you able to come-up with it. But if you truly listen the customer will certainly tell you, and you will easily over-achieve your target and end up with a trail of happy customers.

Happy Listening (selling).

ezine@aldogrech.com

Aldo Grech – CxO Consulting