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By admin

The #1 mistake you make in sales

The #1 mistake you make in sales

A week ago I had an appointment for a product I thought could help my business. The company has a good clientele and I was almost convinced to buy the product as its price was within my budget.

As I got on the call, it didn’t take long until I found myself led through a demo. When the demo ended, I’d gotten off the phone thinking the product wasn’t for us and I should keep looking.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED ? We started the call with “YES” and some how ended up at “MAYBE”.

The sales person committed the #1 sales mistake: They pitched their solution without knowing exactly what my needs were and without showing me the value of the solution he was proposing.

Before you pitch your solution, benefits and features – you must figure out the exact problem you’re solving in the first place. You need to ask about your clients’ pain points first and what their expectations are with your product. There are two benefit of this;

It will give an edge to present a solution which exactly matches their needs which can help you to hide the features that are irrelevant for them.
It gives you an idea how important it is for them; this will help you sell the product at a good cost.
Have you ever faced such a situation where you start selling without knowing what customers want?

Have you ever been in a demo where someone starts selling without knowing your expectations?

If yes… Let me know how it went and how you FIXED IT?

By admin

Do you get lots of “maybe” or “I will think about it” after your first call with prospects?

Do you get lots of “maybe” or “I will think about it” after your first call with prospects?

So far, I have posted a lot of content which tells you about general mistakes in a sales call. Today we are going to talk about the situation when you do everything right but still get a “MAYBE” as an answer.

Most people subconsciously avoid decision making after the first conversation. Every sales guru knows and advises that one needs to adjust their conversation to guide the prospect to come to a decision. This can be tricky as salespeople can become very pushy. So the big question is: how do we guide the conversation while still making the prospect feel like they’re in control?

There is a very simple solution for this: set up an agenda before the meeting. It will align you and your prospect on a plan for the meeting and make sure you’re both on the same page and moving forward together toward one of three outcomes:

  1. Yes
  2. No
  3. Figuring out the next steps – Future meeting date & agenda

By following the above process, you are avoiding a limbo stage. The main advantage of this process is that you are saving valuable time on the lead follow-ups. This can feel awkward at first but if you practice it in your next meeting and make it your own, you will start seeing positive results that you’ll want to use again and again. If you have any specific questions or suggestions about the implementation of this process, we are here to help!

By admin

What happens to a prospect when they go dark and getting to the real objection

When I first started selling, I often experienced the following scenario.

I’d have a meeting thinking I totally nailed it, only for the prospect to go dark after my attempts to follow up.

What the heck was I doing wrong? Well there were a few things, I’d made a classic error: I’d fail to uncover the secret objection my prospect still had at the end of our conversation.

Unless you directly ask, it’s easy for a prospect not to reveal their actual objections to buying. Not only is it too hard for a prospect to pin down the objection on their own, but there’s a stigma associated with rejection, and they don’t want to feel like a bad person by doing it to you.

Also, although the prospect realised both a pain and solution, they were still stuck with an existing process and habit which is hard to break.

On my side, there was still a lot of work to do if I wanted to consistently move these deals forward. The way you can motivate someone to make a change is to continue to play investigator. A few questions I like to use are:

  • Do you want to change this? (sounds simple, but no one asks this)
  • Where would making a change like this sit on your priority list? (get specific, are you in their top three or bottom three? you can learn a lot here. maybe you can solve other priorities and they don’t know it yet)
  • How committed are you to changing this in the next ______? (this gives you a sense of timeline to close/implement assuming you’re on their priority list)

These questions sound basic, but surprisingly very few have a habit of explicitly asking them.

What is your strategy to face this situation? Leave your thoughts and comments below!

By admin

Have you faced this situation in a sales call?

 

Have you faced this situation in a sales call? 

(Source: Flickr)

Here I am with another live experience and a valuable lesson and situation that sales people face on daily basis. I experience this scenario every other day.

Sometimes a prospect will try to push you into giving a demo early in a conversation – we’ll talk about how to avoid this later in subsequent posts in details, but if it happens, here’s a quick fix.

Let’s say you’re selling an amazing product to a prospect over the phone:

PROSPECT: “We need a new system and are evaluating options. Can you show me a demo?”

YOU: “Happy to do a demo. I want to make sure I show you the right parts of our system so do you mind if I ask you a few questions first so we can make the best use of our time?”

PROSPECT: “Sure.” (Most of the time)

Instead of getting straight into the demo, frame your first questions in a way that shows you’re trying to help them get the most for their time (which you will be) and they’ll appreciate it. Also make sure to note down every response and write down corresponding product solution points with your prospect’s responses.

I call this process “earning the right to pitch.” Next, I’ll walk you through a verbal tactic you can pair this with to close deals faster and more consistently.

Have you or someone on your team started selling the solution before you’ve ‘earned the right to pitch’? 

By admin

Sales Performance Strategy to Empower the Sales Force

Sales Performance Strategy to Empower the Sales Force

Companies in the 21st century, that are facing sales performance challenges, asks themselves

Why the market is becoming so hard to reach? .Why closing clients is taken so much time? Is it the sales performance, is it our marketing strategy?

As per the last Harvard Business Review study, January February 2013 issue professor Richard Ettenson, after a study involving 500 managers and customers in multiple countries across a wide B2B industries, showed that that we need to reinterpret the 4p’s.

 

The rules of the game have changed and we are talking more about:

Selling solutions than selling our product service features

1.Value of the solution that we are offering to our leads than focusing and negotiating the prices.

2.In a way improving the sales performance of the sales force while implementing the consultative sales approach.

 

Now that client’s behaviors towards buying have changed

The hardest thing about selling today is that customers don’t need you the way they used to because:

1.They are informed i.e. they are a click away from Google,

2.They have access to any information they are searching for through blogs articles, free webinars etc…

3.And in some cases we face extremely competent procurement teams or consultants armed enough with data to define solutions for themselves when we are approaching multinational companies.

Unfortunately we can still see the majority of the sales performance of organizations weakening by a sales force not prepared to face such changes and still trying to sell as sales representatives using the consultative sales techniques.

 

Selling Styles

The higher up the scale the rep establishes as a base for the relationship, the greater value added to the customer experience.
– On the lower end, the salesperson relies on rapport to carry the day, adding very little to the customer.
– At the other end of the spectrum, the salesperson establishes him-self as a Trusted Adviser, using the consultative sales and  adding a significant value to the potential customers.

The act of building mutually rewarding relationships with customers, applying consultative sales techniques where sales people can help them solve their problems, achieve their goals, and maximize profitability while buying your products and services.

 

Remember

Now that we pinpoint the Crucial need to:

1. adapt our marketing mix
2. take our sales people selling approach to a consultative sales approach

After a study done over half a million sales people, statistical figures showed that:

-85% of sales teams do not have a formal sales process

-45% of sales managers struggle to manage effectively

We have to identify the sales force weakness and establish a long term sales development plan because Sales Training workshops returns on sales performance will last a maximum 3 months while a sustainable sales development strategy can lead to an increase of a minimum of 10% in sales.

 

Now that we all agree that Organizations have an urgent need to:

1.Adapt a new marketing mix approach to gain market share
2.Train and educated its sales force to a new selling solution approach.

 

Whether you need to

1.accelerate your growth,
2. reverse flat or declining sales,
3. reduce your cost of sales,
4. hire a key sales executive, or a VP of sales
5. change your sales model,
6. Or implement an efficient sales process

You will need to ask the right questions to identify the real issues you are facing and provide a comprehensive solution tailor made to your need

Then you will be able to take your sales force from an Order takers level to a Money maker’s level

 

What happens to a prospect when they go dark and getting to the real objection