Thinking Ahead Maximizes Your Selling Time
In my last post, I told you that you needed to gain the prospects interest, before you threw him your best pitch. That leads us to finding better sales approaches. One simple approach would be to tell the prospect immediately what you can do for him.
In terms of what your product will do for him, sell him the desire to see proof of what you’re trying to sell him.
Doing this effectively requires a little thought about the prospect before calling on him. Such pre-call thought should be regarded as insurance for the salesman’s most valuable possession - his selling time.
What’s the nature of the prospect’s business, and what’s his position in the business?
What will the thing to be sold do for such a business and what’s he, in his position, most likely to want done?
If he’s an executive, for example, he’s more likely to be interested in saving money than in saving a little trouble for his employees.
But if he’s an employee, he’ll be much more interested in seeing how the thing will make his work easier, more pleasant or more profitable to him or those above him.
Attracting More Interest Leads To More Sales
Most people have little patience with salesmen and their approaches. They immediately want to know what you’re selling and the price.
Experienced salesmen know, through negative sales experiences, that it’s usually fatal to explain bluntly: ” I’m with the Simplenomics Corporation and I wanted to know if you could use one of our Simple machines. ”
Almost inevitably, the answer to that type of approach is ” No. ”
That’s why many successful salesmen no longer use business cards on their first approach.
Handing out a business card as the first look a prospect gets at your company or product is less than best. You give the prospect an easy way to pre-judge and reject you, your company and your product.
Most business cards are designed to tell the world about you, but you really need to tell the prospect what you can do for him. Immediately.
Handing him a white paper titled, ” 10 Simple Ways To Make Bigger Profits And Spend Less Doing It ” will grab much more attention than a business card with your name, email and cell phone number on it.
On the other hand, ” trick ” approaches, that tend to keep the prospect in suspense about the real reason you’re there, do nothing to disperse impatience or improve receptiveness.
Prospects want to know why you’re there and what you can do for them.
Salesmanship consists of giving prospects what they want…after leading them to want it.
You Have To Buy Time To Make A Sale
To become more successful in your approaches, you have to first recognize that you have two sales to make, not just one.
First, you must sell the prospect a desire and willingness to give you enough time to tell your story.
You have to separate the suspects from the prospects.
If you’ll regard that as a separate sale, you’ll soon discover that you’re increasing the number of sales per attempt ratio - your rate of conversions. You’ll also increase the amount that each sales call is worth to you.
Why ? Because a prospect that’s willing to listen, will listen more closely and with less resistance than one whose consent hasn’t been gained before the presentation begins.
You can try to force feed your story to a prospect, but they won’t eat. Nor will they enjoy it or your company.
Also, it’s much easier to get a prospect to give you ten or twenty minutes of their time than it is to get them to give an order - yet you cannot get the order until you get the time to tell your story.
If you try to force your story on people without their consent, that’ll only add to their resistive powers. It also empowers them at the absolute worst time for you - a fact that’s easily proven by the number sales calls that are stopped after a few minutes by the prospect impatiently telling you that they aren’t interested.
Spend that first few minutes devoted to finding out if the person is interested and you’ll waste less of your time and be more successful.
Nick Faldo’s Life Lesson As Good As His Golf Lessons
In honor of my 44th birthday today, I’m going to share a life lesson that I wish I had learned in kinder garden, instead of later in life.
It works for salespeople, teachers, doctors, lawyers, Indian Chiefs, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers.
On page 72, February 2007 edition of Golf Magazine, during an interview conducted by Connell Barret, this great piece of advice sneaks out of the mouth of the oft-married, never at a loss for words Englishman:
CB: Now that you’re almost 50, what do you wish you knew at 25?
NF: I’ve learned that it’s not the first impression you make - it’s the last one. Whether it’s the checkout girl or the president, you have to ask how you want people to remember you when you walk away. Well, I want to leave them with a smile so they say, ” I don’t know who he was, but he smiled and asked me how I’m doing.” I wasn’t good at that before, but I’ve learned how to be more communicative - to show more empathy towards people. The other thing I’ve learned is simple: Find at least one thing to enjoy every day. It’s not always easy. Sometimes you sit on a plane and it’s delayed, and you say, ” How the hell do you find something to enjoy here? ” And suddenly you see the sunrise from 35,000 feet and you go, ” Okay. That’s it. That was fantastic. “
As this hits the web or your RSS feed reader of choice, I’m driving from 5:30 AM CST to about 5:00 PM EST to Greensboro, NC for a 3-day brick industry forum. I have to be there by 6 PM EST for a dinner, after a 10 hour drive, which includes a stop in Gatlinburg, TN to pick up a co-worker.
Long drive, long day, long dinner, away from my family, yada yada, blah, blah. Oh yeah, it’s also my birthday, which I’ve spent on the road 10 of the last 12 years. Where’s the one thing I’m gonna find to enjoy ? I don’t know, but I’ll let you know when I get back.
4 days away from my peeps, blogging, NewsGator and email may do me in. I’ve loaded up all my blogs beforehand and my laptop won’t be here for 2-3 more weeks, so if I don’t get your comment approved or if I don’t answer an email before next weekend, forgive me.
I’ve got a great book for those long hotel nights - 3 Nights In August, by Buzz Bissinger. I’ve been waiting a long time for a chance to read it … uninterrupted.
As I try to enjoy my birthday, in spite of the circumstances, you try to find a way to incorporate this new lesson into your repertoire.
The impression you leave your customers, your family, your friends, your coworkers with, will be the most important thing you do today.
And look for something to enjoy and then share it with us … one of us may really need it … badly.
Selling Can Be Simple
Salesmanship is not a game, nor is it a craft. It’s work.
It’s vital, creative, interesting, exciting and adventurous work, but most of all, it’s hard work.
Never think of selling as an easy way to wealth.
It’s simple, but it’s not easy. It’s simple to someone who sees it as an opportunity to serve people, by filling their wants.
But it’s not easy, because it’s hard to convince people to buy, even when it’s to their advantage.
You can sell people things to fill their wants, which adds to their ambition and their happiness.
But it’s not easy because people instinctively resist being sold. They know they can’t possibly buy everything that salespeople show them.
They have to exercise discrimination, balancing want against need and cost against usefulness, and this takes concentrated thought, which is the hardest of hard work … for a lot of people.
People naturally don’t want to do such hard work. That’s why they resist even the mildest approaches of salesmen, who must first sell them the want to listen.
Without that first want, you can’t get to the next want, which is when the story really begins.
Getting Past The Gatekeeper: What’s Your Most Successful Method?
I have a new blog friend who has a question that several of us out there could answer.
I’m going to throw in a comment myself, but I wanted to hurry and get this post up before I head out of town tomorrow.
Here’s the scenario: You’re a salesperson who is making a cold call. You need to get past the gatekeeper/receptionist. How do you do that and have success?
Do you try to win her over ? Do you just state the facts, ma’am ? What do you suggest ?
Then, add a little info on ways this person could get the target to call him and make an appointment, which would alleviate his pain.
I’m counting on you regular readers to help out here … even if you do the post on your own blog and link to here.
The image is from Mark Zug, who is a master illustrator if I’ve ever seen one.
Selling Speeds Natural Distribution
Nothing is really worth selling unless it would eventually sell itself.
You cannot sell a thing unless the facts will sell it, because selling is simply telling the truth attractively.
Salesmanship, spoken and/or written, serves to spread the news more quickly than it would travel by word of mouth from satisfied users to others who haven’t heard about the thing.
Salesmanship speeds up distribution and creates production to meet demand. It builds factories and employs workers at wages which add to the buying power for the thing it has to sell.
It’s the impetus of our American civilization with our incomparably high standards of living.
People live well only when they want to live well strongly enough to work for what they want.
Salesmanship supplies the want and the work for all. It’s a fundamental fact of tremendous importance to the salesman that people will do only what they must to get what they want.
To make them do more, you must make them want more, and that’s the function of the salesman, who by his very nature, adds immeasurably to the creative energy of the human race.
The image above is from an ebook that says, ” The very essence of MARKETING is to find out what the market wants and to look for ways and means to satisfy Customers. ”
My kinda guy and you can find out more here.
Looking For A List Of The Top 150 Marketing Blogs?
Thru a post written by my blog friend David Meerman Scott, I found this resource for all of us to use.
Todd And(rlik) has taken a mountain of a task and given the prerequisite massive effort and has produced a ranking of the Top 150 Marketing Blogs.
Before you go criticizing his rankings, as you and I know, they’re always subjective to who, what and how that what was weighted.
Just do as I’m doing and use the listings to troll for info, links, friends and more.
There will never be a ranking systems that’s above reproach, but it’s a great start and he seems to be open to adding a blog … as I hope he’ll do with mine.
Thanks for the effort and the resource Todd !
EDIT - I wrote this on Sunday afternoon and emailed Todd, who added me to the mix and I came in at #56 at 11PM on 1-14-07 ! Thanks for adding me Todd !
People Buy Hope
People do not buy things. They buy the usefulness the things provide. They buy what the thing will enable them to do or be. The end result, as it were.
They buy hope.
A man doesn’t buy a car. He buys a set of keys to the open road, quick, reliable transportation to his life’s work, convenience, ease of operation, low cost and upkeep or pride in possession.
He buys sexy, sizzling freedom.
He buys what the car will do for him, because that’s exactly the emotion that makes him want that particular car bad enough to overcome his fears and inhibitions which would otherwise prevent the purchase.
Likewise, a company doesn’t buy a warehouse full of goods. They buy profits, consumer demand, quick turnover, etc.
They buy more money.
A woman doesn’t buy an outfit. She buys style, acceptance and personal satisfaction.
She buys a sexy, sizzling new persona.
People buy what they want. They want what they can use to their advantage.
That means, as a salesperson, your task is to explain the various uses of your product so clearly and so convincingly that it will create wants which will create sales.
To sell a person something which they cannot use to their advantage is not salesmanship.
It’s larceny.
To sell them something, without making it perfectly clear to them how they can use it to their advantage, is not salesmanship.
It’s sales-suicide.
It creates dissatisfied customers who become living, breathing, word of mouthing, blogging, negative advertisements of vast destructive force.
PS - If you’d like to buy some hope, follow this link to some beautiful artwork.
Wants make the world go ’round … saleswise
True salespeople are those that make wants. Wants make sales.
You’ll become more successful when you don’t think it’s your job to make sales, because that thought tends to transfer itself to the prospect, who doesn’t want to be sold.
The prospect wants to buy what he wants. So you need to make him want and the want makes him buy.
People always buy what they want, when they want it hard enough and when they can afford it. Sometimes even when they can’t afford it, just because they wanted to.
What this really means is that salesmanship is simply creating a want for the thing to be sold. That want must be more burning than any other want requiring a similar expenditure of time, energy and money for its gratification.
To create a want with this type of intensity, you need to think of the thing to be sold in terms of what it will make happen for the prospect after he buys it.
You can’t sell the features … you can sell the feeling that will come after the purchase.
