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Are you Presenting AND Communicating?

 
Do you consider yourself a great presenter AND communicator? It’s a tough question to answer honestly.

The fact is, if you want to communicate a message that sells, you must both present well, AND communicate well. Strangely, communication is a selling skill that is often overlooked: How to get others to listen to you. Or better stated, WANT to listen to you.

All your life you heard the lesson: It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.

Presentation is what you say.

Communication is how you say it.

Here’s a great way to clarify communication skills. Think about the teachers you had in school. Sometimes the most brilliant ones were the worst communicators – and as a result, left you short of both education and inspiration.

Now, think of the teachers you loved. You couldn’t wait to get to their class, and you hung on their every word. In fact, you still remember him or her and you talk about them. They were great communicators.

Here are several “check in” questions to get you thinking about your communication – and I’ll throw in a few challenges:

• How clear is your delivered message? Not how clear to you, but how clear to them.

• What’s the attitude behind your spoken words? What’s the tone of your words? How do they sound?

• Are your gestures in harmony with your words and your delivery? Do your gestures indicate and confirm a relaxed, confident style and a belief in what you are saying?

• How succinct is your message? Short and sweet or way too long?

• Does your message or your words sound scripted or insincere? “Conversational” is the best communication strategy.

• How organized is your message? Are you fumbling or on a roll?

• Does your message have a start and a finish? A finish that ends in a commitment from the prospective customer?

• Do you make solid and consistent eye contact? Especially when asking for the sale or confirming the offer.

• Are you making statements or asking questions? Who are the questions in favor of? NOTE WELL: Questions create interactive dialog, and will tell you, both by body language and gestures, the level of genuine connection – the smiles, the willingness to talk and tell the truth.

• Are you asking for confirmation that what you’re saying is completely understandable?

• Do you talk too fast? Only your recording yourself will tell you that.


• Are you using industry buzzwords and acronyms that could create misunderstanding? Classic example of miscommunication.


And the ultimate self-tests of communication:
• Have you ever recorded your meetings so you can hear your own communication skill level? Most salespeople have not. It’s too scary!


Here’s a Tweet I really liked: A passionate message without clarity will fall on deaf ears. #communication

The object of communication, especially sales communication, is for others to UNDERSTAND your message, AGREE with your message, and then TAKE the correct ACTION. To buy!

Onward & Upward!
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After the loss.

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You can often learn more from your failures than your successes.  If you will just take the time to honestly reflect, and then decide how to improve. Lost sales, failures, hurt!  But they can be remarkably beneficial as learning experiences.  Each loss holds a lesson that will help you become better!

So let’s start at the other end of the spectrum.  YES, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of closing a sale!  It’s one of those YES! Moments where you leave the meeting and when no one can see you, you pump your fists up and down with a wonderful feeling of victory.  It’s the best. Whether it’s a large or small sale we celebrate first and then we try to think about how we won so we can replicate our success. That’s great and it’s the right thing to do, but the fact is, there is often much more to be learned from losing a sale.  The challenge is, most salespeople don’t want to reflect on their losses because it’s really not very comfortable.

Some salespeople will ask a prospect why they lost a deal, but they typically don’t get a straight answer. In fact, according to sales research data, prospects tell salespeople the complete truth about why they lost less than half the time.  Additionally, research has shown that salespeople learn the complete and accurate truth about 40% of the time because most don’t even ask about it. In other words, in 60% of lost sales situations, salespeople don’t have a complete and accurate understanding of why they lost.

What follows are 5 guaranteed, proven ways to ensure you learn everything you can about why you lost a sale, and how to learn and grow from that knowledge:

1) Early in the sales process, tell your prospect that you will conduct a debrief (regardless of the outcome of the sale). In order to make the prospect comfortable and illicit honest and, more importantly, actionable feedback, you should let the prospect know early in the sales process that regardless of the outcome, you will be conducting a post-decision debrief call at the end of the process.

2) Schedule a separate debrief call. Don’t do the debrief in the same meeting in which you got the bad news! When you hear about a loss, prospects have one goal in mind: to get rid of you as quickly as possible. Instead, schedule a separate debrief call after you have accepted the loss and (this is important) let the prospect know that you will not try to change their decision.

3) Use a debrief guide. Research has shown that salespeople who use a debrief questionnaire have a 15% higher close rate than those who do not. It’s simple to create your own debrief guide or you can ask for help from your manager, mentor or colleagues.  Just create a list of 5-10 open ended questions and let the conversation open up from there.  Questions like, “how did you feel about our ability to deliver on the promises I made in the proposal?”, or “tell me how you felt about how we priced our service?”  These sorts of questions uncover pure gold for future sales.  Just make them open and honest and not manipulative.

4) Take responsibility. Make sure that you really want candid feedback; prospects will know if you don’t. Don’t get defensive, and PLEASE don’t debate with the prospect or try to resell them.   (If they start to re-think their decision because of your professionalism, just let them do it.  They will let you know if they might be willing to take a second look.  But that’s THEIR call; you just want to learn from your loss.

5) Drill down for specifics. If their answers are vague, they may be nervous about you trying to re-sell them.  Put them at ease by promising that’s not your purpose here; that you just want to learn and grow from the loss. So follow up vague answers with questions like “How do you mean?” or “Can you please give me a little more detail on that?”  Other great questions for obtaining valuable feedback include asking, “How can I do better with my next prospect?”, “Is there anything you feel we should change about our offering or how I presented it?” or “Is there any other advice you could give me?”  These are strong questions and your prospect will be flattered that you respect them enough to ask them.

So you can indeed learn a great deal from a lost sale.  You just have to be willing to swallow your pride a little and make the debrief happen.  Win or lose, with a lost sale debrief, you can win every time!

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Sales Breath!

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It’s embarrassing, it’s obnoxious, and it kills deals dead.

“Sales breath” is a term used for many things but to me it boils down to this; sales people saying the wrong things and the wrong times and say those things WAY too much.

I’ve been on live coaching calls with sales reps that exhibited sales breath and it has always been one of the most painful things to sit through that I can imagine.  The worst part is most don’t even know they are doing it!

Here are to top reasons for sales breath and the lost deals they lead to.

  1. Insecurity. Even sales people who are usually confident, can sometime fall prey to insecurity in a sales call.  In these moments they (subconsciously) use a tsunami of words, data, facts and figures to avoid dealing with whatever conflict is making them insecure; like maybe an impending “NO!”   Instead of balancing tactical talking with strategic listening, they believe that their fire hose of words will protect them from what they imagine is a threat. They refuse to turn the conversation over to the prospect.  I’ve done it, we’ve all done it and it’s never served us well. Confidence along with a little humility, combined with great listening skills is what will move the sale along.
  2. Poor preparation. Simply put, the less you know about your service, or the prospect and their business, the more empty words you’ll have to use to communicate.  You are reduced to shallow small talk rather than connecting on a subject like your prospects favorite pass time which you found out about on Facebook or LinkedIn.  That’s pretty weak!  With a little more prep-work the night before, using the wealth of resources we have at our fingertips the ability to learn about our prospects background, their company, even their hobbies,  there is never any reason to have to resort to small talk.  When there are things, important to your prospect, on which you could really be connecting, nervousness and empty words go away.
  3. Stress. This one is often overlooked but it’s a proven scientific fact.  When we are tired and/or stressed we tend to ramble and our ability to concentrate decreases. Our brains will respond to mental fatigue by producing more words with less impact. So get enough sleep, exercise, eat right and be on top of your game.  Feeling great is the ideal foundation for a great conversation.
  4. No plan on how you will run your call. After researching the prospect, do you have a plan for how you will run the call.  If not, your counting on luck and that’s not what pro’s do.  You need to have a plan that includes, how you will open the call, what line of probing questions you will use, what possible solutions you will present, and how you will take the sale to the next step.  Even if your plan gets derailed, (and they do!), you must go in with a call plan every time.
  5. Lack of humility. Some people think the things they say are profound and important. When they talk, they experience a rush of good feelings and they often fall in love with their own words. They may use catch phrases, acronyms and complex language to impress their prospects.  More often than not, bloviation leads to the prospect looking at their watch! You’ve officially lost them. Being expressive is nice, but good relationships require us to be receptive to others.  Being humble, knowledgeable and confident, all at the same time, is an ultra powerful skill set.
  6. Holding their attention. It’s important to move quickly and efficiently to find your prospects pain or area of desired gain.  While some salespeople hop around from one topic to another, others quickly get to the core of a customer’s need, solve it and close the sale. Remember, you are competing for your prospects attention.  He/she may be looking into your eyes and nodding, but they may not be listening to you at all.  They may be thinking about that quote they forgot to work on, or the meeting they have later with their accountant, or whatever.  The fact is, business owners are very busy and their minds are going 100 miles an hour.  Your challenge is to get to the point and focus on their problems, challenges and areas of opportunity.  Get their attention and get them talking.  When they are talking, they are focused on you.  If you are talking, you can’t be sure if you have their attention or not.
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The Golden Arrow

If I could only give one piece of advice.  I’ve mentored a lot of sales professionals through the years and with some, it will be a never ending process.  But recently I had a brief encounter with a young sales person who had just started a new job.  He was a very sharp guy.  Great look, great suit, great shoes.  He impressed me the moment we shook hands.  We were on an airport shuttle and struck up a conversation.  It was only about a 15 minute ride but we exchanged cards and he asked me the following question: “What’s one thing I can do to that would be a game changer in my sales production?”

I shared with him my Golden Arrow.  Public Speaking.  For free.  With a giving mindset.

Go out and find opportunities to speak,  Not in a selling way but in an educational way.  Groups and associations are always looking for speakers so the opportunities are out there.  Create a list of topics that people want to learn more about and that you just happen to know a lot about. (And if you don’t know a lot about something, go learn it!)  For me that includes things like: Health Care Reform, Workplace Safety, Employee Productivity, Human resources, Customer Service and others.

The magic of this is that when you speak before a group, and do a great job, you are immediately perceived by the attendees as “an expert”.

So you give an educational and entertaining talk, and then (very important) hang around after the event is over.  Inevitably, someone, or even several people, will come over to talk to you about what you do.  I’ve actually been surrounded by people after a speaking event exchanging cards and even setting meetings.

But again, the key is to go into this focused on GIVING rather than GETTING.  The “giving” mindset is what gives this such power.  The less “salesy” you are, the more effective you will be.  Its also a tremendous tool for building self confidence and polishing your speaking skills.  You win no matter what!

It’s is one of the most powerful networking tools available but it’s up to YOU to make it happen.  Your Golden Arrow.

Onward & Upward!

Ben

 

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Stop Closing The Deal!

In sales we always talk about “closing the deal.”  And saying this puts the emphasis on the closing meeting as the moment where we finally convince the prospect to give is that “YES.”

But I contend the closing meeting should actually be called the “confirmation” meeting.  You see, if you have done everything properly before the “closing” meeting, you really should just be confirming things that have already been covered and then presenting the numbers associated with the solutions you’ve already discussed.

My contention is this, the real sale takes place starting the moment your prospect first lays eyes on you, right through to the end of your  initial “Discovery” meeting.  It’s in those meetings that you learn about your prospects issues, challenges and unrealized opportunities.  And in those meetings, each time you found an area of need, you drilled down on it to find the emotional level pain that situation causes.  It’s then that you delivered your solution and gave your prospect hope and anticipation about not having to deal with that issue any more.

And if you have done this with 5 or 6 REAL issues that your prospect would love to see resolved, you have then created anticipation in your prospects mind.  You leave that meeting with your prospect thinking, “those solutions all sounded really good, I just hope I can afford it.”  That’s anticipation, and anticipation is one of the strongest emotions in sales.  By the time you come back to present your numbers, your prospect has been thinking about your solutions and hoping he can afford them because he knows he really needs what you’ve got.  That is, he know this IF you did a good enough job in the Discovery meeting finding the issues, drilling down to the emotional roots of the challenge, then powerfully delivering the solutions that would solve the issues.

So what we call the closing meeting is really just the meeting where we convince the prospect that the solutions he already wants, are worth the fee we will charge.  All this relates back to the power of the solutions you presented in that initial meeting.  The more powerful they were, the easier it is to cost justify your fee.  The weaker they were… well you know how that ends.

Just remember that is our job to find the issues.  And it’s our job to create value around our solutions.  Done properly, the closing meeting is just confirming everything and wrapping up some paperwork.  Now that’s an easy close!

Onward & Upward!

Ben