Tag: selling system

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“The Natural”

In selling, there’s pressure.  Perform or be gone.  And this pressure can kill your effectiveness.  But pressure doesn’t have to be a negative.  Trust me, if you’re good enough, you don’t feel pressure except in knowing your performance will render it a total non-issue.

I want to share an incredible story that will bring you back to the very essence of selling.  The essence that, if we can remain true to it, will propel us beyond any pressure to perform.  Our  success will simply take care of itself.

I have always loved the outdoors. Hiking, camping, rafting, all of it.  I see a Bass Pro Shop or REI and I have stop in to so see what’s new.

A few years back, I was planning to take on a new section of the Appalachian Trail.  So in gearing up for the trip I went boot shopping and ended up relearning one of the most fundamental selling truths that has ever existed.  Yes, it was that big!

Bass Pro Shop has virtually EVERYTHING for hiking.   So I stopped in to look for boots which I’ve always had problems with.  I went over to a MASSIVE wall of hiking boots.  I was thinking about my last experience hiking, when I hear a voice behind me ask “Looking at boots?” I gave a very obvious answer of “Why yes.” Mr. Eager sales guy then said “Well, let me show you what we got.” Out of an entire wall of boots, he pointed out one very sturdy but heavy boot and began to explain its features; waterproof, ankle support, locking speed-laces,  feature after feature, and on and on he went. It also just happened to be the most expensive boot they sold.  As my eyes glazed over I realized I really didn’t want to listen to this guy.  So I cut him short with a “let me look around a bit,” and left.

A few days later I stopped into a much smaller specialty-hiking store near Hiawassee, Georgia. Tiny little place packed with gear.  I stood looking at a display of only 7 models of boots when I heard a voice from behind, “Looking at boots are ya?”  I actually smelled him coming before he got there. Firewood, incense, and a clear hint of marijuana; lets just say, his scent arrived before he did!  I was about to send Mr. Fragrance on his way when he said “bro, I love to hike, you too?” He called me “bro”. I was 54 years old so that made me chuckle.  There stood a 20-something, quintessential “mountain hippie” guy. “You hiking the AT?” he asked.  I told him, yes, my last trip was the first 18 miles of the Appalachian Trail. I told him how beautiful it was and about the bears I saw, and the story about the night I left my beef jerky in my backpack.  “Bro, I love “The Trail!”, it’s got some gnarly hikes.” So he asked me what I liked, where I went, how my equipment fared and, finally, why I was in his store.  I shared that I’ve never found a boot I really loved. They are either too stiff or too soft.  They either don’t breath, or they let water in. And they all give me blisters, especially when bouldering. “Bro, I get it. You’ve been using those old stiff, Swiss ankle boots right?”  Yep, I said. Then he said “check this out” and took  down a boot that looked more like some strange hi-top basket ball shoe hybrid boot.  “Bro, this boots the s*!t, fits like a glove and moves with you when you boulder.”   I put them on and was blown away.  They felt like nothing I had ever worn and I could not wait to try them on a hike.  The guy was spot on in finding and addressing my needs, and before you knew it I had dropped a cool $300 on a new pair of boots.  I didn’t even care about the price.

As I was checking out I said to hippie dude “you’re good at this.”  Good at what he asked. Selling, I said.  I have been selling for years and man, you’re a natural.  He looked confused, “I don’t sell bro, I just really love to get to know people and find out what they they love about the outdoors, what they need, and then I show things that  I know will work for them.”

BOOM! There it is. I realized, in that moment, that I had forgotten one of the oldest and most important tenets of sales, persuasion and even leadership.  And how could I?  I’m a man who has made the study of selling a life’s passion? It honestly freaked me out. What we think, feel or say about our idea, product, or anything else is largely irrelevant. We do not “convince” people to buy an idea or thing.  Rather we should simply relate to them, uncover their needs and address those needs. It’s so simple we dismiss it!  What I had forgotten was that, whether you’re selling boots, advice or fractional ownership of a jet, people buy emotionally, then use facts and data to justify their decision. I already knew this but this experience was the purest example of the principal I had ever seen!

I’m pretty sure that guy had never read a single sales book or attended a single sales training.  He didn’t need to; he was a natural.  He just naturally connected emotionally, and offered his ideas with enthusiasm and sincerity.  I never for a moment felt like I was being “sold.”  He defined the very essence of what selling should be and that experience changed me forever.

Onward & Upward

Ben

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Selling “systems” don’t work!

Like you, I’ve been through countless sales training’s.  And I’ve  also trained a lot of sales people through the years.  And virtually all sales training’s involve some sort of “system.”  Now, at this stage of my selling career, I’ve come to some conclusions with which I’d like to challenge you.

Let’s look first at the positives of “selling systems.”

  1. Selling systems give us a road-map for each sales call.  It helps us to organize our thoughts and how we will diagnose our prospects needs.
  2. Selling systems give us a platform from which to present our solutions.
  3. They give us the structure we need to come across as organized and professional.
  4. They keep us focused on our goals and make the time we spend with our prospects more efficient.

All good stuff right? 

So let’s now consider the downside of “selling systems.”

  1. In general, selling systems are manipulative. And when prospects feel like they are being manipulated, you’re done.
  2. Selling systems are overly rigid. My skin crawls to think of a sales person sitting in front of prospect thinking to himself, “am I on step 4 or step 5?  Did I miss step 3?”  What a nightmare!
  3. Selling systems are about the sales person and their goals and not so much about the PROSPECTS goals. Which is why you are there!
  4. Selling systems detract from the kind of quality interaction and genuine dialog that leads to a beneficial outcome. You’ll notice that I did not say, “leads to a sale.”  Whatever outcome is best for your prospect is what you want to make happen.  Even if that means they don’t buy your stuff.

So what’s the best way to run a sales call?  Have a system or not?

Anyone who has sold with me or has been trained by me knows I’m a huge fan of constant learning regarding selling.  And I study and believe in “selling systems” because they all have something good about them.  I just feel that systems are overused.  People think too much about the system and not enough about the prospect.  It kills rapport and sales.

So let’s agree to use a word other than “system;” let’s use the word “guidelines.”

Selling guidelines give you all the positives of the various selling systems while avoiding the downsides.  The following guidelines will indeed give you the best of both worlds:

  • Have a well thought out, client focused selling system (guideline) that works for you, but be willing to change it, or abandon it completely, based on how the sales call is going.
  • Prepare you butt off the day/night before your appointment.  Going in with a huge amount of pre-call intelligence will not only bolster your confidence, it will allow you to connect more effectively with your prospect.  Be the most prepared sales person they’ve ever seen!
  • For each call, take your guidelines and think about how they will be used based on what you know about your prospect.  You do know about your prospect, right. Type A’s don’t want to be led down a path, while analyticals will be more at ease with a little structure in the call.
  • Develop a “call plan” that serves as a starting point until you get into rapport with your prospect.  Then make their needs the absolute center of your universe.  They’ll feel your sincerity.
  • Never forget that the prospects needs and goals come first. Your selling guidelines should support that in every way.
  • If you find yourself thinking about your guidelines/system during the call, STOP IT.  Just be yourself and focus on the prospects needs.
  • If you have not mastered your sales call process, work a little bit into each call. Just enough to stretch you without taking your mind off the prospect.  Call it a “system” or a “guideline”, unless you can use them innately and modify them on the fly, don’t use them at all!

Just remember, being genuine is more powerful than any sales system.  But being genuine AND using selling guidelines/structure flawlessly is UNSTOPABLE!   I know it sounds like a contradiction, but it’s a fact.  Great sales people have a plan for every call.  But they can pivot on a dime and change strategies as needed.  Be prepared, be focused, have a plan, but don’t let any of that get in the way of you being you!

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