Salesprocess

Selling Skill: Recover From Poor Performance

10/25/2021 By Don Crawford Leave a Comment

Ouch! I really stubbed my toe that time! Yes, even great salespeople make mistakes along the way to getting the order. And we learn from our mistakes. Sometimes even recover enough to get the sale. The good news is if you are making mistakes you are for sure out there creating opportunities for buyers to place orders with you.

“Do or do not, there is no try.”
Image from Pixabay

It’s A Numbers Game

The more sales calls you make the more likely you will fail to get the order. It’s the very rare sales team who wins 100% of their sales pursuits. Set activity goals and track your success. How many appointment setting calls did you make? How many appointments did you get? From those appointments how many sales resulted? If your closing ratio is 50% then only half of the sales you attempted led to an order. Your challenge great salesperson is to learn why an attempt to close failed….

Sales Skill: Virtual Selling

10/04/2021 By Don Crawford Leave a Comment

I am old road warrior sales guy. I spent my 45-year career sitting face-to-face with prospects. Now the sales world has turned virtual. No more morning coffee with my first meeting of the day. Then lunch with another. Followed by a couple of afternoon meetings. Sometimes finishing with an evening meal with a client. With the pandemic that’s not happening. Or at least not as much. The change is driven by increased efficiency as much by health concerns. Buyer’s time meeting with salespeople is reduced when they meet virtually. So, great salesperson, what’s the new normal?

Virtual selling applies new skills to fundamental selling principles.

Apply Fundamentals To Virtual Selling
Image from Pixabay

Some Things Never Change

In this blog I focus on the fundamentals of good selling. All the fundamentals stay the same. How we now need to apply them has changed. The six-step selling process is Rapport, Pain, Budget, Decision Maker, Presentation, Follow-up. Successful selling still requires great salespeople to do all the same work virtually as doing face-to-face selling.

So What’s Different With Virtual Selling?

Time. In face-to-face selling we had time to build rapport, find the pain, confirm the budget then make a pitch to the decision maker. True we needed to be aware of the time allowed by the buyer but often if we made a connection and really had the buyer’s interest time got flexible. Discussions started in a late morning meeting could continue over lunch. Now we schedule a virtual meeting for a particular time period. Often the buyer has another meeting after ours so time is not flexible. We need to match the goals for the meeting to the time allowed. Everything is moving faster today….

The Concept Of Value

09/27/2021 By Don Crawford Leave a Comment

Great salespeople focus on providing value to the customer. Building strong relationships salespeople know what the customer values. The value triangle is: Price, Quality, Performance. Customers can only get two of the three. With low price a customer must give up quality or performance (sometimes expressed as “service”). Those buyers who value high quality are more likely to pay the higher price. If not the higher price, then a competitive price but delivered with better performance.

The concept of value compares benefits to price

The Concept Of Value
Image from Pixabay

How To Define Value

Think about your personal purchasing decisions. How do you evaluate a major purchase or even a minor purchase made the first time? Take buying a car for example. What’s the concept of value? Well we have a reason to buy the car. If you value a car just to get you from point A to point B then perhaps a cheap used car will do. Maybe you want a car which brings you prestige. Or an all-electric one because you are environmentally conscious. And most likely no matter what the benefit you want from the car, you will have a budget. So here is the mental calculation you make:

VALUE = BENEFIT / PRICE

When the benefit exceeds the price, that’s good value. With ratio of benefit to price less than one we don’t see the value in making the purchase. Great salespeople spend enough time understanding what benefit the prospect wants from the purchase. Then use the concept of value to justify the price….

Sales Skill: Building Relationships

09/20/2021 By Don Crawford Leave a Comment

In this blog I relate my experience in 45 years of successful B2B selling. The fundamental skill to my success is building relationships with prospects and customers. Now I read articles calling for “putting the buyer first” and “delivering value.” This is not new stuff. Ask any great salesperson and they will tell you both mindsets are fundamental to building mutually beneficial, long-term relationships.

Strong relationships between buyer and seller are the key to successful selling

Build Strong Seller-Buyer Relationships
Image from Pixabay

Listen First

I was always more interested in what the buyer had to say. Think about it. How can you put the buyer first or deliver value if you don’t know anything about the buyer? The products I sold had relatively long sales cycles. Three meetings minimum and sometimes as many as a dozen spread over a year. The customer was in no hurry to buy. So why be in a hurry to sell? Asking good questions to find out what drives the customer or prospect is the first step in building relationships….

Selling Skill: Avoiding The Price Objection

09/06/2021 By Don Crawford Leave a Comment

Price is the monetary value of the product or service we sell. It represents what our customer is willing to pay for the solution to the problem they are trying to solve. When the price is higher than the value the customer expects then we get the price objection.

For most products, the marketplace sets the price a customer will pay to exchange their money for the good or service you are selling. For mass-marketed consumer products, competition limits the price for a product. But for unique one-of-a-kind solutions, the value of the benefit of solving a problem drives the price. When we understand the value/benefit relationship we don’t get the price objection.

Guy holds onto his money when he objects to your price

Avoid The Price Objection
To Get The Money
Image from Pixabay

Should You Move On?

What’s a salesperson to do when they get to the close and the customer thinks the price is too high to pay? Or the customer says: “I can get this for less money from your competitor.”

One approach could be to pack up your brief case and thank the customer for their time and move on. Then look for their reaction. If they are happy to see you go, move on to the next prospect. But if they are uneasy that you are pulling out, it’s probably a strong signal they want to work with you but need help in justifying the price. Great salespeople are strong enough to walk away from a bad deal….

Sales Skill: Build Trust

08/23/2021 By Don Crawford Leave a Comment

So you have done the research on a prospect. Determined they would be a good customer worth pursuing. Fought your way past the gatekeepers. And now you have a meeting with the decision maker. What’s the most important sales skill you need to have perfected for this meeting? Great salespeople know that getting the prospect to trust them is paramount to eventually closing the deal.

First Build Trust
Image by InspiredImages from Pixabay

What Is Trust?

Trust is developing the relationship where the prospect has confidence in you. When the prospect knows you have their best interest in mind, they will cooperate with you. And you need their cooperation to get answers to your questions. Those answers will lead you to the perfect proposal to win the business….

Use The Key Sales Performance Indicators

08/13/2021 By Don Crawford Leave a Comment

There you are great salesperson, hanging out with your sales buddies at the end of the month. Everyone has a good sales story to tell about how they landed the big one. But how many of you actually track your Key Sales Performance Indicators? Those are the metrics which tell you how good you are as a salesperson. Let’s look at the most important ones.

Key sales performance indicators keep salespeople focused and improving

Use The Key Sales Performance Indicators
Image From Pixabay

Sales Revenue

Of course this is the most important sales performance indicator. After all the dollars created from your sales help fund all the functions of the business. If you aren’t producing sales revenue it’s hard for the business to continue to operate. Or as my salesman father always said: “Nothing happens until someone sells something.” Do you set reasonable sales revenue goals for yourself? Do you check how you are performing against those goals?…

Sales Skill: Understanding Buyer Stress

06/28/2021 By Don Crawford Leave a Comment

Life in the US is looking like it’s returning to normal. Restaurants are opening, movie theaters, too. Travel for business and pleasure is picking up. People seem a bit more relaxed as the social restrictions are lifted. So that’s all great. But did you hear about the container ship blocking the Suez Canal? How about all those companies with supply chains spread over the world? Ships are in short supply and there are not enough containers. Demand is up but the capability to supply product is in trouble. And there is buyer stress all over the place. What’s a great salesperson to do?

Manage Buyer Stress
Image from Pixabay

Be Customer Focused

Great salespeople put the customer first. They are always in communication with the customer to understand their needs and problems. Some customers are going gangbusters. The demand for their products is high but the challenge is getting the material needed to meet the demand. Be honest. Buyers need salespeople with integrity. Someone they can trust. If you can’t meet the demand tell them then help them find another source. Or maybe an alternate product. Or offer to change the mode of shipment. Perhaps you are a supplier to retail stores. Be listening to your customers about product demand. Then pass the information on to operations so they can shift product mix. By being customer focused you reduce buyer stress….

Sales Skill: Getting to “NO”!

06/14/2021 By Don Crawford Leave a Comment

What you, great salesperson, are shocked that a sales skill is getting to “no”! Think about it. Do you win every sales pursuit? Do you want to convert every prospect to a customer? And aren’t you the one advising those new salespeople that selling is a numbers game? So the sooner you get all those “no’s” out of the way, the quicker you get to “yes”. There are three times in the course of getting the order when getting to “no” is important: Qualifying, Confirming and Presenting.

Go For The “NO”
Image from Pixabay

Qualifying: Looking For The “No”

Great salespeople know they have a qualified prospect when they have rapport with the decision maker, they have a problem you can solve and the budget is there. Any one of these is absent, then you don’t have a qualified prospect. So great salespeople ask good open-ended questions to qualify the prospect. If you can’t build trust and comfort with a prospect, chances are you won’t get good answers. Better to move on. When the prospect doesn’t have a problem they want you to help solve. Time to look for another prospect. No sense waiting to the close to find out they can’t afford your product or service. Get to the budget “no” quickly. Now you see that in the qualifying process getting to “no” quickly saves time.

Confirming

When great salespeople ask good open-ended questions, they hope for answers to lead them toward the successful conclusion of the sale. But we don’t often hear it right. So we ask confirming questions. These questions validate to the prospect we are listening. Confirming questions also help salespeople better understand the prospects mind. In short sales pursuits a confirming question can lead to the close: “If I can get it in blue, would you buy it?” Getting a “no” here gives the salesperson a chance to go on selling by asking other questions about color and other product features. In long sales cycles the “no” along the way offers insight in what it takes to get the “yes”.

Looking For “No” In The Closing Presentation

Now, Crawford, you’ve really lost it! Why put all the work into qualifying a prospect only to hope for “no” in the closing. Good question. Great salespeople are deaf to “no” during the closing presentation. It’s not they don’t hear the word but they interpret it as: “I have a question.” “No” is often an objection. In other words, an appeal for a clarification. So salespeople can find out the reason behind the “no” and go on selling.

The favorite outcome at the end of a sales pursuit is the “yes”. But the least favorite is not “no”; it’s: “I want to think it over.” The salesperson lives in limbo waiting for the prospect to think about it. And most times : “I want to think over” is a polite way for the customer to say “no” without hurting the salesperson’s feelings. Better to have the prospect agree at the beginning of the presentation to tell you “no” if they aren’t going to buy from you. But great salespeople work hard to get the “yes” and they understand the value of “no”.

What You Can Do Right Now Getting To “NO”!

Understand “no” is not personal
Realize “no” is a time saver for you
Treat “no” as an appeal for more information

To learn more sales secrets see Chapter Thirteen, Getting The Order, in Secrets of the Softer Side of Selling. For even more sales encouragement, join our FREE Sales Club! “See” you next week.

Good selling!
Don Crawford

Sales Skill: Successful Selling Behaviors

06/04/2021 By Don Crawford Leave a Comment

Ok so “selling behaviors” might not register with you, great salesperson. Maybe it’s an archaic term. So how about selling tasks or selling activities or just stuff we do to close more sales. Whatever you want to call it these are the things we do every day over and over to become the best salesperson we can be. In the last post I encouraged salespeople to focus on behavior and not be preoccupied with attitude. So what are the successful selling behaviors?

Successful Selling Behaviors Win
Image From Pixabay

In all aspects of life, we do the same things over and over and over again. In the kitchen, we cook, eat, clean up and do it all over again. A fisherman baits his hook, casts into the water, trolls the bait, hooks the fish, reels it in lifts the fish into the boat with his net. Then does it all over again. Salespeople prospect, qualify, close, follow up, ask for referrals and do it multiple times a day. And they pause periodically to measure how they are doing….