Salestools

There is an old saying where I come from: “Things aren’t like they used to be and they never were.” As Millennials and Gen Z enter the workforce, I’m seeing lots written about how companies need to change their culture to accommodate the “younger” generation. That may be true, but over many generations the sales process fundamentals of professional selling have changed little.

Generations Change But The Sales Process Fundamentals Stay The Same. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

There Are Always New Kids On The Block

Me. I was a new kid entering business in the 1970’s. Born of parents from the Greatest Generation at the beginning of the post WWII baby boom. My folks had lived through the depression and WWII. Tough times to hear them tell it. They had little and wanted more for their kids. So they spoiled us. We baby boomers were the “Me” generation coming of age in the 60’s protest era and the sexual revolution. As we aged and settled down we produced Gen X: cautious, skeptical and self-reliant. My kids are now bringing Gen Z into this world after giving us the Millennials. Each generation has different characteristics of how we relate to one another, what we think is important and our comfort with technology. As great professional salespeople, we need to know and appreciate the differences.

But How Are We The Same?

My interests in how I view the world and what interests me are very different from my grandchildren’s. (Yes, I’m that old!) But think about how we get what we want. First we decide what it is we need or want. Then we tell someone who can facilitate getting that for us. In my day it was asking, usually at the supper table, for the new bike or an increase in my allowance. Now, I get a text with a link to the web page of what my grandkids are hoping for. When the need is known someone decides where to buy it, what price to pay and how to get it delivered. So, ever since two people bargained over trading things of value the buying process has been fundamentally the same.

Fundamentals Are Fundamental

The laws of physics are laws; they don’t change. They govern the actions of a baseball from the time it leaves the pitcher’s hand until it arrives at home plate. The pitcher through practice learns how to use those laws of physics to make the ball curve or “dance” on its way to home plate. Likewise when the bat strikes the ball the laws of physics govern where the ball will land.

The fundamental purpose of a business is to make a profit. The only way to do that is to find, win and keep good customers. Customers who value your product or service and will pay a price making it profitable for you to service them. Professional sales people know the fundamentals to make good sales: build rapport, find the pain, determine the budget, understand the buying process, make a compelling presentation and follow up. These fundamentals worked for my grandfather, for my Dad, for me and for my kids who are great salespeople.

Communication Skills Change

How great salespeople apply the fundamentals change over time. My grandfather and father’s greatest sales tool was their car. They traveled their sales territory daily meeting face-to-face with customers. Occasionally they used the telephone to phone an order into the office. My kids rely on email, the Internet, and cell phones to contact prospects and to find, win and keep good customers. While communication styles change, great salespeople today still have effective communication skills (in a variety of means, perhaps). They still ask good questions, listen actively to the answers, confirm what they heard, ask for the order to close sales.

It’s Still A Mix Of Personalities Out There

In the world of face-to-face selling people still buy from who they like, respect and trust. The buyer world is populated with folks from all generations today. Some of us baby boomers are still active. Gen X, Millennials and maybe a few Gen Z are now mixed into the workforce. Sometimes in large complex buying situations multiple generations are on the buying team (and hopefully the selling team). Understanding the general likes, dislikes and attributes of each generation is helpful. And the professional face-to-face salesperson has the skill to determine the likes, dislikes and attributes of the individuals they sell to.

What You Can Do Right Now

• Think about your A list customers. Where do the decision makers fall on the generation spectrum?
• Remember the last series of successful sales meetings. How well did you communicate with the buyers?
• Read about the general characteristics of the generations. Are these hints on how to relate to buyers within your generation and across generations?
• Inventory your sales skills. How do these skills need to change to do business with the changing generation mix?

To learn more sales secrets see Chapter Seven, Understanding Buyer Behavior, in Secrets of the Softer Side of Selling. For even more sales help, join our FREE Sales Club! “See” you next week.

Good selling!
Don Crawford & Lois Carter Crawford

Scrabble is a board game where players make words from a selection of random letters. Each player builds a new word using a letter or letters off of one previously played. Every letter has a point value and certain spots on the board have point multipliers. A player’s score is figured by adding the total points of the new word to their running total. When all the letter tiles are played, the game ends with the first player to use all their letters. Lois and I enjoy a game several evenings a week.

Selling Is A Lot Like The Game Of Scrabble

Scrabble Starts With 7 Random Letters

At the beginning of a Scrabble game all the letter tiles are placed face down. Each player chooses 7 letter tiles at random to begin then as they use tiles they choose more to keep 7 letters to play with.

This is like prospecting. Great salespeople begin the sales process by choosing prospects fitting a particular profile. Usually only limited information is known about each prospect. As sales are made and deals are closed new prospects are added to the sales funnel. Great salespeople know how many prospects to have in the queue at all times….

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This was first posted in July 2019; in the summertime, when the living is easy. Where we are bombarded by distractions from selling. Maybe we are planning a vacation or just returned from one. Or the garden is full of fresh vegetables needing to be picked and processed. Kids are out of school and demand our attention. But, hey, great salespeople still have quotas to meet, sales to close and pipelines to fill.

Push The Summertime Distractions From Selling Aside
Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Away With Distractions From Selling!

Great salespeople know how to deal with all that competes for their time. They are committed to their customers, their company and their family. By setting goals, organizing time and focusing on the task at hand, great salespeople work without distraction. Knowing that this time of year offers more distractions from selling, great salespeople make sure to plan both for goal achieving activities and family time. Creating an optimal work – life balance is important….

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Ever gotten to the end of your sales presentation and heard: “Well, I gotta run this by the boss?” Do you qualify the buyer by finding out who and how decisions are made? Are you comfortable asking to be introduced to the decision maker?

Great Salespeople Always Present To The Decision Maker
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Find The Decision Maker

My mentor Jim Wilson offers this advice:

Whether you are in a living room setting or selling to a Fortune 100 company, it is imperative that you understand the decision-making process completely before you make your presentation. Can you answer these questions?

• Who is involved in the decision-making process?
• Exactly what is the process?
• What is the time frame?
• Once they hear your presentation, are they committed to either a “Yes” or a “No”?

…

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Slumps happen. The baseball slugger can’t even hit the pitch in the center of the strike zone. Fish are jumping and being hooked by everyone but you. The rest of the sales team is hitting quota. But there you are wondering what’s going wrong. You are in a sales slump.

What To Do To Get Out Of A Sales Slump?
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Take An Inventory Of Your Activities

Great salespeople know that successful selling is performing a specific set of activities well over and over again:

• Prospecting
• Qualifying
• Presenting
• Closing
• Following up

Measure the sales activity level for each of these. Compare the sales slump activity level against your peak performance. Great salespeople are excellent self-managers. They continually evaluate their performance and make improvements to overcome weaknesses….

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Ever hear these buyer resistance comments? “We are doing just fine.” “Our current vendor is performing well.” “Now is not the time to make a change.” Or a hundred other put offs the buyer uses.

Ever Been “Stonewalled” By A Buyer Resistant To Change?
Image from Pixabay

The Need To Break Through Buyer Resistance Thinking

Thomas Williams and Thomas Saine (Tom&Tom for short) in their book “The Seller’s Challenge” recommend using Insight-Driven conversations. These conversations open the recalcitrant buyer’s mind to the potential of change. Great salespeople use facts and historical successes presented as an alternative way of looking at the current situation. These insight-driven conversations gently open the way for the great salesperson to overcome buyer resistance.

An Example Of Overcoming Buyer Resistance

When I worked for a safety products distributor, a railroad company sent a letter asking for a 5% reduction in price. The buyer there considered earplugs, gloves, hard hats and other safety products commodities and sought vendors to compete on price. Good for the buyer, not so good for the seller. Using insight-driven selling, our sales team moved the conversation from commodity pricing to reducing workplace injuries. The national accounts manager asked about the most common injury and found out it was employees being struck by trains in switching yards at night. Lost time and medical costs were significant. So, knowing this was a “pain point” for the safety manager, the national sales manager offered a solution of supplying custom designed highly reflective clothing. By making the employees highly visible, workplace injuries dropped. And the buyer’s mindset was changed from “low price commodity” to “concerned, helpful vendor”.

How Does It Work?

According to Tom&Tom, insight-driven conversations include:

• Create Curiosity – a statement to make the buyer curious enough to join the conversation
• Teach – a lesson which matches a buyer’s concern to your strength
• Share The Pain – show empathy by identifying a threat or negative outcome
• Show Contrast – take issue with the status quo and offer a solution
• Invite Collaboration – ask open ended question to find out buyer’s viewpoint and encourage dialog
• Provide Proof – use history of success with other companies to validate your claim

By using inclusive language and open-ended questions, great salespeople overcome buyer resistance. They realize that insight-driven selling is not a linear, step-by-step process. It includes all the elements but great salespeople know when to engage each element and when to switch to another to overcome buyer resistance.

What You Can Do Right Now

Think about all the “excuses” buyers use to put you off.

For each excuse you regularly hear, write as many ideas as you can for each of the six elements to overcome buyer resistance above.

Practice including them in your sales conversations to create “pain” in the buyer.

Make sure you rehearse so the ideas are natural, not scripted. Great salespeople listen to the buyer and move the conversation toward the outcome they are looking for.

To learn more sales secrets see Chapter Ten, Finding the Pain, in Secrets of the Softer Side of Selling. For even more sales help, join our FREE Sales Club! “See” you next week.

Good selling!
Don Crawford & Lois Carter Crawford

Has it happened to you? The phone call from an upset customer. Or your boss gets the phone call and tells you to fix it. Worse yet you walk into a meeting with the customer and he unloads on you. How do you handle the angry customer?

Great Salespeople Know How To Handle An Angry Customer
Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Every Sale Has Three Possible Outcomes

When we meet our customer’s expectations they have a “moment of truth”. The desired outcome from a sale is a “moment of magic” where we exceed the customer’s expectations. But, oh my, the customer experienced a “moment of misery” when we failed to meet their expectations. The challenge for the great salesperson is to convert those moments of misery to moments of magic or at least moments of truth. Great salespeople are mediators when dealing with an angry customer

The First Step Is To Clarify The Concern

When I managed a sales office for a safety products distributor, occasionally one of the customer service reps would rush into my office. An angry customer had called to complain about an order. I asked two questions: “Did anyone die?” and “Was production stopped?” Usually the answers were “no”. So then I would say: “It should be an easy problem to solve.” It is very important when helping an angry customer to be sure you completely understand the problem from their point of view. Great salespeople ask enough questions to completely understand the angry customer’s concern. By getting to the heart of the problem, the great salesperson shows empathy.

Verify The Customer’s Concern

In my experience there are always two sides to an angry customer’s problem. The customer’s expectations and how my company met those expectations. Great salespeople have good relationships throughout their company. If the customer is upset about a missed delivery date, check to see what was promised. When the customer received the wrong items, find out why. Maybe the contract terms were met by your company but misunderstood by the angry customer. Great salespeople find out how and why an error occurred.

Satisfy The Angry Customer

Once the great salesperson knows all there is about the problem from both the customer and seller, they set about solving the problem. Dick Musto was the VP of Engineering for manufacturing company I worked for. We designed, fabricated and installed custom equipment. Since each project was unique there were occasional opportunities for moments of misery. Dick Musto’s question for the salesperson was: “What is the customer’s solution?” Often that was the best approach to solve the problem. And, as Dick Musto reasoned if the solution worked, the customer’s ego was stroked and a moment of misery was turned into a moment of magic. Great salespeople are empowered to find acceptable solutions for angry customers.

The Customer Is Always Right

Except when they are wrong. Misunderstandings do occur. When we were shopping for new car we test-drove a model we really liked. Unfortunately it had already been sold. But the salesperson said he could get one “just like it” from a neighboring dealer. When the new car arrived it was “almost just like” the one we test drove. The price was a little less because of the missing features. We wanted the roof rack as seen on the car we test drove and the weatherproof floor mats. Adding those features to the car we were offered would have increased the price more than we wanted. The dealer offered concessions and we agreed to pay a bit more to get the features to make it “just like” the one we tested. Complex sales are made with comprehensive contracts. How the customer interprets the contract may differ from the seller’s intention. While the seller is “legally justified” in their position, great salespeople work with the angry customer to create a moment of magic.

After The Problem Is Solved Follow Up

Great salespeople know that future business depends on how well the angry customer feels in the end. Was the final resolution a moment of magic? Has the seller’s company made the changes necessary to prevent a reoccurrence? Great salespeople go the extra mile to be sure the relationship will continue for future business.

To learn more sales secrets see Chapter Fourteen, Post Sale Secrets and Activities, in Secrets of the Softer Side of Selling. For even more sales help, join our FREE Sales Club! “See” you next week.

Good selling!
Don Crawford & Lois Carter Crawford