soft skills

A Time To Be Grateful

November 8, 2021 By Don Crawford

This blog was first posted at Thanksgiving 2019. A lot has changed since then with the COVID-19 pandemic. Business disruption has occurred in all markets throughout the world. Many businesses have failed because of the restrictions necessary to control the spread of the virus. Others have thrived by providing new and innovative services during the pandemic. And entrepreneurs are taking risks starting new businesses to fulfill their dreams. Even in the midst of all the angst we can be grateful.

Great Salespeople Celebrate Their Success

Great Salespeople Are Thankful
Image by GraphicMama-team from Pixabay

Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. Thanksgiving is also celebrated at different times in many other countries. The early Thanksgiving celebrations were to pause and show gratitude for the harvest of the previous year and the sacrifices making it possible. In our family we usually gather with friends and relatives to mark the day with pleasant conversation, sumptuous food and of course a glass (or two) of wine. This year the two of us will spend the day together apart from those we love. Even so as we enjoy the meal together we will take turns saying what we are particularly grateful for….

Selling As A Profession

November 1, 2021 By Don Crawford

So maybe you are just joining the workforce or maybe been considering selling as a profession for a while. Or you are an experienced salesperson questioning whether to continue in sales. Let’s look at why people choose selling and what characteristics make a great salesperson. There is the age-old question of whether great salespeople are born or made. The answer is yes to both. Here’s my take on that answer.

Selling as a profession if done well will be rewarding

Great Salespeople Are Well Compensated

My Story. Short Version

I guess I was born to be a salesperson, although my career didn’t start out that way. My mother for a time in her working life owned a children’s shop. My dad both before and after his active duty time in the Army was a road warrior salesman. Me, I got a BS in electrical engineering and a few years later an MBA. I had mostly engineering oriented jobs early in my career. About ten years into my career I was working for an engineering company. And enjoying the engineering kind of work with some customer interaction. I kept looking at the salespeople in the company and saw how much fun they seem to be having. So I made the jump and have been enjoying successful selling ever since….

Selling Skill: Recover From Poor Performance

October 25, 2021 By Don Crawford

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: Lifelong Learning

October 18, 2021 By Don Crawford

Lifelong learning makes great salespeople. If the COVID pandemic has taught great salespeople one thing it’s the need to continually learn new selling skills and refine the current ones. Are you keeping current with the latest buyer strategies? How about all the tech for selling?

Salespeople need lifelong learning to be the best

Great Salespeople Are Lifelong Learners
Image by Deedster from Pixabay

Take A Selling Skills Inventory

All of us have strengths and weaknesses. What are yours? Ask your mentor for an evaluation. Check with your colleagues for their opinion. Discuss your performance with a trusted customer. Think back to recent successes and failures. What did you learn about your selling skills from the wins and losses? Do you have trusted buyers who will give honest feedback on your selling skills? Seeking to understand your weaknesses is a trait of great salespeople….

Sales Skill: Virtual Selling

October 4, 2021 By Don Crawford

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

September 27, 2021 By Don Crawford

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

September 20, 2021 By Don Crawford

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….

Sales Skill: Creating An Unfair Advantage

September 13, 2021 By Don Crawford

OK, Crawford, what are you doing here? I thought great salespeople were always honorable. Yep, but there are advantages you have over your competitor they don’t have. So those I consider an unfair advantage because others can’t have them. And they give you a leg up when competing for business. Let’s look at how you create an unfair advantage.

An unfair advantage benefits the competitor

What’s Your Unfair Advantage?
Image from Pizabay

First Unfair Advantage Is You!

Only the business you work for has you. So what, you may ask. The competitors have salespeople too. Yes, but they are not you. The knowledge, skill and experience you bring to the prospect is unique. How well you know the benefits of your product or service to the prospect is an advantage. Do you have the selling skills to convince your prospect your solution is perfect? Can you demonstrate experience where you have solved the same or very similar problem for a customer? Great salespeople have the skills to be a personal advantage to the prospect….

Characteristics Of Great Salespeople

August 30, 2021 By Don Crawford

Read the literature today about the characteristics of great salespeople and you will find common traits. And they are different today than those of past generations of great salespeople. Take my dad, the most influential salesperson in my life. He got in his car every Monday morning and headed out to see customers. When he got his customer’s office they would usually see him. No appointment necessary. Maybe he would bring donuts or take a customer to lunch. His tech was the phone on his desk and a Remington typewriter. His research came from his customers, his fellow salespeople and maybe a printed business directory. And my grandfather, another great salesperson used exactly the same tools. But now times are really different as are the characteristics of great salespeople.

Great Salespeople Share Characteristics
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

Great Salespeople Put The Buyer First

This “putting the buyer first” characteristic of great salespeople is eternal. Both my dad and grandfather had it. But today we do it a bit differently. We have multiple tools to understand the needs of the buyer. By learning about the burdensome business issues the buyer has we have empathy with them. Great salespeople are successful because they put the buyer’s needs first. And we work hard to satisfy those needs with our product or service. Today we are more thought leaders and consultants for the buyer. We connect with buyers and other influencers using the skill of engaging and relevant storytelling. We build rapport and mutual trust between ourselves and the buyer’s team. For generations first among the characteristics of great salespeople has been the skill to put the needs of the buyer above their own….

Sales Skill: Build Trust

August 23, 2021 By Don Crawford

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….