Archives for May 2013

When Should You Discuss Money on A Sales Call?

May 13, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

This is always a touchy subject and there is always pushback when I suggest what you should do. In this article I will give you the answer right away; I will explain why you should do it; then I will explain why you will feel resistance to doing it.
You should discuss money with some level of specificity early in the sales cycle and almost without exception on the first call. This is obviously true in a one call close situation, but it is just as true for long cycle complex sales as well. I had a client last week who was finally converted to amending his sales process to talking money on the first call. He had a two call situation and he did not discuss money at the first meeting. He had a prospect with a seemingly compelling reason to move forward and he was excited to set a second meeting with him to explain the service he was selling, go over the price, and close the deal. It seemed like a sure sale. You probably guessed by now that when he got to the second meeting went through the presentation and got to the close, the prospect had no money at all. He was just starting out as a realtor and had gone through all of his start up capital and was living hand to mouth hoping for his next client to come along and keep him in the business for another month or two. Watch the video that goes with this article for a similar example in a long cycle high dollar deal. Prospects have problems and they like looking at new exciting ways to solve them. It is for that very reason that you must talk about money to make sure they are qualified for you to spend your precious time and corporate resources on. If you don’t, your pipeline will be bloated with unqualified prospects and your forecasts will be extremely unreliable and your closing rate will be low.

If you are feeling resistance to doing it, it might be because you are one of the 65% of salespeople who have a money weakness meaning that they are uncomfortable talking about money. It might also be that since discussing money early seems a little aggressive you are afraid of upsetting the prospect. If that is true then you are one of the 42% of salespeople who have too much need for approval. Need for approval means you are more worried about whether the prospect likes you than whether or not they do business with you. These are two of the five hidden obstacles to sales success. If you are feeling any pushback at all buy my book Attributes of The Optimal Salesperson® How to master the mindset of Sales Superstars and Overachievers wherein I discuss these weaknesses in more depth and tell you how to overcome them.

Filed Under: Management Tips, Money

Proper Tonality Increases Sales Effectiveness

May 11, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

From cold calling to closing, tonality plays a major role generating sales. This video gives a couple of examples of how your self-limiting beliefs can betray your words and cause your sales skills to fall flat.

Filed Under: Sales Tip Videos

Article about news in world of sales

May 9, 2013 by Dan Caramanico

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Filed Under: News

Re-Motivate Yourself

May 9, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

Motivation is internal. Sales managers can’t motivate salespeople. They can only help the salesperson to get and stay in touch with their own internal motivation. Some people are able to stay motivated without much effort. They have a high degree of intrinsic motivation. They were programmed or trained to constantly strive to do more, be more effective, reach higher levels, etc. This is not always a good thing as these “driven” people often have trouble relaxing or enjoying the journey to success. For salespeople motivation is more often external. Since salespeople are, in large measure, paid for performance in the form of commission, we set financial goals then work to achieve them. In a sense, we set our own compensation level.

The problem comes in the day-to-day grind of prospecting, rejection, proposal writing, staff meetings, and client meetings. When fighting the daily fight, ,it is easy to lose sight of why we are working and in some cases we lose sight of what we should be doing. Selling is not like other jobs where showing up is half the battle. Most doctors, lawyers, engineers, laborers, customer service people, food service workers and mostly everyone else show up and work comes at them. Salespeople have to be proactive and engage with the outside world. We have to overcome self-limiting beliefs that prevent us from being effective. So it is easy to see why we can get into a rut and just go through the motions to get through the days and weeks. After all, it is never a crisis to prospect for new business today … until it is probably too late to do anything about it that is! Sounds grim doesn’t it? But you can change all of that in a very short time.

When was the last time you revisited your personal goals? For most salespeople I ask, it has been a while. And I am not just talking about reminding yourself that your goal is to get a house at the beach. I am talking about reconnecting with the reasons why you want the house at the beach – the underlying emotional reason. It is important to remind yourself how you will feel when you get to the goal. In a very real sense your motivation to do the things you need to do will come from that emotional connection to the things or lifestyle that you want for yourself or your family. Is it a sense of accomplishment, fulfillment, duty? If it is just a “box you checked” on the goal setting form your manager gave you, it won’t move you to action. But if it is something you and your spouse have talked about, and dreamed about and you can’t wait to host some summer parties for your friends or you want your kids to grow with something you never had. That will get you excited and be a compelling enough reason to put the extra effort in to do the difficult tasks that top earners must do. Re-motivate yourself by reconnecting in an emotional way with your goals.

Filed Under: Management Tips, Motivation

A Sales Call Is A Conversation Not An Inquisition

May 7, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

Sales training professionals talk a lot about asking questions. I myself am a big proponent of asking questions. One of my favorite aphorisms is that “you tell more about what you know by the questions you ask than by the statements you make.” Questions get the prospect talking and let us find out information about the prospect. By asking questions we demonstrate our interest in the prospect and foster understanding. Rather than seeing us as a “pitchman”, questions help us establish that we are interested in a relationship with the prospect and we are not just looking for a short term result. Questions are an essential element of a prospect-centered sales process.

There are all kinds of distinctions made about questioning techniques. Trainers tell you to ask open ended questions rather than closed ended questions that can be handled with a one word answer. This is good advice since closed ended questions force you to have to carry the conversation and, as we all know, you can’t learn anything about the prospect if we are the ones doing all of the talking. They tell you to ask “probing” questions to get to the real issues. I am not so sure about this one. Sometimes probing questions can be seen as intrusive and trigger defense mechanisms in the prospect and cause him or her to shut down and make it difficult to get any more information at all. You have to earn the right to ask these kinds of questions.

Questions are a good thing but as is true of many things, too much of a good thing is not always good for you. The problem with all of this focus on questions and questioning techniques is that the sales call starts to look more like an inquisition or an interrogation and defeat the purpose of the sales call. Remember that you are trying to establish a relationship with this person not conduct a “third degree”. If the prospect starts to perceive the interaction as a one-way interrogation of sorts, it will become very hard to develop a bond or a relationship and you will be relegated to getting superficial or even misleading information. The most effective way to conduct a sales call is to establish a conversation. A conversation by definition is a two-way exchange. They ask questions. You ask questions. They make statements you make statements. It is an exchange between two people of equal stature (that’s a whole other topic by the way) trying to get to know each other. It is within this framework that you should ask your questions. They will be received in a much better fashion and give you a higher probability of getting the depth of information and emotion you are looking for. So the lesson for today is integrate your questions into a free flowing two-way conversation. Don’t fire them at the prospect in the form of an inquisition or an interrogation.

Filed Under: Management Tips, Sales Technique

Avoid Confrontation – Lose Sales

May 5, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

I am not talking about an arrogant confrontational communication style that many people use quite naturally. I am talking about salespeople who avoid confrontation of all types at all times. Salespeople who are always totally agreeable come across as weak and more importantly waste a lot of time with unqualified prospects. Here are two occasions when you need to confront a prospect:

1. When the prospect contradicts himself subtly as follows: “Our operations department is losing money.” … Five minutes later, “We are happy with the way things are.” This example is rather blatant and it is obvious that you need to confront the prospect by saying “… I guess I don’t understand how you can be happy when you are losing money.” Blatant as the example is, salespeople let the prospects slide with contradictions like this every day.

2. When the prospect says something mildly positive about your product or service; such as “What you have looks very interesting.” If you take that and keep moving, you will soon find yourself writing a quote for an unqualified prospect. The optimal salesperson pushes back with “really, … why?”.

Both of these examples are mild forms of confrontation and yet they will change the nature of the conversation, yield prospects that are more qualified or eliminate them before you have a chance to waste any time or money on them. This 1-minute video will show you how a healthy dose of skepticism is invaluable.

Filed Under: Management Tips, Need for Approval

Priority 1 for Sales People

May 3, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

No! It is not closing business. No! It is not qualifying prospects. These are very important and are of course how salespeople are ultimately paid. However, the number one priority for sales people is prospecting … Building a pipeline. Put enough people in your pipeline and no matter how bad you are at the qualifying and closing you will hit your goal. Yes, I know that if you are better at qualifying and closing you need fewer prospects. However, the secret to success in sales is consistent daily prospecting; not wild periods of activity interspersed with long periods of doing nothing. I would rather be a master prospector than be a master closer and have no one to work my magic on!

Here is a one-minute video that speaks to this topic.

Filed Under: Management Tips, Prospecting

No Thinking on Sales Call

May 1, 2013 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

Most salespeople spend too much time thinking when in front of a prospect. I am not suggesting that you turn your brain off. But if you are strategizing on the fly about your next move, analyzing what the prospect just said, or thinking about how to solve the problem, you are not listening to what the prospect is saying and you will miss clues or indications that you should follow up with a question. So don’t think! Stay present with the prospect and you will get more and deeper information. click the link to see a short video on the subject.

Filed Under: Management Tips, Sales Technique