An optimal salesperson understands that to increase business they must know the competition. They research the competition and understand where the products and services they sell are different and unique. They then ask questions of the client to discern if the client is interested in those differences. For example, the optimal salesperson represents a company that manufacturers cars with sun roofs. She knows that the competition does not offer that option. It becomes her job to ask questions of the prospect to discover whether or not they want a sunroof. If the prospect desires a sunroof, the optimal salesperson skillfully guides the prospect to the understanding that they cannot get a sunroof anywhere else. Success with this skill requires knowledge of the competition – what products and services they offer. The optimal salesperson knows the competition and that knowledge generates sales.
Archives for January 2014
How to use your value proposition
Value, much like beauty, is in the eye of the prospect. A value propositions is a valuable tool for a marketing professional. It helps define what a product or service is bringing to the market and how they plan to differentiate their product from others in the marketplace. But salespeople often misuse the value proposition. They use it to answer the question “why should I buy from you”? Most of the time that question is not asked explicitly, but salespeople craft their presentations around how to answer it anyway with the value proposition as the center piece of the answer. They say things like “this product is a good value”, or “This service offers our best value.” Statements like that ignore the most basic tenet in sales. A product only has value to the prospect if it solves a problem or fulfills a need or desire for the prospect. If I hate a sunroof in a car because I worry about leaking, the fact that it gets added free is not a value for me. It actually may detract from the value, not add to it.
You should use the value proposition the marketing people give you as a starting point. You should determine what problem each of the features or purported value is designed to solve. You should not view them as selling points yet. Because you do not know if any of those features solves a problem or makes the product more or less attractive to any particular prospect. You now have a list of problems (or desires) that your product or service addresses. Your next task is to get in front of prospects and ask if they have any of those problems. Once your conversation with the prospect has yielded some problems that your service solves and they have enough money to solve them, you can tell the prospect about the feature or benefit. Let the prospect tell you whether they believe your solution has value. Leave the words “value” or “value proposition” out of your sales presentations.
Value propositions are important weapons in your sales arsenal. But they are only worth anything if you use them properly and they definitely don’t belong in your sales presentation. Their best use is to help you prepare the questions to ask the prospect.
Ask Why
A homeowner asks an interior painter how careful his or her painting crew will be. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know the homeowner doesn’t want paint spilled on furniture or flooring. The painter could just assume that is the reason and never ask why. However, the optimal salesperson would, who wants to increase business, ask the why questions.
Why is this important to you? “Because it happened before. We had painters in who spilled paint on an expensive carpet.”
Why is this important to you? “Because I chose the painter.”
Why is this important to you? “Because my wife was angry with me. I don’t want that to happen again.”
The real pain the homeowner wanted to avoid was his wife’s anger. That extra knowledge affords the Optimal Salesperson the opportunity to build a deeper bond with the prospect and deliver all the more excellent service. Optimal Salespeople who want to master sales techniques ask why!
Two reasons not to take technical people on sales calls
It happened twice this week. Two of my clients had nearly identical situations and both nearly made the same mistake. Let’s take Pete (not his real name) for example. He sells a consulting service to the federal government. He had met a high level official at a luncheon event and during the lunch conversation the prospect told him about a problem he was having. Pete promised to follow up to pursue it further and the prospect agreed that he was anxious to discuss the problem. When he got back to the office Pete immediately began the process of lining up a subject matter expert to bring along to the meeting he was trying to set up with the prospect. Luckily we had a scheduled coaching session that afternoon and I was able to talk him into abandoning that strategy and scheduling the meeting without the expert. The first advantage was that the meeting happened the following day as opposed to two weeks later which would have been the case to coordinate three busy schedules.
There are many good reasons not to take technical experts on first sales calls here are the most important three reasons:
- CONTROL – With a technical expert in the room you are more likely to lose control of the conversation. The prospect will ask a question and the expert is off to the races explaining, advising and generally showing off how much she knows. The next thing you know the time is up and the prospect is educated but you haven’t had time to truly understand the compelling reason the prospect might have to move forward, or how much they are willing to spend etc. your team is usually so busy talking that you don’t follow your sales process.
- OPENNESS – If there are only two of you I the room the prospect is more likely to open up and tell you the real problem at a deeper level. They don’t have to watch what they say so much because “there are no witnesses”. They can relax and you can control the conversation and get the information you need.
I am not saying never to take experts on sales calls only to be careful not to take them too early in the process. You almost never need them on the first call since you are just there to qualify the prospect not to show and tell. Weak salespeople schedule a meeting then expect the combination of the expert and the product to wow the prospect and get him so excited they want to buy. This leads to pipeline bloat, poor forecasts wasted time and low closing rates.
So how did Pete make out? He met the prospect the next day. He uncovered a huge problem that needs to be solved in the near term. The prospect had scheduled the meeting for 30 minutes but the meeting lasted 45 minutes. Pete was worried about how he would carry the conversation without the expert. But as I predicted, once he got the prospect started on the problem the prospect went on and on about the problem and its ramifications. At the end of the meeting the prospect was convinced that Pete’s company could help him out of his mess. He scheduled another meeting to hear how they Pete’s company had solved a similar problem in another federal agency and they took the first steps in the acquisition process.
Pete learned a valuable lesson. Going to the meeting alone allowed him to control the conversation and the prospect opened up in a comfortable one-on-one setting. And what drove my point home to Pete was that had he brought the person he wanted to bring, it would have been the wrong expert. Now he can confidently bring in the right person to deliver a specific message to demonstrate a specific capability the prospect is interested in. Once that is accomplished, they will move rapidly to a new contract.
Work on Your Confidence
For many sales people, asking questions and obtaining information from the prospect is the easy part of the sales call. Through those questions and answers, you can discover the compelling reason, the decision process, and the budget, pieces of information critical to closing the deal. However, the success of the entire meeting and your increasing business depends upon your ability to give confidence to the prospect that your solution will solve their pain. With 93% of communication being body language and tone of voice, you simply cannot hide any lack of confidence you may have. The prospect will see your lack of confidence and then have all the reason in the world to doubt your solution. If you don’t believe it, why should she?
Stay in the Moment
Did you ever debrief a sales call with your manager in which they suggest a question that you might have asked but didn’t? Did you ever wonder why it seemed so obvious after the fact to someone who wasn’t even there and it did not occur to you to ask? Part of the reason is that there is no pressure in the debriefing session and you might have been feeling pressure on the sales call. Part of the reason might be that the manager has more experience and has made that mistake many times himself so he is sensitive to it. But for veteran salespeople neither of those is probably the case. More than likely it is a case of not staying in the moment with the prospect. Rather than listening intently to what he prospect is saying and trying to decode what he actually means by what he Is saying, you are thinking about something else. So what could a salesperson possibly be doing instead of listening to the prospect? Here are the most common things that salespeople do when they should be listening:
- Think about how to solve the problem the prospect is describing
- Strategize your next sales move
- Concentrate on your sales process
- Try to remember what the sales manager coached them to ask
- Look for a chance to jump in with your comment or question
- Try to figure out how to respond to something that the prospect just said that you were not expecting
So what are the consequences of not staying in the moment? The most obvious problem is that you miss certain things that the prospect is saying. You might not miss anything really big, but what you miss are the subtle cues that they give which would lead you to ask that question that you missed. You might not miss any words, but you are too busy thinking to notice the change in tonality which indicates the prospect is not quite sure about what she is saying or is worried about it. If you were in the moment, you would ask a question but since your mind is too busy, you miss it and a chance to drill down is missed and the opportunity to uncover the real compelling reason to buy is gone forever. When you are in front of the prospect clear your mind and pay attention. This is not the time to solve the problem and it will be your turn to talk soon enough. If your sales techniques and sales process are not internalized by the time you go on the call they will not materialize while you are in there with the prospect. So, just rely on your ability to respond appropriately. Stop thinking and stay in the moment with the prospect. After all that’s why you set this appointment in the first placed isn’t it?
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