Archives for May 2014

2 REASONS NOT TO WORRY ABOUT BEING “PUSHY”

May 8, 2014 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

You should never worry about this. In all the years I have been training and coaching salespeople, I have never had anyone ask me to teach them to be “pushy”. However, I have had countless salespeople refuse to use a sales technique because they feared it made them sound “pushy”. No one likes a pushy salesperson and no one wants to be that person. Here’s is why you should never worry about it.

“Pushy” is a relative term. What appears pushy to you may not be so to the person you are talking to. It depends on two things. The first thing is your belief systems. If you think it is not OK to ask a detailed question about why a person thinks they need something, then any detailed “why” question will seem inappropriately pushy to you. But if my belief is that I have to know why they need it because it will affect the solution I offer then, I don’t see it as a pushy question. I see it as a necessary and credibility generating question. The second is they way the question is asked. If you ask with humility, sincerity, a yearning for truth, and confusion in your voice it will seldom be taken as pushy. If you ask arrogantly then no matter what you ask will seem pushy.

If you are focused on your product or service and “suggesting” how you can help the prospect this will probably be seen as pushy because you are “pushing”. However, if you spend 95% of your time focused on the prospect and their problem, it won’t be seen as pushy because you are not pushing anything. Doctors aren’t seen as pushy because they spend most of their time diagnosing. Then when they “prescribe” it is seen as a solution and not as a sales pitch. And, as you know, doctors sell a lot of medical services.

If you have the right attitude and the right sales approach you never have to worry about being pushy. Here is an excerpt from a recent workshop that helps explain it.

Filed Under: Management Tips

3 ways to break out of a sales slump

May 6, 2014 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

Slumps can be devastating. Your goals are in jeopardy you can become depressed and they can become self-perpetuating. Some people get in a slump and never get out, effectively establishing a new and much lower level of performance. Follow these three steps and any slump you get into will be short lived and you will soon be back on your way to achieving your financial goals.

CHANGE YOUR ACTIVITY LEVEL – Make more calls. Slumps affect your outlook, expectation of success and your mindset. All three will have the effect of depressing the number of call you make. I bet if you check your activity in the slump period it is lower than normal. So Pick up the phone and make some calls. Call new people. Call old prospects. Call clients. Call old clients. Get out or the office and go see people. You will feel better about yourself and even at lower closing rates your sales will go up.
CHANGE THE SCENERY – Call higher in the organizations than you are used to calling. You may be out of your comfort zone but you will get different questions, different levels of problems to discuss and they may actually have authority to move forward where your regular contact did not.
CHANGE YOUR QUESTIONS – Ask new and different questions. Ask questions you have been avoiding. New questions mean different conversations which will inevitably lead to different outcomes.

Believe it or not slumps are mostly a mindset problem. Change your mindset and the slump will end. A famous baseball player once answered a reporter’s question about his slump with the following “What slump! I am not in a slump! I may not be getting hits right now but I am not in a slump!” He went on to set records for hitting because in his mind (and reality) he was never in a slump

Filed Under: Management Tips, Sales Activity

Selling more in less time

May 5, 2014 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

In this blog post Mark hunter gives six things any salesperson can do to sell more in less time. I am especially fond of Number 2, “don’t sell to unmotivated buyers”. In other words make sure there is a compelling reason to buy before you decide to spend any time with a prospect. The fact that they are excited about your product is not enough. Remember, it’s the prospect that has to qualify to get you to spend your time and corporate resources, not the other way around. Learn this lesson and your time management problem will largely disappear.

Filed Under: Management Tips, Sales Activity

Biggest time waster in sales

May 5, 2014 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

If you want to increase sales then you must be efficient and only spend time where it will pay dividends. One of the biggest time wasters is to NOT talk about money early enough in the sales cycle. 65% of salespeople are uncomfortable having a money discussion at all with a prospect and about 95% are uncomfortable talking about money on the first call.

The video below details a fairly typical example. A client spent 3 meetings and probably $15,000 only to discover that the prospect was not a prospect at all. They could have save most of the time and effort if they had only discussed money on the first call. It is ok to talk about money on the first call. Once they describe the problem, it is the most natural thing to discuss first what the problem is costing them followed by how much they were planning to spend to fix the problem. Alternatively, you could ask how much they would be willing to spend to fix the problem and still a third option is to give them a range of what your solutions would cost and see if that would fit in their plans.

One tip is to avoid using the tem “budget” in your discussions. Budget is a charged word. It is considered proprietary by many and seems like they may be giving you an unfair advantage if they reveal it. Even if they won’t or can’t tell you the “budget” they will probably be able to give you a range of what they might consider a reasonable expenditure. Just for fun read this post to find out the worst time to talk about money.

Links to other relevant posts.

https://optimalsalesperson.com/salesperson-time-waster-1-following-up/ https://optimalsalesperson.com/when-should-you-discuss-money-on-a-sales-call-3/

Filed Under: Management Tips, Sales Activity

Top 3 reasons pain is NOT enough to make the sale

May 1, 2014 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

Many people say that if you know the prospect’s pain you can make a sale. That is not always true. In many cases the prospect has gotten used to the pain and therefore does not act. This can be frustrating to the salesperson who knows the prospect needs what she has and has an obvious problem with some major consequences but won’t act. Many times the inexperienced salesperson resorts to pressure which can cause the prospect to resist even more. You need to recognize that pain is a necessary but not always a sufficient reason to make a sale. Here are the top three reasons that jumping to the close from the pain discussion will not work.

MONEY – The salesperson fails to discuss money with the prospect. The prospect may have a lot of pain but with no money available to address the problem, the sale is not completed. It is also possible that in this scenario the prospect suffers sticker shock when they see the price and sends them into a comparison shopping mode to check the validity of the price. This seldom ends well for the salesperson who first met the prospect.
URGENCY – the prospect my have pain but no compelling reason to do it NOW. Without discussing a timeframe when the project needs to be done, the sale will drag on and may die of old age as the prospect eliminates the pain in some other way.
AUTHORITY – Even though the prospect may have pain, they may lack the authority too do anything about it. This usually means that the salesperson started too low in the organization and may need to adjust their target client description.

Filed Under: Management Tips, Pain

Cut Your Competition in Half

May 1, 2014 by Dan Caramanico Leave a Comment

Use this technique when you know you are in competition for an order. Say the prospect tells you that there are two other competitors. Just ask who they would select if you were not involved. It’s a simple question and one they will frequently answer very quickly. Once you know that they favor A over B you know who the real competition is. It’s simple but effective. Watch the video for a little more detail.

Filed Under: Sales Tip Videos