Archives for August 2019

There is no “perfect” personality to be an effective salesperson. Yet, many salespeople put on their “salesperson’s persona” when they enter a sales situation. They pretend to be outgoing or enthusiastic or knowledgeable or anyone of a dozen different “faces” that they think is what salespeople are supposed to look and sound like. If you catch them in a “real” moment or on their off-duty hours they appear completely different. The truth is that people can see through that. When they sense a difference between who you are and what you are presenting yourself as, they lose trust in you. Even if they don’t consciously know what is going on, subconsciously they feel it. They may not know why they don’t trust you, but they don’t. And trust is an essential element in the sales process. So, the solution is to be authentic at all times. Be yourself. If you are not a bubbly personality do not adopt that personality when you are on a sales call. If you are new in the industry, don’t try to pretend that you know everything. Rather confront the issue up front and deal with it. (how to do that is the subject for another time). The point here is be our self. Don’t try to be something that you are not. It never works out well.

If you have a sales question you would like to discuss follow the link to schedule a call:
https://calendly.com/dancaramanico/callwithdan

Pain is the essential element of the compelling reason to move forward in the sales process. However, pain exists blow the surface. Too many salespeople are satisfied with finding out what the prospect wants or needs and then moving on. Wants and needs are not pain. The pain exists in the answer to the question why they want it, or why they need it. The real answers to those questions take longer to uncover and if you move on after only discovering the wants or needs you will not have uncovered the actual compelling reason to buy. The result of that will become clear when the deal stalls and you can’t close it. Over time your pipeline becomes bloated with unqualified and uncloseable deals, your forecasts become unreliable and you waste a lot of time chasing dollars that never materialize. The solution is to linger in the pain step of the sales process until you are sure there is either a compelling reason to buy or are convinced there is not now a compelling reason and will never be one so you can close the file and move on.

If you have a sales question you would like to discuss follow the link to schedule a call:
https://calendly.com/dancaramanico/callwithdan

Chef’s have a process to make delicious meals. They use it every time. Engineers have a design process. They use it every time. Airline pilots have a system for pre-flight checklist. They use every time or people may die. Salespeople, on the other hand, most often wing it on sales calls. A sales process does not have to be as rigid as a pre-flight check list, but it needs to be a flexible milestone centric staged set of steps you go thru on every sales call. I laugh when a salesperson tells me “I used the selling process on this call”. I have to wonder why she picked this call to use it on and why not others? It would be like combat fighter pilot saying, “I think I will take my parachute on this mission.” Top salespeople have a sales process and they use it on every call. At all times they know where they are in the sales process whether it is a one call close situation or a long cycle complex sale. If you don’t have a selling process call me and I will give you access to my online training class free for two weeks and you can learn one. If you have one. Use it … especially if I taught it to you.

If you have a sales question you would like to discuss follow the link to schedule a call:
https://calendly.com/dancaramanico/callwithdan

Most salespeople have an aversion to collecting data about their sales performance. Hence, analyzing progress they are making is difficult at best. Progress assessments become subjective. “Joe seems to be doing better as far as I can see” is a typical assessment a sales manager would make in the absence of any data on closing rates. Without data there is no way to see trends or document successes that don’t result in a signed contract. I am not suggesting that you collect reams of data. Only a few select indicators of performance. If you knew that you had talked to an average of 5 more people per week over the last quarter than you had in the previous two years, that would tell you something. If, on the other hand, your number of appointments booked decreased by 2 per week over that same period that would be a cause for concern and further investigation as to why. You don’t have to collect much data. Companies usually have ways to track deals once they hit the pipeline. So, there is plenty of data from that point on. But you should collect some data on how many calls you make, how many people you talk to, how many appointments you book and how many qualified opportunities you turn up. You should do this week by week, month by month and year by year. Plot the data and look for trends. Look for changes. You don’t need any fancy math to analyze the data. But you will find that data like this can be an invaluable diagnostic tool and as a bonus it can be an early warning of an impending slump in sales.

If you have a sales question you would like to discuss follow the link to schedule a call:
https://calendly.com/dancaramanico/callwithdan