Most salespeople are oblivious to their own belief systems and other hidden weaknesses. Yet that is what determines your mindset on a sales call and ultimately how successful you will be in sales. When you feel reluctance to asking a particular question that is your mindset getting in the way. When you shy away from using a sales technique that others use successfully, that is your mindset limiting your income. So what is your mindset and how can you determine what it is? You may ask. It’s simple to talk about but not so simple to actually do. As I mentioned in this one minute video sales tip you have to pay attention to what you do or say or more importantly, what you avoid doing or saying. The sad truth for salespeople is that their belief systems and hidden weakness such as call reluctance or need for approval, or discomfort discussing money WILL have a dramatic negative effect on how much you earn. This is not true of other professions. Heart surgeons can have all of those mindset issues and it will not inhibit them from doing their job at the highest level of effectiveness. The same is true for brick layers, engineers, scientists and most others. Another tactic to help uncover your hidden weaknesses and increase your sales is to debrief yourself after every call as I describe in this one minute video sales tip. The great news is that if you overcome your mindset issues, the sky is the only limit on your earnings and the even better news is, unlike most of the other professions, you can achieve great leverage and earn far more than them in dollars per hour of work. If you really want to see how these hidden weaknesses affect your income watch this video which goes into great detail.
IT’S YOUR MINDSET THAT MATTERS IN SALES
SGT. Friday was wrong!! You need more than “Just the Facts” to get a sale
Facts are good as far as they go but they usually do not constitute enough of a compelling reason to get a sale. “The fact that I need a consultant” may or may not compel me to hire one. If the consequences of not having one are severe enough I will hire one. If the consequences of winging it without a consultant are fairly minor, I will go it alone and see how I make out. Uncovering fact on s sales call is not enough. You need to get behind the facts to uncover the consequences which will move the prospect forward in the buying process.
DON’T ASK LEADING QUESTIONS – THEY LEAD YOU NOWHERE
Have you ever been sold to? Sure you have. How often do you see where the salesperson is taking you with her questions? Pretty often I would say. Is it because we are “in the business”? I don’t think so. It is usually because the salesperson is asking a leading question. Here are a few that come right out of traditional sales training courses:
- “Is the xxx machine producing at least 32.3 percent?” (Probing question)
- “You would have to agree that it makes sense to reduce cost right?” (irrefutable statement)
- “If I could show you a way to increase output would you be interested”?” (commitment)
All of these are an attempt to lead the prospect somewhere … and they see right through it … and furthermore, they don’t want to go there because the see it as a trap … and it is one. So don’t ask these leading types of questions you won’t get the answers you are looking for and you will end up working too hard for the order. Here’s a different approach. Make statements that they can refute. Don’t probe, discuss. (Who wants t be probed anyway.) don’t ask commitment questions to stat the conversation. It might sound like this.
- “I assume the xxx machine is above 32%”
- “In an operation like yours at least it is easier to keep costs in line”.
- I have some clients worrying about output, but it looks like yours is OK.
You won’t get typical responses to these statements that’s for sure. If it seems unnatural it is because new skills are needed for the new economy. Go here to watch a short video to find out why the new skills are needed.
2 REASONS NOT TO WORRY ABOUT BEING “PUSHY”
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.
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.
3 ways to break out of a sales slump
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
Selling more in less time
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.
Biggest time waster in sales
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/
Top 3 reasons pain is NOT enough to make the sale
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.
Cut Your Competition in Half
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.
The Mathematics of Rejection
Brendan Burchard gives great advice in this blog post about rejection. He basically says that for every person who really rejects you there are hundreds and even thousands who don’t reject you. He is one hundred percent accurate in what he says. The problem is that though he is right and most people will agree with his point, my hunch is that it will not have a very big effect on people’s behavior. The reason is that fear of rejection is an emotional response and you cannot overcome an emotion with a logical argument. If you don’t believe me just try to talk your spouse out of being mad at you by giving her/him three logical reasons why they should not be upset. I made a similar argument to Brendan’s in my blog post last year. Both appeal to logic. But the only way to actually overcome the fear of rejection is to face the fear and really deal with the issue. The reason rejection is so difficult to deal with is that rejection is a primal fear related to an “abandonment fear” developed in early childhood. How to address it and overcome it is too complex to deal with in this blog post but it will be the subject of an upcoming white paper.
