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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

I have asked thousands of salespeople over the last 24 years what they do when a salesperson calling on them starts into their sales pitch. And do you know what they say? It is nearly unanimous. They all say they get defensive and try to figure out how to get rid of the sales person. And they are supposed to be a sympathetic audience! Usually when a salesperson starts into his or her sales pitch you recognize it for what it is immediately. And the sad part is salespeople keep pitching over and over again. They figure if they talk louder, faster or more eloquently they can show how their service is better or is worth more money. Here’s the remedy. Stop selling and start asking questions. Here is a four step process that will get you more qualified prospects and more sales.

1. Get rid of your sales pitch and value proposition. Prospects don’t care about that stuff.
2. Identify two or three things that you do better than the competition. Maybe you have a Customer Service Representative (CSR), or are faster or run small quantities.
3. Brainstorm what kind of problems or pain a prospect would have to be in to care about the difference you provide. For sample, if you are faster the problem might be “We need quick turnaround. or we work on tight deadlines”
4. Go talk to prospects and ask if they have those problems.

If they have the problems that you are uniquely suited to solve, they will buy and will pay the right price. If they don’t have the problem, don’t waste time with them. They are someone else’s prospect.  Here is a conversation example to illustrate:

YOU: I assume your current supplier delivers on time every time.

PROSPECT: Mostly.

YOU: What happens when they don’t … How often does it happen … Does it affect your operation.

Ask them don’t tell them. The paradox of sales is “The way to get the prospect to focus on you is to focus on them”. If you understand this, and ask questions instead of talk about your product you will write more business and stop wasting time with people who won’t buy from you.

This article could be just one sentence – “Always know the next step in the sales process”. If you do always know the next step in the sales process then I guess you can stop reading. But wait! Let me ask you a couple of questions:

Do you know it because you assumed it or because the prospect told you what it was?

Do you tell the prospect or does the prospect tell you?

Let’s take them one at a time. The first one is a common mistake that many experienced salespeople make. They have been through this so often that they just know what the next step is or should be, so they fail to ask. Sometimes they are right but often they are not. This leads to wasted time, inaccurate sales forecasts and frustration. The remedy is simple just ask the prospect what the next step is to make sure there is no misunderstanding.

Weak salespeople tell the prospect what the next step is. Strong salespeople ask. Really weak salespeople define the next step and to make matters worse, will take on work just to bail out of a call that is not going so well. It might sound like “Well Mary, why don’t I just get back to you with a plan of action and some numbers which will make this much clearer.” Or they might say “how about I get you a quote on that?”

The remedy for this mistake is easy to explain but not so easy for the perpetrator to implement. Just don’t volunteer the next step; let them ask you to get them something if they want it. And don’t bail when the going gets rough. If it looks like you are not making headway you should say something like “it looks like I may have confused you”, or “it looks like you are not impressed so far”, or “Maybe there is not a good fit here”. What you say Is not as important as communicating what you are feeling at the moment. This sounds pretty simple but the real problem is that the weak salesperson will view those questions as an overly aggressive move or a statement likely to upset the prospect. There can be other feelings about those questions but they all point to a self limiting belief or other hidden weakness that the salesperson has. A top salesperson has to be mentally tough. If you are overly sensitive to offending a prospect you may have a weakness we call need for approval. Having this weakness means that you are more worried about whether the prospect likes you than whether or not they do business with you. In the above scenario having need for approval will cause you to spend time writing a proposal just so you do not have to have the seemingly difficult conversation about the fact your product did not fit what the prospect was looking for. The Optimal Salesperson™ knows they can’t win every deal and recognizes it early in the sales cycle. They confront the issue (not the prospect) as described above and move on to the next sales call.

To get more sales tips click here to sign up for the free OPTMAL SELLING™ weekly video sales tip.

Dan Caramanico is a salesforce development expert and he is the author of The Optimal Salesperson® One of Selling power’s top ten books for 2010 and Optimal Selling, Sales Conversations of the Optimal Salesperson.

Here is a link to a related video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FImFskoIC9k

Over the last few years buyers have made a significant change in the way they buy. It is now estimated that up to 70% of the buying cycle is completed before the buyer ever talks to or engages a salesperson.

In the past, buyers may not have welcomed a visit from a salesperson but they needed us. If they wanted any information they had to contact us as that was the only way to get the information they needed to make decisions. Now with everything “on line” and “in the cloud” they can get most of what they need without engaging a sales professional.

So what does this mean for the average salesperson? It means that the buyers frequently have the upper hand. Your “line card”, brochures, and data sheets are no longer of any help to getting you in the door. The sales cycle is more than half over before you even get started. Sales processes and techniques born in a different era will not be effective.

It is more important than ever to proactively get to decision makers before they are actually “in the market” for your product or service. Because once they are in the market, a few clicks of a mouse and they have access to worlds of information that render most of your value as a sales professional obsolete. You need to be in talking to them about their situation and helping them to solve problems. This is the very definition of a consultative sales process. Introductions are more important than ever. The truly efficient and effective salesperson will cultivate a network of people who are well placed in the industry to put them in touch with prospects who are beginning to think about attacking a problem that they are positioned to solve.

I don’t think we will ever return to “normal” after this most recent down turn. Companies have learned to get along with fewer staff members and those who remain in place have totally integrated smart phones, tablets, and other devices into their daily life. Executives work from home and on the road and handle things efficiently they used to delegate to people who are no longer in place. It’s a new economy out there and the old methods won’t work anymore.

Click here for a video that explains it in more depth. To learn The Attributes of the Sales Overachiever needed in the new economy, Click on this Free Report link.

Dan Caramanico is a salesforce development expert and he is the author of Attributes of The Optimal Salesperson® One of Selling power’s top ten books for 2010 and Optimal Selling, Sales Conversations of the Optimal Salesperson.

The Optimal Salesperson® has a blast on a day to day basis. Sure there is some drudgery involved. I mean who really likes writing proposals or filling out forms to prepare quotes? Then there are a few management reports and the odd internal meeting or two. But you should be having fun every day. You meet new and interesting people regularly, you help people solve problems, you are not trapped behind a desk, you are your own boss most of the time, you have control of your own destiny, you make a lot of money and you can usually find a way to see your kid’s soccer games. If you are not having fun, then you are doing something wrong. But amid the crush of daily activity, many salespeople forget some very important things that need to be done regularly to get to the top and stay there. Most salespeople will follow up on leads they receive and prospects in their pipeline, and all salespeople will respond to urgent requests from clients and management. But here are four things top producers make sure they do on at least a weekly basis which mediocre salespeople ignore.

1. Connect With Goals and Purpose – It’s easy to forget why you are doing what you do. As much fun as sales can be, it still requires tremendous amounts of emotional energy on a daily basis to overcome internal obstacles and fight through personal barriers to get the job done. The work just doesn’t come to you, you have to go and get it. It’s easy to become distracted and demoralized. You should review your goals at least weekly to remind yourself why you are working and what your priorities are. It will keep you motivated, on track and happy.
2. Improve Skills – The Optimal Salesperson® constantly strives to get better. They know what skills need improvement and they work on them. They take classes, they study and they practice. They also know what internal obstacles are holding them back and they put out the energy to try to overcome those obstacles.
3. Prospect – The Optimal Salesperson® prospects consistently and relentlessly. The secret to sales success is consistent weekly prospecting; not wild periods of activity interspersed with long periods of doing nothing. You should know how much prospecting you need to do on a weekly basis and never let a week go by without doing it.
4. Track Sales Activity – Top salespeople keep track of how much sales activity they do on a daily basis and they report it … even if they only report it to themselves. Accountants, Engineers, bakers and even day laborers know how much work they have to do in a given time period. They know how much they have done and they know how much they have left to do. Should you do any less? If you are not tracking it you are probably not doing it!

If you add these four important activities to your weekly routine you will find yourself more motivated and less distracted. You will have more money and be happier. And as an added bonus … you will probably see more of your kid’s soccer games.

Beliefs are more important to sales success than sales techniques or sales processes. Everyone knows that if you don’t believe in your product you will not be very effective at selling it. Not everyone knows why that is true. Part of it has to do with the fact that you will not be willing to stretch the truth by saying something is good if you don’t think that it is. But it is more important to understand how beliefs affect everything you say and how believable or effective your words are. It well established that we communicate more by our tonality and body language than we do by the actual words we say. One study showed that as much as 93 percent of communication is non-verbal. If you think about it we all learned to communicate non-verbally first because we did not know any words until we were about 18 months old.

What we believe will be communicated non-verbally whether we want to communicate it or not. For example, many salespeople believe that a client will not be willing to give them a referral. Suppose we train that salesperson to ask for referrals by teaching them what to say and how to say it. But, we do not address the belief that he has. When he goes to a meeting with a client and asks for a referral in exactly the way he was taught, the chances are that the salesperson will return home empty handed. The reason is that when he asked for the referral 7% of what he communicated was “please give me a referral” (more or less). However 93% was screaming out at the prospect (through his tonality and body language) “there is no way you are going to give me a referral”. His belief was not congruent with his words.

Before you go on a call you must get your mindset straight. If you are going to ask tough questions make sure you believe you have the right to know the answers or else the prospect will either refuse to answer or dodge you by dancing around the subject. If you are not sure your product is the right fit or is worth the money, then work on selling yourself first so that your beliefs can match your words. If you don’t, your tonality will try to “un-convince the prospect” in very subtle almost undetectable ways. If you have ever had someone from your company come in behind you and close a deal you failed to close and said to yourself “but how come he didn’t buy when I said that?”, now you know the reason. Before you go on a call make sure your mindset is congruent with what you are planning to do on the call. Click this link to watch a short video for more explanation.