Alen Majer’s blog

If your prospect does not see the value in your product or service, and if the only difference between you and the competitors is in pricing, you didn’t do a good job as a sales person. The main description of your position inside the company is to create the value, not just to show your price list. Teaching and educating customers is no longer enough, giving them information about your products or services is no longer necessary. They can get them by themselves, without ever talking to you or your company, and know more about your product and positioning on the market then you.

If they know so much about you, how can you try to sell them the same product without knowing their business situation or their needs?

Remember that customers are sophisticated; they either have or believe they can get product information more reliably on their own. Information is readily available through many different sources, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Internet is full of different forums, blogs, and review or research websites where they can get information about your product easily.

Customers don’t just want a specific product; most of the times they want to solve their pain point or business issues. A customer in today’s competitive sales environment does not expect to educate the sales professional about their business.  Therefore, you must already possess a solid understanding of the customer’s industry, competitors, and business direction.

Developing such a comprehensive view of the customer is a task that requires extensive researching and education to get an overall picture of the customer’s business industry. The modern sales person needs to focus on understanding the customer’s business initiatives, strategic plans, IT environment, and key customer preferences.

If you are still seeing yourself as someone who is there to educate customers, you are living in the past. The time of product-centric sales is gone. Welcome to customer-centric approach in sales.

You need to move away from the focus on presenting your products. Instead a customer-centric approach shows that you recognize and understand your customers’ needs, which is necessary if you want to survive in a 21st Century sales environment.

Your customers are tired of salespeople who come in and are unable to address real business needs, but talk about their company and the hottest feature, or unique one that nobody else has. There are many dimensions that you are selling, and price is only one of them.

Tags: Objection Handling, price objection, Trigger Events, value based selling

Certain objections exist to every proposition in the world. What would a soccer, football or basketball game be like without the blocking of shots? And what your proposition is determines what the objections are.

Call on a thousand average people to whom your proposition is salable. You’ll find the self-same objections on the lips of the majority of them. And these objections, boiled down and standardized, resolve themselves into a very small number.

For instance, in the paint business the standard objections are:

(a) “Too much money tied up in present stock to consider changing.”
(b) “Nobody is asking for your products.”

And really these two objections represent the big buffing points of the paint salesperson today, found in the mouths of the great majority of their prospective purchasers.

Now considering the fact that the majority of a salesperson’s calls entertain the same objections, it is only reasonable to suppose that the same rebuttals or answers should overcome them. And that is more than just reasonable; it is absolutely so.

When I say objections, I mean what I say - bona fide objections, not merely excuses for not buying. That kind of objections is a reflection on the salesperson by not yet selling the customer. A real objection can be defined as a valid, existing reason for not taking the products or proposition. When it’s overcome the sale is made.

The effective rebuttal or answer to an objection is one that gets past; it settles it forever. Every salesperson should study and classify the objections met throughout his or her career. Then when these objections are fairly well established in mind, the salesperson should start formulating rebuttals.
They can be (the rebuttals) taken from colleagues, common sense, experience, and experiments.

Whenever an answer overcomes one of these standard objections and makes the sale, put that answer down as a standard rebuttal to that particular objection. There’s nothing better than your own success journal. Except for this book (Crucial Points to Succeed in Sales), you can’t buy one that is better.

And the first thing you know, your equipment includes a standard, effective rebuttal that will clear the path of every common objection you meet.

It is positively a shame to see salespeople stumble and stammer and “hem and haw” in answering an objection they have been up against forty times before. It is inexcusable.

Further reading:

• If you live by price - you will die by price
• How to win the deal without discounting
• Three Classes of Price Objections
• Six Common Objections and How to Handle Them

Tags: answering objection, proposition, sales excuses, sales objection, success in selling, success journal

Top Sales Experts have released new e-book (Volume Six - Summer 2009) with articles by over 50 top sales trainers, including yours truly.

Download your free copy of the latest TSE E-book here

Or

Sign up for a VIP membership at TSE and receive the latest TSE E-book absolutely free (value $19.95).

TSE membership is just $25/year when you join today. Join here

Tags: free e-book, sales articles, top sales experts, top sales trainers

Consider the following letter by an active head of one of the largest software company in America:

“Results are the only things that count. We are perfectly willing to pay a salesperson $100,000 a year if they deliver the goods; we are willing to pay $750,000 a year if that person delivers, and a person’s earnings from $7500 a month up to almost anything is in their own hands.”

The heads of ninety-nine out of every hundred companies employing salespeople reflects that sentiment. Often the main limit to the salesperson’s earning power is a self-imposed one.

I am sure you know the question in the mind of the person starting out with a cell phone in one hand and an expense check in the other is: “How can I sell?”

The question in the mind of the salesperson producing now is: “How can I increase my sales?”

Understand in advance, please, that we offer no theories. The source of the methods offered herein derives from the operation of thousands of successful salespeople in varied lines the country over.

These people are working more than the average salesperson because they are better than the average. And here is what they have found produce real results.

Are You an Order Taker or an Order Maker?

Let’s take a look at the order-taker, not as a negative example, and not as an object of pity, but only to make a point.
Chris the “order-taker” visits on Smith, Brown, Jones, James, and Robinson. They are not in the market. Then she opens her portfolio in Harrison’s store and Harrison buys.

Mind you, she didn’t sell anything. Harrison was ready; the order taker had the goods, showed them and took the order. Why? Simply because the prospect was in the market, ready to buy.

She encountered a favorable situation; she was standing directly under the apple with a bushel basket when it dropped from the tree. That is what makes it possible for the order-taker to exist. If the order-taker calls on enough people they are bound to find a certain percentage needing what is sold and ready to order.

Let’s leave the subject of order taking. Let’s deal with the problem of the person who really sells.

What is it? What’s the difference?
Simply this - the salesperson must create a specialized situation, and place people in the market who didn’t feel that way when they walked in the store. It has been said that sometimes a good salesperson sells to buyers who don’t think they want what they buy.

The reason why is this: the good salesperson makes the buyers realize they want what is being offered.

Let this sink in deeply. The order-taker canvasses looking for people who want to buy. However, the professional salesperson tries to make every person he or she calls on wants to buy.

The order-taker accepts the advantage of the situation he finds. But the order maker, a professional salesperson creates specialized situations to suit his purpose.

Now, the question you should ask yourself is:

Are You an Order Taker or an Order Maker?

To learn more about the Crucial Points to Succeed in Sales and how to use them to improve your sales results, get my e-book here.

Tags: creating needs, order maker, order taker

1. Upcoming interview - mark your calendar for June 3rd at 2 PM EST! Join me and Deidre on Deidre’s Author Buzz and learn what are trigger events, where to find them and learn how to use them, and I promise, you’ll never have to make a cold call again!

Call-in Number:  (347) 308-8745

Link: Deidre’s Author Buzz

2. Podcast - last week I gave an interview for a FindNewCustomers.net website about Trigger Events. With buyers in control, sales and marketers need creative ways to get into accounts. This podcast explains how to do it.

Listen to my interview with FindNewCustomers.net :

3. Interview completed - my interview titled “Let’s start working with a smile” was just published in the newspapers in Croatia and it is targeted towards sales people in tourism. If you can read croatian visit the website by clicking here, or translate it with http://translate.google.ca

Tags: author buzz, sales interview, sales podcast, Trigger Events

I am proud to share with you that my article “Differentiate Prospects from Suspects” has been selected as one of the top ten sales articles for June!

Top 10 Sales Articles website spotlight only the ten best sales articles each month, selected from the hundreds that are submitted. These featured articles are filled with:

1. Timely ideas for emerging sales challenges.
2. Fresh perspectives on what it takes to be successful.
3. Valuable strategies that will transform your sales results.

Please visit Top 10 Sales Articles website and vote for my article as the top sales article of the month!

Tags: article nomination, differentiate prospects, prospect vs. suspect, top sales articles

If you want to be a successful sales person and to close the deal, very important part is to be in front of your customers at the exact time when they are on the market for goods or services. You can find companies they are on the market now, or you can put them in the market.

The only thing you can accomplish is to lose a precious time chasing prospects who are not interested for your product, or they are not a fit for your products or services at all.

Many unsuccessful sales people spend their time with customers who are not even close to sales process and to buying, but poorly trained sales person still contact them regularly simply because they are in pipeline and they need to fill their day somehow. Talking to that kind of prospects is just a waste of your and their time.

When you are selling you need to differentiate and trigger events will make this possible. You will have tools to create the opportunity for you, and not just in the visible market where customers are actively looking for provider or supplier, but also in the invisible market - you put them in the market, you are making customers realize that they are on the market now. Without trigger events you can’t force customers to meet with you because you will be just one of many sales guys knocking on their door.

Here are two examples of trigger events:

• Your research shows some trigger events like hiring new 15-20 sales reps or changes in upper management levels: this clearly sends out messages that the company is in need of new office furniture or new computers with software, or maybe a new benefits plan for employees.
• Thousands of corporate turnarounds occur every year. You may have read about a few of them in your local newspaper, but that’s not enough. There are companies in a turnaround phase that affect sales in your area all the time. I suggest keeping abreast of the New York Times or other newspapers like that in your region. Their business page carries a number of turnaround events throughout the company along with web sites by the large accounting firms and graduate business colleges such as Wharton. Turnaround time means change time: new people, new products, new services, and new sales potential for you.

Customers will be positively shocked with your due diligence and fact-finding mission you accomplished with them. When you contact your prospects and on the first conversation you leave them with impression you know their situation very well — you care to help, and you can add value to them, trust me when I say you are much closer to signing a deal than anybody else.

After discovering trigger events, the next steps are to develop the customer’s perception of your unique value. What can you do for them? How your solution can actually create value to them?

Trigger events will give you the clue about the timing too.

More about Trigger Events here:

Selling in 21st Century

Hit or miss doesn’t work in selling

Get the book “Trigger Events”

Tags: invisible market, Lead Generation, Prospecting, prospects, sales tools, suspect, Trigger Events, unique value, visible market

Subscribe to my daily sales tips between May 23-31 to win one of 5 copies of my e-book “Trigger Events”!

(as a valued subscriber you will receive a different e-book every 30 days completely free!)

Tags: prize draw

Recently I visited with Mike, one of my previous customers, who gave me an interesting list of 10 rules for employees. Every new employee who enters his plant has the first step to a partnership in the shape of these ten rules handed them on a printed card:

Read more in my latest book “Crucial Points to Succeed in Sales (and Life)” - link is here.

Tags: crucial points, rules for employees, succeed in work

In my previous article about presenting, I was talking about how we can’t all be at our best every day or every hour.

But if you get your best possible presentation down on paper and then firmly entrench it in the back of your head, you’ll be certain to make a better average presentation than you ever have before. It will also give you confidence during off days.

Now, knowing what you do about your own proposition, if you were in your prospect’s shoes you’d want it, wouldn’t you? Well then your task is simple; you have only to make your prospect feel the same way about it that you do yourself and the order is yours.

And how are you going to do this?

By conveying to your prospect the very things that have made you feel the way you do. You can hardly expect the prospect to view matters the way you do in the first place. If they did, their orders would be coming in through the Internet or the mail.
That’s what you are there for - to make them feel the way you do and arouse their desire.

Fear – Haste - Uncertainty

• Fear is a dangerous four-letter word - an emotional response to impending or imagined danger that is tied to anxiety. They’re all enemies of the successful presentation. Why should you fear? The worst that can happen to you is not to get the order. And you can’t lose anything that you haven’t got.
• Haste, why should you hurry?
  You must make your listener understand in order to get the order. You certainly can’t make them understand by rattling off your presentation as if you were paid by the number of words you got out per minute. Listen and record yourself sometime. Are you interesting to listen to? Are you clear and with a voice of different tones?
• Uncertainty?
  You can’t be uncertain. You know too much of the merit of what you’re selling to waver one second from the absolute knowledge that you are there to benefit the person you’re talking to.

You’re too strong to let fear, haste, or uncertainty wrecks your plans. Leave them to the weaker ones.

I’ve seen lots of salespeople who the minute they encounter opposition put themselves on the defensive, and take the attitude of trying to prove that they are not liars. They’re predestined to failure.
You are the captain of your presentation.

You know what you are going to say. You know how you are going to say it.
You know that what you are going to say and the way you say it are going to direct your prospect’s mind to the final point of desire for what you sell.

So let your facts come as gospel. State them as undeniable, irrefutable truths. Let your deep sincerity and positive statements head off objections and overcome arguments before they are raised.
Assume that your listener believes you; give them facts they can believe, and in the majority of cases they will.
Simply make it easier for them to believe than not to.

Avoid the pitfalls of long words and small superfluous arguments. Remember that the salesperson, to be effective, must get it across in the quickest, most convincing sort of way. Long words and so-called “clever talking” defeat their very object; they are offensive instead of impressive. And those little, good-for-nothing arguments don’t get the orders. Stick to the big points of your proposition: the points that count - the tried and true order-getters.
You know them. Use them.

Whenever you open your mouth to make a presentation forget that you ever made one before, or that you’re ever going to make one again.

There is just one person in the world to be sold, and that is the person you are talking to. You can’t sell that person by thinking of the person you sold yesterday or the one you are going to sell this afternoon. The person is before you; concentrate on that one.
Remember, no matter how old your arguments are to you, they ring fresh in that person’s ears. And the same points that sold your proposition last year and the same ones that will sell it next year will sell it this very minute to the person you’re talking to.
Leave no possible questions unanswered in your prospect’s mind. Some people have a tendency verbally to say, “Yes,” without really being convinced, just to be agreeable or avoid argument. Instead of trying to get a mere verbal assent, bend your endeavors toward making a prospect’s mind completely and absolutely convinced of the truth of what you are saying.
In this way, step-by-step, as you go through your presentation you will gain a general approval on every point you make. Then - when you return to the net result of getting the order - your prospect cannot raise a point, and go back and disagree with you.

To learn more about the Crucial Points to Succeed in Sales and how to use them to improve your sales results, get my e-book here.

Tags: creating desire, demonstration, powerful words, Presentation, talking points