The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

On March 25 I am holding a webinar titled: Find Buyers Who Are Ready to Buy…Now!

Learn to Identify the Trigger Events That Motivate Prospects to Buy

“I have lot of business in my pipeline, but very few deals are closing.” Adding prospects to a sales pipeline is easy … but if they aren’t ready to buy, you’ll waste precious time that could be better spent pursuing accounts that are ready to sign. Although the economy is in strife, people are still buying. The key is to identify which prospects are ready to buy now.

In this webinar, you will learn how to:

• Use trigger events to select the right prospects to pursue
• Identify prospect needs before you ever contact them
• Recognize the difference between internal and external trigger events
• Leverage trigger events to increase your sales effectiveness

By learning where to find and how to use trigger events, calls you will make in the future will never ever be cold!

Suggested Attendees: All sales people, sales managers, and small business owners

Register here: http://triggereventswebinar.eventbrite.com/

As an added bonus, you’ll receive my e-Book, “Trigger Events,” a $13.95 value.

More about the e-book Trigger Events - click here.

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

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.

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”

You have arranged the meeting with your customer, and you got his attention. Next step is to secure his interest in your products or services.

Interest is usually lacking for one of two reasons — either you have not secured your customer’s attention, or your argument or selling pitch or presentation is not the best.

If you believe your argument or selling talk is failing to arouse interest, you must investigate the cause.

This could be one of the following:

1. Your proposition actually has no interest for the customer and for good reasons can have none. If this is the case, the sooner you find it out, the better for you both. A salesperson, however, should be very careful about giving up on this supposition. There is a constant temptation to believe it is impossible to interest a customer, when as a matter of fact, the whole fault lies with the salesperson.
2. You do not understand your customer and are not grasping the things that will be sure to interest him.
3. You are not describing your products or services in an attractive, intelligent way.
4. There is something objectionable about you as a salesperson.

In short, you will see that unless the fault is of the first point mentioned, it lies in your failure to understand and make the most of either one of the three factors of the sale: the product, the customer, or the salesperson.

It is very natural when the salesperson is putting up the best talk he knows how, and knows that his products are right, that he should believe that the fault lies with the buyer.

The fault is rarely with the buyer.

While it may be true that certain ignorant buyers will hurt their own interests rather than purchase from a certain salesperson, the reason for this is always to be found in some matter connected either with the salesperson or his products in a direct or indirect way. If the customer will not buy a certain new style of products, it may seem that it is the prejudice of the customer that makes the sale impossible; but the thing that really makes the sale impossible is that the salesperson does not know how to overcome this prejudice.

In short, it is wrong for the salesperson to blame his failure upon the buyer. He can’t properly excuse himself for the failure to make a sale by merely saying, “I could have sold it to him, if he had had any sense.” The salesperson must take the customer as he finds him.

More about how to awake interest on buyer’s side in my next article on this blog.

My new webinar is scheduled for April 2nd: Find Buyers Who Are Ready to Buy…Now!

Learn to Identify the Trigger Events
That Motivate Prospects to Buy

“I have lot of business in my pipeline, but very few deals are closing.” Adding prospects to a sales pipeline is easy … but if they aren’t ready to buy, you’ll waste precious time that could be better spent pursuing accounts that are ready to sign. Although the economy is in strife, people are still buying. The key is to identify which prospects are ready to buy now.

In this webinar, you will learn how to:

• Use trigger events to select the right prospects to pursue
• Identify prospect needs before you ever contact them
• Recognize the difference between internal and external trigger events
• Leverage trigger events to increase your sales effectiveness

As an added bonus, you’ll receive my e-Book, “Trigger Events,” a $13.95 value.

Suggested Attendees: All sales people, sales managers, and small business owners

Read more here.

Many sales are lost because salespeople assume they know what the customer wants. Sales people like to made assumptions of knowledge about what the buyer wants and needs, or sometimes more important why the buyer might be motivated to buy. Using one’s instincts and sixth sense is fine in the equation of success, but it should be only part of your expertise.

Consequently, through unorganized, hit-or-miss methods, his cost of selling is high simply because his methods are not as efficient as they should be.

This does not mean you shouldn’t use your instincts and training well. But it does mean that your sales assumptions must be based in a finding of facts, not guesses.

Using the dart game in the sales profession can lead to failure. You have limited time on your sales call to a prospective buyer and your darts must hit their mark. It’s even more crucial when you use the phone for your sales prospecting activities: many telephone sales calls miss their mark as being off-the-shelf calls that aren’t developed with a specific buyer in mind. Dartboard selling is a quick way to go broke.

Top notch salespeople advise that 75% of a successful sale is due to the pre-flight work. You must make sure you know what direction you want to go in, and you have to ask precise questions that will lead you to confirm needs you recognized through trigger events. You must know what direction to fly before your takeoff.

Most sales people out there are making a huge mistake meeting (or talking over the phone) with their clients unprepared. They think it is enough to schedule the meeting and they will work their magic and close the deal. They will try to break the ice with the customer by talking about the stuff in his office. Then the next misstep is to ask a few questions and not even wait for the answers, but to start with the same old sales pitch.

This kind of salesperson knows all the answers and few features and benefits later they will ask for the business. After hearing few “No’s” from customer they may give up and leave the office with the promise of a follow up a few days later. Unfortunately, the down side is that the customer will probably never return their calls.

Big number of sales people doesn’t take the time to have a conversation with their customers, because they assume that every other customer is like all the others. You will discover that your previous assumptions in sales were fatal many times. Keep those times in the past. It was necessary for you to learn a lesson every salesperson needs to learn, and now is the time to grow and develop your skills and knowledge. You will do so in developing your knowledge about trigger events. It is time to replace assumptions with research.

When you start learning how to recognize trigger events, rather than trying to assume or guess at them, will not only enhance your professional sales career and knowledge, but will increase your sales savvy to what the customer needs.

It is mind-boggling to receive a sales telephone call and the caller spits out a menu of mechanical words. The customer isn’t even, it seems, invited to be part of the conversation. It’s all about the need of the seller. Now when you contact your customers with information collected from recognized trigger events, you will have right questions to ask them, and all you need to do is listen to their answers and reshape your presentation accordingly.

Start with understanding customer’s actual situation and have their needs on your mind, but also find the way to put them on the market by making them realize their yet uncovered needs.

I hope you realize how often you barked up the wrong tree in your prospecting activities, talking to companies without the real need, following up and leaving numerous messages to someone who doesn’t see the value in your product. It is time to move on. Of course, at one time when we were starting sales, we all may have wasted our time that way, calling people from the long list of unqualified prospects we got from our manager, simply because they were in our territory or vertical market.

Now you will have a very powerful tool to change your approach to selling.

You have to understand the positioning of the company, what are they needs, does not matter if they are hidden or visible to public eye.

You need to do this ahead of the first contact as part of your trigger events research. You have to know the customer’s situation better than perhaps they know it, because at the time of presentation of your product, you will have their needs on your mind and prepare your sales presentation accordingly to information you hold.

Think value. Give to the customer what they ask for; give them what they need and more, drive the conversation to the customer’s wants and needs.
Impress them with the depth of your understanding of their position on the market and recent events that can trigger buying process, and they will sign on dotted line.

Very often you can hear how selling is a form of art, how sales people need to be creative and use their imagination, but I am not agreeing with that – sales is more science than anything. Yes you can use imagination and creativity, but after using tools available to you. With the proper tools and techniques you’ll replace guesswork with success.

Even if your company does not have automated system to generate new leads for you, when you learn more about trigger events, you will be able to find your next customer by your own. This will send the message to your manager that you care about your job and you really want to develop your career further, without waiting for someone.

Becoming best in team is an achievable goal and your self-confidence is growing as you establish a competitive advantage towards your colleges and towards your competition.

You don’t need to use old sales excuses anymore, like “territory is too small”, “need more training”, “inadequate sales tools”, “marketing provides no leads”, “we are over priced” etc.

Numbers of sales people who lose their jobs or miss their quota each year are not really important to you anymore, because you are more confident that you know what you doing in your sales role and all thanks to getting new customers from trigger events.

Now you are becoming a real Sales Professional. And it is a good feeling having control over your sales career, isn’t it?

Going back to basics and having focus on what made you successful in the start of your career (learning, learning, and learning) becomes vital in selling in these difficult days for the sales profession. In fact, one of the rewards of a successful sales career is the stimulating learning process - it’s never dull unless that’s how you make it.

The cry of “hard times” is heard at all times, and not just in these recession days and that is where you should refresh your knowledge of how to handle objections during your sales process.

“Times are too hard, I cannot afford to buy anything“- how often have you heard that in the last few months?

This objection is made during the most prosperous times, as well as during periods of financial depression. Customers are confronting sales people all over the world with this before even they had a chance to show them the products, or tell them how they can benefit of them.

It is seldom, however, that the objection is made seriously. Oftentimes prospects don’t have anything else to say. They don’t mention it seriously and don’t expect you to take it seriously.

So what to do?

Pay no attention to the cry of recession.

Go back to prospecting and find customers who want to buy in any market, and spend your time only with the decision maker.

Don’t forget that you create the value through how you’re selling, not just through what you’re selling. You can create the value in each step of sales process, but the most value can be created early in the process by helping customers to define their needs.

Use open-ended questions, use clarifying questions, and remember that great questions produce great answers.

Make it easy for customers to say “yes”.

Ask for the order. Ask for the order. Again, ask for the order.

You can use direct questions such as:

• Are we ready to move on this?
• When can we get started?
• Shall I write up the order?

Use active listening skills. Ask for the feedback.

Remember to read buying signals.

Don’t forget to send a thank you note.

If you get the sale, send them a note thanking them for their order.

If you don’t get the sale, send them a little note thanking them for taking time to meet with you.

It is intelligence that makes times easy, and it is the lack of intelligence that makes times hard.

Go back to basics.

Invest in your knowledge and sharpen your skills, that is the best way of not buying the cry of “hard times” from your customers.