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.

You are there to assist people in finding the right solution to their problem. Your expert advice is given in an informed and informative way. You need to listen well to what the client’s needs and desires are before you can even attempt to sell her a solution. And it must be the best solution for her particular problem. Therefore, the art of closing sales is not the process of persuading people to make decisions, but the art of making decisions with which people agree.

The beauty of closing the deal in sales is that this actually does resolve problems. Sadly, when we refer to “closing the deal” in sex, this usually just creates more problems. If the final agreement did not end simultaneously, there’s a massive issue. If your pitch was anything less than perfect and sustained, then there’s a problem!

Every time you manage to close a sales deal, you feel great about having discovered the best solution and having resolved the client’s problem. You have that guaranteed satisfaction after every close.

Part of your sales job is to continually reassure your customer that she is making the right decision by purchasing. If you leave her hanging long enough, there will be time for doubt to creep in. Don’t allow that to happen. You are her support during the dealings and discussions and you need to remind her of that by being her ongoing source of reassurance. A failure to close the deal comes from an inadequate performance in other areas. If you let your game slip at any point in the sales process, you have potentially endangered the success of the deal.

When closing the deal, fulfilling your client’s needs (and helping them get a useful product) actually fulfils your needs as well. If the deal is heading for closure then both parties will walk away fulfilled and satisfied -simultaneously, every time! It doesn’t get better than that!

Helping your customers can actually be a very fulfilling prospect of its own. It’s an important role that you play in the client’s life as she depends on you for your level of expertise on the subject. The beauty of sales is that once you find a suitable presentation you can use that same pitch each time, simply adapted to the current client’s needs. And with such a successful pitch, you can easily close more than one customer in one day - and not feel guilty. You can close a different customer every day and not feel concerned about a tarnished reputation. Again, with sales, it all boils down to “the more the merrier”.

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If you are interested to learn more about the art of closing, get my new book “Selling Is Better Than Sex” - www.SellingIsBetter.com

In sales you’ll always know where you stand. No longer do you have to torment yourself with the question of your performance. At the end of the day, your sales figures will be the yardstick that indicates how well you’ve done in selling. You’ll always know how your performance was for that day, for each and every customer. The proof is in the purchase of the product that you’re selling.

No-one can fake a purchase or lie to you about how great your pitch was. Customers aren’t concerned with stroking your ego just to pacify you so that they can make a quick escape. If you’re great at what you do, they buy your product. It’s as simple as that. And if you’ve really impressed them, they’ll keep coming back for more. And they’ll tell their family and friends about you and refer them to you for your excellent service.

That’s essentially what they talk about – how great you are at performing in the sales arena. They don’t care what kind of physical shape you’re in either. They don’t sit around and chat about your physique or snigger about your six-pack that’s been left abandoned for years. In fact, most of the best sales guys are usually out of shape. You don’t have to concern yourself with sweating it out at the gym.

As a successful sales guru, you’ve got the customers coming in already, in droves. Because you don’t have to be concerned about your fitness in order to be a brilliant salesperson, you don’t have to feel embarrassed by selling with the lights on! In fact, if you turned the lights off, most of your clients might start feeling a little concerned about their own safety and well being. Leave the lights on; forget about the gym; in sales you can be a success regardless of what shape you’re in.

As well, what makes all of this a lot easier is that a new sales job comes with an instruction manual – complete with graphs and pictures and everything that you might need to come to grips with the basics. Imagine how easy some things in life would be if everything came with a manual? Sure, some of us are blessed with a natural charm and an outgoing and vivacious personality (among other things), but there are still things to learn.

There aren’t too many of us that can be really successful without further enhancing our education. It’s not like a few tips from your Dad are all that you need to make a good go of it. No – we start with the manual and we progress from there to more extensive, specialized courses in skill and technique. And then it still takes practice to perfect the technique. At least, with selling, you don’t earn yourself a reputation for being promiscuous when you expose your sales pitch to a wide variety of customers.

Let’s face the facts here – as a salesperson you don’t have to pussy-foot around your clients and question them in subtle, tactful ways to find out if you were any good. If you were good, they bought your product. Your massive sales figures at the end of each day will show the world what a sensation you are, a market leader in your field. You have the magic touch – you know it and you can prove it!

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If you want to learn how to transfer the sex energy into sales enthusiasm to improve your career and life, and learn about other 200 reasons why selling is even better than sex, get my book “Selling Is Better Than Sex” today! www.SellingIsBetter.com

The world’s oldest profession involves selling. One might even argue about which came first – the selling or the sex? In fact, selling and sex are so closely related that succeeding at either one of them can be euphoric, addictive, and good fun.
Some people might like to argue that selling is not better than sex. They believe it’s the other way round. In this post (and other following this one) I will give you many different reasons why selling IS better than sex.

For a start, it’s okay to make a sale in public.
In fact, the more people that witness the sale you’re making and the product you’re providing, the better! Also, when they see first-hand the customer’s satisfaction at having had an excellent sales experience, it inspires them to think about making their own purchase. This leads to word-of-mouth referrals where you earn a reputation for being the best at what you do. You become known as the expert in your line of work. But sex in public? Well, that may just get you into a lot of trouble. And let’s face it – a reputation for being promiscuous is perhaps not the way you want to go.

This brings us to the next point: that it is perfectly legal to sell professionally. The Ten Commandments don’t say anything about not selling. Yes, one of the commandments is “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, but Moses did not climb Mount Sinai to receive the instruction “Thou shalt not sell”. On the contrary, selling, bartering and trading were an essential source of income for many families, even in Moses’ time.
Nor is selling listed as one of the seven cardinal sins and the Pope makes no mention about the hazards of selling prior to marriage.

With a humorous twist, my posts will take you through the essentials of successful selling, illustrating that business can be fun and should be fun. Love what you do and do what you love. It’s about passion…it’s about creating the pathway for your own success and doing it with enthusiasm and zeal. Anyone who wakes up in the morning with passion in their heart will bound out of bed ready and eager to face the challenges of the day.

A positive attitude reaps rewards. It was Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, who said:

“If you think you can do a thing or you think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”

A positive attitude is the fuel that will drive your ability to achieve the tasks you undertake. Adopting an expectation of excellence and achievement is the first step to being successful at what you do.

You have the freedom to SELL! You can sell as much as you like, to whomever you like, for whatever the acceptable rate is, without exploiting yourself or bringing shame to your family name! Yes, selling IS definitely better than sex. And we’ll examine the reasons why more closely right here on this blog.

If you want to learn how to transfer the sex energy into sales enthusiasm to improve your career and life, and learn about other 200 reasons why selling is even better than sex, get my book “Selling Is Better Than Sex” today! www.SellingIsBetter.com

A sale is often completed in business without any inspection of the actual products by the purchaser; as when the sales person shows a picture of it with a catalog number. The “goods” are to be delivered later. However, the selling process is finished; though only the mind’s eye of the buyer has seen what he anticipates getting on his order. The sales person has presented nothing except certain ideas to the mental vision of the prospect. But these ideas have been sold so realistically to the imagination of the purchaser that he gives his order for what he expects.

Suppose the products delivered later do not correspond with the particular ideas about them that have been sold. For example, the device shipped is not the same as the sales person pictured when he got the order for it. Then there has been no sale of the different “goods.” The intending buyer bought particular ideas, and he will not accept the delivery of products unlike the ideas sold to him.

Sales person doesn’t really sell products. He or she sells ideas about products.

Let me give you an example: a real estate agent describes a bungalow to a potential home buyer. She shows plans and specifications, with accurate dimensions; there is no misrepresentation of any detail. The agent especially emphasizes that the bungalow would make a “cozy” home. The prospect decides to buy the property saying, “If it is as you describe it, I’ll take that place.”

The sale to his mind has been completed.

All that remains is delivery of a bungalow corresponding to the ideas sold. The delighted real-estate agent takes the buyer to the “cozy home”, but the empty rooms do not confirm the idea emphasized to the prospect. Real-estate agent has made the mistake of omitting to learn the other person’s conception of a cozy home before selling the expectation of coziness. She is shocked when the sale is canceled with the prospect’s contradiction of her description, “There’s nothing cozy about this place.”

The intending buyer of a home feels there has been a misrepresentation; though the bungalow is exactly like the plans and specifications shown to him. He was sold an idea that “the product” have not delivered; so he declares the sale off.

Remember this two steps next time when you are visiting your prospects: a sale is a successfully completed only when true ideas are sold, and afterward are delivered by the product or service.

The average salesperson is overly eager to begin actual selling, and in this ambition he or she is encouraged by the average sales manager.  In selling, as in many other activities of life, it often is true that less haste makes more speed. It does not pay to rush the preparation steps, for the result is bound to be a lot of stumbling afterward.

The importance of the preliminary preparation of the salesperson in knowledge of his products or services has already been emphasized in the preceding posts on this blog. Now we are to realize that knowledge of his territory and of his prospective customers is equally necessary.

Many salespeople consider prospecting in a very narrow way. They are on the lookout for the names of people who might buy, but do not realize the broader aspect of prospecting. They do not seek comprehensive knowledge of conditions in general throughout their industries or territories, but only “hot tips” that are likely to lead to orders.

I frequently meet salespeople who regard systematic prospecting as the sales manager’s job. These people think the company should comb the field with marketing messages and keep the salesperson supplied with prospects to follow up and sell.

Let us realize the wider salesperson meaning of prospecting, and appreciate that prospecting is the salesperson’s job -  practically all of the responsibility rests on him for doing it well. We get the right idea if we understand that the salesperson should comprehend for whom he is working primarily — himself.

Don’t start your selling cross-eyed. The business in which you are engaging is your business. Attend to it yourself if you would have it taken care of in the way that will be best for you. The company risks very little on you, compared with what you have to lose. Therefore make your investment of yourself wisely, with forethought and care to insure the highest degree of effectiveness in your sales efforts.

Do not think of what you do as temporary or a makeshift. Search for the materials with which to build your business permanently. Act from the start of your connection with a company as if you expected to spend all your life in that relation, developing from year to year. You may have other plans in view, but conduct yourself as you would do if the company was really your own.

Aimless, hit-or-miss prospecting is never very systematic effective. The salesperson must determine exactly what he or she wants to know. If you are just looking for the names of buyers, you will find your prospecting like bacon, with a streak of fat and a streak of lean. But if you systematically seek fundamental knowledge of your industry or territory, and are motivated by a definite purpose all the time, you will accumulate a fund of facts that will enable you to do most of your prospecting inside your own mind.

You won’t need tips. You will know the conditions in your field which influence buying, and at the right time will be guided by your knowledge to the very places where business is to be had.

Don’t let your internet presence have an effect on your sales.  Make sure you have the right website hosting service.

You can’t expect to get the sale 100% of the time. Sometimes the sale is lost to conditions beyond your control. But it does help to understand more about those deals that slip through your fingers when they just may have been saved by foresight and a little more training.

In order to understand the cause of a lost sale and to find ways of overcoming these in the future, it is necessary to make a careful analysis of the factors that come into a potential sale:

1. The Salesperson
2. The Product or Service
3. The Prospect

The Salesperson

-    I didn’t pay enough attention to my service delivery

As the salesperson, top-notch service and attentiveness is par for the course. You cannot expect to woo a prospect and then obtain his business if you pay no attention to the details of your dealings with him. Even the finer points make a difference, such as keeping your appointments and being on time, EVERY time! If your service delivery is poor before you’ve even met with the prospect he probably expects it to become even worse once he’s purchased your product. Your prospect will be inclined to head for the hills before he’ll commit to a contract with you.

-    I couldn’t control my frustration when the prospect kept me waiting

Patience and self-control are admirable and indispensable tools that you will need in order to maintain high levels of service. The business that you don’t get today might just come through to you tomorrow, as long as your prospect has been impressed by your knowledge, dedication and professionalism.

-    I didn’t have a good understanding of the prospect’s business or his needs

When it comes to success in selling, first-class service is an absolutely essential part of the deal. This includes being prepared for your prospect in every possible way by understanding his business and his potential needs, before you even meet with him. It will prove to be a great asset to your selling pitch if you can demonstrate a high level of understanding surrounding your prospect’s particular requirements. This will ensure that your approach is appropriate and that the talking points are pertinent to his business.

-    I was not well-prepared for the meeting

Conduct yourself properly at all times, demonstrating the fact that you are well-prepared for your meeting. When you’re unprepared, you may tend to ramble and talk about points that are not at all applicable to the prospect’s situation. He will lose interest and he may also wonder as to your level of expertise, if you have not managed to understand his business sufficiently.

-    I dropped my professional guard and tried to be too friendly with the prospect

Each of us is different and will tolerate familiarity in varying degrees. It is only appropriate to enjoy a professional relationship where you conduct yourself respectfully and from a polite distance, at all times. Unless there is an invitation from your prospect on a social basis, it’s never wise to become his friend when you’re dealing with a business situation.

-    I’m not particularly enthusiastic about the product that I sell

You MUST be enthusiastic about your product. If you are not enthused, how can you expect others to be? Also, if you’re not interested in the product yourself, you’ll have no desire to learn more about it and will be ineffective at sharing that information with potential buyers.

-    I couldn’t answer the prospect’s questions

If you are unprepared and do not know your product well enough, you will be unable to answer your prospect’s questions or even understand his needs. In order to sell a product effectively, you need to understand it thoroughly and believe in its value.

- I bullied the prospect into listening to my sales pitch

It’s your duty to educate the prospect on the finer details of your product and all its features and benefits. You also need to LISTEN to his concerns so that you may address them effectively and be an asset to the process of discovering his ultimate business solution, as opposed to “just another salesperson”.

-    I frequently repeated my statements

Repetition is sometimes necessary and can be of great value, when properly used. But to do so too frequently only displays a lack of training and an indefinite plan of presentation. It can also indicate a loss of self-control. If you’re well-prepared, you will use repetition as a tool to highlight noteworthy points, instead of rambling while you try to find your place.

-    I couldn’t identify the appropriate time to close the deal

You need to constantly keep your finger on the pulse of the deal and be ready to close the deal at the critical moment. Always be aware of where the meeting is heading and take control of how the discussions pan out. If you’re a step ahead at all times, you will be prepared to seal the deal when the critical moment occurs.

As the salesperson, you are the driving factor of the sale. Your strength and determination in closing the deal will ensure its success or failure. Being properly prepared to meet your client’s needs gives you the strength that you need to address the deal successfully.

Don’t simply be the force behind the sale. Be an EFFECTIVE and EFFICIENT force – and ensure your success. Most importantly, CONNECT with your client. Nothing can work on a broken connection.

Before you begin to sell, you will need to decide who you’re going to sell to. This means finding your Target Market. If you know who you’re selling to, you immediately have the advantage of being focused on a specific market and knowing who and what you need to research.

In your search for a Target Market, try to identify those that have a major problem and who are willing to spend money in order to fix it. Straight away, this gives you the advantage of knowing that your customer has the funds to pay for the excellent product or service that you can offer. It’s no use walking in with guns blazing, shooting off fantastic selling techniques when your client hasn’t got the resources to make the purchase.

Investigate, research, explore.

You need to select a market that you can identify with. This will be the place where you spend your days fulfilling your dreams – you need to be comfortable and able to enjoy yourself, and able to identify with your customers. This will benefit you as much as it will benefit them.

For example, it would be fruitless to try and market a Rap CD at an old-age home. For starters, your audience will never identify with your appearance (most likely resembling your most favored Rap artist). And secondly, a group of octogenarians is less likely to scramble over one another in order to purchase a CD that doesn’t qualify as “music” to them and certainly doesn’t have any lyrics that they can actually understand.

Focus. This seems basic, but in the frenzied rush to accumulate sales, this detail may be overlooked.

By finding your Target Market before you get ready to sell, you can save yourself a lot of time and money that would otherwise be wasted on inappropriate targets.

Another important factor in selecting the correct market segment for your product is finding out if you have a competitive advantage over your rivals who are in the same selling industry as you.

As part of your research, there are other factors that you may want to take into account before selecting your Target Market. Firstly, you might want to identify geographic factors. You’re not going to be terribly successful if you try to sell air-conditioning units to folks in Alaska. Secondly, take into account the demographics of your clients. You’re not going to want to sell hair-loss prevention products to young women, or shampoo to bald men. Age, gender, race, income-earning potential – these are all things to take into account when selecting the right target for your product.

And, thirdly, some companies see themselves as being high-tech or innovative, or it may be important to them to maintain a reputation of social responsibility. These are psycho-graphic characteristics that you can use as a marketing tactic. This is all good information.

Finally, investigate the behavioral characteristics of a potential market. Understand what their buying habits and buying patterns are. For example, Fortune 500 companies don’t take purchasing decisions lightly and they certainly don’t rush into them. If you understand your target market and if you can identify with them and what they stand for, you’ve taken the first tentative steps to success. You’ve found a select group of customers that may actually want to buy your product.

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So you think you can sell? is a series of sales seminars and workshops dedicated to three groups of salespeople that exist in the world today. The first group is a group of novice sales reps that are entering the field of sales. Second is a group of experienced sales professionals. Finally, the third group is a group of non-sales people who need help selling their newly created product or ideas themselves.

Please keep visiting this blog in the month of November when we will share more info about this unique sales training program: So you think you can sell?

The first step of the Closing Stage is getting the prospect to make the right decision. Once Interest and Desire have been secured and Objections eliminated, you need to help the prospect come to the right Decision about buying the product.
Always be sure of yourself, without being over-confident. Assure the customer that he is making the right decision by purchasing the product or service. Reinforce that assurance without repeating your sales pitch. If you’ve done well in your presentation then you have successfully brought the prospect to the Closing point. Simply repeating your sales pitch and constantly reasserting that information in an effort to get him to make a decision will be fruitless. You need to help him to weigh up the decision and aid him in focusing on the positive aspects of purchasing the product.

The Decision to buy takes place in the prospect’s heart and mind. But it is up to the salesperson to translate that Decision into actually Placing the Order. It is entirely possible that a prospect can make a decision to buy and then reverse his decision and walk away without placing an order. This is why it is imperative for you to get the prospect to state his intent to purchase. After that, he is unlikely to change his mind and walk away without the order.

There is a law of human nature referred to as the “continuity of action”. The continuity of action is more powerful in leading to new acts than any other process. This means that if you want your prospect to do a certain thing, the best way is to start him doing something. Get him involved in some sort of action, and then it’s easy for him to switch to another action; such as signing an order.

Whenever a new commodity appears, we ridicule it, and oppose it, and refuse to buy it at any price. Then the salesperson trains his energies on us. We fight for a while, and finally we surrender. But we give no credit, or glory, to the salesperson. We walk up to the counter and buy the commodity, remarking to the clerk that it is just exactly what we needed for the past twenty years.

It is not true that new products are manufactured to supply the demand.

There is no demand. Both the demand and the goods have to be manufactured. The public has always held fast to its old-fashioned discomforts, until the salesperson persuaded it to let go.

• There was no demand for the Railroad, and for years many people believed that thirty miles an hour would stop the circulation of the blood.
• There was no demand for the Steamboat, and when Brunei drove the first boat by steam on the Thames, he became so unpopular that the London hotels refused to give him a room.
• There was no demand for the Sewing machine, and the first machine that Howe put on exhibition was smashed to pieces by a Boston mob.
• There was no demand for the Telegraph, and Morse had to plead and beg before ten Congresses before he received any attention.
• There was no demand for the Air-brake, and Westinghouse was called a fool by every railroad expert, because he asserted that he could stop a train with wind.
• There was no demand for Gas-light, and all the candle-burners sneered at Murdoch for trying to have a lamp without a wick.
• There was no demand for the Reaper, and McCormick preached his gospel of efficient harvesting for fourteen years before he sold his first hundred machines.

No, it is not true, as learned theorists have said that every great invention springs into life because it is demanded by the nation. It springs into life and nobody wants it. It is the Ugly Duckling. Everybody prefers ten cents to it, until a few salespeople take it in hand and explain it.

• When Frederick E. Sickles first exhibited his Steam steering-gear, now used on all the seas of the world, all the sailors looked upon it with contempt. “Nobody seemed to take the slightest interest in it,” wrote Sickles.
• When Charles T. Porter first showed his High-speed engine in England, it was not taken seriously by anyone. “My engine,” says  Porter “was visited by every engineer in England and by a multitude of engine-users; and yet in all that six months not a builder ever said a word about building neither it, nor a user said a word about using it. I was stupefied with astonishment and distress.”
• When Bell first showed his Telephone at the Philadelphia Centennial, it was endorsed by the greatest scientists of America and England. It was tested and proved. But the average man called it a “scientific toy” and refused to either use it or finance it. Bell preached telephony for years before the public bought it.

When the new product has been perfected and produced, the manufacturer must step back and make way for the salesperson. The salesperson can’t invent. A sales mind is not in-growing but out-growing. They aren’t manufacturers. Whenever they have tried it, the costs go skyward. But they know how to interest and convince the public.

The truth is that salespeople have done more for progress and civilization than anyone imagines. They have done more than all the colleges to develop the peasantry of Europe into enterprising American citizens. They have transformed the “Man with the Hoe” into the person with the computer. They have given us the radiator for the fireplace, the automobile for the push-cart, the computer and voice recognition for the quill pen. They have put more comforts into our homes than the king used to have in his palace.

The main thing in selling is to make people want to buy. A selling atmosphere must be created, if you fail to do that - you will not sell. Simple as that. The good salesperson makes the customers realize they want what is being offered.

Continue reading in depth on creating the demand: Are You an Order Taker or an Order Maker?