The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

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.

Today I am sharing with you my Daily Sales Tip #17 titled: “Once you’ve made the sale, stop selling.”

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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?

Today I have a guest on my blog, his name is Marshall W. Northcott and he is a master in the field of sales training, coaching and consulting, with over 20 successful years of practical work experience and a solid track record in the sales industry. He partners with progressive, growth oriented organizations in challenging and rewarding roles that allow him to leverage his skills and assets in corporate sales, sales management and/or customer service. Here is his article:

The Sales Process

In the early years of my sales career, what I discovered was missing most was what I affectionately call the finesse skills.  Closely related to those finesse skills is what is commonly referred to as The Sales Process.

If you study most activities that occur in business after a while, you will notice that a pattern emerges.  Every successful outcome is preceded by a series of steps that make it possible for you to arrive at that outcome.  Simply put it’s like preparing a recipe.  If you use and properly prepare the ingredients as instructed, cook them in the manner suggested, for the length of time outlined, you will likely enjoy the desired outcome expected.  These success steps are known as The Sales Process.  Anyone who is willing to learn and master these steps will enjoy the greatest of rewards during their career in professional selling.  However if you don’t know and/or recognize the steps and in addition you have a haphazard, random approach although you may get results, those results will likely be limited, inconsistent, unpredictable and less than what you are truly capable of.

At the core of The Sales Cycle is the thought process that will make a significant difference in your success.  Establishing winning thought patterns is essential to achieving sustainable, long term results.  This training includes psychology, personality styles, people skills, communication skills, business and time management skills.  On the outer portion of The Sales Cycle you will note the various steps of the selling process from new business generation (or prospecting) to qualifying, to pre-call planning, to telephone skills, to appointment scheduling, rapport building, needs assessment, proposal preparation, presentation skills, objection handling, closing techniques, negotiation skills, on-going customer service and asking for referrals.

Work ethic is extremely important, however, hard work alone will only get you so far.  I’ve always worked hard without being told to do so.  Unfortunately, I discovered that left me short of hitting my objectives and reaching my sales goals.  There are a number of essential skills and beyond those are many other pieces of the puzzle that can have a huge impact on results.  Our primary goal through a structured, formal training program is to discuss these pieces of the puzzle, explain what they are individually and then cover how they fit together.

In The Bourne Supremacy, the second in the trilogy, there is a line in the movie that is directed towards Matt Damon’s character and those other individuals who were trained to be operatives like him.  Bourne gets caught crossing a European border and one of government agents states that he must have made his first mistake, a random error and got caught.  The woman who had once been his handler states, “It’s not a mistake they don’t make mistakes, they don’t do random, there’s always an objective, always a target.”  The point is that they were trained, programmed and conditioned to know what they were doing at all times and be 100% conscious of it at all times.  You will find that those sales professionals who end up at the top of the ranks in their chosen field are the same!  There is a reason for everything that they say and do their timing is well thought out and positioned, they are perfectly deliberate in their actions.

It isn’t practical to think that anyone, who doesn’t commit themselves to their profession, can fully reach their potential.  It is also rare for the majority of people to step up and take on this responsibility on their own.  If you are one of those rare individuals who has acted on your own in the past, congratulations!  It is likely that you are well on your way to achieving exceptional results in your sales or business endeavors.  You may already be in a management position or one of the principles of your organization.  This is all best summed up by the quote, “Those who don’t need a boss are usually asked to be one.”  Either way, in order for people to be fully productive contributors to the corporate effort, knowing and putting the steps of The Sales Process into action each and every time is not optional, it must be mandatory.

Visit Marshall’s website at www.marshallnorthcott.com.

I am sure you have heard about salespeople earning $200-300k, a million or even more. Do you think this sales person is better than you are? They are not much different from you; they are not geniuses or impeccable experts in their field. They probably don’t know much more about their products or service than other salespeople in the same company.

So you are probably asking yourself – how is it that they can make six or seven figures and you are struggling month by month to make ends meet and reach your quotas?

The first and probably the most accurate answer is that they see themselves as professionals.

How can you grow if you don’t adopt new ideas or learn about new things in business and in sales? How can you expect to advance to better, higher paid positions if you stop investing in your knowledge?

In my 16+ years in different roles in sales, I have met many sales people who never bought a book about the sales in their life. They never attended a seminar about sales, which was not part of their company at the time. However, they were always complaining about how companies are not investing enough in their sales force, yet expect them to be perfect and up to date. That is the reason why they don’t want to invest in seminars on their own.

They believe that if their company does not see the value in it, why would they pay for it by themselves? Also they feel they know everything about the sales, so there is no need for spending money on books and seminars, or finding time for reading magazines or specialized websites. Many of those people who don’t learn continuously wonder why they don’t advance in their career or are skipped over again for a promotion.

I am giving you perfect examples of how the amateurs are thinking while blaming everyone around them for being unsuccessful in sales. You are the one who is making the decision. Every morning, when you look in the mirror, are you seeing the reflection of an amateur or professional?

Sales professional is someone who invests in his knowledge, who reads magazines and web portals dedicated to sales people and attends seminars and conferences. A sales person who follows the trends understands how essential it is to improve him personally.Professionals are ones they know how necessary this is to start selling more. And of course – they are the ones who are earning more.

Be different from the 95% of salespeople out there who are not investing in their knowledge, and you will start seeing the change. It will start first inside of you where you will be hungrier for the new knowledge. You will have a better conversation and better approach to your prospects and people around you will see that difference.

Your self-respect that you’ve gained with that new knowledge will make the world your oyster. Don’t wait for your employer to send you to a seminar. Be proactive, for yourself and your career. It will benefit you in the long term - with your career and most importantly you will see the difference in your wallet!

You are asking your clients to make a change, but if you are unwilling to change yourself, how can you ask your prospects to?

Your sales process will also depend on your efforts invested in research and understanding your customer base, your energy and enthusiasm about your product. If you cannot transfer enthusiasm to your prospects, you are in deep problems. When you talking about something people can feel if you are insincere, or you really know what you are talking about.

It is not what are you saying but how are you saying it.

What does it mean to be sales professional? I am not saying that you have to live, eat and breathe sales 24/7 every day for the rest of your life, but to start seeing your sales position as something more, something bigger than 9-5 job.

Whether you love your sales job or not, you have a choice to do it well or not, to be fully involved or back away, and if you have this attitude of choosing to do your work well, you will enjoy your job itself!

You can be very productive once you consciously choose to be in sales, and if you change your approach from “get things done” to actually enjoy what you do, you can get the job well done and be rewarded for your efforts.

Fulfillment in your life comes with doing a great job, whatever you do. And your occupation, in this case sales profession, is just as important to your personal health as the right food for your body.

Invest in your knowledge; put the seeds in the small steps and watering your skills and constant caring about your sales knowledge. And when the time of harvesting comes, you will have the fruits of your efforts in front of you.

To differentiate from majority of people who don’t like what they do, you have to actually enjoy what you do.

Start your day by doing your job the best you can, and try to do it for a week. Then come back next week and do it all over again. The best you can, not waiting for rewards, not asking for rewards. Don’t wait for results to come, just do the job the best you could. When first results came back, when you get positive feedback from your customers, when you close a new deal – ask yourself: What has changed?

You will start loving your job because success will come, first in small steps, but more and more day by day it will grow. Your customers will start seeing you as a knowledgeable person, your colleagues will see you with different eyes, and you will realize that all of that is important, but most important are feelings inside of you that start building – good feelings about yourself.

You will feel worthy, valuable to your customers, colleagues, and you will build that feeling inside of you that you are valuable part of your environment.

And you will start feeling that you are helping others – your colleagues to be better, your customers to find the best solution, and by helping them you are actually helping yourself to become a more valuable member of the community.

Does it make sense?

Natural order of things is in doing your best at what you do best, and the rewards will follow inevitable.

Remember this - you can’t fail how hard you try it.

In my previous article I was talking how If you live by price - you will die by price.

Let’s talk further about how to close the deal without discounting.

If you base your offer on your price only, there is a good chance that someone will have lower price than you, or you can end up in the bidding war that distracts from solutions. To avoid that, base your proposal in achieving more goals for your prospects, not just to save money, because every other salesperson will say exactly the same.

Customer wants to see the value not in your product; he wants to get the value from your solution to their business problem. They must perceive unique value from you. If they cannot differentiate you from the competition, there is no reason to buy from you.

Probably you can’t differentiate much with your product, I am sure you have some unique features, but your competition has them too. Customers today can easily substitute your product with the one from your competition and still be satisfied.

So how can you differentiate?
That’s where trigger events are coming to the game.

Trigger events can help you with recognizing needs and opening the door to have a meaningful conversation with customers who have events happening. Just to be different from the competition is not really important to your customers. What they would like to see is added value.

What creates customer value?
-    Skilled sales force
-    Sales process itself
-    Understanding their business situation today and adapting to their particular wants and needs

If you recognize customers’ needs and create the value for them, customers will move from initial meeting to a decision much easier. Communicating the value is a traditional view of selling, but in today’s world you can’t survive if you are not creating the value for the customer. And make customer realize that they are on the market.

Sales person needs to play a leading role to create the value for his customers. In each step of sales process sales person can create the value, but the most value can be created early in the process by helping customers to define their needs.

This is true especially in consultative sales where sales person can create the value recognizing customer needs with trigger events and helping them to define them better and deeper. Sales professional needs to create the specialized situation and put them on the market even they didn’t felt like that before he entered the picture.

If you are just selling your product – you are missing the point and you will die by price, as you lived by price. Customers are looking beyond the product; they are looking for the solution to their needs and your understanding of their business situation. Many times that should include help and advice too.

Different customers must be treated differently, what works for one customer may not work at all for another. Knowing about trigger events happening to your targeted prospect (and more different events is always better) you will have a very powerful tool to adjust your sales presentation to their needs, recovered with trigger events.

Concentrate on understanding your customers’ business issues, and show them how to solve more than one goal with your product, create a value for them and you will go home with the contract in your pocket, whatever the price is.

Let me repeat it here once more - if you don’t show the value you will definitely not win whatever your price is. Even if you have a lowest price on the market, it does not mean much to the prospect, because they don’t see the difference between your product and ones from the competition. And many buyers are buying from someone who had crafted a compelling solution to their needs, then comes understanding of their needs, and after that the financial part of the deal.

Your goal as sales professional is to create value through how you’re selling, not just through what you’re selling. To be a real sales professional ready for 21st century customers, here is no question you need to change your approach, but when and how?