“If,you cannot get rid of,the family skeleton, you might as well make it dance.” George Bernard Shaw
The quote from George Bernard Shaw may not seem to have any relevance to sales and training but it does. It demonstrates an attitude that will serve you well in sales. That is to find out what your perceived negatives are and turn them to your advantage – make those skeletons dance!
You might confuse potential client comments as objections. You might hear:
• Your more expensive
• Your deliveries are too slow
• Your company is not big enough
My folks were down this weekend and they are always great for inspiration for a few blog posts. One that stood out for me was my mum telling me about her dissatisfaction with sky (digital tv provider in the UK).
My mum rang to cancel her Sky subscription, partly because it was not getting used, and partly because it then seemed rather expensive for what was being consumed. She had to run the gauntlet of questions for a few minutes to avoid the special deals only available to her if she continued to be a subscriber to get to a point where the contract was going to be terminated.
The young guy (YG) on the other end of the phone asked:
“I have to put down a reason for you canceling. What shall I put?”
It’s funny but as a sales trainer and consultant it’s very rare that I wear a tie anymore. And do you know what I don’t miss them one iota!
I was reading through a classic sales ‘text book’ from the early 1990’s recently and was caught by the Way that the advise has dated so much in just ten years. I won’t give the name of the book because it was once regarded as the best sales texts books available and it would not be right.
The suggestions when it came to dress were:
‘Mens suits should be solid blue or gray, pinstripe or chalk stripe or modest gray plaid. Wool or polyester that looks like wool, is preffered. The darker the suit, the more authority it carries, although black is funeral. Men’s shirts and ties are important. Generaly, shirts should be white or pale blue or have mdest stripes………The ages of the salesman and the customer he is facing will affect the choice of dress. For salesman, considerbly younger than his customer, particularly buyers over the age forty eight, it is advisable that the salesman adopt the high – authority pattern of a dark suit along with a white shirt.’
When times are tough, the temptation is to consider dropping your prices. Don’t!
If you drop your prices you are only adding to your own difficulties. The table above shows the impact small changes in the price you sell at can have on your business.
If you are having difficulty putting together a logical and emotional reason why your potential customer or client should use you then look at the quality of the questions you asked initially.
It may not be the definitive list of questions to ask but I guarantee you, that if you have managed to get the answers to all of the following questions then you are well on your way to a sale.
What is the customers/clients situation?
What is the customer’s perspective on the situation?
To ensure your stability and sales success in difficult times why not adopt a business diversification strategy.
If you own a SPAR retailer consider a Subway franchise. If you are a huge department store, how about adding an old fashioned gents hair cutting and shoe shine shop.
I have recently finished reading “The Power Of Your Subconscious mind” by Dr Joseph Murphy and it really struck a chord with me based on the current business climate. I have been hearing a lot of negative talk from many business owners and sales people I meet recently.
If you are determined to set yourself up to fail I have drawn up the 7 key things you should say to yourself on a daily basis to ensure that you speed up your failure as soon as possible. Might as well get it over and done with right?
One of the worst experiences at the hands of a so called professional sales person happened recently in a Portsmouth car dealership. See if you think they need sales training
“Can I help you sir?” Dave asked (name changed to protect the not so innocent)
I explained that I was just looking at the new Audi as I may be changing in anything up to 6 months and was interested in the new range. I was stood admiring one of the new range at the time.
“Come over to the desk Sir” as he led me to the far corner of the dealership where he proceeded to look straight into his computer. He made no eye contact with me at all as he asked “name, postcode, telephone number, email address”. Dave was so concerned with getting my details so that he could put me on the database that he made no effort to build rapport, ask me any questions and the worst sin of all – he took me away from the product. A product that I liked the look of, the more time I was examining it.
Negotiation and Negotiating Skillsare some of the most sought after sales training courses. People seek out negotiation tips, negotiating strategies and scour the web for processes to win against the ‘other’ person in a negotiation.
It may come as a surprise to you but your own worst enemy in a negotiation is yourself. Some people seem to spend hours seeking out the magic words that will help them win in any negotiation yet fail to look to see what they or their employees are doing wrong.
Two recent personal experiences highlight this fantastically well:
People are often surprised when I turn up for sales training workshops without a laptop and powerpoint slides. They are pleasantly surprised throughout the day as the workshops unfolds and the day revolves around creativity, interaction and the application of knowledge. It makes for a fun and engaging day.
I found long ago that traditional powerpoint presenations and sales training does more to kill off the key things I promote than anything else. It is rigid, linear and down right boring!
Don’t fall into these traps with your presenations:
We became the proud parents of a new puppy a few weeks ago when we became responsible and bought Pemba, our black Labrador puppy.
He is a great big ball of energy that only knows fun and has quickly become part of the family — with all the emotional attachment that goes with it.
Apart from teaching me a few things about communications skills the search and purchase of Pemba has been an introduction to some superb business practices – most noticeable by my vet.
See if you can spot their skill from our tale of acquiring a suitable pet doctor!
I recently received a comment on one of my blog posts from a uk sales trainer which was basically a rant about the difference between Push and Pull selling and the death of ‘80,90 – BS!’.
To be honest I wasn’t sure of the point of the rant and what he was taking offence to. The post was this one on persuasion .
The post was a quick quote from Dale Carnegie about human nature. The rant took offense to the terms ‘Influence, persuasion and convincing’ and essentially (I guess) tried to make the point that no one like to be sold to – they like to buy.
I would like to open this up to debate, especially to the sales training, sales consultancy and sales coaching industry.
From personal recent experience I would say the Post Office can urgently do with some sales training .
The papers and TV news have been filled recently with the subject of post office closures and how this will kill off many local communities. I can understand this and can only sympathise with people who rely on the post office for essential services.
What I can’t help is my feeling that largely the post office have brought this upon themselves with untrained and quite frankly appalling customer service / sales staff . I know that many of the post office counters operate as mini franchises but they should insist on some element of sales training or sales management training .
I spent my last weekend at an Entreprenurial Get together of 500 people who had gathered to see some amazing guest speakers.
One of the highlights for me was Duncan Bannatyne. He spoke for an hour and then held an open microphone question and answer session.
Duncans speach was superb. I have to say he was not the most “polished speaker” you are likely to encounter but his talk was based on his real life experiences and his humour shone through. This just made the talk seem so much more natural.
One of the things that really struck me was that Duncan could not really say how he had done any of his huge successes any more than “Just do It” (or was that Nike?). He truly believes that anyone can emulate his success yet can’t really describe how to do it.
This short but powerful video introduces a fantastic tool for assisting traditional businesses in getting more sales and more profits from existing clients and prospects. The form used can be downloaded here: Product and service matrix for increased sales growth
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Peter O'Donoghue is a Business To Business Sales Expert specialising in Modern Day Prospecting.
