Category: Posts

No Apologies For Prospecting

Marketing, Posts, Sales Management, Sales Training, Strategy Planning

Have you ever been cold-called by a salesperson who opens the call with ‘Sorry to bother you, but…”? You should never apologize when selling and prospecting. How many of your co-workers in other departments, such as operation or finance, have to spend their time apologizing for doing their job? So why should you apologize for doing yours? Timid and weak salespeople bring timid and weak results. Why? Because they have a poor self-image that they project onto prospective customers who will, in turn, reinforce those beliefs.

 

If salespeople could accept the hard truths about prospecting and the benefits it brings, the less reluctant they would be to do these essential selling activities. Frankly, these aren’t big mountains for us to climb, they are little bumps that trip us up every once in a while. Prospecting new customers not only works, but it is the best way to acquire new business. So embrace these 5 realities of reaching out to new customers.

 

  1. Your call is unexpected – Of course, it is. So what? The day can be filled with a lot of unexpected things and many of them can be good? Why wouldn’t you and what your selling be one of those things? If you didn’t have something great to offer, why would you bother them with an unexpected call?
  2. You are calling at a bad time – Yup. At least that’s what prospects will tell you. My advice? Open your call by acknowledging this. “Hi, did I catch you at a bad time?”. It’s a personal favorite way to cold call. They will always say ‘yes’, but ask you what the call is about. This means they have given you permission to start selling. Go for it.
  3. You are a disruption – Salespeople who are not willing to disrupt their prospect’s day will not bring in new business. Period. You have to be a disruption to get their attention. Today, phone calls achieve this better than emails for sure (for those of you who say that phone calling is dead). If you don’t disrupt people, you will not get noticed. 
  4. You must get noticed – This is the fact in sales. You have to get noticed in order to begin any sales process. Unless you have a fantastic marketing plan that brings in a lot of new leads, you will need a campaign that gets you in front of people one way or another. 
  5. It takes more than one try – It can take as many as five, ten, or more tries to get time with your prospect. Be persistent and don’t give up too easily. Be willing to try several methods including phone calls, emails, cold call walk-ins, social media, and so forth. Sooner or later they will have to notice you good, bad, or otherwise.

Close the Deal or Walk Away

Posts, Sales Management, Strategy Planning

Sometimes it is hard for a salesperson to know if they should close the deal or walk away from it. You have arrived at the moment of truth and it is time to ask for the sale. You have done everything necessary to control yourself, your process, and the customer up until this point. There are only 3 choices for the customer: yes, no, and maybe. Let’s face it, you are not going to win every sale no matter how much control you have in the process. What you are selling is not going to be a fit for everyone and sometimes you have to simply walk away from the sale. If you did not get a ‘yes’, then everyone must decide if, or how, to move forward. If you get a ‘no’ or a ‘maybe’, that does not mean that the sale is over yet, but there is certainly a barrier for you to work through. Before you decide to work through the barrier or walk away from the sale, there are 5 stages to complete to see if you can still reach a ‘yes’.

 

  1. Maintain your position – Don’t back down immediately just because the customer did not say ‘yes’ right away. Especially if the barrier to the sale is price. Remember, never lower your price until you ask twice. Even if there are other objections to the sale that aren’t priced, resist the urge to go immediately into negotiation mode. Always ask twice.
  2. Check for fitness – Be honest, are you trying to fit a square peg in a round hole? Is the sale really right for you and the customer or have you been ignoring important cues all along?
  3. Negotiation – Some barriers in the sale are negotiable, but do you have enough cushion to work with? Are the customer’s objections reasonable and workable? Do not create promises you can’t deliver on for the sake of making the sale.
  4. Managing expectations – You’re so close to making the sale. If you can cross the finish line, how well can you manage the customer’s expectations? Are you creating more problems with this sale or can you reasonably deliver on their expectations?

Is it worth giving up control? – If you have to adjust your deal to the customer’s satisfaction, that means they now have control. This may be ok, but there is a good chance that the customer will remain in control now that the sale has been made and they may become unreasonable to deal with moving forward in some fashion. If they changed the terms on you once, then they are likely to try again. It may be better to maintain control and walk away from the sale rather than developing a difficult customer relationship. 

Dealing With A Tricky Sales Objection: The H.E.L.P. Method

Posts, Sales Training

Don’t you just love it when a customer throws you a curveball during a sale? Something that really takes you off course and keeps you from your sales process. We call them Sales Squirrels. They show up out of nowhere and, like a dog, you chase them around and around the tree getting nowhere. There is no hard rule about what a Sales Squirrel looks like, but here are a few examples:

  • “Let me tell you all about a bad buying experience I had 10 years ago.”     
  • “Why do you use those colors for your logo? I don’t like those colors very much.”
  • “I really don’t like spending money, so just show me the cheapest option you have.” 

Sales Squirrels take everything out of your control if you let it, and by that I mean you spend too much time indulging the question that isn’t in the best interest of the sale. If you see a Sales Squirrel, then you are going to need help to get the sale back under control. That’s where the H.E.L.P. Method comes in.

 

Hold – When you see your Sales Squirrel, stop everything you are doing to take a moment and think. What did I just hear? How important is it? Will this take me off my sales process? What is the best response I can offer? Think before you speak.

Empathize – Acknowledge what you just heard and repeat it back to the customer. Let them know it is okay to bring this up. “I understand that you saw some of our online reviews that concern you and that’s something you would like to discuss. I check online reviews as well so it makes sense to me that you would bring this up.”

Leave it – Let the thought perish as you move the customer through a quality sales process. Sometimes acknowledging the objection is simply enough. After all, you don’t want to spend 10 minutes of your 30 minute engagement talking about a bad online review. If that matter needs to be discussed, then we should wait until after we have completed the sales process.

Postpone – The objection might be a sales squirrel, but perhaps it is important after all. Does it mean that it has to be discussed immediately? Usually not, and if it is, that means that you have given control over to the customer. Why not wait until after you have completed your sales process? Oftentimes at this point the customer has either forgotten about it or finds it to be less important than they initially indicated. “This sounds like something I should know more about. Let me make a note about this and come back around to our online reviews a little bit later.” 

The 3 Truths About Sales Objections

Posts, Sales Training

If you are like most salespeople, you do not like any sales objections. On the one hand, who could blame you. It would be nice to have every sale be easy with nothing but fun to answer questions from enthusiastic buyers who have already made up their minds that they are going to buy from you. If you like that kind of selling, you would probably enjoy working the cash register at a local fast food restaurant (and even that isn’t always that easy). When I say sales objection, I mean statements and questions like:

  • Why are you so expensive?
  • Is that all you have to offer?
  • I think I would like to think this over.

None of these examples are an outright ‘no’ or deal killer. It is a question from the customer that shows that they probably have not made up their mind yet and are still engaged. 

One of the biggest mistakes you can do is avoid sales objections. You know one or more objections exist for your customer, but you are doing everything you can to dodge it. In fact, encourage and embrace their objections because as you satisfy each will, you will increase your odds of closing the deal. That said, there are 3 basic truths about customers when it comes to sales objections.

 

  1. One or more objections will occur at any given phase of the sale process.
  2. Objections never magically disappear on their own.
  3. Objections will always fester until they are acknowledged and addressed.

 

         Take a moment and reflect on some of your own purchasing experiences. Have you ever made a major purchase without at least having one concern about your purchase? If the concern was important to you, did you just let it fade away without discussing it? Do you fixate on your objection, possibly tuning out the salesperson, because no one is taking time to address what is important to you? Of course you do, but just because an objection cannot be satisfied doesn’t mean the sale is dead, it is now just part of the purchasing equation of what is most important to a buyer. Continue to demonstrate that their objections are important to you and help them to solve it together.

 

Want to learn more? Schedule Managing Sales Objections Training for your sales team and head off objections before they defeat you and kill the sale.

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What Keeps a Salesperson from Being Great?

Most people want to be great at what they do, and if they don’t want to be great, it makes you wonder why they want to even do it at all.  This is so true with salespeople, but considering how many people you have known in sales, what percentage of them would you consider great? What was it about the remaining salespeople that didn’t meet the mark? Can the gap be closed to create more great salespeople? Yes, if you can identify some of the key factors that keep them from being great.   

 

Sales is such an interesting department in businesses because it is so vital to the health of every single business, and yet we invest so little into this critical component. Training is lousy if it even exists at all. Very few managers know how to manage and coach salespeople well. To make matters worse, most salespeople are even embarrassed to admit that they are salespeople. They will go so far as to change their job titles to ‘account rep’, ‘business development’ or ‘client advisor’ to avoid any stigma associated with being a salesperson. As if customers couldn’t tell the difference. So it’s no wonder why so many salespeople don’t become great. Common reasons include:

  1. Lack of proper sales training – Very few organizations have a formal training program. This is especially true of small businesses. Fortunately, there are a lot of third-party options to help you with this. You can also find out more about Scorecard Basic Training and Sales Objection Training here.
  2. Lack of an effective sales process – Be honest; are you mostly winging it? Many salespeople are because they are too proud to write out their process. If you need help with your sales process, check out Scorecard’s Tools and Templates to streamline your organization’s sales process.
  3. Lack of sales experience – Hey, we all have to start somewhere. This is one that you cannot control, but it is important to use our experiences to our advantage.
  4. Lack of preparation – It is all too common that salespeople do not like to plan. Again, too often salespeople are winging it. Take the time to get organized and develop the necessary disciplines.
  5. Lack of self-confidence – We all have bad days, and sometimes our lack of confidence is easily detected by our customers. Read these tips to help with your confidence.
  6. Lack of self-control – We give in to our impulses too easily and lose control of our sales. This is usually seen as desperation by our customers. 

There are certainly more items we could add to our list, but these are usually the top issues. At least one of these reasons is constantly getting in your way. Customers, as a result, are taking control of the sale and taking your profits. It’s not that you can’t be great, it is that no one has shown you how to become great. Discover which area you need the most help with so that you can take your first steps to being great.

Is a Difficult Salesperson Holding You Hostage?🔫

Business Analysis, Posts, Sales Management, Sales Training

Some people just have to make any and everything difficult. They refused to be managed, coached, or listen to anything that is contrary to what they believe and what they will or will not do. This is especially worse when it is a salesperson who brings in good numbers. Ain’t nobody gonna tell him what to do cause if you don’t like it, he’ll just quit. In essence, these types of salespeople derive a certain pleasure from holding their sales managers and the company hostage They put you in a darned-if-you-do-darned-if-you-don’t arrangement that gives them complete control at the expense of the rest of the team and your leadership. Who’s the boss?

When I say difficult salesperson, I mean someone who is truly disruptive and undermines the company and its process. They do not demonstrate the right attitude and behaviors, they act unprofessionally, focus only on themselves and they undermine leadership and policy any chance they get. Even worse, they carry themselves with a sense of diplomatic immunity and encourage others to be defiant as well. They just constantly set a bad example over your core values, but you really need the sales. Is this a hill that you are prepared to die on? If you do nothing, you may die on it eventually anyway. However, there is a good chance that you are dealing with a classic bully, and bullies must be dealt with. I’m sorry to inform you that the end result may come down to termination, but it almost never does. Besides, recovering from these kinds of losses may be inevitable yet easier to overcome than you think. But, let’s plan for the best by having the right conversation with the right person in the right way.

  1. Remain calm – It is way too easy to get your emotions involved when dealing with difficult salespeople. They will do everything they can to make sure that you lose your cool so they can gain control of the situation. Resist every urge, keep calm and focused on your desired outcome.
  2. Discuss the performance, not the person – Discussing a person’s character becomes subjective and argumentative. Once the person becomes defensive because you make it about them, any progress in the conversation will cease. Talk about what they do and not who they are.
  3. Create clear expectations – Leave nothing to chance here. This part of the conversation should definitely include potential consequences. If you are firm and fair at this point, most reasonable people will want to keep their job and are willing to begin the compliance process. If not, there is a good chance that you need this person off your team sooner than later. 
  4. Create a PIP – A Performance Improvement Plan demonstrates not only how serious you are, but your level of concern about performance, behaviors, and attitudes. Change won’t happen overnight, but a good PIP will get everyone headed in the right direction. If things ultimately don’t work out, then there won’t be any surprises. 
  5. Use good management follow through – It is important to sustain any course correction by managing the process, structure, communication, environment, and goals of the salesperson. There is a reason why things fell through the cracks, and it is up to you to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.