Category Archives: Selling skills

Just A Blank Notepad

Leave a reply

A consultative approach in business-to-business selling is perhaps the most effective these days.

When you spend time with the right decision maker/s and understanding their needs before offering any solution, you have a much stronger chance of doing business.

Believe it or not, many salespeople still roar into action from the very first minute spent with their prospect and start presenting before finding out what their needs are. In Brian Jude’s words – “that is telling, not selling”. Others refer to this approach as a “product and feature dump”.

What type of approach do you use? Are you trained into a generic approach, or have you crafted an approach that works for you? By  “approach”, I mean preparing the questions you need to ask a prospect about their needs and their business. Not just a one-size-fits-all question list, but a list of questions referring specifically to that prospect, based on what you have already researched or found out about their business. It’s called pre-call planning – an essential step in consultative selling.

After asking those quality questions and finding out what their exact needs are, it is worth reviewing and agreeing what their specific priorities are.

Quality questions and a blank notepad is all you need for your first meeting, not a trillion brochures and an order book.  However if your particular product or service lends itself toward a short sales cycle, and if the buyer is ready to make a decision right then and there (i.e. at that phase in their buy cycle), perhaps you could present your solution at that early meeting too. 

Here’s to your first appointment success!

Regards
Suzanne Burgess

Turn On Those Sales Ears

Leave a reply
Mutual understanding. That’s the result of effective communication.

Listening is an extremely important selling skill. I still wince when someone says “he’s got the gift of the gab, he can sell anything” because I’m a believer in the ‘One mouth, Two ears’ practice when it comes to selling i.e. less talking, more listening.

Listening attentively shows respect. It builds rapport. It makes the person really open up. Isn’t that what we sales professionals want our clients to do as early up in the sales cycle as possible? Sharing their  REAL needs and drivers is what we want in order to determine whether or not we are a good fit in terms of providing our service or product.

Asking the right questions is of course, paramount. However sometimes prospects do open up of their own accord and let you know exactly what their problems are. This enables you to get to the bottom of their needs and requirements instead of just scratching the surface.  That is, If you can hold back on butting in excitedly in order to try to sell them on a solution immediately.

Sometimes in our attempts to show a prospect that we really “get” them, we end up cutting them short in their explanation of the real situation. Let them talk.

Encourage them to open up even further. Challenge them to look at something from a different perspective. Make sure you re-state the facts and what you’ve picked up about their perspective so that you can check your understanding. Then, summarise what you have learned and use this as the basis for building your proposal or walking away i.e. making a “go” or “no-go” decision.

Cheers for sales ears!

Regards
Suzanne Burgess

Organise Yourself For Future Success

Leave a reply

In your sales career you need to decide what you want to achieve, whether it be: peer or professional recognition, outstanding results, a business breakthrough, being a person of integrity or being a truly successful person who balances home and business life. Or a combination of the above.

 Having crystallised your thinking on the worthwhile goals you want to achieve, it is wise to capitalise on your sales strengths, talents and skills which distinguish you from peers and competitors. 

Take charge of future success by aligning yourself with like-minded achievers who have an unstoppable attitude and positive expectancy to win. Develop a blueprint and written plan of action in which your long-term goals are broken down into practical, measureable activities.

 By planning your progress step-by-step, day-by-day, week-by-week, a productive,  results-orientated routine emerges. Diligently allocate and diarise regular time slots. Set deadlines and organise activities systematically. 

Disciplined, self-confident action and focus will ensure success. Above all, with dogged determination, follow through on your dream!

Is April An Annual “Go Slow” Month for Sales Folks?

Leave a reply

April – the bane of many a sales rep’s existence here in South Africa – eclipsed only by December (and the first half of January)  in terms of slow sales.

There’s less selling time because of all the public holidays, all of our prospects have disappeared, half of our co-workers are missing from their desks, all of our deals are so much harder to close …

Is this true or is it our mindset that’s holding us back from achieving stellar sales results?

Here we are, at the beginning of a brand new month, the start of Q2 and in fact we’re only losing 3 selling days in April, not half the month as some folks would like us to believe.

There are many selling activities that don’t have to stop just because it’s holiday season. Prospecting, lead research and client communication can all be stepped up. So what if your key contact is basking on the beach or watching a hippo take a bath – the whole company hasn’t closed down – what about the other 5 people involved in that buying decision that you haven’t spoken to yet?

Selling always requires innovative and creative thinking and action – the month of April puts us to the test.

A Sales Metamorphosis

Leave a reply
metamorphosis (noun)
“a process in which somebody/something changes into something completely different,  especially over a period of time”  – The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary

We’re all familiar with the most common example of a metamorphosis in nature – that of a tiny butterfly’s egg becoming a caterpillar and then becoming a butterfly.  What about using the same descriptor to change from a sales newbie or underachiever to top achiever?  Is it possible that by applying a process, giving someone enough time to make the changes and to do the hard work, that they could metamorphose into someone at the top of their sales game?

Of course it’s possible. The deciding factor is the amount of hard work one is prepared to do in order to make the transition. Who knows how hard it is for that little caterpillar to spin that cocoon. Who knows how hard it is for the baby butterfly to crack that cocoon open in order to escape. The one thing we do know is that if the caterpillar was wired to have a choice between doing the hard work or not, it may never experience the freedom of the skies. 

If we want to metamorphose into sales achievers, the choice is ours.  We can choose to do the hard work of figuring out what makes a successful sales achiever in our particular sales environment. We can choose to continually learn and practice the selling skills required. We can choose to continually gather the business knowledge necessary to make the transition. Or we can continue to do absolutely nothing.

Reign in your “over-giving”

1 Reply

As salespeople do you think we should reign in our tendency of “over-giving” when it comes retaining clients? Or should we be at someone’s beck and call if we want to keep their business? Where do you draw the line?

Diagnosis is half the cure – use a Needs Assessment

1 Reply

Get face to face with your client

When coaching or recruiting B2B sales folks, I always try to establish whether or not they are in the habit of conducting a well-defined needs assessment for each qualified prospect they see. In most sales processes, this is an extremely important milestone because if your subsequent sales proposal doesn’t “talk to” the right need, the probability of a successful sales outcome is extremely low.

If you’ve qualified your prospect thoroughly, most likely you have determined that they do have a need – but not always. Sometimes a need may exist and be obvious but sometimes the need might be undetermined or non-existent, then you have to work that out by asking the right questions. This is the essence of a consultative selling approach.

Having the right needs assessment in place will pay dividends.