FIVE STEPS TO SYSTEMATIC SALES SUCCESS

How did you make your last sale? Can you specifically identify every action and step, the flow to your conversations, and what worked well? With a lot of thought you probably can track how you did what you did—from opening the conversation to closing and getting the “buy” decision.

This is because you are consciously or unconsciously using a system for your sales conversations. You already have established a routine and comfortable way of conducting yourself and your sales calls. Your routine has been adopted over the course of your career, and it’s most likely very comfortable for you. You may even work through your sales conversations without a lot of thought about how you’re doing it.

This routine is producing your current level of success. If you are satisfied with your results at this time, then you probably don’t need the ideas and tools in this book.

But if you are like the top performers I know, you may wonder, “How do I sell even more?” and “How can I capture more sales, in less time, and with more ease?” Top performers look for incremental adjustments in their selling to help them sell more. This attitude of continual improvement is why I really enjoy working with top performers and willing students; they often discover that going back to the basics for their sales conversations can easily catapult their efforts and sales by 5 or 10 percent.

Or maybe you are newer to sales and trying to save time and shortcut the trial-and-error process to quickly ramp up your sales. In either case, one sure-fire way to become more proficient is to dissect how you work through your sales conversations to identify the system that leads you to success most often.

Such analysis is a lot of work and may be limited by time, your personal habits, and your experiences. Fortunately, you don’t have to go to all the trouble of constructing a system that will lead to more sales conversation success. The five-step sales system I’m about to outline—WIIFT^™—was developed by observing thousands of sales professionals around the globe and sharpened through application in many different industries.

I purposely use the acronym W-I-I-F-T (note all capital letters) for the steps of this system to give double meaning to the term WiifT (What’s in it for Them) that you learned about in Chapter 2. WIIFT in all caps stands for each of the five steps—Wait, Initiate, Investigate, Facilitate, and Then Consolidate—in this guide to making every conversation count.

This system may challenge your current practices and actions. I ask that you put your assumptions, ego, and current beliefs on hold and objectively consider minor or major adjustments to your approach that just may elevate your sales in a short time.

The WIIFT sales system guides you toward a greater probability of success in every conversation, allowing you to:

• Ensure success with consistent and conscious actions.

• Replicate it over and over in all situations, with minor adjustments.

• Diagnose gaps in stalled sales or troublesome situations, allowing you to close the gap and advance the sale.

Your sales conversations gain efficiency when you take the related parts—introductions, POWNs analysis, building rapport and trust, negotiating, and closing sales—and organize them into a system.

Figure 3–1 is your visual aid to the system that allows you to capture that Win³ described in Chapter 2. Each component of the graphic represents a key principle to collaborative selling success:

1. Prepare, or preparation, is the foundation of your conversation and makes every aspect of your conversation more effective.
2. Prove is the umbrella over the whole system, present throughout the sales conversation and relationship. It begins in pre-sales and in every action you take or don’t take for the entire sales cycle and relationship. Proving includes using information about your solution, company, and yourself.
3. The five steps of the system—Wait, Initiate, Investigate, Facilitate, and Then Consolidate (WIIFT)—are in the middle of the model as the center of your conversation success.
4. The dots are you! They indicate your involvement. Your expertise, credibility, and experiences are critical components in this equation.

We begin our overview of the model at the center, with WIIFT. As you read through this systematic approach to your conversations, think about your most successful sales conversations and how they have most likely followed these steps.

Step 1: Wait

Just as the first step of every system is the launch for the rest, your conversation success with WIIFT starts with the Wait step. The purpose of Wait is for you to maximize the value of the time with your buyer as you prepare for the specific conversation on paper; a time when you break your preoccupation with everything else, and mentally begin to focus on this buyer and situation.

This often is the step we miss because it’s so easy to jump into a conversation without making the time to pull our thoughts or our words together when we have a sales opportunity. As a result, this could be the end of your sale instead of the beginning!

As the anchor to your conversation, this is the only step completely in your control. The Wait step is about preparation—which may begin days or even weeks before your initial conversation—with research, a review of prior documentation, or team meetings. It ends with your mental pause just before the actual contact with your buyer. When you are ready, move to the next step.

Step 2: Initiate

The purpose of the Initiate step in WIIFT is to open the door to a value-filled conversation and connect with the buyer to build trust, engage them, and earn the right to ask questions. This step begins your connection with the buyer. However, it does not only relate to a first-time conversation—it is applicable to the opening moments in every conversation.

Permission to talk business is earned by demonstrating your focus on What’s in it for Them? from the very start. Initiate includes your greeting and introduction, confirms the reason for connecting and the time allotted for the conversation, then turns the focus directly to them. Even if you know the person, a good initiation makes a relevant connection to build upon. Initiating productively earns you the right to move forward to the third step.

Step 3: Investigate

From Initiate, your conversation easily flows into Investigate. The Investigate step in WIIFT identifies the problems, opportunities, wants, and needs; qualifies the buyer; and clarifies the sense of urgency in addressing their POWNs.

More than fact-finding for needs, although that is important, you expand your value and potential for collaboration by discovering and exploring problems, opportunities, and wants as well—the POWNs introduced in Chapter 2.

Collaborative sellers take a broader and more strategic approach to their sales conversations than just looking for their needs. They:

• Explore and review the current and future problems of their buyers.

• Aid their buyers in capturing opportunities for their business, roles, and lives that they might not have considered.

• Take time to explore the wants and emotional aspects of the buyer and situation. Even though most buyers make their business case or decision with logic, emotional factors are often the true underlying motivator to the decision.

Relevant open-ended questions asked during this step get the buyer talking while you actively listen, take notes, paraphrase, and ask additional questions. This lets you confirm that you both understand the buyer’s POWNs. The information gathered and discovered together, including whether this is a qualified buyer of your solution, opens the potential for collaborating in the next step.

Step 4: Facilitate

While the Investigate step is the crux for most consultative sales systems, collaborative conversations place at least as much emphasis on the Facilitate step. The purpose of Facilitate is to make it easy to connect your solution to their POWNs and collaborate through objections or questions with Them.

The key components of Facilitating are educating, recommending, and collaboratively exploring appropriate solutions for fit and value. Your customized recommendation to the buyer’s POWNs presents only relevant information about features and benefits that apply to that person, situation, or company while generating a feedback loop with the buyer.

This collaboration also helps you constructively work through any concerns, questions, or objections: the basis for good negotiation. Matching the solution and working through objections leads the conversation into the final step.

Step 5: Then Consolidate

The “close” is often the target within a sales system. While we need to close the sale, focusing solely on the close can be limiting because not every sales conversation ends in a buying decision. In collaborative sales, every conversation should be consolidated and end with closure . . . for you and for them.

Then Consolidate is the last step of WIIFT. I took the liberty of using the letter “T” in “Then” to create a phrase that consolidates several key activities that close each conversation and eventually the sale. The objective of Then Consolidate is to advance or make the sale by securing the decision or commitment and clarifying the next steps. A commitment to a decision or action at the end of every conversation helps you advance the sale more quickly and eliminate redundancy in follow-up actions and conversations.

Consolidating or bringing closure begins with a recap of how your solution addresses their POWNs, then seeks a commitment to a decision and identifies the next steps for all parties.

Your success in securing a decision or commitment relies on the Investigate and Facilitate steps. The conversation does end with closure—a final confirmation of expectations and a sincere, personalized closing statement.

The WIIFT systematic approach to sales conversations is a road map for reaching a successful closure every time. Each step of WIIFT is useful on its own and also builds on the preceding one, making transitioning from step to step easy. As part of the system, each step can be dissected for study and application. You will realize greater and greater success as your skills become so habitual that the steps are connected seamlessly into a fluid, meaningful, and logical conversation with your buyer.

The WIIFT system isn’t so specific and prescriptive that you become robotic in your conversations. It allows for flexibility for your style, industry, buyers, and situations. All of this allows you to be genuine, to be really you, as discussed in Chapter 1. Think of it as the curbs along the side of the road that keep us safe and guide us to our destination, yet leave room for us to maneuver within the lanes, even allowing for U-turns when necessary!

WIIFT is effective both in one-visit selling situations and for strategic sales. My consulting team follows the WIIFT system for the many steps in the corporate sales cycle that often occur over nine to eighteen months! This system is also used in three-minute telesales that are inbound. I wish I would’ve known about a systematic sales approach when I tried mall jewelry sales as a second job after college! Following WIIFT each time you are in conversation with your buyer, whether it is a three-minute or three-hour conversation, keeps the sale moving forward or lets you know that the probability is low and you can move your time and energy to more probable sales opportunities.

And now you’ve had your introductory overview of the five steps of WIIFT. Chapters 5 through 10 outline specific whats and hows for each step, sprinkled with plenty of examples and best practices. To keep yourself relevant, adjust the steps and tools to best fit your style, company processes, industry, and customer types.

WIIFT is the center of the model and is central to your conversation. However, the five steps are also surrounded by two actions that are just as important, Prepare and Prove.