Creating a pleasant buying experience

Why wouldn’t you want to make buying from you a pleasant experience for your prospects? If your approach is anything but this, then you may need to consider whether you’re in the right job.

Prospects demand higher levels of service than ever and want to deal with someone who they trust to deliver the solution and who takes the time to understand their unique (to them) needs. Today’s prospects are also going to give you referrals to future business and provide case and reference studies for you, so it’s in your interest to make the buying experience as pain-free and helpful as you can. This does not, however, mean rolling over and submitting to every whim.

Be human and engage with your prospects, but do so genuinely. If you ask questions, then ask them sincerely and actually listen to the answers. Avoid clichés like “How are you today?” You’re not looking to build a friendship or find a best buddy for fishing trips, so keep it professional (but nothing’s wrong with adding a bit of human touch, either). You can take an interest in your prospect as a person and pick up on clues that may be visible, such as sports photos, but make sure that anything you comment on is done sincerely and not as a glib comment in passing. For some reason that I have never really figured out, a lot of my prospects are soccer fans and so I make a point of keeping up-to-date with headline soccer news so I can have a real conversation about it should the need arise.

You also need to care about, and be seen to care about, the issues that individual prospects seek to address with your solution. You may have seen these issues hundreds of times and already know what they’re going to say, but let them tell you the problems, listen carefully, and engage with a positive answer that’s tailored to each individual prospect’s needs and not some off-pat response that you always say at this stage. For example, I was once involved in selling campaign tracking software solutions and could almost guarantee that I knew what questions would arise and in what order, because I had heard them so many times. Every time I was in front of a prospect, though, the questions were treated with respect and answered with explanations as if the prospect were the first ever to ask.

The process of managing expectations is an important one in new business sales, and you should use it, among other things, to make the buying process pleasant so your prospects always know where you are and what you’ve achieved (because you tell them). Use contact reports (as I introduce in Chapter 3) as a tool to assist you here.

Fostering long-term buying opportunities

Not all sales cycles conclude as quickly as you’d like them to, even when there seems to be little reason why your prospect can’t move ahead. Other sales cycles are, by their very nature, always elongated, especially in high-value capital goods or services such as buildings or other infrastructure projects with multimillion-dollar price tags.

When conducting longer-term sales cycles, be patient, especially when you can’t see the reason for slower-than-expected progress. As long as you’re covering the bases and qualifying continually (see Chapter 19 for details), you’re in the right place. You need to gain an understanding of the buying cycle from your prospect’s perspective, which will give you the required insight.

In longer-term sales cycles, the relationship always comes before the sale, and how you conduct it will help you get over the finish line in first place. As I was writing this chapter, I received an email from a potential supplier. I’m the prospect in this instance for a business-to-business tool that will assist in the daily operation of my business. We had some discussions several weeks ago, and then both the salesperson and I were away so we scheduled a touch point for this week, which she duly confirmed in an email as her type of contact report, along with the decisions we had already agreed on. For reasons that she likely won’t feel especially relevant for a delay, I don’t plan to move forward into a sale just yet, although the qualification shows that I’m ready. I’m actually going to be traveling over the next few weeks and want to wait until I return because I’m on the critical path for the implementation, or so I believe.

She’ll get the sale because the solution fits, although other solutions could also do the job, but she built a relationship with me, and I’m confident that she’ll ensure that our implementation succeeds. The only way she can lose the sale now is if she makes a mess of the longer-than-expected sales cycle.

You likely won’t be able to do much to speed up the buying cycle if you feel a mismatch with your sales cycle. For example, the email I received today offered a 10 percent discount for a close this month. Although a discount would be welcome, this is a strategic purchase that isn’t driven by cost.

Building your reputation for buyers

Your reputation as a new business salesperson goes before you and is something that you need to build on and protect. In addition to making prospects like and want to deal with you, your reputation opens the door to many new opportunities as you’re more likely to get good, solid referrals. Prospects will begin to seek you out and ask to deal with you.

Among the ways to build a reputation with people yet to interact with you are to use social media and speaking opportunities, and you can find many great books and articles on these topics. To provide a quick overview, you can enhance your social media reputation building by

• Writing articles and posting them on LinkedIn and Twitter
• Posting value-added comments on existing posts on LinkedIn and Twitter
• Engaging in discussions on both those platforms and on Facebook business pages

Post on a regular basis, and you’ll both build up followers and enhance your reputation. (For more information, have a look at LinkedIn For Dummies, 4th Edition, by Joel Elad and Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 3rd Edition, by Shiv Singh and Stephanie Diamond; both are published by Wiley.)

Getting involved in speaking opportunities with local business groups or chambers of commerce is often as easy as just asking because they’re usually desperate for good speakers. Breakfast meetings are another good opportunity to both build your reputation and practice speaking because they often include a roundtable 60-second slot as well as a main speaker at each meeting. These are excellent opportunities both to talk about your product or solution and to position yourself as an expert in your field — someone audience members can remember the next time they have a requirement in that area.

The bottom line in terms of reputation building is to have prospects seek you out as someone they want to deal with, which is exactly the effect that you want to create and couldn’t be further away from the hard-selling environment. (And note that after you build a positive reputation, you need to maintain it; I explain how to do so later in this chapter.)

Enhancing your credibility

When you initially meet a new prospect, chances are that he won’t know a lot about you, but if he’s on the ball, he’ll have done some background checking. One of your first jobs subconsciously is to enhance your credibility in your prospect’s eyes so that he sees you as a partner who can help achieve his objectives and not some sales guy who wants to take the money and run.

Enhance your credibility as you win new business by doing the following:

• Listen more than you talk. Practice active listening as I cover in Chapter 2, and be sure to use your mouth and ears in proportion — two ears and one mouth should be a clue! Don’t attempt to sell to prospects, especially in the early touch points. Take the time to listen and understand what they’re trying to achieve, and then in a consultative manner you can guide them to your solution as the best fit.
• Observe body language. What prospects do is often as important as what they say. If you see that you’re losing your prospect’s attention — perhaps he’s looking around and not focusing on you — then stop talking. Use the power of silence to refocus his attention. If the words you’re hearing aren’t consistent with the body language you’re observing, then challenge and requalify his real need. If the need is genuine and the prospect has the authority, then he should be engaging with you; if you aren’t getting this engagement, ask whether this is a good time and suggest rescheduling when he can give you the necessary attention. If you’re seen as being focused and professional, then your prospect should reflect that.
• When you ask questions, make them open ended to give an opportunity for your prospects to tell you what you need to know. Try to avoid questions that can result in yes or no answers and get them to elaborate on key points. Ask questions such as “How does this …?”, “What do you think about this …?”, and “Why do you think that this …?” — questions that are intended to encourage your prospect to open up to you and engage in a meaningful conversation that will help you with both qualification and moving the sales cycle forward.

Maintaining your reputation

After you’ve enhanced your credibility as being seen as a partner in a consultative approach to the prospect’s problem, you need to begin to deliver to maintain your reputation. Stay in contact between touch points. And be sure you do as you say you will and document it in contact reports.

When you don’t win a sale or when the sales opportunity goes away for circumstances beyond your control, you maintain your reputation and credibility with the way that you handle these types of situations. If you implement these golden rules, you’ll live to fight another day:

• Stay in touch. Staying in touch doesn’t mean pestering or phoning frequently to see whether your prospect has changed his mind; instead, schedule quarterly emails or brief messages just to let your prospect know that you’re still available if needed. A good way of doing this in a positive and nonobtrusive manner is to send news or information snippets that are relevant to your prospect’s situation and maybe ask questions like “Does this have an impact on you?” or “How are you solving this issue?”
• Thank the prospect for the opportunity. Thanking someone for the opportunity is just as it sounds. When a sales cycle ends without a deal being struck, send a thank-you note saying that you appreciate being given the opportunity to discuss a potential solution and wish him every success with whichever path he selects, even if it’s with a competitor. You want to be seen as a good guy and one who your prospect can return to if the first choice goes wrong, so never burn bridges. You may, of course, encounter him later in another role or another company, and this will give you a head start.
• Walk away professionally. Walking away professionally involves accepting defeat gracefully and not sniping at either your prospect or his chosen path. Shake hands if in person, or if email, give a “best wishes” note, and don’t attempt to interfere with his selected solution. See Chapter 20 for more information on walking away.