CHAPTER 12

Overview of Learning the Great Skill to Sell—The Fun Part

For New sales People, Experienced Sales People, Sales Managers and Sales Coaches

Now let’s get down to the final sales skill: “selling.”

Every business has to sell in order to survive, and not everyone understands how selling is a way of encouraging the customer to achieve what he or she needs. This chapter will introduce you to the principles of selling in a way that removes the fears that new or existing salespeople have. The key factor is to be open to learning new ways of selling and be willing to accept critique until you are up and skilled.

We have discussed through the book various methods proposed by RTOs and internal coaching systems. Here, I will present a seven-step simple selling approach that is easy to follow and understand. The main takeaway is that during the sales call, you should know, with some practice, where you are on the seven steps and how to get back on focus to complete the sale.

You may be sitting next to an experienced sales person in a Monday sales meeting, but this person may not be able to classify or repeat the 7 steps of the sale process. They probably just sell on auto pilot. I was one of these till I had an interest on how the process worked.

Who Will Benefit from This Chapter?

Those new to selling who are required to promote their organization and sell their products and services and those who need to understand the correct way to sell honestly and ethically. The chapter also delivers skills learning to sales managers and sales field coaches. You are never too old to learn the best way to sell to your customers, and this includes professional salespeople too.

Admission of Guilt—Time for Honesty

For years as a new sales person, I didn’t know the steps of the sale. I was never taught or given tuition on this very important subject. The Internet was not available, and companies were deficient in this coaching task; they just expected you to know. As time went on, you just forgot to learn the basic sales steps and got on with selling, or what you thought was selling; I call it “selling on autopilot.”

I would go so far as to say that 85 percent of professional salespeople out there cannot recite the full seven steps of the general sales process. For instance, I have found most sales managers can recite at least three to four steps but can’t clearly write down the seven steps as they themselves have not studied this process.

If, however, your sales manager or sales coach is unable to recite the seven sales steps, you may have a problem. During my coaching career, I did this simple test at the beginning of each sales course. Not one could recite the seven steps except a customer service person I worked with, and to my astonishment, she recited the seven steps backward! The group was amazed.

Is there any benefit of knowing this simple seven-step sales process? Some would say it is not on the high priority list, but I would argue otherwise. Going back to where I started off in sales, I now wish I had this information to study at the time.

What Will You Get Out of Learning a New Sales Technique?

Understanding a simple seven-step process of ethical sales and what to do next and how to gain the customer’s “real” attention—GFA.

Gaining Favorable Attention

Gaining attention and respect from your customers as a salesperson specialist and developing a role as a professional salesperson and product advisor.

When you first meet a new or existing customer, do the respectful greeting and wait for their response. Do not proceed with the sale until you have the full attention of the customer. They will have distractions such as email, intercom, phone and other people entering their office. Wait till you are convinced you have GFA.

Learn how to listen to your customer’s needs and provide solutions to overcome the customer’s problems; applying sales techniques that build rather than destroy relationships along with presenting the features and benefits of the solution and knowing how to present the solution.

How to gain the customer’s commitment to buy along with closing the sale and following through to ensure customer satisfaction; finally, how to conduct post-sales call self-critique analysis and the further use of customer relationship management (CRM) in support of prospecting sales.

Learning Outcomes for Ethical Sales

1. Participants should be able to understand and accept the benefits of working in an ethical sales-oriented culture in a global organization.
2. Support selling as a positive behavior for meeting customer needs.
3. Be able to use nonmanipulative sales techniques (ethical selling).
4. Finally, use features and benefits correctly to demonstrate their solutions and to promote products and services based on value rather than price.

In the end, if you apply the ideas presented, your success rate will improve over a six-month period. The proviso is that you apply an attitude of continual learning and self-analysis. In addition, you need to adopt a mentor and use your sales manager or field coach to assist you to improve.

Helpful hints: consider a few of the following preliminary suggestions:

• Never take your eyes off your customer; maintain complete focus during the sale.
• Keep to your SSO, or single sales objective.
• Do not be distracted by the ringing of your mobile phone; turn it off.
• Work on the customer relationship for several minutes, keeping this to a minimum.
• Establish the customer needs while assessing what you can offer instead.
• Do not assume anything during probing, summary, and closing.
• Maintain the seven-step sales process to keep on track.
• Customer follow-up should be completed and sent within 24 hours.
• Always ask to return again.
• Be positive, professional, and persistent.

Follow the very simple seven steps of the sale¹:

1. Meeting Plan
2. Customer Appointment and First Meeting—GFA
3. Needs Establishment
4. Demo – Presentation
5. Overcome Objections
6. Summary—Commitment
7. Close or Advance to Next Stage

The following seven steps of the sale are your cornerstone for ethical and professional sales technique; practice this method

1. Reason for sales call, utilize background customer information, come up with an SSO. Don’t visit the customer to meet and greet only, but have a sales objective for the visit.
2. Gaining favorable attention is vital. In the first meeting, you will spend more time chatting and developing a rapport. Time to establish customer positioning and summing up what potential is there for business.
3. Using probing questions of customer needs, you should be able to position your product to meet needs. Needs payoff can be established at this stage also.
4. Performing a product demo or presentation will solidify and bring together customer need resolution. There will be some questions and objections to answer, time to prepare your mind for the next step.
5. When objections come up, it is imperative to answer them objectively and accurately with the view that the customer sees them as solving their problem. If you are unable to answer a question, commit to providing the answer as soon as possible.
6. When you feel the sales call has progressed enough, summarize, incorporating need resolution, product offering, and any other feature and benefit required. If when the six steps have progressed suitably and you are comfortable to close, ask the question for close.
7. “Closing fear” appears at this point as you have not covered off objections correctly or you have totally missed your customer’s needs or aspirations. In addition, prework may not have been effective enough to uncover as much information as possible. Closing is only left for the point where you feel very satisfied your customer has traveled the process with buying signs and you consider the customer sees your solution and is saying yes to moving forward.

GFA—Gaining Favorable Attention of Your Customer

The seven steps will not proceed without any customer attention. Many sales managers consider this stage to be trivial and accept that they always get the attention of the customer. Personally, this step is the most important part of the sale. Research tells us that a customer will or will not like you within the first 60 seconds of meeting. A customer will consider during this very short period of time, whether they will let you continue and listen to you. If you miss this vital point of eye and body language contact, you have totally missed the first sign.

Observe the office, wall items, desk items, photos to connect with the customer first. This observation is essential to gauge the customer’s personality. Commit these physical items to memory for future sales calls.

Items You Will Need to Be Alert to and Aware of—Drilling Down Further

What information do you need regarding strategy, that is, what will you need to take into the sales call? Props, references, brochures, laptop, or tablet. Avoid taking in heavy overweight bags and briefcases. Ultimately, an iPad will suffice. Bags and luggage distract the customer.

Explore the customer situation, any business issues to talk about, challenges they have, and problems. Are there decision makers above the customer, or is the customer the key decision maker? Be sure your product will impact on their performance and when they are buying and how many. Timelines become important in the sales close.

Select the solution for your customer—needs-based selling While exploring the customer’s needs, be careful not to jump prematurely into your offer or solution. This can be a big trap, and you may end up running off course without realizing you have. If you offer your product/service solution, be very sure that it is going to solve the customer’s needs!

In your own mind, formulate your specific product/service offer and proceed to introduce your solution to assist the customer. It is very important when doing this to be aware of the body language accompanying your presentation; it is a great indicator to a “like or lost” scenario.

Customers pain tolerance could be introduced at this stage, suggesting that if the customer was not able to proceed to buying, what implications would arise.

AC—Always Be Closing

Listen to the customer’s objections and don’t rush into your answer. Think and respond to the objection, then watch the customer’s response for agreement or disagreement. If you don’t know the answers, say, “May I get back to you tomorrow with this answer,” and make sure you do!

After answering objections successfully, point out, pull in the features and benefits of your product, and summarize them into a solution for the customer. At this stage, evaluate the customer’s impression and look for buying signs or an agreement to consider, going forward. However, if at this stage you sense a nonbuying sign, ask if the solution is of assistance, and confirm the answer. You may at this stage need to go back to step 3 in the sales process.

Avoid Appearing Overly Pushy

Be confident in your position and offering. Draw the sale into a win–win situation, and do not be pushy.

Many Salespeople Fear the Closing Stage

Asking for the order is a precarious situation and, in some cases, you may feel you have got this in the bag, and the customer says no. “I will think about it”—they are being cautious and thorough. At this stage, if the customer has not said no, you are still in there. What do we do now? Asking the customer, “Have I covered all the product features adequately”? will at least provide you with a sense of acceptance.

What Is Most Important to the Customer during the Sales Process?

As a customer in buying mode, they are judging you constantly and also thinking of the following needs:

• Value for money, price, cost, competitiveness, customer service, and after-sales service. Keeping promises and reliability, maintaining quality, and ease of doing honest business. Meeting customer ego, customer aspirations and needs, service performance.
• Past performance as company reputation, and the company’s readiness to help post point of sale.

Relationship Strategies

Here are a few of the tactics I advocate for building sales relationships and making the customer feel important:

• Mutual interest: People are drawn to those who are similar to themselves or have similar interests; if you can learn what mutual interest you share with the customer, be sure to engage them in conversation about it.
• Ask for their opinions: This shows not only that you value their insights, but that you can learn a lot from the prospect by encouraging them to share their knowledge and experience. Customers like to be asked questions and opinions.
• Indicate that you care: This is often achieved by demonstrating to the prospect that you’d like to remain informed. Ask about the customer’s present situation and the outcomes he or she is seeking.
• Compliments: It’s important to tell them not only what you like but why you like it; otherwise, you may be perceived as “insincere.” The same is true of personal compliments. Be sure to focus on the individual’s actions and not traits.
• Past Rep! If you are in the unfortunate position of filling in after a past rep who had a bad reputation and burnt many customers, my advice is to tread carefully and not to sell hard. Start by acknowledging the person’s behavior and apologize, but say you are ethical and will not show such behavior yourself.
• Be a challenger (discussed in earlier chapters): The challenger is known for high sales achievement. What this means is challenging your customer for the best outcome for them.
• Sales as a conversation: In the end, the sales process must be seen as a natural and normal discussion. If it is disjointed, then the customer will be suspicious of lack of skills or of product knowledge.

Post-Sales Call Critique: A Critical Step in Self-Improvement

For many new salespeople, preparing the sales call and appointment, visiting the customer, and noting any follow-up required complete the call. Unfortunately, it is not. Prior to walking to your car, sit for 5 minutes quietly and conduct a “post-sales call critique.”

The reason for this is to look back on your SSO: the attention you received from your customer and whether you got through the seven sales steps and came out with a conclusion/close or moved forward with the opportunity. The critique is to enable you to be honest with yourself about the methods of selling you used and whether there are any areas of performance you can improve on.

The following questions are used as a guide: you can make up your own questions

• Were you on time for the appointment, and did you exchange business cards?
• Did you “gain favorable attention” from your customer, and were you relaxed?
• Did you understand the customer’s position and needs, or did you stray from this?
• Did you find out who is the decision maker or makers/did you get their names?
• Did you find out when the customer needs to place their order (by what date)?
• Is the customer a KDM (key decision maker)?
• Did you center on the implications if the customer may not receive funding?
• In summing up, has the customer made a commitment to exploring further or ordering?
• Did the customer commit to seeing you again?
• Did you accomplish the SSO?

Helpful Hint

Again, review all these question in order. If you are getting a lot of “no” answers, look carefully at each question and assess why the answer is no. For instance, the customer shut down and did not give you the attention you needed. Why was this?

How to Self-Critique—Method Suggestion

If you are having problems with any of the items on the preceding checklist, ask your mentor or sales manager coach to visit customers with you and to watch your conduct over several sales calls. Rectifying bad habits is difficult. On recognizing the habit, work on one at a time, not an entire group of bad habits.

These Are More In-Depth Questions

• Did I sell correctly?
• Did I hold the customer’s interest?
• Did I understand the customer’s present needs?
• Did I emphasize the features and benefits?
• Did I simplify my presentation?
• Did I watch nonverbal signals?
• Did I answer the objections properly?
• Did I match the argument at the right time?

Critique Frequency

How many times a day should I critique myself? As you commence in sales and are still learning the skill, I would suggest that you critique yourself after every sale. Many salespeople come out of a sales call and say “I mucked up” and yet continue on without any positive change or self-reflection. You must identify where you need to improve.

Post-Sales Call Follow-Up Checklist

Sales is not the only task we do each day. There are a multitude of tasks we need to do each day to keep up. Here are some of them:

• CRM/Sales view entry of each sales call and information of the sale advance.
• Project Sheet: Call a meeting to advance the information and allocation of project tasks.
• Tasks Entry: Make notes of when the next sales call is to be, and enter appointment date.
• Notes: Enter into tasks what the customer needs quickly and follow-up dates to book.
• Advance: Consider what items you need, whom you need to engage, and when you need this engagement.
• You should write back to your customer, thanking them for their time and quoting the items you are forwarding on soon.

Post-Sales Data Entry

What Should I Put in My CRM/Sales View Notes So Others Fully Understand Too?

There are several types of CRM/Sales View entries. Some are too short and do not provide enough information, and some are much too long. I would suggest the following entry.

Date/day and customer that come up automatically on each entry.

Example 1: Sales call went well. Customer provided good time to establish position and department needs. Need centered on enough funding, and there are three decision makers—customer, John Johnson, and CEO Margret Smith. All others are low down on the KDM list. They need three new sheds constructed. Next step is Quote requested.

Example entry: could be shortened but does explain well for the viewer. It could be shortened a little or abbreviated into a sales code.

You have the order now—is this the end of my work?

Congratulations!

Your first order has been sent through, and you are excited to prove yourself to your sales manager and team members. You receive some congratulatory calls, and you go home feeling quite chuffed. So you should. However, did you analyze why and how you succeeded?

The following questions may be of help

• Did you keep the customer’s attention through the sales cycle?
• Did you offer a specific helpful customer solution?
• Did you engage other team members in the sale?
• Where could you improve even though you secured the sale?
• What can you do better?
• What did you do well to build on for future sales?

Securing your first sale feels wonderful, but this is only the beginning. Each subsequent sale will be different and require innovative selling techniques. “Selling is to me fun and exhilarating when it goes well, even on the worst of days; look for the good in each of your days activities.” In addition, find the fun in dealing with different and various customer engagements.

When Do You Walk Away from a Sale and Why?

Walking away is difficult and hard. It’s especially hard when you’re walking away from a potential sale; after all, you’ve spent time, energy, and resources building a relationship, and giving up means you’ll have nothing to show for it. But in the long run, knowing when to walk away and delete a lead will make you far more effective.²

The following reasons to cancel or delete an opportunity

1. The prospect can’t answer these three questions: The sales process requires some detective skills. You need to gauge your prospect’s pain threshold or pushing their bruise. This term is used to see if the customer will react to sensitive questions or problems that need solving.

   Ask yourself the following questions: What does success look like with this opportunity? Who else will be involved in this decision? By when do you need to have this opportunity completed?

   If the prospect says, “I don’t know,” it means that either he or she is not serious or is not a decision maker. And if it’s the latter? Well, somewhere during the approval process, the real decision maker will ask her those same questions. Without a satisfactory response, the deal won’t move forward. Just don’t forget the customer is consulting the key decision makers up the line.

   Before you give up, try saying, “I’m worried that unless we can figure out what you’re hoping to accomplish—and by when—this might not be the best investment of your time. Should we take notes on our conversation and log this into CRM?”

2. They really don’t have the budget: Salespeople are used to hearing “We don’t have the budget” and “I can’t afford that price.” That shouldn’t be your cue to give up; many prospects use price as a convenient excuse to get off the phone. However, some companies really won’t be able to afford your product. Here’s where you should try digging a little deeper.
3. You’re competing with three other vendors: Given your line of work, you probably enjoy a little competition. Some sales managers are constantly reminded that “if we did go for this opportunity, we may have had a small chance of winning.” But if you are competing with the preferred vendor, you need to know when to back off and move to another opportunity.
4. They go quiet and dark, not taking your follow-up calls: Out of nowhere, your prospect fell off the face of the cliff. They won’t return your calls, answer your e-mails, or respond to your LinkedIn messages. Eventually, you turn to your sales manager to engage the customer. This scenario generally starts and continues for months until the customer announces the competitor has won the business.
5. Working with a customer as a champion inside the account: If a prospect is unable to introduce you to other stakeholders; talk about his or her budget; share their decision criteria; or answer your questions about their needs, desires, and pain points, he or she is likely a coach. This is someone who can be valuable in providing context around his or her company’s internal politics and decision-making processes but lacks the authority or influence to impact a deal. Having a coach within the opportunity is a key role and can provide you with information about what is going on so you can adjust your target strategy actions. If the coach says, “Forget this deal, it won’t happen,” do you continue or abandon the prospect?
6. They Don’t See Your Value: It’s the salesperson’s responsibility to educate the buyer on their solution’s value. If your prospect is struggling to understand why they need your product and how it will help achieve their goals, redefine your value proposition, show the customer case studies, send them testimonials from your happiest clients, and so on. The main thing is to identify the objection stopping the onward progress of the opportunity.
7. It’s Not a Good Fit: If your product won’t help the prospect, are you obligated to walk away? At the end of the day, your mission shouldn’t be closing; it should be delivering the best solution to your customers.

   Imagine you are selling battery power tools to a mining company that is located miles from a generator. Think of the logic and if the customer would even see you at all.

Helpful Hint

To walk away from a sale is seen by many as committing suicide of sale ethics. Suggesting that you don’t pursue every opportunity/lead is to some salespeople the worst of selling ethics.

I, on the other hand, think it is smart business to walk away if the work up of the opportunity has been exhaustively thrashed out, and all key stakeholders agree too, then move onto the next opportunity.

Walking away from an opportunity should be a collaborative decision, no jut the sales manager. You as the sales person will play a big role on this final decision.

 

¹ Teaching Sales/Suzanne Fogel, David Hoffmeister, Richard Rocco, Daniel P. Strunk/Harvard Business Review/An insight into the need for trained and qualified sales coaches. Runs along the same lines as my thoughts.

² W. Humphries. 3 Excellent Reasons You Should Walk Away from a Sale, May 17, 2016. Three reasons to walk away, but there are many more than this example reference.