May/100
The shoemakers children could have had shoes, if only….
I wrote a blog post last week about dumb things that otherwise smart people do or say. The conclusion of the post was that there is always something to learn in order to improve, and it is foolish to think otherwise, or to avoid efforts for self-improvement because of this misconception.
To make the point, I invoked the spirit of Abraham Lincoln (sharpen your ax before trying to cut down the big tree) and Lance Armstrong (ride your strengths, train your weaknesses). I suggested that in your efforts to sharpen and train, there are plenty of books, blogs, podcasts, etc. to help you.
But what’s the problem?
Which ax should you sharpen? Which weakness should you train?
The advice is my last blog is good advice (if I may say so myself), but it presumes that a person knows what needs improvement. This is often not the case. What to do?
Let’s attack this like salespeople – PROFESSIONAL salespeople!
When I go to meet with a prospect, I don’t assume that I know what issues they might have. I don’t even assume that the prospect is aware of the issues they might have. I go into the meeting with the idea that IT IS MY JOB to help me and my prospect discover together what issues might exist that I might be able to help with.
In the vernacular of the sales process described in my book, Mastering Your Sales Process, I call this step “Needs Analysis”.
Have you heard of it? It is THE core element of a professional selling system. If we don’t know what our prospect needs to fix, how on earth can we offer a solution that has value to them?
Do you have some kind of a systematic needs analysis that you use with your prospects? (If not, shame on you!). How did you develop it? Could you develop a new needs analysis for a new kind of prospect if the opportunity to do so arose? What if you got a new job? What if your company started selling in a new market, or started selling a new kind of solution? You would have to develop a new needs analysis system in order to be successful. The ability to do so is an important part of being an effective salesperson in an ever changing world.
So what if the product was you?
See where we are going here?
If the goal is the improve, but the question is “improve what?”, then the answer is needs analysis. Do you know how to do one? If so, do a needs analysis on yourself as a salesperson, or a tennis player, or a spouse, or whatever area of your life that you want to improve. When you find your answer, go find books or podcasts or coaches that can help you.
If you can’t find the answer yourself, recruit the help of a friend, a co-worker, a manager, a life coach, or a spiritual adviser (for those of you in my adopted home state of California).
If after all of this you can’t come up with an answer, then allow me to suggest that your first skill to improve is the skill of developing and conducting a needs analysis on ANY kind of problem that comes along. It will make you a better salesperson, and will give you an important tool with which to improve all of the areas of your life that are worthy of an investment of energy towards the return of self improvement.
Then you can do the needs analysis on yourself, and go after all of the rest of the stuff!
May/101
What my friend and I learned about (sales) process by doing the dishes.
Lessons in life can come from funny places. Sometimes, we don’t even realize the point of the lesson until years – even decades later.
I was doing the dishes last week, and I was reminded of just this – a lesson that a college roommate and I shared about process that we learned by doing the dishes, some 23 years ago! So here is that short story, the lesson we learned, and how it applies to your potential for success in sales.
When friends live together in college, doing the dishes can often become a source of tension (especially when they don’t get done). When it was my turn to do the dishes, I had a style that was different than that of my friend, so of course, he gave me a hard time about it.
His method was to fill the sink with all of the dirty dishes, pour in some soap and water, and fish around for dishes in the grungy water while struggling to find room between the top of the dish pile and the faucet to rinse each dish after washing it.
My method was to first rinse off all of the gunk, then put all of the dishes on the counter, and fill the sink with a small amount of clean, soapy water. I then gave each gunk-free dish a quick swoosh through the “bath”, and rinse it.
So my friend teased me about this multi-step process of mine until one day, he came up to me out of the blue, and said, “hey, I tried that rinse first method of yours, and it was a lot faster than my way”.
Wow. That kind of admission just doesn’t happen too often between 20-something college guys! Now this blog post isn’t really about the dishes, so let’s not get hung up on what might be the best way to do the dishes. It is about process and preparation, so let’s move things along in that direction!
Much like my college friend before his dish-process enlightenment, my co-workers used to often tease me about the time I took to map out a task list at the end of each day so that my work was organized for the next day. In spite of the teasing, I typically sold more than most of them, and went home earlier each day.
Hmmmmmmm.
Sense a patter here? Let’s try a few more:
- When I train and consult, I suggest that an introduction call script be prepared, printed and practiced before the first introduction call is made.
- When I consult around negotiations, I spend more time than my client expects fleshing out the position of OUR side: what we really want (interests); what we are willing to do without; and where we will walk away (BATNA).
- When I do the dishes, as you now know, I first get the gunk off of the plates before I break out the soap.
The point is the same in all of these cases
The point is that the execution of your work (an introduction call, a negotiation, the dishes) can be made more efficient and effective if you take the time to properly set up the work before you start doing it (working on a script; identifying the position of your own side; scrapping the gunk).
Lessons in life come from funny places. Many of the best lessons wind up being the kind of thing your grandmother would say – simple, effective, non-sexy, non-glamorous – but they work.
- The nutrition community cites expensive studies that suggest you should eat more vegetables.
- The health community commissions expensive studies and declares that a few drinks a day is not so bad, and might even be helpful (everything in moderation, says Grandma).
- Old expressions like “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” make us roll our eyes when we hear it from the older generation. But by golly, they just turn out to be true nonetheless.
So scrape your gunk: work out an effective selling system before you go out to sell, sell more effectively, and then go tell grandma that she was right all along.
May/100
Sales and Negotiation
Last week, I wrote about the difference between sales and marketing. The point of the article was to take these two ideas that often get mixed together, and draw a clear line where one activity stops and the other starts.
These kinds of definitions are important for the same reason that a sales process is important: If you want to be effective, then it is helpful to have a clear idea of where you are in any given situation, to know where you should be going and to know how to best get there. Taking the time to get your bearings and doing so within well defined frameworks will make these endeavors more efficient and effective.
One other set of words that often gets mixed together is sales and negotiation. Let’s take a look at these two activities, shed some light on the differences between them, and look at when and how to consider each one. Let’s start with some definitions:
Definition of Sales: I think of sales as an endeavor of persuasive communication, executed one-on-one or in a relatively small group
Sales Key Concept: Generally speaking, salespeople are successful when they successfully seek to understand the compelling reasons for which a prospect will take action toward buying the product or service offered by the salesperson
Definition of Negotiation: I think of negotiation as a conversation between two or more parties about the details of working together. It takes place after a general agreement about all of the sides wanting to work together. Negotiations can derail that idea, but this is where the details of working together are fleshed out and agreed to (or not)
Negotiation Key Factor: A negotiation is likely to be successful for a given party in the negotiation if the interests of their side are well understood and the walk-away point (BATNA) is both clearly defined and adhered to
In the sales process as defined in my book Mastering Your Sales Process, Negotiation is half of step 6 out of 7 (“Objections and Negotiations” is the single step before the last step of “Securing the Deal”). This placement in the process is critical to a proper understanding of what negotiation really is, and when it is appropriate. It is also indicative of where most people fail with negotiation.
If we look back at the definition of negotiation, there is an implication that negotiation happens when two parties have already decided to work together in general principle. The negotiation is about working out the details. Deals can certainly fall apart in negotiations, and the details are important, often hugely significant. What is important to remember is that the negotiations can’t start until a basic agreement to work together has been established.
Let’s look at an example of how NOT recognizing the proper place of a negotiation within the context of a sales process can derail the negotiation and the sales process itself. See if this sounds familiar:
You walk into the office of a prospect to initiate a complex sales discussion. You have never met this prospect before, or anyone from their company. As you sit down and begin your work of getting to know the prospect, their needs and their ability to buy, the client interrupts you and says:
“Listen, let’s just save some time here – how much does it cost.”
Now price is a certainly component of negotiation, but it is based on value. In this example, there has been no opportunity to establish value. Value is a function of needs. There has been no chance to establish needs. So what can you do?
If you offer a price at this time, you are attempting to negotiate before both sides have a chance to decide that there is an interest in working together, and you are likely to lose. To be successful in sales, negotiation skills are important. However, of equal or perhaps even greater importance is knowing when to negotiate, or even if you should negotiate.
You will improve your likelihood of success if you can help the customer understand that you offer different solutions for different problems, and each solution has a different pricing model. Based on this, what makes sense, then, is to understand the needs of the client (part of selling) before getting into negotiations about price (part of negotiation).
For a simple example, imagine waling into an auto repair shop and saying “my car won’t start, how much will it cost to fix it?”. The ONLY possible answer is some variation on the theme that the price can’t be determined until there is more information about the nature of the problem and the solution required to fix it.
It is much easier to get to your destination if you know where you are, know where the destination is, and know the steps to get there.
So to be successful in your sales negotiations, map your sales process, know where negotiation fits, and don’t go there too early. If you have not established value by uncovering needs, and you have not set your own limits about what makes sense for you as a walk-away point, then you’ll be hard pressed to get to a good solution, and to a successful conclusion of your negotiation.
May/103
Sales and Marketing: Where to draw the line and why it matters.
Last month, I was conducting a sales training focusing on the sales process as outlined in my book, Mastering Your Sales Process. Near the end of the training, one of the participants asked why I didn’t spend time talking about marketing driven sales models, and how their company can use marketing to get the client to pick up the phone and call them, already pre-disposed to the product they are selling?
From a macro perspective, the perspective of generating revenue for the business, it is not a bad question. The problem with the question is that it confuses the appropriate role of marketing, branding, PR and the like with sales. I see this issue come up a lot, so let me post on the differences here, and a way for our friend at the training to think about the result he wants to get in the context of what is happening at his company.
NOTE: These are my definitions, and they are simplified towards to goal differentiating between sales and marketing. If you feel that there is something that really needs to be added to these definitions in this context, please do leave a comment.
Definition of Marketing: I think of marketing as an endeavor in which single messages are broadcasted to a single, large group. There may be multiple single messages going to multiple groups, but the basic “unit of currency” is a focused message going out in bulk to a group. Interactive marketing and social media marketing make the complexity and execution more nuanced, but even there, if it is a message going to a group, it is marketing
Marketing Key Concept: Marketers are successful when they understand the aggregate hot buttons of a target audience, the best medium through which to reach each audience and the appropriate messaging strategy for both the audience and the medium
Definition of Sales: I think of sales as an endeavor of persuasive communication, executed one-on-one or in a relatively small group
Sales Key Concept: Generally speaking, salespeople are successful when they successfully seek to understand the compelling reasons for which a prospect will take action toward buying the product or service offered by the salesperson
So why does all of this matter, and where does this leave the guy from the training?
After he asked his question, I asked him to imagine the phone call he believes that marketing can help to materialize. We had just gone through the seven step sales process as laid out in my book (Leads, Prospecting, Qualifying, Needs Analysis, Proposal, Objections and Closing). I asked him to identify where we were in the process at the time this marketing generated phone call was received.
In this context, the answer was clear: as soon as the person called, we had a lead – someone we could talk to about buying our product. That was about it. Marketing, branding, PR and the like might have made the person more positively pre-disposed towards our product or service, but the prospect is still a lead, nothing more, regardless of their pre-disposition.
Prospecting, where we ask permission to discuss the needs of the client had not happened.
Qualifying, where we find out if the person we are talking to is both able to and likely to buy had not happened.
We had not done a needs analysis, or made a proposal, or answered objections, or closed the deal.
Now it is possible that if the company receiving the marketing generated inquiry was selling a book, a boxed software product, a toy, or some other physically well defined commodity, the caller might call in based on the marketing and said “hey, I read about your stuff – please send some to me”. In this case, there is no need to go through all of the steps.
But the training was not for a company that sold books, etc. Most people who read blogs like this are selling something that requires them to engage with their prospects in order to understand the needs, and the circumstances that might surround a sale before an offer can be made and certainly before a deal can be consummated. This is often called a complex sale, and sales has to do some stuff to convert initial interest – however it was generated – into a signed deal.
So in this case, marketing was able to generate a lead. Perhaps a qualified lead, perhaps an enthusiastic lead, perhaps a lead inclined to take action – but according to our definition of sales and marketing, just a lead. Once the lead is generated, then all of the “sales stuff” needs to happen to get the prospect through to a close. This work – the sales process – is typically NOT the job of marketing.
This may all seem a bit semantic, but it is important to know where you are in the process, who is who, who does what, and what a name on a piece of paper or on the other end of the phone really means. You may get a call one day from someone who is totally turned on by your product based on what they read in an advertisement, or a blog, or in a review, or from a friend. But they are a lead – and if you are selling a product with ANY level of complexity at all, you will need to do the sales work to carry them through to the end.
This is easier to do if you recognize this truth, along with the sales related limits of even the most effective marketing, in a sales environment that is even the least bit complex.
Apr/101
Book Review – “Mastery: The Keys To Success & Long Term Fulfillment”
Over this last week, I re-read a great little book called Mastery: The Keys To Success & Long Term Fulfillment by George Leonard. According to the author bio, Mr. Leonard is the author of several books on human possibility and social change including The Transformation, The Ultimate Athlete, and The Way of Aikido.
Mr. Leonard is a practitioner of Aikido, arguably one of the most difficult of the martial arts to master. His learnings as a student of Aikido led him to write this book on mastery, in which he translates the philosophical and practical drivers of his quest for mastery in this martial art, to a more universalized quest for mastery.
Other than enjoying the book, it seemed an appropriate topic for the sales process blog. Why? If I was asked to distill the book down to one salient point, it would be this:
It is neither possible nor useful to define mastery as a specific level of proficiency. It is more useful to consider the quest for mastery as, on a day-to-day basis, a journey of self improvement. As such, mastery should be thought of as a discipline; a practice; a mentality that inspires showing up every day and working towards an longer-term, larger, ultimately unreachable goal rather than towards some arbitrary recognition or some specific, high level of proficiency.
In several places in the book, Mr. Leonard refers to process; a methodology for following a proven path towards an ongoing level of improvement via engagement. In this way, Mastery: The Keys To Success & Long Term Fulfillment is a great book for anyone trying to improve at anything – from sales, to martial arts, to simply the enjoyment of life itself.
Traditional Zen philosophy is not for everyone. Mastery: The Keys To Success & Long Term Fulfillment has roots in Zen philosophy (among other things), but is presented as an accessible and practical reminder that showing up every day and doing your job IS mastery in the making. Furthermore, since the journey rather than the destination tends to be the real “juice of life”, learning to enjoy the juice, rather than an elusive and often myopically sought after goal, is a path towards both fulfillment and success.
Many martial artists quit once they get their black belts. Many salespeople quit pushing when they meet their revenue target. Many of us have been conditioned to strive for a prize, rather than to simply do the work — and to enjoy and prosper from our efforts. Rather, we often choose to live-or-die based on the outcome of some specific reward or recognition.
The word “mastery” sounds very lofty. Perhaps the idea of “The Journeymen” is a better metaphor for those of us in sales. Either way, showing up every day, surrendering to the execution of our process and working as a master, or a journeyman, is a sure path to long-term success, and inner peace. Looking for short cuts, and living-or-dying by the quarterly target leads elsewhere.
Mastery: The Keys To Success & Long Term Fulfillment was a good reminder of these points, and it is a short, enjoyable read. I hope that you enjoyed this review, and that it was useful for you in your quest for sales mastery.
Apr/103
The most important step in the sales process
Back in October I wrote a blog post called what is the most important step in the sales process . The answer I gave then is still true – the most important step in the sales process is the NEXT step, and a well-defined and executed sales process is useful by giving you a map to follow as you work through each sales opportunity, step-by-step; sequentially; in the right order.
Based on questions I see posted in LinkedIn Q&A, and in some of the feedback I am getting on my book, Mastering Your Sales Process, it seems that the message has not yet been fully received. So let me try another perspective here.
Let’s pretend that instead of the sales process, we are talking about the manufacturing process of, say, a car. Does the “which is the most important step” question make sense here? Well, it depends. Do you want the process to produce a car that is fully built, or are there some steps you can leave out?
Can you leave out the step where you bolt the engine into the car? Can you leave out the step where you paint the car, or put on the steering wheel? Not if your goal is to make a COMPLETE car. You’ve got to follow ALL of the steps to do that.
And what about my idea that the NEXT step is the most important – implying that you need to complete a specific step before taking the next?
Well, with the car, you probably want to finish building it before you paint it, right? You probably want to put the seats in before you finish the exterior. I’m not a car building expert, but you get the idea – right? There is a correct order to go through in this process, and completing some steps before moving on to others makes some of the early stuff easier than if you left it until later, and makes finishing easier too.
So which step in the sales process is the most important step and how can we justify that, relative to the importance of the other steps? Let’s look at them one-by-one:
LEADS: Leads are people from whom you can request a conversation about sales. If you don’t have any leads, you have no-one to talk to. Pretty hard to make a sale in this case. OK – so this is important!
PROSPECTING: Prospecting is when you ask a lead for a meeting, or a chance to talk about making a sale. If you don’t set up a sales conversation, it is pretty hard to have one. So this is important.
QUALIFYING: In spite of the fact that many (poor) salespeople skip this one, you need to qualify your prospect to avoid unpleasant surprises at the end, like finding out that they don’t have money, are not the decision maker, or don’t have any real problems that you can help them to solve. So this one is only important if you want to win the sale. Otherwise, feel free to skip it and spend a bunch of time on the other steps in the process before you eventually lose the deal because you failed to qualify – your choice!
NEEDS ANALYSIS: If you have a solution that is self-explanatory, and customers knock on your door and say “hey – I know all about your stuff, please sell me some” then you don’t need to do a needs analysis (and your company probably doesn’t need sales people either). Otherwise, you will need to find out how your product or service can help your prospect, so that you can present it to them in a way that it makes sense for them to buy it, relative to whatever need they need to solve or satisfy. So in most cases, this too is a pretty important, unskippable step.
PROPOSAL: It may be as simple as a price tag, but you need to let your prospect know what you are selling, and what it will cost. I have yet to meet someone who will buy something without knowing what it is and what it costs – so this is an important step too.
OBJECTIONS: You can skip the objections step if you like. If your client has an objection and you ignore it, they won’t buy from you. So go ahead and ignore it – unless you want to actually make the sale – in which case this too is important.
CLOSING: If this is simply the agreement to move forward, then moving forward isn’t complete without it. Here again, important.
So what can we cut out? What is most important? Clearly, these are just the wrong questions! In the analysis above, qualification, needs analysis and answering objections only seem important if we want to win the sale, but I do think that is the goal, don’t you? So they are all important. And that is the point.
The reality is that you need all of the steps in the sales process, and no one step has importance in and of itself. The process makes sense because all of the steps are needed, in sequence, properly executed in order to get the right result. None is important alone, because alone, none can get the job done.
Following the process gets the job done. If the desired goal is making a sale, then the sales process needs to be followed, Each step. Humbly working with all of the others in a coordinated sequence. Perhaps it makes you sad that there is no step that gets the glory of being most important, but that was never the goal. Making sales is the goal. So take the all of the steps, take them well, and get where it is that you want to go.
To a sale.
Apr/100
Map your way to sales success
Have you heard the old joke about the husband and wife on a cross country driving trip? The wife says “honey, I think we’re lost”. The husband replies, “yeah, I’m sure we are, but we are making great time!”
Are you lost in your sales career? Are you coming into work everyday and reacting to what is put in front of you or are you following a map to reach your destination?
These kinds of generalizations used to drive me crazy, until I realized what kind of a map was needed. For me, in my sales career, and for the salespeople I work with, that map is a process map – a map of the sales process.
There are so many sexy things to talk about in sales. Sales process is not one of them. Following a map also sounds a lot less sexy than Rambo charging into the woods ready to defend himself and later to take revenge, but in the end, things didn’t turn out so well for Rambo!
Sales is a bit of a mystery to those who don’t sell, and to most who do. What exactly are you supposed to do to generate business? Are you insulted by this question – you’re a top earner, you have been in sales for years, etc.
OK – try this one: If you needed to double revenue in the next 90 days, where would you start? If you can’t answer this in 60 seconds, then you need a better handle on your sales process. You might not come up with the perfect answer, but you really should know EXACTLY where to start looking.
- Where are your leads coming from, and how can you increase the quality and quantity
- What are you doing to get meetings to talk about new business, from both new AND from existing clients
- Are you really qualifying in a disciplined way before you get into the meaty part of the sales cycle? What exactly are the qualifying criteria you need to see before moving forward?
- What do you need to know before you present a solution, and how do you and the client both know that your information gathering is both cone and done in a complete way?
If you can’t answer these questions in a concrete way, you can do better.
Why does this matter (and why should you care?)
- Because when you take charge of your sales process, you will be happier on the job because you have a clear direction, and you know the you are driving towards it with every move you make.
- Becasue when you take charge of your sales process you make more sales with less effort, because you don’t waste time on the back end of the process with unqualified prospects.
- Because you won’t chase every possible sale that is in your pipeline for lack of better opportunities – because you will fill your pipeline too full to go after them all, which you shouldn’t – just the qualified ones
- Because you will sell more effectively in less time, allowing you time to spend your commissions on a gym member ship you will use, spending time with friends and loved ones, and enjoying all of the fruits of your labor.
Can you imagine – being a top earner at work and having a life? Now if that isn’t motivating, then work twice as hard and retire 10 years sooner, or never, but twice as rich as you can imagine.
Increased efficiency and effectiveness don’t have much sex appeal at all. But neither does driving around in circles, lost without a map. The benefits of driving towards a goal with precision and discipline can be as sexy as you make them, but you’ll get there with a map.
Make one!
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Hi, this is David. I hope you have liked the article and if you have any comments, please do contribute.
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Mar/102
Where is the spotlight? If it is on you, you are not selling!
I was sitting in the best burrito place in Budapest one afternoon. At a table near me, I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation in English, My Hungarian is still pretty weak, so the familiar language caught my attention.
In this conversation, an older guy in a business suit was sitting with a young, fresh faced 20-something guy in jeans and a t-shirt. The older guy was peppering with younger one with questions:
- So how long have you known her?
- Where did you guys meet?
- Do you speak any Slovakian?
- What is your current status?
- What does she do for a living?
- Etc.
The kid didn’t seem to mind, but it was eminently clear that the older guy was COMPLETELY controlling the conversation. I am not making any value judgement here, just an observation.
It reminded me of a talk show. Where Johnny or Jay or Connan or Larry fires off well informed questions, directing the celebrity of the moment through the interview until the key moment when the hot issue is approached, exposed and explored – with or without the consent and/or comfort of the interviewee .
What does this have to do with sales and selling? The key concept here is all about what we can call “the spotlight”.
Some non-salespeople (and some salespeople) have the misguided idea that salespeople love the spotlight. They believe that selling is an opportunity to get up on a kind of stage and present the wonders of a product or service in such a dazzling way that prospective customers can’t help but throw money at them, like bras at a Beatles concert in days of old.
These people have it all wrong. If these people are salespeople, then it is probably a hard job for them. The image of the snake oil salesman on his wagon in the old west town is an old story, and it no longer plays in Peoria or anywhere else.
If you aspire to be an effective professional salesperson, then you should remember the concept of “the spotlight”. To help you remember it, perhaps I should tell you what it is:
When you are in a sales conversation, imagine that you and your prospect are on a stage with two chairs. You sit in one, the prospect in the other. The stage is dark, except for a single spotlight. The spotlight shines not on the person talking, but on the person who is the subject of the conversation.
You are selling most effectively when the spotlight is on the other person – the prospect.
How can this be? Don’t you need to tell the prospect all about your great stuff so that they know that they need to buy it? Not necessarily.
In the sales process that I map out in blow-by-blow detail in my book Mastering Your Sales Process, the first four steps (leads, prospecting, qualifying and needs analysis) are designed to allow the salesperson to demonstrate professionalism which generates trust and to gather client information interactively, in such a way that what feels to the client like the gathering of information (spotlight on them) simultaneously and proactively addresses potential objections and informs parameters for the solution option.
In this way, the second half of the sales process (solution, objections and close) can be brief, spot-on, and totally effective without the need for presentations, lengthy proposals, extended negotiation sessions, or any of those other “spotlight on the salespeople” activities that usually do more damage to the opportunity to close than they do help it.
Proposals and presentations have their place, but if you want to be effective, the skills you need to focus on revolve around understanding the compelling reasons that the prospect has for wanting your product or service, and fleshing them out in a dialogue that highlights your understanding of the issue, your ability to fix it, and your character as the kind of person the prospect wants to partner with towards a solution.
Keeping the spotlight on the prospect with great questions, trial solutions, thorough needs analysis, properly timed and complete proposals will help. A lot. When you do it all right, your closing technique can be as simple as something like “well OK then”. It is true that to close, you do need to say or do something, By keeping the spotlight on the prospect the right way as you work towards the close, you can keep it short, and help make it more effective than your best uninformed, spotlight-on-you monologue or power point presentation ever will.
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Mar/102
Prospecting series – The bane of the cold call
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Many subjects in sales elicit a strong, emotional, binary response from salespeople; none more so than the question of cold calling.
Some people swear by them, to this day. Others declare them dead, obsolete, etc. How can both of these be right?
Like most things in life, “is that good” is too simple of a question. Luckily for those of us who relish the beauty to be found in nuance, there is more to the cold calling question than a simple thumbs up or thumbs down. When done poorly, cold calls are painful on both sides of the phone. When done well, they just aren’t so bad. Sure it would be better to lie on a warm beach sipping from a cool drink, but then again you could say that about most things you do at work – that’s why you get paid to do them!
So if we are going to cold call, what should we do to make it work? Here are a few tips:
1 – Know what you are going to say in the first 20-30 seconds
You want to be able to deliver your call with confidence, and you must be sure that you say what you need to say in those precious first seconds when you actually have the attention of the person you called. You may be nervous, which makes it easy to screw this part up – so yes, you should use a script. Not a complex one, but a simple one. Not for the whole call, but for the first 20-30 seconds for sure! Read Stephan Schiffman’s book on cold calling to get some ideas, or send me an e-mail and I’ll send you an excerpt from my book that might help.
2 – Have the right reason for the call
I first started cold calling when I sold promotional products. At first, I told the person I was calling that the reason for my call was to suggest that we should meet in person so that I could demonstrate all of my great ideas. It was not so compelling, or effective. Later, I started calling people with a trade show coming up in the very near future, and I suggested that we meet so that I could help them come up with a good promotion for their upcoming event. Same basic idea, just more targeted and time sensitive. That was much more effective.
Your industry will be different (unless you happen to sell promotional products), but ask yourself – is the reason I am suggesting a meeting compelling to the prospect? If not, find a new one, and build your call script around it.
3 – Don’t sell on the cold call
Unless you sell via a one-call-close-by-phone methodology, the goal of the cold call is probably to secure an opportunity to talk more about the possibility of a sale. That might mean a longer phone conversation, a later phone conversation, or in most cases a personal meeting. Whatever the case, the first thing you need to sell is the idea of a sales conversation before you start selling your product or service. Once you secure agreement for a sales conversation, you are not on a cold call anymore, even if the same phone call continues as a sales call; you are now on a sales call, or on your way to a sales call in person at a time you agreed to met with the prospect.
4 – Be ready to close
Most of the time, the close of a cold call is an agreement for a meeting – so be ready to make that close before you pick up the phone to make the cold call. Have your schedule ready, and if you will meet them in person at their office, know where they are located so that you can schedule a meeting that fits in with the rest of your schedule. Once you are ready to set a meeting, don’t lose momentum by fumbling with your calendar.
You’ll need make a lot of cold calls before you can really measure results. Give it an honest try, and work smart. Then you can weigh in on the debate about whether they work or not, but from a position of knowledge, not opinion. Making five dials, getting one surly receptionist or one grumpy CEO on the other end and giving up is not a reasonable effort upon which to measure the effectiveness of this prospecting method.
If cold calling is impossible for you, there are a LOT of other ways to prospect. However, whatever prospecting method you choose, you’ll probably need to follow that up with a call to set up a meeting – which is a LOT like a cold call. At the end of the day, a cold call, a call to set a meeting, or a call to check in with a client after a long period of inactivity all have the same dynamics. Get comfortable with this kind of call, and find a way to be effective with it, and your career will move forward much more systematically than if you simply complain that this can’t work for you, and avoid trying to make it work for that reason.
Mar/102
Objection Series – “Your Price is Too High!”
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Early in my sales career, I worked for a promotional products importing company in California that was very entrepreneurial. The president of the company would often get distracted from his core business and pursue a good idea, just because he thought it had potential in the market. Because of this, I had the opportunity to work side-by-side with a golf pro, who had a very direct way of handling price objections.
The president of the company had fallen in love with a golf training product, and hired Rod, a golf pro, to help promote it. Rod worked in the office next to mine (this was in the days before cubicles were the norm).
One day, I heard Rod say something into the phone that I later learned was a response to a price objection (i.e. “your price is to high”). In a very direct, almost sarcastic voice, Rod said:
“Compared to what?!?”
I was pretty new to sales, and still a bit on the nervous side when dealing with customers. His approach absolutely stunned me. I asked him about it, and he was very convinced that his approach was correct:
“Listen”, he said, “people pay me 20 times the price of this simple training tool for an hours worth of private golf lessons, and after the hour is gone, I leave. This training tool, on the other hand, is something that people can use anywhere they can swing a club, and they get instant feedback on their swing that is even more accurate than watching how the ball flies or hearing what a golf pro has to say. To object to the low price of this product is to not understand the value it offers. Anyone who objects on price is an idiot, and needs to be told how to value what they get from this thing”.
Now Rod was a pretty crusty old guy, and I am not a big fan of the style with which he delivered this objection response. However, with respect to his logic, he couldn’t be more right!
Too many salespeople hear a price objection from their prospect and agree with it. Then they run back to their company and demand a discount so that they can make a sale. The problem with this behavior, is that the salesperson is functioning as a semi-automated price tag. It is as if there is a basket of apples with a sensor and a digital price display. If a prospects walks up, sees the price and starts walking away, the display emits a signal, and drops the price 10%. This process repeats until the price is just above cost, or the prospect buys – whichever comes first.
In this case, the salesperson has not established sufficient value in the mind of the prospect. This salesperson is not acting as an expert, as we discussed in the blog series about the importance of expertise. This salesperson is not serving himself, his company OR his prospect well. This salesperson can also be easily replaced by another message runner, or when the technology allows, and someone actually builds it, our automated display!
Only the most Neanderthal of prospects shop on price alone. There are fewer of them than you think. The truth is, almost nothing is bought on price alone. No-one in their right mind would buy on price at the expense of quality, reliability, in some cases warranty, packaging, delivery time, etc.
Do you, for example, buy on price? You might think you do, but you probably don’t:
- Do you buy the cheapest shirt in the store, regardless of style, fit and color?
- Do you drive the cheapest car available, or did you pay a bit more for a car you like?
- Do you use the cheapest mobile phone?
- Do you eat at the cheapest restaurant?
- Have you ever had a coffee at Starbucks?
If you said yes to any of the questions, there is something other than price at work here. It is true for your prospects as well. There is some kind of value that is driving your decision. It needs to be in alignment with price, but is not subservient to it!
What prospects typically want from a salesperson – without even knowing that they do – is an EMOTIONAL assurance that their decision to buy from the salesperson is a good decision. They don’t want to make a mistake. They want to make sure that the product they buy matches up with their values (which may include organizational values from their work place). They want to be sure that your product or service comes at a fair price relative to other options, AND to this value that it provides.
A salesperson can help make this happen with a thorough needs analysis to make sure that the problem that the prospect needs to solve is solvable by the product or service that the salesperson offers. Once this assurance has been made, value has been established, and assuming that the price of the product or service is in alignment with the value that has been established, a price objection should not be a major hurdle.
This is not to say that some prospects won’t play the pricing game with you – some people just like the feel of a good haggle. Even in this case, the salesperson who has established value based on a thorough needs analysis and the presentation of a solution that meets as many facets of the prospects needs as possible has more leverage in the negotiation than one who simply offers the lowest price.
Don’t be the low price provider! Before you know it, someone else will have a slightly lower price, and your choices at that stage are limited, and undesirable.
When a prospect argues that the price is too high, it is because the value has not yet been adequately established. Period. Establish value before offering a price, and put yourself and your prospect in the best position to make a deal that everyone will be happy with.
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