Sales Blog with Sales Tips

Think about your own buying experiences. Have you ever really believed that you were paying the very lowest, cheapest, down in the dirt “total-cost” for what you were buying at the time? The truth is, you weren’t. It’s impossible. Your customers know this truth as well.

Let’s define “total-cost.” Total-cost = the direct cost of the item or service + any associated costs for procurement.

Why is it that we and our customers can never be assured of the best total-cost on anything? There are three primary reasons:

1. Prices are never static. One vendor might have a great price at the moment but 30 minutes later another vendor has a lower price. This has always been true, but the Internet has made pricing even more fluid.
2. If a particular vendor across the continent has great pricing, but transportation costs inflate the price by 50%, this vendor’s pricing doesn’t look so competitive anymore. This would include freight on products and travel expenses related to services.
3. The cost to research and find the best price can far outweigh any savings. Spending an entire day researching the best price for the purchase of one $2.57 widget wouldn’t be the smartest investment of an employee’s time.

What’s liberating about this is the realization that at some level our customers know that they are always paying something extra for included value. That value could be the availability of the product, location of vendor, simplicity of ordering, speed of shipment, reputation of vendor, quality of service, relationship with vendor, etc.

Smart buyers are looking for the best total-cost solution, not the best price.

Our customers know they’re never going to be able to nail down the best price on any product or service they need. Knowing this, it’s our job to show them the added value we bring in order to show them the best total-cost solution and make their buying decision easier.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

Those sales professionals that I’ve worked with through the years all know that I am constantly comparing the sales process to sex. The greeting, meeting, dating, engagement, marriage, kids and divorce thing is quite analogous to engaging a prospect and turning them into a customer.

One of the best applications of this girl meets boy analogy can be applied to closing a sale.

We all know that the close is the point where a decision maker agrees to buy. I get tired of sales trainers who obsessively focus on “the close” as if it represents the entire sales process. It’s important, to be sure, but it’s only part of the sales process and shouldn’t require an inordinate amount of effort on our part.

If we’ve properly completed all of the parts in the sales process, this concluding piece should be easy. In fact, it should be as easy as a first kiss.

Think about it. You meet someone and get to know them. There is chemistry. One thing leads to another and before you know it you’re face to face in a candlelit restaurant enjoying a glass of wine. The kiss just happens. No planning, no big strategies, it just naturally happens. It was part of the normal course of events that evening.

Closing a sale is exactly the same. If we’ve done our job, no arm twisting of the prospect or customer will be required. The close will naturally and comfortably fit into the normal course of things.

Many salespeople get anxious about the close. “Should I close them today? What kind of close should I use? Should I experiment with trial closes?” Doing this can really rob us of confidence and diminish the work we’ve done leading up to that point.

I used to have a customer that said to me, “Scott, I know you’re not here for a social visit because you’ve been working hard to earn our business. Where’s the order for me to sign?” We know we’ve done a good job handling the sale when the customer or prospect expects to be closed. Sometimes they even ask to be closed.

Should we ignore closing skills? Not entirely. But I want us to remember that the close is the final punctuation, and nothing more, to a well written sentence.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

I’m a big believer in sales training, but it often leaves out an important, yet not very sexy, fundamental.

If you’ve been in sales for awhile you’ve been exposed to the following training: closing strategies, steps in a sale, making good first impressions, etc. I call this kind of training “sales step training” because it focuses on very clear-cut steps in the sales process and preaches that some of the steps are much more important than others. Normally whatever sales step is being taught at the moment is deemed to be the most important step in the sales process.

While this model is convenient in the classroom, it really doesn’t translate that well to the real world of selling. I can just see the experienced sales professionals nodding their heads in agreement. Sales is not simple and nothing in the sales process is that concrete.

One of the sales steps that is radically overrated in my opinion is the close (more on this in the next post). The fact is, if you have managed everything properly in the sales process, then the close is just the last part of the process. I like to think of the sales process as links in a chain. Meeting the prospect is the first link in the chain and the last link in the chain is the close.

The chain analogy to the sales process is a good one because each link is the same size and is equally important. You break one link and the sales process falls apart, regardless of where it occurs. If we’ve done an outstanding job of managing the sales process but forget a simple thing like returning a couple of phone calls to the prospect, we stand a good change of losing the sale. Each link is very important.

Most salespeople love doing high profile presentations to prospects. We get back to the office after a successful performance feeling higher than a mountain. We run into our manager’s office and remind them of what a great salesperson we are. But getting the order is in the details. While our great presentation skills may have wowed the prospect initially, it’s our follow-through on all the routine elements that will ultimately get us the order. Break a link in a chain, no matter where it occurs, and the chain is broken.

Remember that prospects think you and your company are probably never going to be more conscientious than you are prior to closing an order. They are looking at each and every link in your chain for breaks. If you ignore what you think is a trivial detail in the sales process, you may have just handed the prospect a chain cutter.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer