Sales Blog with Sales Tips

I’ve given a million formal sales presentations and I think I’ve observed even more. The most important thing I’ve learned is that everyone is nervous when they present. Everyone.

Mark Twain said it best, “There are two types of speakers: those who are nervous and those who are liars.”

I have a few sales tips below that have worked for me and for others to control the jitters when speaking to customers.

The Underwear Visual
Sadly, the only training most sales professionals ever get about controlling nervousness when giving formal sales presentations is to pretend everyone in the audience is only wearing their underwear.

Have you read the statistics on obesity in America? Personally, I find the thought of visualizing most audiences in their underwear far more frightening than merely making a presentation.

8 Techniques For Controlling Nervousness When Giving Formal Sales Presentations
1. Where does fear of speaking come from? Us. We quite literally scare ourselves with the negative thoughts we have before we make an important sales presentation. Just as professional athletes can envision a successful outcome of a game, we can do the same when presenting.

2. Your nervous body symptoms, like a shaky voice or sweating, are hardly – if at all – noticed by your audience. Quit adding to your worries by obsessing about butterflies in your stomach that no one can see.  Butterflies don’t bite.

3. Everyone’s biggest fear is not public speaking. That’s a myth. Every person has a different hierarchy of fears. For some, public speaking is very displeasureable; for others, it’s enjoyable. You probably fall somewhere in-between.

4. It’s perfectly okay to speak from a lectern with notes or to carry your notes in your hands when presenting. You don’t have to memorize your speech. Scripts are bad, but notes are okay and can bump up your confidence considerably.

5. Accepting, even welcoming, nervousness when speaking can go a long way in actually reducing your dread of speaking. The fancy psychological term is paradoxical intention. When light shines on the anxiety bogeyman and he is welcomed into your thoughts, he cowers.

6. Preparing and practicing your speech can move mountains when it comes to reducing speaking anxiety.  I attended an event where George H. W. Bush spoke while he was President.  He mentioned that he had rehearsed his speech earlier in the day.  Excuse me here, but if the President of the United States feels it necessary to practice his speech, it confirms to me there is real value in doing this.  There are many executives in corporate America who think they are above practicing speeches.  Their speeches show it.

7. Nervousness can help you during a sales presentation because it brings energy to your presentation and causes you to think faster on your feet. It also causes you to hyper-focus on the matter at hand.  The nervousness monster doesn’t want you to know this; see number five above to see why.

8. Executives are frequently very poor speakers and get nervous too, just like the rest of us mere mortals. They get nervous because they know each word they use is weighed and measured. Please remember many -  if not most -  executives struggle with speaking; they understand your nervousness when you present to them.

Sales Blog Epilogue
Becoming a better presenter doesn’t happen overnight. You can’t take a one-day or one-week school and magically become Zig Ziglar. However, I can recommend that you give Toastmasters International a try. This is a non-profit international organization that takes people at all levels and, over a period of time, develops them into better speakers.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

I had lunch recently with the President of a large fabrication company who is a personal friend of mine. He told me over the last 6 months that he had secretly conducted research on sales professionals. He wasn’t conducting sales research on his sales force, but research on all the salespersons outside of his company who were trying to contact him.

I’ve never heard of any other executive doing this. I was fascinated.

His Plan
He decided that for about a 6-month period he was going to take every call from any salesperson who called. He routinely gets dozens of prospecting calls each day.

He had built a highly sophisticated defense system to avoid these kinds of calls and he simply turned it off for 6 months. He instructed his assistants to let all calls through. In short, whenever his phone rang, he answered it.

His first rule was that all callers had to pique his interest in 90 seconds or less or the call was over. If the sales professional was particularly effective, he would agree to an appointment.

If an appointment was made, his second rule was to inform callers that he was seeing them because they sounded interesting. He also let them know that he was most likely not a good prospect for their products or services.

The Why
When I asked him why he did this, he confessed it was for selfish reasons. He knew the results would be anecdotal, but it would give him a feel for what worked and didn’t work when salespeople are trying to develop new business. Maybe some of these experiences could be applied to his sales team. He also was interested in meeting the people behind these calls.

The Results
The following is some of the knowledge he gained in his 6-month test. A detailed analysis of these results is for another sales tips blog post. These are listed in no particular order.

1. Most of the salespersons viewed him as the only decision maker in any purchase.
2. The President has formed significant relationships (business and personal) with some of the salespersons.
3. He observed a broad variance in sales techniques and abilities.
4. All of the callers seemed anxious to meet with him even before qualifying him over the phone.
5. Very few callers asked about the competition.
6. Purchase time frame was rarely brought up.
7. He has not purchased anything from any of these sales professionals.

Sales Tips Wrap Up
If I take the 7 points above in combination with the myriad of other details he told me, I feel confident in coming to the 3 following general conclusions regarding this unique experiment.

• The callers were primarily interested in getting an appointment with an apparent decision maker, and not much else.
• The salespersons who met with this President have not leveraged their relationships very effectively.
• The sales professionals were indifferent to, or didn’t know how to, qualify a prospect.

Unfortunately, none of what he discovered was really much of a surprise to me. I think he saw nothing more than a representative sampling of an average sales professional. He saw the middle of the bell curve. The left tip of the bell curve usually doesn’t prospect because of lack of motivation and the right tip doesn’t have to prospect (at least by phone) because of their networking skills.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

There is a universal buyer behavior shift that quietly started about 1997. It is a change that is profound, permanent and growing. It has already affected every sales professional reading this sales tips blog. One of the least endearing characteristics of this transformation is how it is concealing itself inside our current economic circumstances, while its effects become increasingly far reaching.

I call it Buyer 2.0™.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point writes that “The best way to understand the dramatic…changes [we see in business]…is to think of them as epidemics. [Seemingly insignificant] ideas, products, messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.”

The Foundation For Buyer 2.0™
Let’s review some buying trends over the last few years that don’t appear to be abating whatsoever in consumer or business sales.

Walmart’s continued strong growth is one of the biggest indicators. It is the largest corporation in the US and by far the largest discount retail store. It has achieved this status not through any kind of traditional value selling; they’ve done it through pricing. There is no “buying experience” or added value at Walmart.

The proliferation of “big box” stores like Sam’s and Costco has taken the Walmart concept and put it on steroids. You go, you buy bigger quantities than you need, you pay cheap prices and you leave. You’ll have to carry your stuff out in your hands (literally) if they run out of trash boxes to give you to carry your purchases. These stores are everywhere.

The “cattle call” airlines like Southwest only offer low prices, a bag of peanuts and a destination.  Their load factors and profitability are better than the more conventional airlines.  They offer a bus ride with wings that cheaply gets you from A to B.

Shopping.com and Amazon.com have made shopping for price almost stupidly easy. These websites do all the work of finding the cheapest price and their traffic is growing rapidly.

Car companies are increasingly moving away from the $30,000+ car segment and focusing on the less than $20,000 car buyer. These cars were being designed before the current recession. How do we know that? Some of these inexpensive cars will be available within the next 12 months; car companies take at least 3 to 4 years to design and build a car. Automobile manufacturers have to be hyper sensitive to buyer trends – obviously some do a better job than others do.  Simply stated, some car manufacturers are already aware of Buyer 2.0™.

Ski resorts are starting to charge skiers according to the condition of the snow. Good snow – higher price. Bad snow – lower price. Skiers are more interested in the price of the skiing, not how cozy the ski lodge is.

There are sports venues that adjust ticket prices according to the standing of the visiting team and importance of the game. Playoff game – higher price. Preseason game – lower price.

Buyer 2.0™
As sales professionals we have historically viewed price objections as the most commonly stated objection. While this is the objection we hear most frequently, we also know that research indicates it actually falls to number 5 behind availability, risks, service and quality on the list of the buyer’s real decision criteria.

However, are we seeing a significant renumbering of these criteria that pre-dates the recession? Is price no longer number 5 and covertly moving up in the rankings? My answer to both questions is yes.  This is the essence of Buyer 2.0™.

We’ve Been In Denial
There’s nothing new here; it was inevitable. The Internet has taken all of the sales professional’s pricing secrets out of the closet. Burglars like to operate at night because they’re more effective when undetected. Our current recession provides a perfect cover for this swiftly building trend, which started over 10 years ago. It was around 1997 that the general population was becoming familiar with the wealth of pricing information available on the Internet. This was the genesis of Buyer 2.0™.

Sales Tips For Responding To Buyer 2.0™
The first thing we must do is understand that this is a change or evolution in sales, not the commoditization of all products and services. Sales has changed dramatically in the last half century. This is but one more of those changes. We are not all destined to become unemployed salespersons or lose our jobs to e-commerce websites.

However, to continue forward as if nothing is changing would represent a dismissal of reality. Companies and sales professionals can adapt and thrive by recognizing the following:

Companies will be required to get very serious about controlling costs and increasing efficiencies. In other words, provide the same product/service but at a very competitive price, much like our global competitors are already doing.

Sales professionals will legitimately need to understand and demonstrate ROI (Return on Investment) and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). Buyers are increasingly demanding performance metrics from vendors.

Differentiation of your products and services in the market will become more important and heavily supported by marketing.

Marketing departments will play an increasingly important role as the town criers of value and price competitiveness. They can no longer merely print nice and colorful product/service collateral materials.

Bundling, kitting and packaging of products and services will be a way to recover lost margins in a discounted pricing environment.

Purchases will be pushed down to lower-level decision makers. Sales professionals will have to more effectively deal with purchasing departments since Buyer 2.0™ will mean a swing back that direction. This is a change that is already being seen in many companies.

Contractual purchasing agreements will become more common, even for smaller customers.

Selling service can be a safe haven in many selling situations. I’ve always felt that no 2 companies offer the same service. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, for customers to shop price when it comes to service.

Sales Tips Wrap Up
It was unavoidable. The Internet has put the seller in a more difficult position when it comes to pricing. The recession has made it seem that this is a recent phenomenon, but it is only hastening a pre-existing trend.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer