Sales Blog with Sales Tips

The following is a bad habit I’ve observed in hundreds of sales professionals. They get tired of hearing themselves “sell” and think their prospects feel the same way.

All of us bring a unique chemistry to each individual prospect we speak with. Everything about us is new to them. They’ve never heard our message or experienced us before. We’ve never experienced them either.

An Analogy
Remember the schoolteachers who made you feel like you were the only person in the world? Even though they might have taught 10,000 students in their careers, they knew their relationship with you was unlike any other, and treated it as such.

I don’t care if you’re 20 or 100 years old; you still remember the magical quality of those teachers. Sales professionals who master this same ability will create customers who see them as standouts from the hoard of  salespeople they see every day.

Why Tired Sales Professionals Do Poorly
When we approach a sales opportunity feeling as if we’re tired of hearing ourselves talk, we create circular reinforcement.

1) The more downtrodden we become with our own message, the less receptive a prospect will be. 2) When we observe the resultant fatigued look on the prospect’s face, we conclude our sales approach must be unappealing. 3) Our motivation is lessened. 4) Go back to step 1 and repeat. This process creates a death spiral of enthusiasm for both the salesperson and the prospect.

Snap Out Of It!
I’m no physics expert (just ask Mrs. Crook, my high school physics teacher, who never liked me). However, I do know that once something is set in motion – e.g. a bored and self-defeating sales attitude – the only way to change its direction is to apply another force.

Shrinks call this an intervention. But you don’t need to go to a shrink to help yourself. Read on for some sales tips that will do the trick.

Sales Tips Rx
Consciously practicing the following habits over an extended period (e.g. 3 months) will freshen how you feel about yourself and how your prospects see you. Most importantly, you’ll sell more too.

1. Slow down. I know you’ve heard your own sales presentation a million times, but the prospects haven’t. Give them the opportunity to absorb and process the valuable information you are sharing.

2. There is no such thing as a generic prospect. After you’ve called on a few hundred prospects they can all look the same. When you see them in this light, they can tell. Just remember how important your favorite teachers made you feel when they treated you as an individual. People you make feel important frequently do one thing – buy from you.

3. It’s in the eyes. If you’re in front of a prospect, you must make constant eye contact. It will greatly enhance communication quality and will let you know what he or she is thinking. Let his or her eyes guide your presentation.

4. Listen. The questions prospects ask are everything. These questions will tell us everything we need to know in order to sell them. Giving prospects all the room they need to speak will move mountains when it comes to revitalizing how your prospects and you perceive your presentation.

Internalizing these habits will energize you and your prospects. Most importantly, you’ll re-learn how important it is to connect with people in the selling process.

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>©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

Scott Sheaffer’s New Book, “Comatose Management”
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Six Short Stories of Destructive Management Practices, Volume I
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Available in printed and Kindle edition on amazon.com
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I hate the term “salesperson.” Sounds empty to me. If we think of ourselves as a person whose primary job function is selling, then we are nothing more than a “salesperson.”

Why Being A “Salesperson” Makes Us Less Effective
The human mind is full of uncharted waters (you need to visit some of my family members if you don’t believe this). However, there are a few things about how we think – and more importantly, how our customers think – that are predictable. The following are “salesperson” behaviors that cause us to stumble.

• People resist being pushed because they are hardwired that way. Crowding and bulldozing customers causes them to instinctively resist.

• Being overly forceful and “salesy” causes us to exude a vibe of desperation. This is not a good thing. Social psychologists have shown over decades of testing that people prefer to buy from successful people, not ones who seem needy.

• When all we focus on is selling, selling, selling – we put ourselves under stress which makes us less capable sales professionals. Stress is circular. It creates feelings that are completely counterproductive. Stress causes fear, tunnel vision, disorganization. I’m amazed at the number of sales managers who think beating on sales professionals will create sustainable increases in sales.

A Metaphor
Everyone is familiar with Chinese finger traps. The harder you pull, the more they grip down on your fingers.

The harder we try, the more determined these traps seem to become.

Customers feel the same way about us. The more we “sell” them, the more they resist.

Sales Blog Antidote
The following three simple ideas will make your job as a sales professional more enjoyable, your customers more responsive and you more successful. These may seem ill fitting at first, but a great pair of jeans takes a few outings before things look and feel right.

1. Stop being “salesy.” Customers hate this. They see it coming 10 miles away. I know many salespersons who think “salesy” must work because people buy from them. No. People buy from them in spite of the “salesy” approach. Your authenticity is what customers want.

2. Instead of always asking questions, start providing answers to your customers. Giving them something they need (e.g. useful and timely information) is the best antidote to looking like a generic salesperson.

3. Provide your customers with service. I’m not talking about the services your company normally provides. I’m talking about helping your customers in ways that aren’t normally associated with salespersons. Give them referrals. Help them find suppliers for products you don’t sell. Find a new way your company can save them money (don’t worry; this will inspire them to find other things to buy from you that will eclipse any losses).

Sales Blog Wrap-Up
See yourself as more than a salesperson who is trying to maximize how much he or she can get from a customer. Turn down the sales volume and increase the “How can I help you?” volume.

Further sales blog reading:
Sales Advice: Is there a “vibe” in sales? You betcha.
Get customer cooperation by “lowering your shields”

>You can automatically receive Sales Tips Blog by Scott R. Sheaffer >by email< or >by RSS<.
>Follow >Scott R. Sheaffer< on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
>©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

Scott Sheaffer’s New Book, “Comatose Management”
—
Six Short Stories of Destructive Management Practices, Volume I
—
Available in printed and Kindle edition on amazon.com
—
—

Do you answer personal and private questions from complete strangers? Of course not. Why do we think we can call prospects, machine-gun them with open-ended questions and expect to get oceans of information from them?

This approach may have been somewhat successful for sales professionals in the past, but we live in a world that is increasingly more apprehensive about revealing information.

That’s Right, It’s A Catch-22
Axiom 1: People share information with people they know.
Axiom 2: Relationships form when two people share information.

We can’t get information from prospects because we don’t have a relationship with them, and we can’t create a relationship because they are unwilling to share information.

The “Smiler And Dialer” Crowd
This reality is something the “smiler and dialer” crowd doesn’t get at all.

The “smiler and dialer” crowd chooses to pound the phone until someone finally talks with them. The efficacy of this technique is rather poor. Prospects return only 3 to 4% of voicemails. Only about 1 out of 100 direct contacts turns into a customer using this brute force style of prospecting.

I think the phone pounders actually have even more dismal results than the numbers indicate. What they define as a “customer” is for another sales blog post (i.e. one order does not a customer make).

Stop Being A Phone Pounder And Start Selling
There are two simple things we can do to extricate ourselves from this circle of non-results (i.e. trying to get people to open up to us when we don’t know them, while simultaneously needing to know them in order for them to open up).

1. Prepare. Prepare. Prepare. Spend 60 seconds to look at prospects’ websites in order to learn something about them before you call. Google their company name. Check them out on LinkedIn. Set up Google Alerts and let Google collect information.

2. Specific Questions. Specfic Questions. Specfic Questions. Don’t greet the prospect with an open-ended question like, “Karen, how is your department organized and how have you historically procured your products and services?” What prospect would feel comfortable answering that question?

Ask questions specific to the prospect (this is where that earlier research is going to pay off and is absolutely mandatory).

Greet the prospect with something that sounds more like, “Karen, I’m Scott Sheaffer with the XYZ Company and I’m your assigned account manager. You don’t know me. I’m cold calling your business because my research indicates you might benefit from our products and services. To help establish that, I need to ask you just a couple of specific questions. Do you have time to answer two questions?”

Virtually Everyone Has Time For Two Specific Questions
Example: “Karen, my research shows that you are the person responsible for purchasing training services for your company. Is that correct?”

Example: “I see you are opening a new training facility in Dayton, Ohio in March. What is the status of that new facility?”

The Magic
These mostly closed-ended questions open the door to conversation. They show that we know something about the prospect. The prospect views the time investment as minimal. From these early questions we can easily move into more substantive open-ended questions when the time is right.

This same technique works very well when leaving voicemail messages too. Take 20 seconds to leave a voicemail message introducing yourself and asking if they will call you back to answer a couple of specific questions.

Our first call to a prospect can realistically start a relationship that will provide a basis for information sharing down the road.  This requires that we have some knowledge of the prospect prior to the call, and have realistic expectations as to how much information they will provide.

Sales Blog Epilogue
This model does not fit with the old-school model of prospecting where the quantity of prospecting was much more revered than the results.

This technique takes into account the current realities of available information on prospects via the web, prospects’ need for privacy, and prospects’ busy schedules. Cold calling when viewed only as a numbers game merely serves to keep sales professionals busy. The real objective when prospecting is to create more business.

Further reading:
Be Bold about Qualifying Questions
6 Thoughts On The Fickle Nature Of Prospecting

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>©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

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I had to strongly reprimand a nice young sales professional recently.

This occurred when I met my new account manager for the first time at a Fidelity office. We went to his office. He asked if I wanted something to drink. Everything was fine.

I had been seated in his office about 120 seconds when he made his blunder. Brace yourself. “Scott, when I first saw you I was worried you might think I was too young to help you. I have been through Fidelity’s rigorous training program…”

I stopped him in his tracks. In a most fatherly and firm way I leaned over his desk (I even think I pointed my finger at him…bad form on my part) and said, “The issue is not mine. The issue is yours. If you think you’re too young, you’ll project that belief on others and they will ultimately agree with you. Stop saying this kind of thing to your customers right here and right now.”

“Yes sir.”

For possibly the first time in my life, I didn’t tell someone not to call me “sir.” Sales tips and sales training can be a soft science at times. However, I knew I was right about this. No uncertainty. He needed some immediate and firm coaching. He got it and, frankly, I felt good about it. It helped that he was physically much smaller than I was.

But Scott, I Would Never Say Or Think Something Like That
It doesn’t matter whether you say it or think it (that’s Biblical I believe). If you think it, you’ve done it. Just thinking invalidating thoughts about yourself, your employer and your customers will hurt you. This kind of thinking takes all forms, by the way. There are a million variations; below are just a few examples.

Do You Ever Hear Any Of These In Your Head?

• I’m too old.
• This industry isn’t right for me.
• I’ll never be able to sell in this recession.
• Our product line is junk.
• This is a loser company.
• Our prices are too high.
• I wish I worked for competitor X.
• My customers never have the budget for anything.
• I have the dumbest customers on the planet.
• Our customer service is a joke.
• The quality of our products and services is not even close to our competitors.
• My sales manager is an idiot.
• Our corporate management is lame.

Sales Tips For Real World Successful Thinking Habits

1. If you say or think invalidating ideas long enough, they will come true. You’re committing sales suicide and not even realizing it.
2. I’m not perfect. You’re not perfect. No one is. Get real. Quit minimizing your opportunities for success by creating a foundation of negative and baseless thoughts about your customers and yourself.
3. No surprise here, but your employer isn’t perfect. Never ever will be. Oh sure, you can change jobs, but you’ll find all the same dummy-ridden-management but with different names. Stop wasting energy bellyaching about something you’ll never be able to change, no matter where you work.

Sales Blog Epilogue
I’m going to recommend a book to you in further reading below that was not sent to me as a freebie to review. I recommend very few books in this sales blog, but this one is an exception. I bought this book myself and have no financial interest in promoting it. It is not a sales training book, but it will make you more successful in sales.

It covers in detail what I’ve written about above. You won’t be able to put it down. It will permanently change how you see yourself, your employer and your customers.

Further reading:

• “The Power of Intention” by Dr. Wayne Dyer

My new book, “Comatose Management,” will be available from amazon.com and other distributors by mid-November.

>You can automatically receive Sales Tips Blog by Scott R. Sheaffer >by email< or >by RSS<.
>Follow >Scott R. Sheaffer< on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
>©2009 Scott R. Sheaffer

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Are you satisfied with your sales results?
Kay Ray can show you and your team how to reach
your objectives and unlock the door to success.
thekayray.com