Quick review: there are Three Levels of Management within the Student role you play during Step 1 of the Buying Process. The three levels of Management are: CEO, Core Level, and the Support Level. If you can reach and do business with the CEO, you will discuss issues of competitiveness, cost cutting and efficiencies, and you will like be holding better margins.
Core Level management is interested in solving problems NOW and maximizing Key Success Factors, those areas which contribute most effectively to the organization’s overall ability to succeed function to function. We also discussed the ways to contact Core Level managers and determine which have influence and which have authority without influence. The overall recommendation was to find influential sponsors who will sell your message to the Core managers in various relevant departments.
Now we look at the Support Level of Management, which is the bottom level providing support to the CEO and the Core levels.
Support level reacts to the needs of upper management. It includes areas like purchasing, legal, training and accounting. If you are dealing with a purchasing type in Support you will likely find an emphasis on the most machine for the money and consequently margins begin to shrink. This is the price-driven or “Transactional Sale.” Engaging business at this level is a Win-Lose: the purchasing agent is looking for the most machine at the lowest price. He wins. You lose.
To find big problems, which yield big sales with healthy margins, you need to be talking to CEO and Core level managers because these larger problems and longer view issues are their natural habitat. This is important for sales management training.
How to be a Good Student: Change how you think. Forget your product. Imagine you work for the customer. Imagine you are selling for your customer. Walk two miles in his moccasins. This way you begin to focus on his goals and concerns.
If your product helps him expand his business and solves problems, price is no longer the top issue.
Here is an example for sales training: A copier rep trying to sell a machine to an owner of an ice cream store. At first the reps pitches features and benefits. Customer could care less about copy quality and speed and so forth.
Then the rep imagined he was selling ice cream for the man. He started asking questions. In the process he learned that the man sold ice cream to local retail outlets, but he wanted to expand and provide specialty desserts to restaurants.
The rep then suggested that the man get the logos of all the restaurants he wanted to work with, and produce customized menus of ice cream products to be sold through each establishment. The man immediately loved the idea, bought the copier at retail and implemented the new marketing plan. The rep had created a solution to enhance the man’s business and that solution required the rep’s product.
By imagining that you sell for your customer, you will quickly understand your customer’s business strategies, and then you will be in a position to identify innovative sales opportunities that achieve value for your customer. Use these tips for yourself, or your sales training courses.
Here are 5 sales tips to help you achieve success in your sales career. These tips are often taught in sales training courses across the country. Your sales team will learn how to sell based on how customers buy. Understanding buying is where selling should start. Improve the productivity and morale of your sales force by improving the skills of your sales managers. Let’s start with these five important tips:
1) Negotiate Price Late in the Sales Process, Never Early
There is no reason to discuss price until buying desire has been aroused. If you customer doesn’t need it, any price is too high. Discuss price only when buyers recognize what they need and why the need it. Lowering price does not necessarily make a product or service more attractive to a buyer, in fact it rarely does.
2) Carefully Consider the Consequences of Any Concession You Make
Without profit there is no purpose. Therefore, carefully analyze each concession before making a commitment. Any concession will become an expectation later on. Don’t give away the store or that’s all you wind up doing, all the time.
2) Don’t Propose a Solution with an Already Discounted Price
Purchasing agents are often evaluated by how much they save the company. If you cut price right away in your initial proposal you may actually be doing that purchasing agent a disservice. If you don’t start with significant gross profit built into the deal you don’t leave yourself any negotiating room. There are exceptions of course. If you get into a deal late, you may have to shoot your best price just to be considered.
4) Be Patient
Relax! Slow down! If the prospect wasn’t interested, you wouldn’t be negotiating. Take the time necessary to achieve a true win-win. This is an important factor in sales training.
5) Never Give a Concession Without Getting One in Return
To a prospect asking for a lower price you might reply with a willingness to discount if the prospect will agree to purchase several more units during a specified time. The prospect wins by obtaining a lower unit price. You win by increasing the size of the sale. (Discuss other real life requests prospects make and how you might respond by asking for a concession.)
We hope these 5 tips create a common language for you and your salespeople. These tips will help your sales management training become easier and more profitable. Don’t wander aimlessly through the sales process. Have a plan. Have a strategy. Don’t miss opportunities during the buying process. This will help you to intensify your customers’ needs and differentiate your solution.
One simple strategy for understanding your customers’ needs better than your competition is to resist the natural temptation to talk about yourself, and instead, keep the conversation focused on your customer’s needs. If your customer asks you about your product or service – as they often do – answer their question, then redirect the conversation back to your customer’s needs. A good rule of thumb is to identify at least eight customer buying criteria before you start talking about your product or service.
Throughout the first five steps of the buy-learning process, your prospects’ focus has been on achieving value. They have examined their problems, determined the problems’ seriousness, and examined the alternatives. They have a well-defined expectation of value because their attention has been on the benefits they will enjoy by purchasing. Now, in Step 6, Commitment, the focus changes from the value of your solution to its cost.
If your negotiation is occurring at the proper time, that is, after the two of you have completed the first five steps in the sales training process, then there is good news: your prospect wants to buy from you! However, don’t start computing your commission. The prospect will usually want more concessions. This is when real negotiating begins. Customers negotiate because they know that getting a lower price or other concession is likely at this stage. They do it because it works! But there are other reasons prospects negotiate. If you wish to negotiate successfully, you will want to understand the motivations of the other party. And, this will help you a lot in you sales management role.
People negotiate hard when their jobs are on the line.
Buyers are often (always?!) evaluated by their ability to save the company money.
CEOs and Core-level decisionmakers are evaluated on much more than price.
Example: efficiency of operations and return on investment. Consequently they negotiate differently, focusing on a variety of items.
Some buyers negotiate vigorously if:
They want to be admired.
They enjoy being tough.
It is strongly recommended that any negotiating you engage be done in good faith, with the objective of achieving a win-win, even if you are negotiating with Attila the Hun. You can learn lots of “tricks” from negotiating books or attending sales management training classes and seminars. They may work short-term. But in the long run they work against you.
Obtaining commitment from your prospect is a matter of working through the negotiating process so that everyone wins. The buying process unfolds in a series of eight predictable steps that your salespeople can anticipate. Our sales training programs teach your salespeople eight easily understood sales roles that correspond directly to the steps of the buying process. Our sales roles: Student, Doctor, Architect, Coach, Therapist, Negotiator, Teacher and Farmer, provide a disciplined, repeatable method for closing more sales, faster, while your competition wonders why they lost out.
A sophisticated sales approach made simple.
Many of our clients are looking for a common language, a consistent and measureable process for solution selling. Without a common language salespeople tend to sell on their instincts, and some wander aimlessly through a sales process without a plan, missing many opportunities during the buying process to intensify the customers’ needs and differentiate your solution.
Understanding what it takes to improve your team’s closing ratio – a thoughtful sales strategy combined with effective sales tactics on each and every sales call. Sales training programs will show your salespeople how to add more value, sooner, to your prospects and customers.
For years, the focus of sales training has been on the selling process – while ignoring customer buying behavior. But tomorrow’s big winners in sales will be those who learn to join customers in their buying process.
If you have successfully applied Customer-Focused Selling concepts, up to and including the negotiation of terms, getting a buyer’s commitment should come naturally. You have earned your customer’s trust, helped with recognition of needs, and proved that your solution is best.
As mentioned earlier, your goal is to open the relationship, not to close the sale.
In the Customer-Focused Selling process, I refer to the abilities needed to ask for the agreed-on order as “commitment skills,” not “closing skills.” This is a major technique in sales training.
Closing skills attempt to get the buyers to commit.
Commitment skills are different because there is MUTUAL COMMITMENT at the point of sale: the customer commits to you, and you commit to the customer.
In the final two roles you play in the process–Teacher and Farmer–are focused on the commitments you make to the customer.
Use these tools in your sales management training. Here are a few non-manipulative ways to ask for commitment:
Ask, “What should be our next step?”
This question is most appropriate for a buyer who has a clear direction of how events should unfold, a lion personality type. This is a simple, honest question that asks your buyer to suggest a commitment to you.
Describe in detail what happens between now and installation, delivery, or commencement of service. If you have an implementation plan, now is the time to share it.
Then, simply ask, “Does that sound acceptable to you?”
Ask, “Would you like to give us a try?”
This commitment question is soft, yet direct, because it asks for a “Yes” or “No” answer.
By now you have come a long way with your prospect. The commitment techniques above are often successful. However, some buyers may still be reluctant. If this is the case, you must deal with the salesperson’s old nemesis–objections.
To learn more about these sales techniques and many others take the time and attend sales seminar.
Recent research has found that the highest producing salespeople are those that work for sales managers with a “hands-on” coaching style. Sales managers that monitor, direct, evaluate and reward their salespeople on a on-going basis; and, these high-performance salespeople were found to have a greater level of commitment to their organizations when they worked for a sales manager with this “hands-on” coaching approach.
Your company can increase sales and reduce sales turnover by installing a culture of coaching within your sales management team.
The role of sales manager just may be the most important job in your company. Sales is the life-blood of every business, and there is a sales manager at the heart of every one of your sales teams.
Has your company provided your sales managers with the skills and tools they need to pump maximum growth and profits out of your sales force?
Your client has certain expectations of you and your product or service. If their expectations are met, or exceeded, they will be satisfied. Simple.
Not always.
For your product to be successfully implemented into the client’s daily working life, the client must move through a learning process. This process can be described through five phases, helping you understand the way people learn, and your responsibility in helping them. The best sales manager professionals know and understand this completely.
Phase 1 | Unconscious Incompetence | Your customer does not know that he does not know.
Your customer has signed the order, product is delivered and they are enthused. They expect to realize the benefits of this product, benefits you have described and promised throughout the sales process. However, the customer’s expectation of benefit is at its highest point right now, and their understanding of the learning required is underestimated. To derive benefit they must learn, you must teach them, but they aren’t ready for the learning just yet. That’s okay, sometimes people just are not ready to experience the true benefits of a sales seminar.
Phase 2 | Conscious Incompetence | Customer knows he doesn’t know.
Customer frustration mounts during this phase as they come to realize that change / learning will be difficult. Habitual ways of working must be altered. Productivity may suffer in the short term while people learn to use the new product. The customer may wrestle with a feeling that they are worse off than before.
Phase 3 | Conscious Competence | Customer works hard at what he doesn’t know.
With application, the customer begins to learn how to operate the equipment. They begin to seen the benefits in the real work environment. The product begins to make a real contribution, as promised. In the sales training process this step is crucial.
Phase 4 | Unconscious Competence | Customer begins to make the new habitual.
The customer has a real sense of accomplishment now that the product is fully integrated into their office and the daily routine. Results are being realized. Everyone is happy!
Phase 5 | Conscious Unconscious Competence | Customer easily explains the new benefits of the new product, and how to derive them.
In-house experts can now train others in the office as the entire team develops an appreciation for the equipment. It has become part of the family.
Other considerations: if the product is complex, expect the learning process to take more time, and expect it to be more frustrating for the customer. Likewise, have these expectations if the customer is inexperienced. Often, the people who actually make the purchase decision are not the end-users. Therefore you may experience outright resistance to the product by end users who did not participate in the buying decision.
Bottom line: meeting and exceeding customer expectations is not easy, but it is well worth it.
The sales presentation is your best opportunity to show and tell, but there’s more to it than just showing and telling. You also need to think strategically about the customers buying process and needs, your competitors’ offerings, and why your solution is best.
To plan and deliver winning sales presentations, try the following approach:
Find out in advance how much time you will have.
Have you ever had a key decision-maker leave in the middle of your presentation because he was out of time? You can’t hold someone’s attention when he’s looking at the clock.
At the beginning of the meeting, ask how much time the prospect has set aside, then adjust your presentation to take no more than 60% of the allotted time. Why only 60%? Because your prospect’s decisions to act typically occur at the end of the meeting. Adjusting your presentation will allow enough time to resolve any remaining issues, and reach an agreement. This is one key skill learned through sales training.
Check in.
Another good question to ask at the beginning of every sales presentation is, “since the last time we met, has anything changed?” If your competitor gave a presentation yesterday afternoon you may have a few new hurdles you need to overcome. The sooner you identify those hurdles, the more time you have to plan a response.
Take his temperature.
The next question you want to ask is, “Where are you in your decision process?” If he tells me he’s scheduled presentations with three suppliers and I’m the first presenter, I know the chances of this prospect agreeing to a decision at the end of my presentation are virtually nonexistent. For starters, it would take the prospect more time, energy and stress to cancel the appointments than to go ahead with them.
More importantly, the prospect wants to hear all three presentations, because from your customer’s perspective, comparison is necessary to recognize value. Never go for the close when you are the first presenter. You’re simply asking for something that you can’t get, and customers will think you’re pushy. Instead, come up with a legitimate reason to come back after the other presentations, when the prospect likely will be in a position to make a decision.
Try to be the last presenter.
The last presenter has a significant advantage, because he is closer to the customer’s point of decision. If I am the final supplier to present, and have shown why am I am the best choice, it’s only reasonable to ask for a commitment to buy. It also creates an opportunity to address any lingering concerns that may prevent a sale. Just by being the last presenter you will increase your sales performance substantially.
In one of the largest sales opportunities I ever worked on, I was the third of three presenters to a committee of seven decision-makers, the most senior of whom was the Executive Vice President, I’ll call him Mr. Burns.
Ten minutes before the conclusion of my presentation, the phone rang. Mr. Burns had a plane to catch, and his cab had arrived. As he stood up, I said, “Mr. Burns, before you leave, may I ask you one final question?”
I asked, “Now that you’ve evaluated all the options, is there any reason why my solution is not your best option?”
He paused, then said “Yep!” And out came his final concern about my solution. It was a concern I was ready for, but I never got a chance to respond because his comment triggered a firestorm of conversation around the conference table. Mr. Burns missed his cab, but several other decision makers drove him to the airport so they could continue their discussion.
A few weeks later, I learned that in the car on the way to the airport, a lower-level decision-maker had resolved Mr. Burns’s concern, and I won the sale.
This example shows that today, as much as 90% of the sale takes place without you being in the room. So it’s essential to make sure that the prospects championing your cause have the tools to sell other decision makers for you.
Start with a quick review of the customer’s goals and objectives. On a flipchart, list each of the customers buying criteria. This list is your outline for effective sales presentation. Next, show how your solution meets and exceeds each customer criterion.
Throughout your presentation, get a reaction from your prospect. For example, after demonstrating a capability you would ask, how would this be an improvement or how would this help. Interactive presentations keep prospects more involved and interested.
Communicate all your unique strengths.
Today’s customers want to know two things: can you do what we need done, and how can you do it better than the other options we are considering? It’s not enough to show that you can meet your customer’s needs. You must also have some reasons why your solution is the customer’s best choice.
To ensure that my strengths are understood, I always prepare a flipchart titled “Why we are your best choice” which lists at least three reasons why I’m the customer’s best option. Often, I list seven or eight reasons. The more reasons you have, and the more compelling those reasons are, the better your chances of winning the sale.
In sports, when two teams are evenly matched, the winner is the team that makes the fewest mistakes, and executes its plays the best.
To deliver a winning sales presentation, you must do the same. When you implement these 10 tips in your sales presentations, you will win more sales. To learn more great sales techniques, you should attend a sales seminar.
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