Sales Tip Of The Week - SalesTrainingCamp.com

Let's face it. We all have those difficult customers to whom we are required to sell. From the demanding, abrasive buyer to the individual who never seems to make a buying decision, we encounter challenging people on a regular basis. Part of the reason this happens is due to the disconnect we have because of conflicting personalities. This article will look at the four key types of people and how to improve your results with each.

Direct Donna. Donna is very direct in her approach. She tends to be forceful and always wants to dominate or control the sales call. Her behavior is aggressive, she points at you while she talks, interrupts your to challenge you, and she seldom cares about hearing the details of your new product or service. Instead, she demands that you "cut to chase" and "tell me the bottom line." Donna is very results- focused and goal-oriented and hates wasting time.

To achieve the best sales results with this individual you need to be more direct and assertive. Tell her at the beginning of the sales call or meeting that you know how busy she is and how valuable her time is. Tell her that you will "get right to the point" and focus your conversation on the results she will achieve by using you product or service. Resist the temptation to back down if she confronts you because you will lose her respect. To Donna, it is not personal, it's just business.

Lastly, be direct in asking for her business-you don't have to dance around this issue.

Talkative Tim. Tim is a gregarious and outgoing person but very ego-centric. He is often late for your meetings and his constant interruptions and long stories cause your sales calls to go beyond the scheduled time. He appears to be more concerned with listening to himself talk which is frustrating because you don't always get enough time to discuss your solution.

Relationships are very important to Talkative Tim so invest more time in social conversation. Even if you don't see the point in this, he will appreciate the gesture and will like you more. This person often makes buying decisions on intuition and how he feels about the sales person.

Be careful not to challenge Tim because he will feel rejected and when this happens he will "shut down" and become unresponsive. During your sales presentation, tell him how good your solution will make him look to others in the company or how his status or image will improve. In other words, appeal to his ego.

Steady Eddie. Soft-spoken, Eddie is a "nice" fellow who seems more focused on his team and coworkers than on his personal results. He is very quiet compared to some of your other prospects and can be difficult to read. But most frustrating is his reluctance to make a buying decision. Eddie's mantra seems to be "I'm still thinking about but thanks for following up."

Structure and security is important to these people and it is difficult for Eddie to make changes. He often contemplates how the decision will affect other people within the organization. That means you need to slow down the sales process, demonstrate how your solution will benefit the team, and remove as much risk from the decision-making process as possible. Soften your voice and make sure your sales presentation flows in a logical manner. Use words like "fair" "logical" and "your team" in your presentation.

Analytical Alice. She reads every point and specification about your product or service and regardless of how much information you give Alice, she always wants more, including written guarantees and back up documentation. She is very difficult to read and it is extremely difficult to get her engaged in an open conversation because personal feelings and emotions do not enter the picture when Alice makes a decision.

Whenever possible, give Alice a written, bullet-point agenda of your meeting-beforehand. Ideally, email it to her a few days in advance so she can prepare herself. Make sure it is completely free of typos, spelling mistakes and punctuation errors. When you meet, follow the agenda in perfect order and if you make any type of claim, have supporting documentation available for her to read.

While the approach to use with each of these people may not make sense to you or seem completely rational, it is critical to recognize that how you naturally and instinctively sell may not be the best way to get results with someone else. Modifying your approach and style, even briefly, will help you better connect with your customers and prospects which means you will generate better sales.

Kelley Robertson, author of The Secrets of Power Selling helps sales professionals and businesses pinpoint what they need to do differently to improve their sales. Receive a FREE copy of "100 Ways to Increase Your Sales" by subscribing to his free newsletter available at www.kelleyrobertson.com. Kelley conducts workshops and speaks regularly at sales meetings and conferences. For information on his programs contact him at 905-633-7750 or Kelley@RobertsonTrainingGroup.com.

Are you doing a little tradeshow planning? Are you going as an exhibitor, or just a tradeshow attendee?

If you’re not going to exhibit, you may think that you don’t really need a concise plan, except for a few exhibitors to visit and some conferences to attend.

But look at this again: as a conference attendee in your industry, you have so much more you can come back with.
For instance, you might do a little spying! Yup, make a list of your main competitors and see how many are exhibiting. Then make a point to stop by each booth, and perhaps even chat up some of the booth attendees on their new offerings. Now, any well-trained booth staffer will know what he can and can’t talk about, but that doesn’t mean your competitors have trained their staff well. (Have yours?) Just by asking a few innocent questions, you might uncover information on an upcoming product or service they’ll be offering soon that your company wants to know about.

The tradeshow is also a great time to meet partners and reinforce alliances. Everybody’s time will likely be heavily scheduled, so plan your specific meetings well in advance. If you wait until the week before, chances are good that the person you want to have dinner with on Saturday night is completely booked up.

Next, walk the show floor with an eye to what exhibits stand out. Are there any new exhibit properties or accessories that catch your eye? Are your competitors setting up booths with new cutting edge materials, or are they using the same old exhibits from 1996? Just note what types of things catch your eye and draw your attention. Is it a ceiling banner? Is it an eye-popping graphic? Is it an unusual demonstration? Collect these good ideas and you’ll be able to consider them for your own exhibit in the future.

During all of this ‘work,’ make sure you plan a little R-n-R for yourself. After all, chances are that you’re in a big city that offers entertainment you may not have in your town. Plan at least one night out with co-workers or industry colleagues if you can. Dinners are always great, especially if you heading for an unusual restaurant (I vividly recall the dinner with clients at the Japanese restaurant I had last year!) – it will usually afford you plenty of time to get to know each other better in far different circumstances that you haven’t experienced before.

No doubt you’ll have a good handle on the little things, such as comfortable shoes (you’ll be on your feet a LOT) and clothes, lots of business cards to hand out, show planning schedule, small first aid kit, etc. But nothing like a good reminder.

About The Author:
Tim Patterson is VP of Sales and Marketing for Interpretive Exhibits in Salem, Oregon. In his 5+ years in his position Tim has worked with numerous clients such as Kettle Foods, Nancy’s Yogurt, Marquis Spas, Natracare, Bi-O-Kleen and more. Tim also hosts IE’s tradeshow-related podcast at www.interpexhibits.com/podcast. Contact: 503.371.9411 or
t-patterson@interpexhibits.com.

Your attitude is shaped by many factors, starting when you are quite young: personality, environment, self-image, the positive or negative expressions of others and your thoughts. While the first four factors listed influence your attitude greatly when you are a child, your thoughts, will have a greater bearing on your attitude as an adult. For instance, if you grew up in a ghetto and had parents who divorced while you were young; if people routinely told you that you'd never amount to anything and your self-image took some major hits as a result, it is safe to say that your attitude was greatly influenced as a youngster as a result. Sadly, until you change your thoughts, these childhood factors will continue to form your attitude—the prevailing way you choose to see the world—throughout your adult life, causing you to strictly limit your life's vision and impose tight boundaries around your self-belief.

This is why the quality of your thinking as an adult is so instrumental in forming your world view and explains why the most successful people guard their thoughts; fortify their thoughts, and take the time to think about what they're thinking about. Otherwise, they can serve a life sentence for the negative influences they had during their childhood. The rooms of therapists are filled with adults who have chosen to bond with and continually rehearse their past and who refuse to stop blaming mom and dad and take responsibility for reshaping their attitude in life by first changing the quality of their thoughts. Without question, thoughts are a significant influencer of attitude. How you think of something or someone greatly determines your attitude towards it. If you have negative thoughts about Muslims, Christians, Caucasians, African Americans, old people, young people and the like, then your thinking will greatly affect your attitude towards these people. By changing how you think about them you can change your attitude as well. This is precisely why attitude is a choice. No one can give you a bad attitude. Someone may alter your mood by the things they say or do, but you are still responsible for how you respond to those actions.

It may be time for some readers to give up the crutch of genetics, environment, past expressions of others or a poor self-image and begin taking more responsibility for the quality of thinking that will ultimately determine their attitude towards work, family, money, religion, success and their future. Deciding to give up your scapegoats and assume personal responsibility for your outlook on the world is an essential and great step in improving your attitude. Since no one can make this decision for you and because you have nothing to gain by delaying a decision, right thinking mandates that you act now to do so.

About The Author:
Peak performance author, columnist, trainer, speaker and radio show host for sales, management and leadership, Dave Anderson walks the talk as a leader. He has led some of the most successful retail automotive dealership in the country—the most recent dealer group he led had over $300,000,000 in annual sales—and now gives 150 presentations, workshops and speeches annually on sales and leadership development around the globe.

Dave is author of over 50 training programs on sales, management and leadership including the books, Selling Above The Crowd: 365 Strategies For Sales Excellence and No Nonsense Leadership: Real World Strategies To Maximize Personal & Corporate Potential. Dave authors a monthly leadership column for Dealer magazine, publishes a monthly leadership newsletter and hosts the weekly radio talk show, Dave Anderson’s Learn To Lead Hour. His books, cassettes, videos, newsletter, column, web articles and live presentations pull no punches and provide real world strategies for peak performance in business and in life.

Dave is a member of the National Speaker's Association and is a featured speaker at conventions worldwide.

Dave is president of the Dave Anderson's Learn To Lead and LearnToLead.com, a cutting edge web site providing hundreds of free training resources to thousands of subscribers in over 30 countries.

"I really care about my customers," Terry told me as we were driving to an appointment. "I try to do the very best I can for them and make sure that their needs are met."

Most sellers I know go to great pains to point out to me just how customer-focused they are. They want to make sure I know that they're not pushy or manipulative or sleazy in any way. Yet when they get into meetings with prospective clients, they quickly switch into a seller-centric mode of operation before they even know what's happening.

That's exactly what occurred in my sales call with Terry. Before we went in, I asked her to tell me what she'd said to get the appointment.

"I told him that we'd introduced some exciting new services that I thought could help reduce turnaround time in their production area," Terry told me.

While the meeting appeared to have a customer-centric agenda, what actually played out during our time with the prospect was an entirely different matter.

After a few minutes of genial exchanges and a bit of data gathering about the business and operation, the decision maker asked Terry about her new offering.

Excited to learn of his interest, she started talking about it. Then she pulled out brochure. And she kept on talking - answering his questions, one-by-one, in excruciating detail.

Before we knew it, her time was up and we were escorted to the lobby. The decision maker thanked us for our time and instructed Terry to keep in touch.

But Terry was customer-focused, right? She graciously answered all his questions and told him exactly what he wanted to know about her offering.

I'm sorry. I beg to disagree. Terry wasted that man's time. She wasn't one bit concerned about his business operation. She just cared about being perceived as a service-oriented and helpful person.

Mind you, I'm not talking about being rude, mean or ornery to prospective clients. Instead, your job today is to help customers figure out how to improve their business operations. That means increasing or decreasing something - and especially "something" that's tied in to one of their key business metrics.

Here are several ideas on how you can truly be customer-centric in today's marketplace:

Nothing beats an immersion course. Roll up your sleeves and become an apprentice for a week. Identify the goals and objectives, mission-critical business imperatives and critical success factors. Find out what's happening in their industry.

Learn how your product or service fits into their work flow. Discover where the gaps are - what kind of problems occur in their current process or methodology. Explore the business ramifications of these problems and the value of solving them.

Some sellers tell me they can't take the time to do this ... that they need to be out making sales calls and signing contracts. Or they say their boss won't let them do this.

Yet their customer knowledge is so shallow - and I mean incredibly shallow - that they can't even hold an intelligent conversation with a key decision maker for longer than five minutes.

You can't be customer-centric if you don't understand your client's business. You can only show them your offering, albeit in a very nice manner, and hope that they understand the difference it makes in their organization.

Many sellers inadvertently set themselves up to talk about their services right away. In phone calls to prospective buyers, they mention their new 'stuff" to get their foot-in-the-door. This type of lead-in guarantees that they'll to be asked to talk about their offering. Requests for appointments should always focus on business results.

When asked about your services in a first sales call, answer very briefly and guide the conversation back to the prospect's business. It's not nice to waste your customer's time talking about something that may be entirely irrelevant to their business.

You may not know this, but top sellers always prepare a list of questions to ask before they go on the call. In fact, these questions are carefully planned to elicit very specific types of information about the customer's business, goals, objectives, current situation, challenges and more.

You can't be customer focused unless you write your questions down. Otherwise, when you're talking to a prospective client you'll continually be thinking of what you'll SAY next.

If you're not listening and totally tuned into what your customer is saying, you're not being nice - you're being rude!

Honestly, the real key in selling is to not delude yourself into thinking that being nice is what customers are looking for. They don't need more friends. Nor do they really care about your service offering.

Customers want someone to help them improve their business. They want a seller who brings them ideas and insights. That's what's valuable today - it's the new NICE!

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events.

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