“My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.”
– Benjamin Disraeali
For Salespeople…
There’s one important strategy to remember as you’re planning your sales call. Try to get agreement early in the sales call. Why? If you start the sales call with your customer disagreeing with you early in the sales call, it’s harder to come to an agreement. As Disraeli also noted, people tend to like people who agree with them. Being liked helps with persuasion. We tend to comply to the requests of people we like. So next sales call, start with those areas that you think your customer will agree with. I predict your customer will find you more agreeable and he’s more likely to buy.
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THE BLOG S AND OTHER COLUMNS
I’m now writing The Real Deal, a column on women in business for Allbusiness.com Hope you’ll read more ideas so you can achieve your success in business.
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THE SELLING IDEAS FOR THE MONTH
Critical Success Factors for Sales
Do you wonder what makes a salesperson successful? I hear from readers all the time asking me questions about sales. One reader recently asked me, “If you had to boil success in sales to three critical factors, what do you think they’d be?” I’ve thought about this quite a bit over the years. I couldn’t limit it to just three things. Here’s what I said.
Persistence Persistence has to be the common denominator found in all successful salespeople. It’s essential because of the nature of selling. You may have seen the statistics from a study reported by Selling Power magazine. They found that 2% of sales close on the first call, 3% close on the second call, 4% close on the third call , 10% close on the fourth call, and 81% close the sale on the fifth call. If you lack persistence, you don’t make the sale. Those numbers show just how important it is for a sales professional to be persistent.
Successful sales professionals have what I call “polite persistence.” They ask prospects when they should follow up—and then they do. They call back with a relevant reason of why they’re calling and a reminder that they had spoken with the prospect before. Persistence that annoys or agitates a prospect is bad selling and disastrous for the sales process. What happens? If you get a customer annoyed, your sales process stops and you’ll probably never get the chance to meet and sell
Listening Skills How do you know how to sell to your prospects? You listen to them and use the information to develop your selling strategies. You listen to what prospects say and how they say it. You capture the nonverbal, or what is said without words. You listen so you can “read” people and help your prospects feel comfortable with you. You hear when a person is distracted and help them get back on track to better listen to you, or you back off and plan for another meeting. Great listeners help others to listen to them. They communicate a selling message that the customer easily understands. Effective listening is harder than it sounds. Most people are poor listeners. Successful salespeople are all great listeners. They truly hear what their customers mean.
Questioning Skills The job of a salesperson is to help a customer understand why he should buy. The sales process starts by helping a customer see that there is a need for a product or service, that it’s an important need, and the customer has to buy now. All this happens when a salesperson has an effective questioning strategy. Successful salespeople start the sales call with a question that engages the customer in a business conversation that uncovers business issues that the customer cares about. The salesperson continues questioning and uncovers the challenges the prospect faces. Then the salesperson confirms through additional questions that these issues can be solved by buying something that the salesperson has to sell.
Successful salespeople use questions to shorten their sales cycle and identify key decision makers early. There are questions to motivate a customer to buy and there are questions to clarify issues for the customer. Without effective questioning skills, the sales call becomes nothing more than a social call. With effective questioning, the salesperson is a consultant who guides the customer to buy.
Selling Strategy No matter how good your selling skills are, you will waste your time and be unsuccessful if you call on the wrong prospects. That’s why successful salespeople are clear about who their prospects are. They are unafraid to move on to another prospect when it’s clear that a prospect is a poor fit to sell to. Successful salespeople use their effective strategies to find ideal prospects and avoid those who aren’t.
Every successful salesperson I’ve seen over the years has had these skills. If I’ve missed any critical factors of success, what do you think they are? Your answers would be interesting because there are a lot of sales professionals who are looking for the answer to that question.
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ACTION ITEMS
1. Evaluate your listening skills. Better yet, have someone observe you selling and comment. How many nonverbal clues do you observe? Do you interrupt your customer? Do you have many misunderstandings?
2. Look at your top 5 prospects. Are you politely persistent?
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DID YOU KNOW?
Hotels use reciprocation (giving a gift and getting something in return) as a persuasion strategy. Hilton Worldwide trains its staff to hand guest cookies on their arrival before money changes hands. Customer satisfaction scores on the overall arrival experience have improved.
Source: Wall Street Journal April 12, 2012, Traelers Feel Sticker Shock for Siummer Vacations in Europe
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Here are some selling tools to help you sell more now. Click on the photo to find out more!
Monday Morning Sales Tips : A book that has quick ideas for you to be more successful in sales. Real-World Selling: A book with selling skills and strategies that work in the real world of sales. Secrets of Persuasion: Audio CD for the clues to use to speed-read people and close more business.