The reality with most big sales is that you, the salesperson, will not be there when the decision is made. Some Committee, Board, or task force will make the decision.

The real way to beat competition is to have influential friends on that committee who are fighting your corner for you.

There are three key things you need to do:

  You need to identify who the more powerful people are

  You need to get them to support your case.

  You need to rehearse them so that they are articulate in putting      your point across

In some sales organisations, this issue is a ‘Showstopping Qualifier’. If they cannot find a strong internal salesperson they will not bid.

The trick is not for you to be articulate in your case. The real trick is to train your ‘friends’ to be articulate on your behalf. This does not happen by accident, you have to train them.

It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it

The quality of the work is not the same as the quality of the service. In every person’s job there are probably 200 ‘Moments of Truth’ every day.

You can do excellent work for a client but a number of factors can destroy the relationship:

• Some of your expenses were dubious
• You did not answer phone messages quickly enough
• You leave voicemail to answer all your calls so that you can filter them
• You billing was complex
• You didn’t do that little bit extra that would have been so easy. Or you insisted on billing for it
• You didn’t follow up on the day you promised

Satisfaction = Perception – Expectation

The view that people have of you and your organisation is not just the work that you do. It is all the little ‘Moments of Truth’ that add up. The airline ‘SAS’ developed a series of courses based on this concept of ‘Moments of Truth’ after they became unprofitable for a year. When you serve a cup of coffee, you can do it with a smile or a frown. It’s a moment of truth. When the telephone rings, you can answer it immediately or let it ring. It’s a moment of truth. Every job is full of moments of truth.

Most sales people understand the idea of selling their goods. After all, they get paid on the amount they sell.

But, from the buyer’s point of view, the decision rest on three things

• You must sell yourself
• Sell the capabilities of your company 
• Sell the product

It is from these three areas that the buyer decides whether or not they are getting value for money.

Selling Yourself

At it’s simplist,’ Selling Yourself’ means that the prospect wants to do business with you, personally. This normally arises because they have the greatest faith in your ability to install successfully.

Somestimes, the winning salesperson is actually a rather though, possibly rather abrasive, personality. However, the prospect will give that person the business because he or she thinks that with someone like that on his or her side the system is sure to go smoothly.

Selling yourself is about keeping promises, being on time, sorting out problems quickly, getting the resources necessary and organising both your own team and the prospect’s.

Selling your Company

When someone buys a technological solution to a problem, they are buying more than just a product. Frequently, they are entrusting part of the control of their business to the supplier.

If the supplying company should fail for any reason, or if they withdraw the product, or if they discontinue maintenance, it could be disastrous for the purchaser. So, in addition to convincing them that the product can meet their needs, it is essential to convince them that your company can and will back them.

If salespeople do not appriciate this point and do not present their company professionally or they do not present their company at all, then the buyer may not demand the information. Instead, the buyer may just give the business to a competitor who does understand.

I have come to the conclusion that the one thing you should never do is to just telephone the prospects and say that you have decided not to bid. Nor should you just write.

Firstly, it would mess up the relationship; and secondly, there is a much better way to do it!

You go to the prospect and give them your problem. 

 I would be delighted to bid but unfortunately there is no way I can meet your implementation timescales. I am worried that Imight be wasting your time and mine by bidding. Can we discuss how we might fix the problem?

In other words:

Convince me I should bid!

Either they will convince you or they will not.  

If they do convince you that is great because you have shifted the goal-posts in your direction. The prospect is now more articulate in your strengths.

If they do not convince you, then the game is to get the prospect to tell younot to bid! If you can get the prospect to tell you not to bid, then you have kept the relationship squeaky clean and neither the prospect nor your management can complain about you not bidding.

It is hard to describe but it is such good fun to go to a sales meeting when you know that the outcome will be that the prospect tells you not to bid! It is certainly not what the prospect is expecting.

If you have a sales hat on your head then it may seem a bit strange and embarrassing to behave this way. Put a business hat on your head and it is the easiest thing in the world.

Designing the Quit Points

The strongest salespeople are very tough qualifiers. I always enjoy it when people design what I would call ‘Quit Points’ into their plan.

A Quit Point is defined as follows. Let us assume that there is some potential show-stopper. To overcome the show-stopper, some commitment is needed. In other words you need to ‘Change the Rules’.

If you achieve the commitment, change the rules, then the sale goes forward for you to win it. If you do not achieve commitment, you quit. If you cannot change the rules then the potential show-stopper becomes a real one and you WILL lose.  In other words, the Quit Points are those critical commitments that convince you it is worth bidding.

If You Are Going To Lose Then Lose Quickly

Coming second doesn’t count in sales. It saps morale, wastes your time, pays no commission and messes up your company’s resources.

Famous entrepreneur and showman P.T. Barnum is perhaps best known today for having said “There’s a sucker born every minute.”  However, surprisingly he never said any such thing.  In fact, he believed there was a customer born every minute, and this belief – that everyone was a potential buyer – was just one of the many solid business principles supporting his long and successful career.

Here at Advance, we hold a similar belief, that the customer needs help exploring their issues in order to define and create the need for what you can provide them.

Interestingly, in 1852, Barnum was asked his rules for business, which resulted in an article outlining his ten rules for success.

1.       Select the kind of business that suits your natural inclinations and temperament.

2.       Let your pledged word ever be sacred.

3.       Whatever you do, do with all your might.

4.       Sobriety, use no description of intoxicating drinks.

5.       Let hope predominate – but be not too visionary.

6.       Do not scatter your powers.

7.       Engage proper employees.

8.       Advertise your business.  Do not hide your light under a bushel.

9.       Avoid extravagance; and always live considerably within your income, if you can do so without absolute starvation!

10.   Do not depend upon others – every man must be the architect of his own fortune.

P.T. Barnum concluded that “the road to competence will not, I think, usually be found a difficult one.”

150 years later, do you think his ten rules for business success hold true?

Of course listening is easy.  You just sit there and noises go into your head and the job is done.  Isn’t that all there is to listening?

In fact, listening is one of the most difficult of human activities.

Think about what actually happens when you listen.  Here’s some thoughts:

• You are paying attention
• You’re selecting the areas of interest for follow up
• You are giving eye contact
• You are grunting, assenting, smiling
• You’re asking follow-up questions
• You’re deciding whether or not its worth continuing the conversation
• You could be taking notes
• Etc.

So it appears to be quite a complex process!

Interestingly, while listening, you also ask questions and use encouraging expressions like “interesting” or “amazing” or “really?”.  So in the process of listening we use our mouth, not just our ears.  In fact, we use our whole body.

I have a personal definition of listening that makes the whole thing a lot clearer:

Listening is the active process of letting the other person know that you have heard them.

Notice the word “active” in that definition.  Listening is something we do.  It is not some innate capability that some people have – because it is active, it is something that we can learn, and acan learn to excel at.

For more on how to listen, try our “Listening Skills” sales training module.

We see a fundamental difference between e-learning and e-training.

There are a large number of e-learning offerings available at present.  Competent though they are at achieving what they set out to achieve, they lack the inclusive and compelling environment of well delivered classroom skills training and workshops.

Consumer insight suggests that many people find e-learning rather dull, boring and a lonely experience.  Others see it as tedious and unexciting.  There is a general lack of community feeling – each learner learns on their own.

While e-learning offerings may succeed in educating and informing, most fail to engage participants and don’t help them develop practical – and practised – skills.  This is particularly true in the sales training arena.

Critically, while e-learning develops knowledge, Advance’s e-Training develops practical sales skills that participants can deploy immediately in the real world.

The challenges – and how Advance Sales e-Training overcomes them

We have created a multi-dimensional experience that takes superb tried and tested content, the best of the classroom training and face to face coaching experiences, and brings them together in an easily accessible online format.

The training is packaged and delivered in an engaging and interactive way using expertly blended media.  It caters for different levels of experience, and for different learning styles.

Follow-up mentoring and coaching is available if the support of the community of fellow learners is not enough, and help is always at hand.

We believe that out e-training solution successfully takes the best classroom experience and transforms it into online learning that not only retains the benefits of the physical classroom, but also delivers additional benefits made possible by today’s technology.

Stories are an immensely powerful way of taking a dry boring subject and making it alive and human for your audience.  forgive me for saying it, but most products are dry and boring. Its what they do for people that cna be very interesting and exciting. So in our Giving Evidence sales training module we explore story-telling a little further. We examine the power of reference stories and the best way of telling them.

Some people are good story tellers and others are not, so this training session helps us use two methods to improve our technique.

The first is to add enough colour and detail to the example to give it an audit trail, to ground it in the real world so that the listener feels that he or she could check it out.

The second technique is a formula for structuring the example. It goes, ‘Once upon a time something bad happened… Then we came along and something good happened..  And this was the result..’

There are three steps: Their Problem: Our Solution: Their Result Each part is important. When describing Their Problem we are giving empathy to our prospect.  When describing Our Solution we are giving the details of our offering and its implementation. When describing Their Result we are not talking about our success, we are describing our customer’s success.

Find out more about learning to tell reference stories for selling.

Access the Sales Training “Selling Styles” module free of charge for a limited time.

There is a school of thought that believes the way to sell is to tell your prospect all about your wonderful product and then sweet talk the prospect into buying it, “handle all the objections” and finally “apply” a closing technique to get the sale.

This process is very common, and is often used if the salespeople think their product is exciting in some way.  They rush the prospect along to a demonstration and then they close.

It works too.  Some sales are closed.

Yet is is not the best way.  A better method is to create or develop the prospect’s needs before giving the presentation of your product.  The prospect’s mind is then fertile ground and many objections evaporate.

Most sales training tells the salesperson to “understand the prospect’s needs” or “find out what they really want.”

The assumption is that the prospect has some needs, and that these needs are fundamental and unchangeable.   This idea is nonsense, of course.  People can and do change their minds.  Needs can be found; and most importantly, they can be engineered.

In our need creation sales training module,we explore how to create or amplify the need in the prospect for our offering.  The discussion will start with the prospect’s vision of problem.  Needs are then created/developed by allowing the prospect to ‘wallow’ in their issues in our area of expertise.  The more they talk about it the more they convince themselves.

We need to create needs in two areas:

• Why should they change at all?

• Why should they change to us?

Even if the prospect has a clear understanding of the need, we must get them to tell us why they need it.  The prospect must know that we understand.

Many salespeople stop this ‘wallowing’ process far too quickly, long before they have bottomed out the prospects real needs.  Even when we think we have finished, we should check by asking the question, ‘Is there anything else?’

Advance’s Need Creation sales training module teaches fundamental skills to understand the prospect’s motivations, and therefore create the need.

Access the Sales Training “Selling Styles” module free of charge for a limited time.

When my social learning company, Reach Further, got involved in the instructional design of Advance’s sales training courses, it became apparent that this was no ordinary elearning project, nor was it “ordinary” sales training.

We wanted to capture Dermot’s unique style in our online versions of his sales training workshops, and there was no way to do this without experiencing some “A-ha! moments for ourselves, according to Mike Wilkinson, of Advance.  So a course was swiftly arranged with the man himself, and a small group of business owners who culdn’t resist the lure of probably the last opportunity to get Dermot out of retirement (and off the dance floor!) and into a sales training classroom.

Within a couple of hours, we had all experienced the famous “Ah-a!” moment.  When suddenly, all the strange frustrations around certains types of selling and sales situations were articulated, and Dermot showed us something that quite clearly explained it all.  Each and every one of us in the classroom shared the same lightning bolt of realisation, and it changed the way we sold forever.

I’ve since drawn the diagram he showed us on the back of probably a dozen envelopes, and shared this gem with others who were stuck looking at sales the wrong way.

Now usually in a blog-post, I’d give you a bit more explanation, but today there is no need.  Advance have decided to give away a copy of “Selling Styles” to everyone of you, so that you can experience the “A-ha!” moment for yourself.

Click to gain access to our online community and this free sales training.  Hurry, you’ve only got until the end of April!