How do you maintain
your edge and enthusiasm for the sales process? What kind of
tools do you provide to your sales force to elevate their motivation
and enhance their performance? The business of selling isn’t
getting any easier. Customers are demanding more and competitors
are right behind you with plenty to offer. One thing that your
customers will always appreciate is a value-added approach to
the sales relationship – one that addresses all their
needs, both now and in the future. In our Introduction to Sales
training class, we take you and your team step-by-step through
the key principles and practices that will help you to grow
a long-lasting, satisfying and successful relationship with
all of your customers. Sales Skills
that Keep Them Coming Back
"People buy on emotion. It's your job
as the salesperson to trigger those emotions to create interest.
Interest=opportunity."
Initial Benefit Statement: An explanation of what you are
offering, what it means and why anyone should care - in the
exact opposite order
Why should someone consider buying your product?
Why should they take the time to hear you out, let alone meet
with you?
If you don't believe in your product or your
services, no one else will. But believing in what you offer
goes beyond having a good mental mindset. Being able to articulate
in a clear, concise manner is essential to succeeding in sales.
You must be able to state your initial benefit
statement as a universal message. Having a "scripted"
commercial explaining how you can help others from the onset
is critical to your success.
If you door knock, state your initial benefit
to receptionists and secretaries. Why else should they help
you get in the door to speak with the person in charge? If
you are at a networking event, your initial benefit statement
should intrigue others so they will chat with you rather than
move on to the next attendee.
When you speak on the phone for the first time
to someone, tell them why they should care. How do you know
they are the secretary?
If you were from Publisher's Clearing House
and your job was to visit businesses to give them checks for
$1 million, do you think top company executives would stop
what they are doing to speak with you for a moment? It would
depend on what you say.
If you say to the first person you meet, "I'd
like to speak to So-and-So," without identifying who
you were and your purpose, it would be hard to get an audience
with a top executive. Wouldn't it?
Features
Identify what you have in your arsenal, what
you physically offer.
For instance, at TBN Sales Solutions, our offerings
include customized sales training, individual sales coaching,
writing of sales business plans and training manuals, and
our sales book. We establish structures and procedures in
all facets of the sales process.
Some might say "customized" training
or "establishing structures" are benefits. But these
are merely types of services. While other companies offer
generic training to the general public, ours are mostly private
programs designed specifically for a particular audience and
company.
Advantages
In any sales opportunity three outcomes are
possible, not two:
The prospect can either buy your service, buy
your competition's service, or do nothing - and make no change.
The advantage is why your feature will make
their current situation better than it was before- from the
salesperson's perspective.
A critical difference between advantages and
benefits is that an advantage is your interpretation of why
a feature is better, not the prospect's.
For instance, an advantage of TBN establishing
structures is that now salespeople can control their own destiny.
While some may ask if that's a benefit, who
says controlling your own destiny is always a good thing?
Sure, we think it is, but perhaps a larger company has a system
in place, where they don't want salespeople thinking for themselves,
crazy as it sounds.
Benefits
Benefits answers the age old questions customers
ask, "What's in it for me?"
A benefit is how your product will help your
customers. It's a "translation" of the features
and advantages to fit the individual prospect.
Knowing and being able to verbalize benefits
of your product separates you from your competition.
Knowing benefits makes you a professional, not
just another salesperson. For instance, the benefit of each
of our features at TBN is three fold:
Increase commissions for salespeople
Increase profits for businesses
Impact the bottom line
Ideal Client
There is a fourth element, to the initial benefit
statement that largely gets ignored when salespeople deliver
the elevator pitch. This is known as, “Who you are selling
to.”
The concept that, “everyone is a potential
client” is simply a fallacy. Everyone is not a client.
Sure, it would be rare for a salesperson to walk away from
business, should the opportunity be there. But the key is
to know what you are and to know what you are not. Then the
next key is to tell the prospect that exact scenario. The
ideal client is also not just for positioning your company
to prospects, but when you are seeking referrals, as well.
What’s critical about your ideal client
is it is just that: ideal. Now some salespeople express concern
they are selling themselves short if they say the ideal client
to a prospect who does not fit that criteria, but recognize
the fact you don’t know anything about this prospect.
They are just that a prospect.
Too often salespeople mix and match steps in
the sales process. At this stage, when you deliver your initial
benefit statement, you are looking for opportunities –
to qualify potential clients and exclude non-potential clients.
For instance, you may ask, “Well, what
if I say, I impact the bottom line for emerging businesses
and they are a Fortune 500 company? Then I hurt my chances.”
One small factor you forgot to mention is that if you really
impact the bottom line for emerging businesses, then why would
you work with a Fortune 500 company?
It’s like saying you sell long distance
phone service, but gosh, they need local phone service. Are
you going to create a local phone service company?
Know what you are. Know what you are not.
Action Exercise:
1. Write 10 features of your product and company
2. Write 10 advantages of these features
3. Write 10 benefits of these advantages
4. Write 10 characteristics of your ideal client
- By Todd Natenberg
"Customers + Quality Service = Sales"
Sales Success Quote
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed
is more important than any other one thing.
Abraham Lincoln
Suggested Reading
Quality Focused Sales Strategies : How Excellence Leads to
Profits
by Selling Power Editors
Sales Strategies for SOAs
by Jason Bloomberg
Healthcare Sales Strategies
by Suzanne Houck
101 Tools Using ACT to Develop a Sales Strategy
by Brad Sandy
Encyclopedia of Sales Strategies
by James Fantus
Two Thousand One Winning Sales Strategies
by Kenneth R. Schock
Sales Strategies for the Internet Age
by David Stauffer
Media Sales Strategies : Capitalizing on the
Upturn
by Julian Smith
RESULT$: Proven Sales Strategies for Changing
Times
by Jeff Blackman
Internet Marketing and Sales Strategies
by American Productivity & Quality Center
Professional Sales Strategies
by Allen Terek
Personality and sales strategy (The Psychology
of selling)
by Harold C Cash
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