Presenting with Confidence and Panache

March 10th, 2009

For some reason our organisation is winning lots of presenting skills programmes. In today’s competitive world, Sales Leaders are required to be accomplished presenters, who know how to communicate with their audience, someone to whom people listen. Whether presentations are to their sales teams during meetings, at annual sales conferences or to big prospective buyers, the effective Sales Leader, just as in the political arena, is the one who can make people hear the facts and believe the message.

A common physical reaction to having to present to a group of people is a release of adrenaline and cortisol into our system, the equivalent to drinking seven cups of coffee. Our primative brain shuts down normal functions as the ‘fight or flight’ impulse takes over. The good news is that if you have good rapport with your audience, they will want you to succeed. They’re on your side. Don’t try to get rid of the butterflies - just get them flying in formation.

When it comes to the enthusiasm that Sales Leaders have for making a presentation, they broadly fall into four categories:

The Avoider:

Does everything possible to escape from having to stand in front of an audience; in some drastic cases Sales Leaders may seek positions that do not involve making presentations. This can really block their career opportunities.

The Register:

Extremely hesitant of presenting, however Registers may not be able to avoid presenting as part of their job but they never encourage it. When they do speak they do so very reluctantly. This ‘reluctance’ will be unconsciously conveyed when they present and can detract from the message and reduce the perceived credibility of the Sales Leader.

The Acceptor:

They will give presentations as part of their job but do not seek opportunities to do so. Acceptors occasionally give a presentation and feel they did a good job. They even find that once in a while they are quite persuasive and enjoy the experience. The more presentations Sales Leaders do, the greater their confidence and this group can be far easier to persuade that the above two groups.

The Seeker:

They continually look for opportunities to present. They understand that anxiety can be a stimulant that fuels enthusiasm during a presentation. Seekers work at building their professional communication skills and self-confidence by presenting often. The reality is, that making presentations is an essential skill for Sales Leaders and consequently becoming a Seeker is a pre-requisite to success!

If you’d like to ensure that your presentations stand out from the crowd then you may find attending An Audience with Charisma worthwile. They guarantee to increase an individual’s level of charisma within 48 hours and provide tangible evidence of this increase - cool eh?

Becoming Passionate about Motivation!

March 1st, 2009

Just enjoyed a wonderful Sunday Lunch with friends of ours, Ari and Irene. Ari is a very talented Sales Manager and the conversation turned to motivation. I don’t believe that there is such a thing as co-incidence so Ari has inspired me to talk about my passion for motivational techniques during this week’s blog.

When we feel motivated we are able to tap into the fuel that drives our performance. Motivation gives us additionally reasons to solve problems, overcome difficulties and persevere when the going get tough. Motivation can transform an ordinary performance into an extraordinary performance because ultimately if an individual wants to achieve a particular goal badly enough they will be prepared to do whatever it takes to get it. In a sales environment where sales people are often on the receiving end of countless rejections and tend to work mainly alone, the individual’s level of motivation will be demonstrated by the results they achieve, not necessarily instantly yet at some point in the future. An important characteristic required for sales people is that they possess a positive mental attitude to support them through times of stress and difficulties. Yet their attitude is often a reflection of their inner drive; they know what they need to achieve and why achieving it benefits them. Therefore, a Sales Leader who has the ability to ‘ramp up’ their sales peoples’ drive will generally be the Sales Leader who gets better results.

Every individual is completely unique and consequently has a set of values that are unique to them. These are the fundamental principles and beliefs that are considered worthwhile and desirable by the individual and consequently they hold a lot of emotional intensity. Many Sales Leaders make the mistake of trying to motivate their sales team in the same way or based on what is important to the Sales Leader. This approach may work for some people, those that have similar values to their Sales Leader, yet in the main it will fail. The best way to motivate a sales person is to identify what they value as important, in context of their careers, then, use this information to motivate and leverage their performance. The following process enables you to discover what is important to each member of your sales team and is an ideal session to do either during performance reviews or at some point during the accompaniment day:

 

  • Prior to discovering a sales person’s values, ensure that you have built high levels of rapport to encourage open and honest communication. Because a person’s values are very emotive the sales persons needs to feel high levels of trust in their Sales Leader.
  • Explain why you are going to ask them questions around what’s important to them. This should always include a benefit to them. For example, “To ensure that I give you the support needed to achieve your target, I’d like to ask you a few questions. Are you ok with this?” or “I want to really understand what motivates you so that I can do what I can to keep your motivation levels high. Therefore, are you comfortable with answering some questions?”
  • Ask “What’s important to you in your career?” wait for their answer and write this down using their exact words. Then ask “What else is important to you in your career?” until you have written down approximately 10 -12 of their values. Never pass judgement on what they tell you because this could cause the individual to clam up. Expect long pauses and never prompt them with your own ideas – everything has to come from them.
  • Then, ask the individual to number their values according to their importance. For example, 1 = Most important, 2 = Next important and so on until they have numbered every value. You’ll notice that the order of importance for most individuals is different to the order that they first tell you their values.
  • Write out the individual’s values in order of important to them and then for each of their values ask “ Why is (value) important to you?” Record their reply. This step is helpful for two main reasons; firstly, you’ll understand what the value means to the individual and you’ll be able to use their words and phrases at future moments in time to motivate them appropriately. Secondly, you’ll be able to identify whether their motivation type is either ’Towards’ or ‘Away From’. Some individuals are motivated by what they can gain; this is called ‘Towards’ motivation. Other individuals are motivated by what problem they can avoid, this is called ‘Away From’ motivation. Both directional types of motivation work effectively and if a Sales Leader is aware of the directional type of each sales person, this improves their ability to motivate individuals in the most effective way. For example, if an individual wants to avoid failing (fear of failure is a common value held by many highly successful sales people according to Zurich Financial Services) then highlighting the success that achieving their targets will give them will not be as powerful as highlighting that feeling of failure that they’ll get if they miss their sales targets.
  • Once you’ve completed this target, you then have vital information about what motivates the individual that you can use to help them accomplish different tasks. For example, if an individual’s most important value is recognition and you want them to increase the amount of time they devote to cold calling, you could say, “ Imagine the amount of additional recognition you’ll get from being successful at cold-calling.”

Good luck with the impending birth of your first baby Irene and Ari- he will be a very lucky little boy having you both as parents!

Probing for Pain

February 26th, 2009

If your sales people are involved in prospecting then they’ll already know the challenges of persuading a prospect to give them the business. Ultimately there is a 4-step process involved in buying, that all of us follow;

 

1. We have to feel MOTIVATED to make a purchase, irrespective of its type or size.

2. At some point after we’ve become motivated to want to buy, we make a DECISION to buy.

3. Then, after we have made a decision, we want to feel CONVINCED that our decision is the right one and at this stage we may seek approval and input from other people. Then, we’ll make our purchase.

4. Finally, after making our purchase we seek REASSURRANCE. Interestingly, if sales people haven’t nurtured newly acquired customers, this can result in ‘Buyers Remorse’ and the customer will get ‘cold feet’ and cancel their order.

 

Every step of this process requires careful handling, yet if the sales person lacks the ability to motivate their prospect to talk to them, let alone buy from them, the other steps become redundant.

According to a growing number of International Sales Gurus including Neil Rackham, David Sandler and Anthony Robbins, people are fundamentally motivated in 2 main ways:

 

1. What problem or pain they can avoid and move away from

2. What pleasure or benefit they can move towards

 

Imagine your alarm going off in the morning and you realise that you have to get out of bed. It’s just too warm and comfortable where you are, so you give yourself another 5 minutes. Then, after this time, you decide to lay in for another few minutes until you suddenly get a picture in your mind of your angry boss! The consequences of being late for your meeting with him, scares you into jumping out of bed.

Alternatively, imagine your alarm going off on the morning of your holiday. The prospect of sun, sea and Sangria, fills you with excitement as you jump out of bed to start your 2 week vacation.

 

If a prospect feels content with their current supplier or their current situation, then it will be a huge challenge to motivate them to want to buy your product or service. That’s why every pain your prospect feels is an opportunity for you. Your task, during the initial fact-finding stage is to uncover their ‘pain’ and help them to dwell on their problems. The stronger the pain or the bigger their problem, the greater their motivation will be to move away it. If you can convince prospects that your organisation can reduce one or more of their ‘pains’ then you have suddenly discovered a powerful way to unleash their motivation to buy from you.

 

Here are some examples of questions that probe for pain:

 

● “What areas of your current situation don’t you like?”

● “What is this costing your organisation each year?”

● “How do you feel about (problem)?”

● “Who else is aware of these issues?”

● “How do they feel about it?”

● “Why haven’t you tackled this before?”

● “How do your issues compare to those in similar organisations?”

● “Which of these problems is causing you the most concern?”

● “What have you done in the past that’s not worked?”

● “When did you begin noticing this issue?”

● “Why is this such an issue for you?”

● “When will you decide to resolve this?”

 

When probing for pain it’s more effective to start with general questions to build rapport and encourage discussion and plenty of input from the prospect. As you begin using questions that probe for pain you’ll notice shifts in their body language that can provide you with important feedback that your questions are hitting the mark. Ideally, encourage the prospect to define the consequences of their problem, this magnifies the problem in their minds eye and consequently builds their motivation to want to get it solved. Finally, you need to gain their commitment to resolving their problem by asking “How committed are

you to resolving this issue?”

Post-Sale Follow-Up

February 26th, 2009

The first sale isn’t the end of the sales process but the beginning of the next sales cycle. What you do after you’ve made the first sale determines whether you get the next one or any referrals. New customers have a tendency to evolve through 3 phases once they decide to buy from you. Initially they feel very excited about their decision before going through a learning curve where they may struggle with blending in your products/services. Finally, they begin to experience the value that you provide and the relationship settles down and finds its own balance. During Phase 2 this can be a potentially vulnerable time for a sales person because without the benefit of an established track record, in the face of possible problems, no matter how minor, this is the time when most newly acquired customers are apt to change their mind. 

The process of buying has 4 main components that all customers will evolve through. They: 

  1. Have to be motivated to want to buy from you
  2. Make a decision to buy from you
  3. Want to feel convinced that they have made the right decision
  4. Look for reassured that they are doing the right thing                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Once the customer has placed their order, they are at the 2nd stage in the buying process. If a sales person doesn’t provide the relevant reassurance that validates the benefits of their decision, then the likelihood of the customer cancelling their order increases dramatically. This is often referred to as ‘Buyers Remorse.’ Therefore, it’s important to provide tangible demonstrations that the customer has made the right decision. These can include, the use of testimonials, higher initial servicing levels, regular contact and if appropriate training sessions on the areas effected by the introduction of your product or service. There are a number of additional ways that can improve the post sale part of the sales process:
  • Set a service agenda for the first 30 days after the sale so that your customer knows exactly what they can expect from you. This may include visits and phone calls at the point when they receive your product or your service begins. This enables you to have established contact frequency at important times when teething problems could occur.
  • Ask each customer for their preferences in the way you manage their account and ensure that they have all the contact information for every eventuality.
  • After the call, send a hand-written note, thanking them for their business. This is a personal touch that only takes a moment to do, yet leaves the customer feeling valued and special.
  • Identify what areas in particular the customer feels is vital to the way you manage their account so that you can pay close attention to these areas.
  • Agree up-front how future problems will be handled
  • Document all successes and evidence of your value in writing. For example: “I noticed that your delivery was received on time last Thursday and am delighted that you now have our products in stock.”
  • Actively ask questions to check their satisfaction. For example, “Was everything as you had expected?” “Is there anything we need to change?”  This helps to flush out problems and manages the customer’s expectations so they feel they are genuinely being looked after. If there is a problem, the earlier you know about it, the sooner you can remedy it.
  • Resolve any complaints quickly and to the customer’s satisfaction

 

 

Effective Negotiations

February 26th, 2009

The fundamental difference between selling and negotiation is that selling is a process to identify the fit between what the seller is offering and what the buyer is seeking. Negotiation is the process of agreeing the terms of the deal and is part of the selling continuum. Yet, the negotiation should only begin when there is a genuine commitment from the buyer and seller towards a conditional sale. It’s a bit like dating, usually a person is unlikely to book a restaurant until a date has been agreed to! Equally the person being asked for a date wouldn’t particularly care about the restaurant choice unless they were sufficiently interested in attending the date. Once the date has been

agreed it’s simply a matter of agreeing/negotiating the type of restaurant, location and time. When an individual is or has committed to do something, their level of interest rises dramatically, which is why the negotiation phase can be a hotbed of emotional intensity and tension.

Excellent salespeople use the selling phase to lay the ground rules for a possible future negotiation by ensuring that they fully understand their prospect’s requirements, and decision making process while planting seeds and setting the tone for the negotiation phase. If for example you do all the giving through the selling phase, you have established the presupposition that you’ll continue to do all the giving in the negotiation phase. The transition from selling to negotiating can only occur when the desire to do business has been evoked in their prospect.

 

Start with the end in mind

The benefits of a well-negotiated deal can have a major impact on bottom line profit, and naturally when the buyer and seller enters into a negotiation they both want the best possible deal for their own organisation. It’s little wonder that negotiations are viewed as competitions where the outcome has to yield winners and losers. The ‘winning’ negotiator may experience short-term gains, yet long-term gains may prove harder than winning the lottery! That’s why the process of creating an agreement that each party will willingly fulfil is referred to as Win-Win, and provides increased probability of sustaining long-term customer relationships. Every negotiation has the potential to achieve one of the following outcomes:

 

● Win-Lose - where your customer wins a better deal at your expense and can lead to an unprofitable long-term relationship, because you have conceded too much to sustain future account servicing and growth

● Lose-Win - where you win a better deal at your customer’s expense which can cause bitterness and resentment, resulting in cancellations and a myriad of issues that stem from negative emotions

● Lose-Lose - which is symptomatic of big egos on both sides that are prepared to ‘fight to the bitter end’ just to do a deal. This outcome creates bitterness and relationships are unlikely to continue past the short term

● Walk-Away - which is actually a better outcome than all the above because it preserves the possibility of a future relationship that is profitable for both parties

● Win-Win - where both parties have made concessions yet both the buyer and the seller are willing to comply with the agreed terms, and share a perception that the outcome was fair to both

 

Recognising the importance of Win-Win outcomes is the first step towards planning to create an environment where both people are willing to share information, and invest time in the negotiation process. Some people see themselves as natural, spontaneous negotiators which may get the

adrenaline pumping yet a lack of planning can result in lost revenues, lost opportunities and lost time. Thorough preparation is more likely to create and instil a high level of self-confidence, as well as create an increased probability for a Win-Win outcome.

 

Here is a useful checklist of questions that will ensure good preparation practice:

 

● Who’s got the most leverage? (the better bargaining position)

● How strong is your proposition?

● How strong is the other party’s proposition?

● What will you and the other party be asking for?

● What are your options and alternatives?

● What is the cost/value of each negotiation point?

● What are the other party’s worries, frustrations and motivations?

● What are the fixed and variable points from all sides’ perspectives?

● What ideally do you want to achieve?

● What is your fallback position from which you are not prepared to move?

● What are your fixed points?

● What can you use as concessions if you decide to trade?

● What are the real issues for you?

● Who will be attending the negotiation?

● What are their roles?

● What are their positions?

● Is the decision-maker present?

● In your team, what roles will you be taking?

● Who will handle which issues?

● How would you describe the negotiation style of the other party?

● How will this effect your own approach in the negotiation?

● What did you learn from your last negotiation that you can apply to this one?

Managing Your Pipeline

February 26th, 2009

Imagine a bath filled with water. Almost instantly the water begins to evaporate or can slowly seep through the plughole. Over a period of time the water level reduces and the temperature drops! The only way to keep the water level high and the water hot is to turn on the tap and continually refill it. Equally, you want to keep your prospects ‘on the boil’ by actions that continuously warm up and consolidate your relationship with them.You certainly don’t want all your efforts to go down the drain! 

The moment you contact a qualified prospect you are committed to the time consuming process of ongoing discussions, and have created a real opportunity to convert potential business into actual sales. This is often referred to as ‘pipeline business’ because the more progress you make, the higher your probability for success.These milestones and percentages will vary from organisation to organisation, yet the principle that the more milestones you reach the higher the probability for success remains valid for everyone. These milestones form goals against which you can plan specific activities. These can then be translated into specific objectives that you can review and monitor at each stage. The ability to leverage your probability for converting potential business in your pipeline is a vital part of the sales process and helps to focus your mind onto getting each prospect to the next milestone. Speed of follow-through is really important because it helps to create a momentum that consolidates your relationship with potential new customers. 

The following suggestions can help you accelerate your prospects through your pipeline, and increase your probability for winning more deals: 

● Agree the next steps with your prospect, and ensure that you are clear on the actions that will take you to the next milestone and closer to the sale. 

● Before agreeing any actions with your prospect, ask yourself if these actions are leading you towards a sale. If you can’t see the tangible reason for doing an action then you could find yourself in a never-ending situation of fruitless discussions that dilute your results.

● Send an acknowledgement and confirmation of agreed actions to your prospect within 24 hours if possible. This conveys professionalism and provides another layer of reassurance for the prospect. 

● At the end of every telephone call and meeting with your prospect, agree a specific time and date for your next contact. Lots of your valuable time can be wasted trying to get in touch with a busy buyer! 

A well-managed pipeline helps to improve the consistency of results achieved, and creates a platform for more accurate sales forecasting. If pipeline management is not an integral part of an organisation’s sales process, this can result in a number of problems, including: longer sales cycles, reduced forecasting accuracy, inconsistent and unpredictable sales performance, declining win-rates and an inability to pinpoint reasons for decreased results.You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and if you can’t measure your pipeline then you can’t improve your productivity. There are a number of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) that can be measured, monitored and managed to ensure achievement of sales targets: 

KPI                                                      DESCRIPTION

Pipeline Opportunities                    These should be measured in value and the number of opportunities in the pipeline

 

Opportunities by Milestone            Once these milestones and their different probabilities of closing have been calculated, these figures ensure greater accuracy of forecasting

 

Average Deal Size                          This ensures better focus on larger deals and ideally will increase steadily each year

 

Sales Cycle Time                            Shortening this can have a huge impact because of the cumulative ‘saved time’ available for prospecting

 

Profitability                                        Margins can be tracked to ensure that there is sufficient contribution to enable ongoing account handling

 

Conversion Ratio                            The number of opportunities won and the % of pipeline potential converted

 

 

Open, Leading and Closed Questions

February 26th, 2009

In a selling environment where most good sales people appreciate the importance of discovering a prospect’s requirements, it is easy to take questioning skills for granted. Yet, questions that are crafted with strategic intent can uncover a myriad of secrets stored in the prospect’s mind. A typical trap that even the most experienced sales person can fall into, is that they make assumptions, either based on hard facts, possible facts or generalisations they’ve formed about their industry, prospects and themselves. Good questions seek to challenge and test assumptions so that the sales person’s mind and the mind of their prospect/customer is free to think clearly and consequently to provide the relevant information.  Before you can start to ask questions designed to uncover specifics, it’s important to give the prospect the opportunity to talk. The more they talk, the more signposts you’ll receive that will help lead the way to your desired outcome. Therefore, it helps to understand the definition and the positioning of different question types:

 

Open Questions

For example: “How can we help?”

● good for opening up the customer and getting broad, general, information that is uninfluenced by you

● gives the customer the freedom to tell you whatever they want

● tend to start with what, when, where, why, who, which or how

 

Leading Questions

For example: “What else can you tell me about your delivery requirements?”

● good for leading the customer in the direction you want them to go and finding out more specific information about their requirements

● tend to start with what, when, where, why, who, which or how

 

Closed Questions

For example: “Do you want to order this?”

● usually get a “yes” or “no” (or very short) answer

● useful when you want to pinpoint/clarify specific information

 

The type of questions you ask customers can generate an uninfluenced or an influenced response. Open questions tend to give you longer, uninfluenced answers that allow you to begin to appreciate what’s important to a customer. Leading questions are still open questions yet they influence customers’ responses around specific areas.

 

The Open, Leading and Closed Combination

Open questions »»» uninfluenced customer response »»» leading questions »»» influences customer response »»» closed question »»» validation of customer response

 

The example below illustrates the ideal combination of using open, leading and closed questions to pinpoint a customer’s specific requirements:

 

Sales person: “What’s important to you?” (Open question)

 

Customer: “Price, quality and efficiency.” (Uninfluenced response)

 

Sales person: “Why is price important to you?” (Leading question based on price)

 

Customer: “So I can be more competitive in winning new business.” (Influenced response based on price related question)

 

Sales person: “If I can demonstrate how we can help you win more business, will you review our proposition?” (Closed question to gain agreement)

 

Customer: “Yes” (influenced, definite response)

 

Testimonials

February 26th, 2009

“If you become a testimonial-based seller, (which I believe to be the most powerful form of sales in the world). Then you can get testimonials for every element, or every step, of your sales cycle.”

 

Jeffrey Gitomer, author of Little Red Book of Sales Answers

 

Customers like to feel reassured that the purchase they are about to make will do everything that the sales person has told them it will do. Why? Because there is a principle based around social proof that effectively confirms “if other customers like this, it must be good”. The power of using testimonials during different stages of the sales process increases sales when ‘real’ customers are seen or heard testifying as to how beneficial a product/service has been for them. They increase your credibility, because they are third-party endorsements rather than words out of your own mouth. The goal of a customer is to predict the future about a product/service, and by offering real stories from other real customers can turn a picture of your proposition into a tangible experience.

 

When using testimonials, there are a number of elements that can maximise their effectiveness:

 

  • The more specific a testimonial is, the more power it has for the customer. For example; ” Great company, great service” lacks meaning because it is vague and doesn’t tell the customer anything. Consider the impact when a testimonial becomes more specific: “I was really impressed with this company’s speed of service. They pulled out all the stops so that I had product sitting in my warehouse within 24 hours.”
  • Every testimonial should include the customer’s name, their title and their organisation’s name (if relevant) and ideally a thumbnail size photograph of that person. This helps to convey the authenticity of the testimonial and builds credibility.
  • Dividing testimonials into different aspects of the sales process can be really useful. When used in context, they create more impact. For example; if a sales person is struggling to get an appointment with a prospect, a relevant testimonial could help persuade that prospect to agree to a meeting:“It took me 2 years before I agreed to meet this company. Having worked with them almost a year, I wish I’d seen them earlier.”
  • Within the context of the sales cycle, testimonials can be used at many stages, particularly:

-       Initial letters/emails to request a meeting

-       Sales presentations to reinforce key points

-       Objection handling and negotiations

-       Post – meeting follow up to provide reassurance

-       Managing ongoing relationships with regular contact

 

  • Validating the benefits of your product or service can be achieved brilliantly by using a video format for your testimonials at the end of your presentation. This provides a powerful benefits-driven summary that confirms and proves your claims. Just remember, the only thing better than saying the right thing at the right time is when your customers do it for you–and better.

 

  • You and your team are already acutely aware of your most frequently encountered objections. That’s why testimonials should acknowledge and mention these objections, before explaining why they still decided to buy from your organisation. For example: “I was initially surprised with their prices until I saw the quality of their product and experienced their vast range of promotional services.”  Testimonials are really powerful when they acknowledge an objection that paces the probable experiences of your prospects, then wipes out the objection with an overarching benefit.

 

  • When requesting testimonials, you are looking to obtain a genuine viewpoint that praises your organisation/product/service. Therefore, the best time to ask for this is when your customer has experienced the benefits of your product/service. To help busy customers respond to your request, provide them with other examples of testimonials so they can see how easy they are to write. It also helps if you can provide them with a simple structure to follow, for example: 

-       Why did you agree to meet us?

-       What persuaded you to buy our product?

-       What benefits have you gained from using this product?

-       How would you describe our level of service?

A Consultative approach

February 26th, 2009

If a sales person pitches a prospect too early in the sales process and has not taken the time to fully appreciate that prospect’s requirements, they are likely to encounter much more resistance in comparison to a sales person who has first sought to identify and agree the prospect’s requirements prior to presenting their proposals.

In the current competitive climate where the role of sales people is becoming even more demanding, organisations that adopt a consultative approach are more successful.

Every prospect and customer is unique. They have their needs, their own set of problems and their own motives for choosing a particular supplier. That’s why if they receive a ‘bulk standard’ pitch, they will feel less compelled to properly evaluate it.  A consultative approach seeks to fully appreciate each prospects needs and gain agreement to those needs before presenting products/services in a way that demonstrates how their needs can be met.

 

There are a number of positive benefits gained by using this approach that includes:

  • Improved sales results because the whole sales process becomes easier
  • Less objections because your proposals are aligned to their requirements that they have already agreed to
  • Better relationships because the prospect feels that you have a good understanding of what they want
  • Easier negotiations because you have agreed their requirements with them that you can refer back to at a later date
  • Price becomes less of an issue because you have identified all their requirements not just the price one. The more requirements they have helps you to build a case for why they should chose you
  • Prospects feel listened to because a consultative approach has more contribution and input from the prospect
  • More leverage because the offer is more compelling to the individual as it has been tailored to what they said they wanted

 

During each of the 4 steps of a consultative approach, there are a number of areas of competence that sales people should be excellent at demonstrating:

 

  1. Find out the prospect’s requirements
    • Good questioning skills
    • Ability to probe for problems/the prospect’s pain
    • Rapport to ensure that the prospect feels comfortable answering the questions
    • Active listening skills
  2. Agree the prospect’s requirements

·      Ability to summarise requirements in the prospect’s own words

·      Asking checking questions to flush out any other requirements that have not been mentioned

·      Maintaining good levels of rapport

 

  1. Present solutions tailored to the prospect’s agreed requirements

·      Taking each requirement in turn and linking to a relevant feature of your product/service and highlighting the benefits gained from that feature

·      Using the prospect’s own words

·      Looking for non-verbal signs of agreement and if not seen, asking checking questions such as “How does that sound?”

·      Using the sensory communication type that the prospect has shown a preference for using. For example if the prospect is very visual, then using visual aids will help them to better understand your proposition

 

  1. Agree the solutions

·      Summarising your proposed solutions

·      Maintaining rapport

·      Being vigilant to buying signals

Asking checking questions to flush out any hidden objections

Listening beyond Word

February 26th, 2009

Active listening is a powerful way of listening and responding to customers that improves mutual understanding. It is the foundation of effective communication and demonstrates real respect. According to Nancy Kline, author of the book ‘Time to Think’, when you are listening to someone, much of the quality of what you are hearing is your effect on them. Giving good attention to people makes them more intelligent. Poor attention makes them stumble over their words and seem stupid. Your attention, your listening is that important. When we are in conflict, we can sometimes contradict the customer, denying their description of a situation. This tends to make them defensive and they will either lash out or alternatively, withdraw and say nothing more. However, if they believe that we are really tuned in to their concerns and want to listen, they are more likely to explain in detail what they feel and why. This in turn, gives sales people a much greater chance of being able to develop a win-win solution.

 

Your role in the sales situation alternates between sender and receiver of messages. The very best sales professionals devote a large portion of the sales interview to listening because sincere listening demonstrates sincere interest. Ultimately, good listening is the shortest distance between you and more sales; better sales, faster sales. 

 

How often has a customer said something that has been misinterpreted by you? If you accept the view that everyone is unique, then every word has a different meaning to different individuals? What we say can be different to what we actually mean because we all have to edit our thoughts in order to communicate them in words. We do this by a combination of deletion,distortion and generalisation.

Communication involves four steps:

1.Sensing the message and the stimuli that goes with it

2. Interpreting it (to be sure you understand)

3. Evaluating it (never judge before you understand)

4.Reacting (either verbally or non-verbally)

 

That’s why it pays to listen with your eyes as well as your ears. Frequently, a gesture, an expression, will reveal as much or more than words. Therefore, effective listeners seek to understand the meaning behind their customers’ words, this requires giving the other person full attention, and demands conscious practice.

 

To become excellent at listening, there are three main techniques:

 

  1. Build high levels of rapport and trust your instincts

When two people have established high levels of rapport, they unconsciously pick-up on the feelings of each other. The quickest way to build a deep connection with the other person is to match their breathing. At this point the sales person may get an instinct about something the customer ‘feels’ which is important feedback that is driven from their unconscious mind. Trusting these instincts can sometimes prove to be a challenge for people who work in a corporate, logical environment yet the ability to ‘listen’ and act upon these instincts can make the difference between a good listener and a great listener. If for example, you have created rapport and start to feel nervous, then chances are, so is your customer. Imagine the impact of asking  I’m getting a sense that you’re feeling nervous about this, what specific concerns do you have?” will have on your customer.

 

  1. Demonstrate that you are paying attention

This really encourages the customer to continue talking and helps put them at ease because they can see that you’re interested in what they are saying. Using noncommittal words with a positive voice tone, that neither, agree or disagree with what is being said will ensure that the customer remains motivated to want to continue talking. For example,  “I see”/ “Uh-huh”/ “That’s interesting” are great ways to achieve this. Nodding your head and taking written notes are also effective when demonstrating your interest.

 

  1. Clarifying your understanding

Adopting a consultative approach means that it’s vital to fully appreciate your prospect’s requirements. Even if you think that your prospect has made them very clear, it’s good practice to summarise your understanding of them. For example: “So what you’re saying is (requirement).” “You obviously value (requirement) as being very important to you.” These summaries will strengthen your relationship and demonstrate a genuine desire to really understand what they want. Rephrase their main points at regular intervals and ‘play them back’ to them. This helps them see if they have said exactly what they wanted to say, and to make sure you understand. Put their feelings into words. This will help them evaluate and perhaps modify their statement…and it gives further evidence of your understanding.


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