“I’ve failed a lot and often. I was in sales for nearly 17 years before I discovered these secrets to selling successfully. I’d actually gained 1 year’s experience seventeen times because the lessons I learned in my first year of attracting attention, generating interest, building desire and instigating action formed the basis of everything I did in sales. I knew it wasn’t working but my management kept encouraging me to do the same things I’d always done and I was too blind to see the harm I was doing myself.” Marcus Cauchi
Every month I struggled to pay the bills, the mortgage, the groceries, and every month I kept myself upbeat and positive …. But nothing improved. I moved from job to job to job, and got through interviews because I was good at interviews.
I discovered a system of selling three years ago that transformed the way I sell. My close rate increased from 1:10 to 9:10 in less than 2 years. My day rate has risen by more than eighty times. My self esteem has gone through the roof and I fear nothing the prospect can throw at me.
I recognise that how I perceived my own worth i.e.my self-concept, determined how much I earned not my customer, my market or my competition. I’m in control. Now, that is a much happier place to be than being tossed about by the tides of the market, the economy and my employers or customers. If you’re sick and tired of being part of someone else’s plan for your future and your success, and you’re angry enough to do something about it, read on.
Secret 1: Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail
I pooh-poohed all attempts at setting goals. “They don’t work for me”, “I can’t be bothered” and actually I was right. They didn’t work for me and I became despondent because the goals I did set when I tried to set them were doomed to failure. Why? Because they were results based goals not behavioural goals and they were often set for me not with me or by me.
You can only manage what you can control. I can’t control the prospect signing the cheque but I can manage the behaviours that get me there – the number of dials, letters, marketing emails I make or send; the number of cold calls I make until I speak to a decision maker; the number of face to face meetings I go on, the number of times I’d qualify a suspect until they warranted my time to make a presentation etc.
Fail to have a plan of your own and you will always become part of someone else’s plan.
Secret 2: Fail to Prospect, Plan to Fail
I’ve never had to queue to cold call, have you? We all hate doing it but you don’t have to like making them, you just have to make them. Anyone who says they like making them is either sick, lying or has never made one!
Fail to prospect and you are at the mercy of Lady Luck. Would you be comfortable gambling your house, your marriage and your children on the hope that Luck will provide and you’ll always have enough customers at the end of your current project or sale to keep you afloat? Probably not! So why do so many of us do this? Feast to famine to feast to famine. Over 80% of 2000 small business owners and salespeople I’ve interviewed or trained were lucky to be 35% productive in any given year. That means for a MAXIMUM of 65% of the year their time is taken up with navel gazing and waiting for the phone to ring. (many admit ot be as little as 10-20% productive). You’re probably not that ineffective, but if you are, you’re not prospecting effectively or often enough.
Do you know who’s in your target market? Have you defined them clearly? How can you contact them? When you do make initial contact what are you going to say to get them to invite you in to meet them?
Apparently a recent DTI (UK department of trade and industry) survey noted that 47% of new business was generated by word of mouth and a whopping 43% was initiated via a cold call. Combine networking and asking for referrals with cold calling and that’s 90% of new business generation delivered via these two tried and tested methods.
When you network be specific and ask for referrals all the time. On that note, if you know any business owners or executives responsible for sales revenues or sales teams in the London region in Technology, Telecommunications, Professional Services, Financial Services or Banking who are frustrated with the performance of their sales, who find themselves losing in bids and tenders or struggling to recruit the right salespeople first time every time, do drop them a line with my details (07876 616983 or MCauchi@SALTeurope.com) or give me their details and I’ll make the call myself!
Secret 3: Never Sound Like Your Competition
Write down your “elevator pitch” i.e. your 1-minute introduction that tells prospective buyers why they should invite you in to meet them. Now, imagine your business had folded or you were fired from your sales job and you’d been hired by a close competitor. Now write down their elevator pitch. Is it any different, really? “We help companies like yours who want to improve , , .” Blah, blah, blah! Buyers have heard it all before, probably a dozen times before you finally stopped shuffling bits of paper and writing “follow up emails” and made that dreaded cold call.
Never talk about yourself, your company or what you do. Always focus on the customer, their problems and what they want. Always try to enter the conversation they’re already having inside their heads about their problems.
Mine might sound something like this.
“John, we help business owners and salespeople in small and medium sized service businesses who are frustrated that their sales pipeline looks weak or empty and they’re worried that if they don’t fix this soon, they’ll miss their targets and struggle to pay their bills.
“Others are afraid that when they get in front of a prospective buyer that they’ll get sucked into a discussion about price prematurely and find themselves in a bidding war where price is the central issue and they’ll struggle to compete at a profit.
“Typically, many are angry at the level of free consulting they give, finding that their best ideas are stolen by buyers who try to solve their problems by themselves or give their ideas to their competition …. and they get paid for your hard work.
“I don’t suppose these are problems you ever face in your business?”
Where is there a mention of my products or services? At what point do I talk about myself, my company or my features and benefits?
Secret 4: Never Sell Using Features and Benefits
If you cold call, or speak to a prospect or networking group, using your standard features and benefits you will get drowned out in the wall of noise that surrounds them, won’t you? That’s never happened to you, has it? Your call may be the most important call they receive that day, that week, that month, that year or ever, but if you don’t get the air time and they don’t sit up and pay attention, it’s a waste of your time and effort isn’t it?
So the answer is speak to their pain. Even if when they woke up, the sky was blue and the sun shining and they had no idea they needed your product or service, if you speak to their pains, you will grab their attention and they will invite you in. You must never beg for an appointment and you should leave them with questions NOT answers. They should want to know more not have their questions answered or what’s the purpose of them inviting you in.
Focus on their pains and whose data are you using? Yours or theirs? Prospects never argue with their own data but they’ll argue with yours until you’re blue in the face. Make your “pitch” using your features and benefits and you might hear “we already have that covered”, “we’re happy with our current provider”, “not interested”, “send me some information”, “the timing isn’t right”, “we have no budget for that at the moment”, “call me back in 6 months” …. But that’s never happened to you, has it?
Secret 5: Close At The Beginning
Traditional selling teaches us to qualify (i.e. make sure they have the money, authority and need to buy what you’re offering), present (explain your solution, prove your value and demonstrate your credibility), close (get commitment) and follow up (send a proposal, do a demonstration, send pricing), but this is the road to ruin. I did this for 16 years and was permanently broke. One month I’d hit target the next two I wouldn’t and so on and so forth. I had credit card debts, overdrafts, I struggled to pay my bills, couldn’t afford to go on holiday year after year, and every brown envelope that came through my door gave me bile and nausea. Familiar?
That was until I learned to contract in clear, specific and certain terms with my prospects. Let me give you an example.
“Once we finish talking and you’ve seen how what I do applies to you in your business, in your role, I want you to make a decision. You can say “no” and “no” means you will simply decide that what I teach isn’t for you, I can’t help you, my systematic approach to selling can’t help you increase your sales or you’re so happy with the way your business is running that you don’t want to improve, in which case you will say “Marcus, no thank you” and we can part friends. That’s what “no” means. Is that fair?
You can say “yes”. Let’s start with what “yes” doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean you’ll become my next client. I’m expensive and picky about who I work with. And you may hate me when we speak! What “yes” does mean is that you want to take a call from me to discuss your problems with sales and to explore if I feel I can help you improve your performance or the performance of your company in sales. Now, I don’t know if I can help you as we’ve not spoken for some time if at all, and I’d be lying if I said I could without diagnosing what’s happening to you and what’s holding you back.
If either of us feel at that point that there is no fit, we can both say “no” and end the conversation then and there. If on the other hand we both agree that there may be a fit and you want to take things further, we’ll agree one of two things. You’ll attend my next Executive Briefing on the 7th November 2006 in London (0830-1230) which will require you invest an entire morning and £147+VAT learning why buyers control you today and what to do to reverse that problem so you are always in control. Or, you’ll invite me in to meet you for up to 90 minutes to discuss a tailored programme of sales training for you or your team. At that meeting we’ll dig deeper into the causes of your problems which requires me to ask you some tough and direct questions and for you to give me direct and honest answers back. Once we’ve diagnosed the causes of your problems we’ll need to agree what you want to do about them. You can say “no” and end it there or we’ll need to agree how much time, money and resource you’re willing to invest to make these problems go away. Does that make sense?
There are two reasons why when we meet you may decide you don’t want to do business with me. The first is what I teach is tough and takes time to learn, and you might be someone who is unwilling to do what’s necessary to get buyers to buy from you because you’re more interested in being liked and being seen as technically strong or professional. This means that you are more interested in staying stuck than you are in helping yourself and I can only help people who are ready to change and want to improve.
The second is that I’m expensive and your fear of loss is greater than your desire to succeed. You want guarantees when I can only guarantee I’ll deliver my side of the bargain, good material with strong delivery and support but I have no control over your behaviour in the sales situation, you practicing the material and techniques and forming your own good selling habits, and you reinforcing the changes in yourself and your salespeople when I’m not around. You don’t see yourself as ever being good at selling no matter how well equipped you are because you think of selling as a dirty way to make a living and you’re more worried that your mother will be upset that you’re selling at a profit than being seen as a “professional” or “technical” expert in your field. My costs will vary from a one off of as little as £997+VAT to tens of thousands of pounds per annum per head. If we get that far, we’ll need to talk about your budget, where you’ll find the money to pay for my services be they training, coaching or consulting, your timescales and your decision making process i.e. who besides yourself will be involved in making the decision to retain my services, when, where, how and what the process looks like.
Neither side will waste any time, and we’ll both always know what will happen next. Does that seem reasonable?”
Clear, specific and certain in its terms, that is the basis for a strong up front contract. Now when did the close happen? If we reach the point where you ask me to help you, all I’m doing is confirming the order, aren’t I?
How different is that to trying to close at the end of a 2, 3 or 7 meeting sales cycle that may have lasted for weeks or months and cost me how much?
How much do new business meetings cost you? Is that where your profit might be going? Doing busy work that doesn’t result in revenue is the road to ruin and many of your predecessors’ corpses litter the road to where you are today. Do you really want to become another business-failure statistic?
Now do you see why you should close at the beginning not the end?
Secret 6: You Gain More Credibility From The Questions You Ask Than From The Information You Give
A couple of sales truisms do hold water. “Telling isn’t selling”. “You were probably born with 2 ears and one mouth, so use them in that order”. Every sales opportunity should be treated as a sales interview not as a sales pitch. You are in the sale to gather information not to give it.
How often do your sales meetings involve you spilling your guts, delivering “death by Powerpoint”? Do you give away your thoughts, your ideas, your information and leave your prospect with all their questions answered? If you do, why would a prospect need to invite you back? Why would they need to hire you or buy your products? All they have to do is pick up the phone at some time in the future and you’ll come running to do the same thing over and over and over again.
You giving your presentation is something a prospect should earn, it isn’t a right. Not every prospect is qualified to receive your presentation. And presentations are only given to prospects who have committed to some clearly defined action like agreeing to buy your product or service if your presentation confirms that you are the person or company to help them solve their problems.
And they are only given when you have identified and gathered all the decision makers together (I know you can’t always do this but in most cases a good seller will manage this process and secure all the decision makers so they only have to present once and to everyone involved in the decision so a decision can be made instead of a fob-off like “I’d like to think it over”, “I need to talk to my boss”) and you have addressed all their objections up front.
If you’re presenting and you find yourself handling objections like “it’s too expensive”, “we don’t have the budget in this quarter”, “I can get this cheaper/faster/better up the road”, “ABC company does the same as you and we see no reason to change”, then you have presented too soon and you haven’t done your job in the sale correctly. I don’t suppose you have interest in finding out how you can be in the position where this never happens to you again?
Secret 7: Act As If You Are Financially Independent And You Don’t Need The Business
Have you ever walked into a room and there’s a big cuddly Rottweiller behind the door? How can you react? You can either be calm and relaxed in which case chances are he won’t attack or you can show your fear and he’ll snarl, growl, bark and his hackles will go up.
Prospects are like Rotties! They smell your fear, your neediness and your desperation. If you give the air of someone who needs the business, they’ll stall, they quibble over price and then when you make a concession, they’ll go for the jugular and see what else they can get from you. They do that, don’t they?
Or they’ll play it neutral, letting you sweat, letting you make unilateral concessions, one sided giveaways that mean that you’re always on your back foot. You even get emotionally involved in the sale, having invested so much time and effort, several visits, a couple of demonstrations, writing a proposal, making amendments, rushing to meet deadlines only to find yourself in voicemail jail where you hurry up and provide all the information they want when they want it, and you get unlimited access to their voicemail.
Develop walk-away power. How do you do that? The clue is in Secret 2. If you have a full pipeline what do you have that you don’t have now?
Choices come from setting the right foundations, building your prospect pipeline and disqualifying non-prospects quickly and ruthlessly. Choice comes from learning to be brave 5-seconds at a time and being willing, even dedicated to hear a prospect tell you “no”. The more times you hear “no”, the better. There are two reasons why a “no” is a good thing. The first is you get rid of the deadwood faster and the second is selling, real selling, generally starts when you hear a prospect say “no” to you.
The reason is the positive prospect is your worst prospect. The neutral prospect is your toughest prospect and the negative prospect is your best prospect.
I can almost hear you ask “How can that be? It doesn’t make sense.” Think about that for a moment and if you want to know why this is the case then you’ll just have to call me or invite me in to meet you. You probably have no interest in learning why what you know about sales is wrong and has lost you so much time and money over the years you will want to cry. In fact, you’re probably of the view that if you do more of what you’re already doing, sales is a numbers game and you’ll eventually reach your goals.
Decide, Take Action
If you recognise that you’re already working like a dog, your cleaner probably earns more per hour than you do, that your family is suffering and you are taking one step forwards and 2 steps back, that your prospect controls you and you have no way of performing consistently, predictably and above your financial targets you may want to email me for a conversation on MCauchi@SALTeurope.com to help me understand why and you to understand what to do about it.
Remember, if you see no fit, if you have no interest in what I may be able to help you achieve and you are OK with your performance you can say “no” by sending me an email to Unsubscribe@SALTeurope.com. I’m fine with a “no” and welcome your honesty and directness as neither of us want to waste our time.
Qualify Whether You Feel You Need Help
If on the other hand you want to take things further, you might want to qualify yourself further by completing this self-assessment of where your problems lie in your own sales processes.
1. Do you struggle to meet enough genuine, qualified prospects who are able and willing to spend enough money and invest enough time and resource to make the problems you can fix go away? Yes / No
2. You struggle to get invited in to meet genuine decision makers without pushing or begging for an appointment. When you do set up meetings prospects sometimes cancel without warning or worse, don’t show up? Yes / No
3. Have you recently found yourself giving away too much free consulting and you have had enough of having your best ideas stolen while you don’t get paid for them? Yes / No
4. Do you do anything and everything to avoid making cold calls, in fact you’d prefer to visit the dentist for an unanaesthetised root canal filling rather than make a cold call? Yes / No
5. Do you ever find yourself in long sales cycles with unpredictable outcomes which cost you a lot of time and in some cases money and scarce resources? Yes / No
6. Have you recently been in front of a prospect who was positive, showed every sign of buying and still they told you they needed to “think about it”, or they asked you for a proposal which you hurried to produce and they still haven’t given you a decision long after you expected one? Yes / No
7. You have a drawer full of outstanding proposals but no decision is being reached and you’re frustrated by that? Yes / No
8. When you try to close a prospect for a decision, you find their defence walls go up, they hit you with objections, stalls and smoke screens to keep you coming back for more, giving more and more information away and you almost never know where you really stand despite what they tell you? Yes / No
9. Your forecasts are more a guess than a prediction. You can’t grow your business because you just don’t know where and when revenue will drop. You speak to your partners, your boss, your bank or your accountant and you have no idea when, why or how much business will land? Yes / No
10. You’re uncomfortable selling or scared of facing prospects, you get nervous about selling because you don’t like sales, your concept of salespeople is negative and you don’t want other people to think of you as a salesperson? Yes / No
11. When you make presentations you find that not every point you make is relevant and you see the reaction of your buyer; they waver or they lose momentum, or they tell you how interesting your presentation is but they just don’t buy? Yes / No
12. You find yourself in bid or tender situations and you’re frustrated that you come “a close second” too often for comfort, after all, all tenders and bids cost you time and money which is in scarce supply? Yes / No
13. Your competition does stuff you don’t do, is cheaper, better, faster, smaller, bigger, has a better reputation, better clients, better marketing, better collateral, bigger budgets, bigger guns … and you feel like an also-ran or you’re afraid you’re going to “be found out”? Yes / No
14. You feel like you’re just pacing time as “column fodder” where the buyer needs to have 3 quotes and you’re number 2 or 3 and someone else is earmarked to win the business? Yes / No
15. Your business depends on you to bring home the bacon, your family depend on you to bring in the income and the pressure of the sale crushes you because you know you need to make it, but you let your nerves, your desperation, your fear show and prospects take advantage of you?
Yes / No
If you’ve answered “yes” to more than 2 of these questions and you’re worried or angry enough to want to begin to do something about them within the next 8 weeks, see in your mind’s eye the outcome you want to achieve decide, then act.
Wishing you successful selling!
Marcus Cauchi 