How to Eliminate Your Excuses For Failing in Sales

Thank you Mr Prospect for the thousands of times when I tried to cold call you and you carved out my liver for being too bland, too much like the competition, too weak and too stupid to recognise you were busy, you don’t care about my needs or my agenda, my company or my product, you taught me to understand you first, what matters to you, what keeps you up at night, what prevents you from getting the important things done that make a difference to you (apart from my calls of course). You taught me that I needed to break the pattern of the usual cold calls you receive, to get your permission to tell you what I do and to be mindful of how precious you feel your time is.

You taught me not to waste your time or mine if I couldn’t help you, but you also taught me to uncover the real reasons why you’ll buy from me without beating me to death on price. And thank you for the times you promised you’d be at the appointed place when we agreed to meet and you didn’t show up or you showed up without the necessary people so I had a wasted journey or wet my powder giving premature presentations to an incomplete decision making committee (probably after having worried about our meeting all weekend!!). You taught me to stand firm, plant my feet and not tolerate your unreasonable behaviour, to recognise rejection is a rejection of my offer and not me, and not to worry about things I can’t control.

Thank you Mr Prospect for all the times you messed me around and changed your mind, you taught me to take nothing for granted. Thank you Mr Prospect for every time you lied to me, misled me and deceived me though you always said it was salespeople who were untrustworthy, self-interested and deceitful, you taught me to qualify hard and recognise you aren’t the king, you’re my equal; nothing more, nothing less. Thank you Mr Prospect for every time you manipulated, bullied and pressured me into abdicating my rights and for teaching me only I could give away my self respect and dignity.

Thank you Mr Prospect for everytime you gave me false hope so that you could get me to give you free consulting and confidential procing so you could you use my skills, knowledge and expertise to get more from your other suppliers, shop my proposals around town or ddevelop a solution for yourself using all I’d told you as the foundation for that solution. that you for helping me to realise the syntax of qualify, present, close, follow up was wrong. Just because that’s the way you’ve taught other salespeople to behave doesn’t mean I have to do it that way. Moses didn’t come down and the lost 11th commandment was “thou shalt do proposals” nor is it “thou shalt sell the way everyone else has sold in your industry”. I’ve learned that if the competition is doing, I should probably find a different way to do things. I’ve also learned that wirting proposals unless I know I’m going to win them in 90%+ of instances is a hiding to nothing and will probably hurt my credibility and success in the sale later on, let alone leave myself vulnerable to yoru using objections against me.

Thank you Mr Prospect for every time you asked me the one question I was hoping you wouldn’t ask. You taught me to prepare better and practice more, but above all, you taught me not to hide my weaknesses or my fears, and to confront them early, even making myself vulnerable by disclosing them to you up front. You taught me how to build and maintain lasting trust by being direct and honest. And you taught me through your tough and unrelenting questions, objections and stalls that I wasn’t the one qualified to handle your objections, you are.

Thank you Mr Prospect for all the dragonesque gatekeepers you regularly put in my way to block me from speaking to you and other key decision makers in your oganisation , some were sweet, others were sour and a fair number were just as scared and frustrated as me. I learned how to use the psycholological blocks I created around cold calling and asking for referrals into a potent referral and new business habit.

Thank you Mr Prospect for pitting me against my competition in bid after bid, tender after tender, preferred supplier review after preferred supplier review. You taught me to value my time more highly, relish the time I spend with my family and never do anythign unless I know why I’m doing it. You also taught me to call you to account when I sense that something is wrong, your intentions behind certain behaviour is that of someone trying to gain the upper hand not your “equal partner”. Thank you.

Thank you Mr Prospect for the times when you promised me the order and then came back and tried to renegotiate on price, service, resources and timescales. Thank you for being hard-nosed, brutish, rude and abrasive, because you taught me who I am is not what I do and how to spearate the two. You also taught me to contract for every step of the sale and to give nothing away without getting something you valued giving, back in return. You taught me to question why you were asking me to do things instead of blindly syaing “yes” and if they didn’t work for me to say so. And above all else, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me the insight to realise I can say “no”, even after we’re doing business.Thank you for teaching me it’s OK to fire a bad customer (or refer them on to a competitor) or one we’ve outgrown.

Thanks also for teaching me the hard way that I can never lose what I never had; I’m sorry for blaming you for my inadequacies, my terrible selling skills, my awful qualification, my clumsy techniques that you’d seen and heard a thousand times before from other incompetent and needy salespeople. I apologise for the times I cursed you and all your kin, for the times I had wicked and malevalent thoughts about you, for the times I wanted to do you physical harm because I was too weak as a salesperson, too stupid as a human being and too desparate for your business for you to trust me. Lord above, if I were in your shoes, I’d have kicked me out sooner, not been nearly as polite or tolerant as you were.

Thank you making me stronger, more effective and the professional salesman I’ve become. Without your prevarication, inconstancy, selfishness and bullying I’d be as green as I was when I started selling over 20 years ago. Thank you for the personal and spiritual growth I’ve enjoyed (sometime kicking and screaming but enjoyed nonetheless) and thank you for helping me to understand people.
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If you want to accelerate your results in selling, I don’t suppose you’d write a letter to your prospects and identify the things they did to you that hurt you, the lessons they taught you and recognise that you have only yourself to blame for all your suffering and failure. I warn you, it will be a scary catharsis.

There’s no such thing as a bad prospect, only bad salespeople.

You have a chance to take control of your performance in the sale by recognising the problems and admitting them. Then you can do something about finding their causes and taking responsibility for fixing them. If you want to email me your thank you letter my email is ThankYouLetter@SALTeurope.com.

Marcus Cauchi
Sandler Sales Institute
London, UK

Top 5 Reasons Your Cold Calling Doesn’t Work & What To Do About It

Some people say cold calling is dead. I disagree. It can and should be part of many people’s mix of business development activity. And it is a skill that can be learned. I will agree however, that there is never a queue to cold call.

1. Lack of the Right Type of Preparation: Certainly you can prepare by researching your prospect, but do you prepare yourself mentally, physically, emotionally? Do you treat every call as if it’s your first? Do you stand up when you call? Do you recognise how your physiology, posture, breathing etc affect your call and how you sound? Do you prepare yourself and actively go for the “no”?

2. Sounding Like Every Other Person Selling Something: Are you just another salesperson on the phone? Do you sound like you’re selling something? Do you break the pattern so they can’t get you off the phone in the first 10 seconds by making them curious, by engaging them in your call?

3. Defending When Under Attack: When you’re under attack do you defend or fall back? Who handles their objections – you or the prospect?

4. Begging for a Meeting: Do you get invitied in or do you have to beg for a meeting? Do you use obvious deception and clumsy tactics? Do you qualify “easy” just to get in front of someone or do you qualify “hard” to make good use of your time in the field? Do you think “I’ve got a hot one” or do your alarm bells ring when you hear “Why don’t you come in and show me what you’ve got? We’re always interested in learning what’s new in our market.”

5. No Upfront Contract: What do you do in the first 30 seconds of a cold call by phone to get your prospect to commit to give you a decision at the end of your call? Do you steal your prospects time or do you tell them why you’re calling, how long the call will take, give them the power to say “no” and agree that if there is a fit you will either talk further or agree some next steps to advance your dialogue? Do you agree what your role will be and what their role will be?

There are hundreds more mistakes. You may even have thoughts on these you want to share. Now, post your thoughts. I’d welcome your comments and personal experience.

I don’t trust you

As a sales trainer I’m acutely aware that Trust is an emotive issue. Daily, I help others develop and maintain trust but my experience is limited to …. my own experience. I need help to develop and I know many others do to. Perhaps you need help yourself. Can you help me and others?

My objective here is to open up a discussion around the science and art of building trust.

In networking iTrust is at the foundation of most relationships. Occasionally greed comes into play but few of us will give our hard earned contacts and risk our credibility unless we feel that the other party is trustworthy.

Let’s explore that word for a moment – trustworthy or worthy of trust. It’s basis is that we judge others and assess if they are worthy of our trust. What criteria do we place against that worthiness? Track record, what they say, what they do, age, responses to our jokes, race, religion, gender, height, weight, eye colour, shape of the nose? At what point in the relationship do we feel they have earned it? In the first meeting, after several meetings or in the first 30 seconds?

How to we accelerate that trust? I have certainly found a way through my membership of BlackStar to shorten it …. in the short term. I see these people more often, I meet them regularly, we drink together, and in many cases we can even go to war together and I believe they’d be by my side or watching my back. And many I don’t … because they are people with their own agenda, they don’t always live up to promises (I have failed to live up to all mine too – I’m only human), they have their own needs and they don’t coincide with mine. That’s perfectly fair. Back to the question how do we shorten the cycle of trust building.

I don’t believe you do that online, certainly not in a sustainable, highly repeatable manner and cettainly not just online. My experience is you have to meet, press the flesh, eyeball to eyeball, toe to toe another person. Was it Michael Marr or Dennis Barker who recently posted about slow networking working? It does. Without question. But can we shorten it.

I believe we can, but it takes a fundamental shift in some of our beliefs and a change of behaviours.

Who do you trust? I mean really trust? People you know? People you don’t know? People you’ve only just met for the first time? Many of us will take a risk on someone and trust that our instincts are right, we might even buy something over the phone or on the web but what makes us take the plunge.

There are several factors and I can only cover a couple here.

1. Their subconscious bonds with my subconscious and we have a meeting of minds. Is that physiological, psychological or pathological? I leave that for you to argue.
2. We understand one another. I take the time to actively listen to you, your story, your hopes and fears, your aspirations and ambitions and demonstrate that I not only listened but HEARD. How does that make you feel? For another person to actually hear what you are telling them, and be interested in you?
3. Congruence or believeability. If I tell you I’m a high roller and I drive a beaten up rustbucket, come in a torn suit and when I come to pay my bill, my credit limit on all my cards has been maxed out, do you believe I can lay my hands of £20 million to buy out your company? Congruence seems to be a combination of evidence and behaviours – tone, pitch, cadence, emphasis, hesitation or tremors in our voices, a badly timed sideways glance, the words we use, the tense we choose to describe something.

That is, in my opinion, why online networking on its own can’t work to build real trust, total trust. The face to face interaction enables you to discover if someone is a nitpicker far more quickly, if their habits will get on your nerves or frustrate your network contacts.

1. What helps you build trust in another person?
2. What examples have you got of building trust quickly?
3. When has your first impression been so wrong it’s embarrassing?
4. What do people need to do to break trust in your world?
5. What stories or advice can you give to others to help them establish more trusting relationships?

This isn’t the most original blog in the world but from a networking, parenting, sales, social or management standpoint the subject and skill of trust building is vital. Can you help us?

A blatant sales pitch

When is a sales pitch not a sales pitch?

When it’s an interview.

Experience in sales has taught me that you’re infront of a prospect to gather information not to give it. How can you possibly prescribe before you’ve taken the time to diagnose?

How often have you seen a sales presentation that begins with the salesperson whipping out his laptop, powering up the machine and rattling off all the features and benefits of their product and service. The prospect sits there patiently, asks questions, shows interest, parhaps throws out the odd objection and calmly asks for a proposal – all good old fashioned buying signals. You leave after an hour or so satisfied you’ve done a good job. Then you never hear from them again or when you try to call them they’re in hiding and you’re in voicemail jail.

I’ve written many times before on the importance of a strong upfront commitment, and of closing at the beginning, and of passing objections back to the prospect but as I train more and more people I discover just how ingrained the culture of telling not selling is.

Selling has been defined as matching their needs with the benefits you can offer. Why do you think this definition may be deficient? Why do you think that type of belief is potentially lethal in the sale?

How can you better sell under the radar? How can your selling prevent the buyer from building up defence walls?

What behaviours you exhibit and beliefs that you hold today sabotage your success and hurt your earnings?

Sell today educate tomorrow

How often do you find yourself talking instead of listening? How often do you find yourself using the time you have to talk, telling and not asking questions?

Are you ever guilty of trying to demonstrate your own brilliance and knowledge by presenting your solution to a prospect before they’ve committed to buy from you? Have you ever invested precious time, money and resources proving to a prospect that you can help them identify their needs, give them solutions to their problems …. and then wonder why you aren’t closing enough business.

You gain credibility from the questions you ask not from the information you give. Your job in the sale is to gather information not to give it.

You’re in sales to go to the bank …. not to prove how bright, knowledgeable, educated or wonderful you are.

If you’re giving information what aren’t you doing?

You’re not gathering information. You’re doing free consulting. You’re telling the prospect what s/he wants to know …. so what reason does your prospect have for retaining your company or your services? Not much.

This lesson learned late in my career cost me over £12 million in fee income and £3.6 million in lost commission.

Rule: Prospects never argue with their own data.

Gather their data and play it back to them in the form of their pain and in my experience and the experience of my clients you’ll sell more, more often.

Happy selling!

W.A.I.T. and See

I came across a very useful little acronym.

W.
A.
I.
T.

Why
Am
I
Talking

It works on 2 levels. Whether you’re infront of a prospect, a network contact or with family and friends, Stephen Covey’s 5th habit of highly effective people is “Seek first to understand then to be understood”. You’ve probably heard the cliche “You have 2 ears and one mouth, use them in that order”. Well if you ask yourself “why am I talking?”, you realise that either you may be talking drivvel or not listening to what your counterpart is actually saying.

The other level it works on is that it helps you to find the time to actually consider what has been said by your prospect, and use that understanding to formulate your next question.

It is a fatal flaw in many salespeople that they spend the time that should be listening, half listening and trying to work out what they’re going to ask or answer next.

WAIT and you have time (at least 3-5 seconds) to demonstrate you’re taking in what was said by the other party and to formulate a better question.

Does this make sense? Think about that for a moment.

Playing the WAITing game also allows you to draw out so much more information from prospects by using listening noises, body language etc than you might otherwise gain.

Remember …. YOUR JOB IN THE SALE IS TO GATHER INFORMATION NOT TO GIVE IT. Telling isn’t selling.

So many of us in sales can’t wait to prove our worth, demonstrate our credibility by getting up and presenting. This is a big mistake and will cost you tens of thousands in personal income, year on year. And when you establish the cost in terms of lifetime customer value lost, modifying this one behaviour, the costs can run into the millions. What are you doing to make sure you or your people are WAITing for your prospects to tell you how to sell to them? How do you make sure you’re gathering the intelligence you need BEFORE you spill your candy and make your presentation.

PRESENTING IS NOT SELLLING. Don’t you gain more credibility from the questions you ask NOT the information you give?