How To Win New Business Without Sounding Salesy

Here sales improvement specialist Marcus Cauchi uncovers techniques that anyone selling their products and services can use to quickly bond and build rapport with prospects so that they are more open to a sales conversation.

•    Why prospects hate salespeople
•    Why being different works
•    How to differentiate your business through the way you sell

It’s Monday morning at Shiny Widget Co and the sales team are hitting the phones.

Salesman: “Hello Mr Jones we sell shiny widgets. We are in your area on Monday at 4pm and on Wed. When can I come in a show you what I’ve got? I‘m sure we can save you money or make your life easier.”

Bob Jones: “Erm, what’s this about?”

Salesman: “Let me tell you,”

15 minutes later yarn.

Bob Jones: “Can you send me something?”

Salesman: “Sure, our online brochure is on its way.”

Next day and the salesman is following up on what he thought were hot buying signals.

Dring dring.

Bob Jones’ voicemail: “This is Bob Jones’ voice mail, please leave me a message and I will get straight back to you.”

What it is really saying: “This is Bob Jones’ voice mail jail, please leave your message after the tone and I promise I won’t get back to you. Your PDF went straight into trash and if by accident I pick up the phone I promise to give you a stream of excuses and if I’m really weak, I’ll ask you to send it again.”

Who hasn’t had that special someone keep you from your busy day, waste your valuable time, read like a robot from their script and rush towards the close promising you savings or a happier, more efficient life?

So who wants to be one of them? The clown in a suit with the bone crusher handshake, wearing his comedy tie who thinks that by telling you all his reasons for you to buy from him that his unwelcome interruption will cut through the noise of your real life; the 139 decisions you’ve still got to make that morning, your child being bullied at school and you being behind on your numbers by 47% for the quarter.

If you want to sell more, stop selling. Salespeople suffer from a disease called PPS, Premature Presentation Syndrome, where they have to tell the prospect about themselves, their company, their solutions, differences, competitiveness, return on invest, etc. In 99% of cases they do this without ever having heard the prospect specifically ask them to do so.

You sell to go to the bank. To go to the bank you have to gather information not give it. The moment you give information you’ve wet your powder and the buyer no longer needs you. You become a tick in the box and they know just which shelf to get you off. An educated prospect is no prospect at all.  Let me repeat that because it’s important, an educated prospect is no prospect at all.

The moment you start discussing your features and benefits without having the context of the personal reasons they have explicited stated that are motivating them to buy what you have now, you run the risk of dragging them into a pricing conversation. If you are selling on price, you are taking orders.

A client of mine told me that their frustration with being sold to is that they feel like it is all about the seller. They are running their agenda only, which is to reach the close and to get them to buy something. The seller rattles through their questions like it’s a checklist and their answers don’t really matter because the seller is only looking for the answers that fits their script. So my client protects themselves by giving wishy washy answers, being non-committal and non-specific.

When my client buys they want to believe and feel that the seller has their agenda, their best interests and their welfare in mind. They want the seller to take them through a process that helps them to discover their reasons for buying, the causes of their problems and to feel that they are leading them through to the hope that their problems can be fixed.

For that certainty my client would be happy to pay a premium. For the elimination of doubt that this is the right decision; for the belief that the other person’s interests can only be served by serving their interests; for leadership and a safe pair of hands, they’ll pay a premium and if they are willing to pay a premium they will take you to the bank.

Whatever business you think you are in, first and foremost you are in the going to the bank business.

Happy Selling!

What Opportunity To Improve Are You Wasting

No matter how much the world of business may change, one factor will never change: Your most valuable sources of information are your customers. They will tell you what you’re doing right, what you’re doing wrong, and what you need to change immediately to remain competitive. Customer advisory groups may be the best consultants you’ll retain. There are some guidelines you can follow to get the most out of the group.

If customers believe they’re only doing you a favour, getting them to join will be a difficult sell. Make sure potential members understand that membership provides an opportunity to improve their business as they help you redesign yours.

Select advisory group members who are perceptive, vocal and motivated to participate. “Figurehead” members selected for their fame or position, but who won’t attend group meetings or give follow-up a high priority, will be of little value. It’s up to you to demonstrate to members that you need their advice to serve them better. Unless there’s a crisis, schedule no more than two meetings per year. Gathering more often will be seen as a chore and an unreasonable imposition.

Membership in your customer advisory group should be an honour and a privilege. You want members to feel good about service. Treat them to the best transportation, parking, refreshments, meals and meeting space. Have the CEO give them their charge and put in an appearance now and then at meetings. Write up their recommendations in prestigious company publications, and thank them publicly.

The ideas that you get from your customer advisory group will enable you to advance the fortunes of your business. Implement the ideas that will work, and tell participants why you might choose not to implement others. If you ignore their suggestions or drag your feet in applying them, you may never again have customers who are willing to serve on the advisory group.

(c) Sandler Systems Inc, 2006

Happy selling!

Regards

Why Giving Your Customers Strokes is Profitable

Did you know that the most common reason that customers leave suppliers isn’t bad service … it’s lack of nurturing?

A child ignored by it’s parents will develop self-destructive behaviours to get it’s “strokes” even if they are negative. Being ignored is worse than no attention at all. Customers are the same.

Different Strokes
1. Fuzzies
2. Pricklies
3. Rubber bands

A fuzzy is a complement, an unsolicited positive stroke e.g “Good morning Bob, how are you?”, “Ana, you’re looking lovely” “Nice work Bob” or just sending an unsolicited cutting about a customer’s hobby or interests with a handwritten note saying “I saw this and thought you might find it interesting”

A prickly is a negative stroke – “Has anyone seen Marcus’s horrific tie?”, “Why do you always do that Marcus?” or when you say Good Morning, someone blanking and you not responding.

A rubber band looks like a fuzzy but is actually a prickly. “Has anyone seen the lovely tie Marcus is wearing….was it a present from his mother in law?”

Why A Fuzzy File?
I’m sure you get the gist. The point is, have you ever considered keeping a “fuzzy file”? What do your prospects and customers enjoy, what interests them, what do they get excited about. Doesn’t it make sense to get to know your customers and prospects and build up a fuzzy file of their interests, hobbies and family so that you can let them know you are thinking about them (without trying to sell them something).

RULE: All things being equal, people buy from people they like and trust. All things not being equal …people still buy from people they like and trust

It is not a crime to be liked by your customers. If you’re not taking care of your customers, who else is?

RULE: Customers leave you because they are stroke deprived, not because of bad service

What did you do in the last 3 months to demonstrate to your best customers that you appreciate their business?

What have you done to nurture your client relationships in the last 3 months?

What can you do in the next 3 months to protect your best accounts from your competition?

Happy selling!

The 7 Reasons Why YOU Fail to Sell

“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!

Why Aren’t You Having R.E.C.O.N. Conversations With Your Customers Too?

When I was growing up 30 years ago, I remember overhearing a young boy making a call from a public phone box in our local general store. He was so small he had to pull across a milk crate to reach the phone. “Hello, Mrs Jones?”, he said, “Mrs Jones, I’d like to cut your lawn”. It didn’t sound to me like the call was going especially well “Mrs Jones, I’m offering to cut your lawn and take away the cuttings when I finish”, he continued, “Mrs Jones, please give me an opportunity to show you how much I’d appreciate working for you. Not only will I cut your lawn and take away the trimmings, I’ll also prune your hedges” but still no he was having no lick. “But Mrs Jones, I’ll cut your lawn, take away the cuttings and trim your hedges all for £1 less than you’re paying now!”

The hard-nosed Mrs Jones apparently was having none of it, “but Mrs Jones …….Mrs Jones, please listen………” and eventually he put down the phone. I was sure I saw a faint smile fading from his lips. Mr Clark, the shopkeeper called the boy over to him. “Son, I’m impressed by your initiative and someone your age making such an effort to earn a crust. I want to give you a break. If you want a job, come and work here”, he said. The boy replied, “No thanks Mister. I’ve got a job cutting Mrs Jones’s lawn. I was just making sure I kept it!” and with that he got on his bike and rode off.

There’s a fabulous lesson here for all of us. To keep your customers, keep in touch with them, explore any weaknesses in your position and discover if their loyalty is in doubt so you can fix any problems before they cost you a customer.

Have you tried R.E.C.O.N.?

1. R – Remember the reasons you were originally asked to help them, review their pain and relive their previous position before they brought you in to help.

2. E – Evaluate your relationship. How are you doing? What’s worked? What hasn’t? What could have been done better?

3. C – Changed? – What’s changed since you stated working together? For better? For worse? How have you helped improve their lot? What’s changed in their business? In ours?

4. O – Opportunity? – what are the opportunities for them? For you? How can you collaborate so both sides benefit? What opportunities can we pursue together?

5. N – Next Steps? – What happens next? Put in place a clear, specific, certain up front contract so that you both know what will always happen next. Contract with your customer for the next point of contact, for the next piece of work, for the next phase of a project, for the next review or for referrals within and outside their organisation.

I know this is simple, common sense. But what can I say? How many of us really do this type of account development behaviour regularly and routinely to protect our lifeblood income and then hold up our hands in despair when they drop us and go to a competitor or worse still, we lose them to apathy. Now that is a crime against our families and our businesses isn’t it?

Next time there’ll probably be another good story …… which might even be true. If you have any questions or want to engage in a discussion, drop me a line here or call me to chat on 07876 616983.

Happy selling!

Regards

Marcus

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

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!

A fish rots from the head down

Bad selling and management habits are rife in today’s businesses. Company heads that allow these behaviours to persist could be leaving money behind that is equal to or greater than their current profits. Stuck in traditional selling paradigms, many company heads are actively encouraging these inefficient behaviours. Tough times need tough, disciplined management. CEOs, owners and investors that fail to weed these habits out now, only have themselves to blame when their plans for growth or exit deadline is inevitably threatened by poor sales performance.

In the good times, selling was easy. No-one’s balance sheet showed the true cost to win each sale. A discount here, another pitch, proposal or 200 page tender document there. It didn’t matter, as long as deals kept on coming. Revenue came in by taking orders, not by selling; really selling. Company heads who encourage these same selling habits will find themselves betrayed by them, because the success they think they bring has been revealed as an illusion.

Selling in recession requires real selling skills and a systematic, disciplined execution of the plan. Companies with order-taking habits are feeling the pinch as buyers ratchet up the pressure and exploit struggling salespeople’s psychological vulnerability and need to be busy.

If you lead, own or invest in companies delivering disappointing sales performance, look to yourself and your own behaviour. A fish rots from the head down.

When you discount, you subconsciously tell your people it is OK to discount. When you accept a “think it over”, you indicate it is OK to leave without closing or establishing a clear next step. When you give free consulting, your salespeople will spill their guts too. All these behaviours waste your scarce, technical and management resource and end in drawn out, expensive and hopeless sales cycles.

Look at your compensation and management systems, what habits do they really drive? Are they encouraging the opposite behaviour to what your company needs?

Sales people are creatures of how they’re paid and managed. If your systems encourage your people to chase revenue rather than profit, you are in real trouble. Chasing revenue means that they will hunt any suspect who can fog a mirror. They will spend their time and the company’s money writing proposals to non-prospects and taking part in unqualified beauty parades, only to find that they have nothing to show for it.

They will continue to forlornly forecast deals that died months ago just to keep the pipeline looking full and won’t ever close the file because they’re too emotionally involved in the outcome. Why does this happen? It happens when management allows it to and doesn’t know how to fix these problems or hold their salespeople accountable.

Managers who fail to dig deep and ask why a salesperson is about to eat into company resources or is still working long-dead deals need a wake up call. Wouldn’t you rather know early on if the prospect is wasting your time, rather than 2 or more months down the line, when you have already wasted £1,000s in time and resource chasing a mirage?

Never do anything unless you know why you are doing it. Always get commitment from the prospect as to what will happen next. Don’t accept non-committal, wishy-washy answers. Ask the difficult questions early, even if you don’t want the answers.

Stop trying to control the numbers. Face the cold hard truth. You can’t. You can only control the behaviour that generates the results. Teach your sales teams the right behaviours. Perfect practice makes perfect. Enforce a selling system that drives agreement between the salesperson and prospect and delivers predictable, timely results. Enforce consequences if commitments on behaviour are not delivered.

Before getting involved in an ITT, RFP or any other kind of beauty parade, make sure it is in the best interests of the company to do so. Demand that your sales team find out if the prospect really needs your help before they commit any resources to the sales process. Discourage easy yeses. There is no such thing. A positive prospect is no prospect. Get them to go for the ‘no’, to cut the deadwood out of your pipeline quickly. Send timewasters and your worst customers to the competition. Let them ruin their balance sheet.

You may think that it’s the market. You might accuse your salespeople of losing their courage. You could even believe it’s because no one is buying. These are all excuses. Seize responsibility for what is happening. Plan for the best, expect the worst and then take decisive action towards your goals. That last bit is essential for any plan to succeed.

Death By Discounting

The sales floor is a torrid place to be these days. A black cloud of doom has blown in and there’s no silver lining. The prevailing wind says, “no-one is buying” or “everyone is playing it safe.” So to get money in salespeople are dropping their prices and company profits are taking a beating. Unfortunately, the decision to discount leaves more than just a few bruises and a hole in the bank balance. It’s potentially fatal.

Discounting is a disease that eats away at the guts of a company. It kills profits, buys bad business and rots integrity. Discounting is not just dropping your trousers on price. That is only the stuff you can see.

The rest is the hidden cost of sales. Free consulting. Getting paid late. Behaving like the Bank of “1-Born Every Minute” because you either have no credit control or you’re not enforcing your policy. Pitching, proposals and tenders without any commitment from the buyer’s side on what happens next. They don’t appear on the balance sheet, but the results are the same. Profits drop. Shareholders don’t get paid their divvies. Exits are delayed. Jobs lost. Companies closed. Fights. Estrangement. Divorce. Alimony. Stress. Heart attack. Death.

Why? All because you couldn’t plant your feet and tell someone who was pushing you to pay less than you’re worth, “No! My price is my price. My terms are my terms. Thanks but no thanks.”

The figures don’t lie. Discounting by 10% when you work on a 30% GP means that to make up the profit you’ve just handed to your customer requires you to sell 50% more the next time. That’s 50% more prospecting. Given salespeople’s natural propensity to do anything to avoid making sales calls either on the phone or in person, you basically have to double the activity that your sales people probably aren’t doing anyway. Getting cash into the coffers in almost any business is tough enough without making your life even tougher. Buyers know this and rely on you and your salespeople to get emotionally involved in this deal.

Conversely, if you make 30% gross margin and you raise your prices by 10%, you can afford to lose a quarter of your current client base and maintain your current bottom line. In my experience no company that has raised its prices by 10% has ever lost more than 10-20% of its customer base. Experience tells me that when you do raise prices, your best customers stay and the lowest profit, highest effort clients leave to blight someone else’s balance sheet.

Business leaders who allow a discounting culture to develop around them are the architects of their own disappointment. They don’t see it for what it really is – a long term cost that will probably hurt you throughout the lifetime of that customer relationship, disguised as a shot in the arm for cash flow.

Tough times require tough sales people. If customers and prospects are dictating your prices, you’ve just become part of their plan, not yours. Surviving this difficult market requires determination, resilience and conviction. This means a change in mindset.

Do you have a bunch of salespeople and account managers going out with their heads full of crappy programming, e.g. “The customer is king.” “The buyer is always right.” “They’ll buy if they like me, best not rock the boat.” Couple bad beliefs with a poor money concept that says, “don’t talk about money, its rude”, “money doesn’t grow on trees”, etc and you get a culture of subservience, where the buyer is in complete control of the sales process because you and your team are projecting fear and neediness.

These are just limiting beliefs. Bad coding that has been passed down to us. It’s nonsense. Moses did not come down from the mountain with an 11th commandment that said that the customer calls the shots. If he did, he dropped that tablet on the way down the mountain.

Retailers came up with the concept of the customer is king. What a crock! The customer is never more than your equal. They may have the cash but that is all they have. Many prospects probably don’t even have that much. What every potential customer does have is a deep stack of problems that they’re incapable of dealing with, without help …. your help. And they’ll pay whatever it takes if you find enough reasons that are important to them. They don’t give a damn about you, your company, your investors, your products, your people – they worry about their selfish self-interest.

You, on the other hand, can take their problems away. That’s why they really come to you. Your job is to help them discover their problems and what they are costing their business. Once they realise how badly they need what you have, it is no longer about the money.

Yet don’t we usually do the opposite. If we look at how we train, manage and pay sales people in this country, almost everything that we do is like a Government policy before an election. On paper, it looks good, smells good and makes for a great bit of news. But if you look under the bonnet you can see just how divisive and crappy it is.

We teach our sales teams to go after revenue instead of profit. The problem is that if we don’t have much cash, then we go after anything. We buy bad business. We allow our salespeople to state their price and then tell their customers that they don’t believe it. Their credibility is shot to pieces. It’s no wonder prospects take advantage of them. If you buy business at a loss the one certainty is you will go bankrupt. Every percentage point you discount comes of BOTTOM line and requires much more effort to just stand still.

If your salespeople don’t believe that they have the right to play at top table and ask for a lot of money, they are never going to ask for a lot of money and will probably discount like double glazing salesman. When they get down to negotiations and the pressure builds, they’ll probably cave and give away just as much as you, their boss, have allowed them to.

Now is the time to break the bad programming. That means getting out of your head and into your gut. Listen to what it tells you. If you want to be successful in sales you have to be tough, determined and resilient. No more pussy footing around. Don’t worry whether the prospect likes you or not. You have to qualify for both sides. They never bring you the real problem, just a mishmash of symptoms. Dig deep. Find their pain. Do they have the conviction to do something about it? Force the issue. Drive the process forward. If they are not able to make a decision, then they are never going to buy.