Strategic Sales & Marketing Solutions

The days of “autopilot” selling, at least for the short term, are long behind us. In the current economy, professional salespeople…accredited members of the “Top 2% Club”…don’t even consider a script for their prospecting or follow-up efforts. Every single sales call…without exception…requires a true sales performer to master the following skills:

1). Do your homework. In the “Age of the Internet,” there is no excuse for a salesperson to skip this essential step. With a few clicks of a mouse, it is possible to discover a company’s yearly income, its decision maker, its location, and more. There is one reason, and one reason only, for a professional salesperson to skip the “homework” stage. The reason is that they don’t belong in sales.

2). Approach every prospective client with respect and professional courtesy. Then kick over their apple cart. Look at it this way…if every one of your prospective clients is 100% “In The Zone,” they don’t need you. You have nothing…I repeat, nothing…to offer. The good news is that the overwhelming majority of your potential clients are nowhere near “The Zone.” They are too close to their immediate situation. The are playing a game that they cannot possibly win, which is known as “Follow The Leader.” They are using the efforts of their nearest competitors as a benchmark, which is a fatal mistake. Your challenge, as a professional salesperson, is to conduct an exhaustive inventory of every sales and marketing effort currently in play by their competitors. After that, you redefine the playing field. If you are unable to do this, you are in the wrong profession. Start scanning the employment listings in your local newspaper.

3). Discuss your client’s “comfort zone,” and provide supportive illustrations that demonstrate how living in a comfort zone will never result in success. We have now reached the point where professional salespeople separate themselves from “order takers.” If your sales strategy…your entire value proposition…is playing to your prospective customers’ “comfort zone,” you have just guaranteed your failure. If you have the courage to do your homework, understand the needs of your potential customers, thoroughly understand their current efforts, and look beyond “where they are” to “where they could be,” you are in the “Top 2% Club.” If not, you are someone who belongs in a different profession who is currently hiding out with the job title of “Salesperson.”

4). Accept your potential client’s ego and level of self-perception and be willing to turn it inside out.

Here is a real-life illustration for you.

I am currently in negotiations with the owner of an Italian restaurant. I am Italian, and I know how to cook authentic Italian food. I have no interest in…nor patience for…Italian food that is not authentic. When I find a restaurant that knows how to deliver the “real deal,” I present myself for what I am: an Italian-American man who knows how to cook authentic Italian dishes and respects restaurants that offer authentic cuisine. This, combined with my professional Web Design skills, makes me uniquely qualified to approach the owner of an authentic Italian restaurant and discuss my qualifications for building a Web Site that will bring them new customers.

The next step is to enter into the “What’s In It For Me / So What” stage.

There are two stages in every sales call. The first is “What’s In It For Me.” This is the moment in which a business owner makes a declaration of their unique selling proposition, their primary reason for being qualified to extract dollars from their customers’ wallets.

Let’s stick with the Italian restaurant theme.

Response to the “What’s In It For Me” question might be “I make pizza.”

In a world filled with “pizza joints,” the immediate response from most consumers might be “So what?”

The response to the “So what” question is the dividing line between success and failure.

Here is a successful response:

“We make our pizza dough from scratch, as well as our sauce, and we use only the finest ingredients. We do not have freezers in our restaurant. We prepare what we need in advance each day. We use authentic Italian recipes for all of our menu items, and we invite you to visit us soon so that you can taste the difference these steps make.”

The average restaurant owner is locked into his / her own ego. “We make great pizza.” Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. What is required…the critical step which requires sidelining ego…is to explain to the buying public why their pizza is superior to the pizza available from the chain stores that have a presence on every block of every city in the United States.

I’ve worked with a client who is literally operating in the shadow of a major, nation-wide pizza chain. He is located in a strip mall that is set back slightly from the main street, where the chain store is located.

This chain built its reputation on cheap pizza, plain and simple. For a small amount of cash, you can walk in and purchase a large amount of food. For customers who aren’t concerned with quality or authenticity, it’s a great deal.

If you walk a few feet back into the mall, my client offers fresh dough, fresh sauce, quality ingredients…for only a few dollars more per pizza.

For some consumers, “filling the hole” is the primary concern, and at the cheapest possible price. But there is a huge divide between the cheapest fast food and five-star restaurants. Therein lies the opportunity. There is the opportunity for a restaurant owner to say “We aren’t fast food, but you also don’t need to take out a second mortgage to enjoy a meal at our restaurant.”

A salesperson must be willing to roll up their sleeves, to challenge the client’s status quo, in order for that client to see their current unique window of opportunity.

Everything is possible. It just becomes a matter of how willing a professional salesperson is to have a vision, and to relentlessly pursue it.

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Salespeople often explore all of the possible ways to avoid prospecting, which is single most critical skill required to increase sales in a tough economy. It is difficult to understand why prospecting is looked upon as such an ominous, intimidating, threatening activity when it can be an adventure, a game of pure strategy, and the most direct method of achieving a higher ratio of new, qualified potential customers and closed sales.

A sale is closed, a contract is signed, a check is cut in the exact moment in which a prospective customer believes that a need will be met. Salespeople will procrastinate and put off prospecting by offering the feeble excuse that “no one is buying,” which may be true in limited, specific situations, but is a complete falsehood in others. It is a “wishful thinking” excuse. The salesperson doesn’t truly believe that no one is buying. They hope that by placing the blame on the economy or any other external circumstance, rather than accepting full responsibility and accountability for their own inner game, they will be allowed to coast along and gather up the low-hanging fruit.

During lean and difficult financial times, the needs of most people increase. When times are good and everyone has money to burn, basic needs are an afterthought and “disposable income” is used to fuel desires, not to purchase survival items.

In a tough economy, sacrifices are made. Budgets are cut. Products and services which are needs, not desires, are trimmed, creating new and greater needs. The salesperson who has trained themselves to pay close attention to the changing tides will see this and act upon it. The salesperson with low motivation, narrow focus and limited imagination will spend their days endlessly trying to force the square peg into the round hole.

Sales is not a “by rote, by the numbers” game. It is the exclusive province of agile, quick-thinking, highly motivated professionals who seek out challenges for the opportunities they contain. The salespeople who cannot or will not accept this become the leaves that fall from the tree, are gathered up, placed into plastic bags, and set out at curbside for pickup.

A salesperson who can fill a need will always make a sale in any economy. Sales prospecting is nothing more than quickly and efficiently isolating the people who have a need that is in direct alignment with the salesperson’s products and services. The problems begin when an inexperienced or timid salesperson takes on the self-imposed burden of closing the sale on a prospecting call. Professional salespeople resist the temptation to “go for the kill” in the opening stages of contact. This does not mean that if a salesperson contacts a prospective customer with an immediate or urgent need who is willing to buy immediately that they should defer the prospect’s eagerness. It means that one out of every one thousand prospects might respond in that manner. The rest of them need to feel confident that the salesperson is someone worth talking to and not a pushy intruder before they will allow themselves to consider buying from them. As a colleague once said, “Time + Trust = Relationship.” People feel good about buying when they have a relationship with a trustworthy seller.

The search for a prospecting “method” is the first trap that most call-reluctant salespeople fall into. There is only one method, available to each and every professional salesperson, regardless of what they sell or where they sell it. It is called “being comfortable in their own skin.”

If a friend or relative calls with a need, there is no anxiety or hand-wringing or procrastination regarding how to respond. There is no manipulation, no cat and mouse games. A need is articulated. One person speaks, another person listens. The act of verbally expressing the need might raise questions for the person listening. The questions are asked, the questions are answered, and a decision is made in regard to whether the people involved in the conversation can work toward providing a solution that meets the immediate need.

That, in a nutshell, is the definition of sales prospecting. Novice salespeople occasionally overwhelm a prospect with “solutions” that they don’t need, don’t want, or can’t afford, and in doing so, sabotage any real opportunity that might have existed. It is critical to do the appropriate homework before picking up the phone or walking through the door. The salesperson must, to the best of their ability and within reason, determine the need of the prospect before making contact.

The next step should also come naturally, but often constitutes the second trap. Just as the time in a salesperson’s day must be managed, so must their expectations. There should be one question on the salesperson’s mind while they are in prospecting mode: “Do they have an interest in speaking with me, and if so, when can I set an appointment?” It is perfectly reasonable to set a closed sale as a goal. In doing so, initial contact is step one. If step one is successful, step two becomes a follow-up appointment. That could lead to a closed sale, additional appointments, or a prospect who isn’t motivated to buy. The only thing a salesperson can control is a complete and sincere commitment to doing their best in each of the steps as they occur.

The time has come for the professional salesperson to embrace prospecting, to personalize it, and to manage their time as well as their expectations. In doing so, they will close more sales.

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