SOLD July'2012

67
№ 13 JULY 2012 Get Loyalty through Royalty INTELLIGENTLY Manage Prospect Follow-Up p. 16 VISUALLY Engage Your Audience p. 40 SHEP HYKEN shares how to create the amazing customer experience p. 54

description

Online publication for the sales professionals

Transcript of SOLD July'2012

Page 1: SOLD July'2012

№ 13July 2012

Get Loyalty through RoyaltyINTELLIGENTLY

Manage Prospect

Follow-Up

p. 16

VISUALLY Engage

Your Audience

p. 40

SHEP HYKEN shares how

to create the amazing customer

experiencep. 54

Page 2: SOLD July'2012

YOU CAN is a book of HOW . . . specifically how to improve your personal performance and achievement.

In this groundbreaking new book, renown peak performance expert John Von Achen walks you through a proven methodology guaranteed to help you reach your maximum potential.

There is no hype in this book, no filler and no excuses. Only solutions for how YOU CAN produce better results in everything you are doing.

Now, you can learn HOWEveryone Wants to Move Forward

One word describes John Von Achen, RESULTS!

John Von Achen is one of the most respected thought leaders and peak performance experts in the world today. He has become a legend when it comes to helping individuals and organizations achieve their maximum growth, performance and profitability.

Known as an inspiring, forward thinking business leader, John Von Achen has consistently provided his clients “real world” solutions they can transfer into immediate results.

Meet the Author

Learn more at www.youcan2012.com/

Page 3: SOLD July'2012

Founder of SOLDLAB.com and SOLD Magazine

John Von AchenEditor-in-Chief helen Bereschinova

Copy Editor oleg VetoshnikovDesigner lubov Karmanova

Cover story: Shep hyken

contriButorS:

Facts&Numbers Sales crunch

Confidence harlan Goerger, Art Sobczak, Bruce Zimmerman, Mark Pickles

Networking tom Searcy, Diane helbig

Influence nido Qubein, Brent nauer, Mike Weinberg

Presentation Anne Miller, ian Brodie

Negotiation Jeannette nyden, Sean McPheat, tibor Shanto

Loyalty Shep hyken, charles h. Green, Bill Quiseng

Interview Wendy Weiss

coluMniStS:

Zeke camusio, Stan Billue, Maura Schrier-Fleming, Jeff Koser and chad Koser, Peter temple,

Phil Waknell, errol Greene, Arnold Sanow, Greg Williams

Owned and Operated by cente MeDiA, llc.

Address: 1800 Pembrook dr ste 300

32810 Orlando, Florida

Page 4: SOLD July'2012

08 Confidence or Comfort

11 Are you investing in... You?

12 Be Like Warren Buffet: Turn Failures into Opportunities and eliminate rejection

14 What You Aspire Towards Is Just Outside Your Comfort Zone...

24 Customers Expect More

27 SolD Q&A. Ask the sales Pro

28 Who’s Making It About Price, You or the Customer?

29 restructuring with sales

32 chasing Zebras. selling to Zebras. The Untold story … For salespeople

16 Professional Stalking – Managing Prospect Follow-Up

19 using Social to Sell. How to Use Pinterest and Instagram to Boost revenues

20 sales requires a system

22 Success Secrets from a Sales Super Star. Buyers are Liars

cuStoMerS exPect

More

24

20

CONTENTS

4 | July 2012

11

Page 5: SOLD July'2012

34 Death by PowerPoint

36 selling without slides

38 SolD interview. The Cold Calling survival Guide by Wendy Weiss

40 Visually Speaking. Three Powerful rules to “Visually” engage Your Audience

42 Presentation 2.0. Introduction

44 7 Pearls of Unconventional Wisdom: Business Leaders Share Negotiation Best Practices.

48 Mr. Buyer – Please, Object!

50 A Powerful Way to Handle the spouse Objection

52 Advice from the Master negotiator. You Can Be a super Negotiator

54 Get Loyalty through Royalty

59 The Customer Is Paying for His experience, Not Yours

61 Sales research. FUd – research shows It Just May Be the salesperson’s Best Friend

62 up your charm iQ. Charm and Customer service

64 Are You Client Focused or a Client Vulture?

46

64

34

July 2012

www.soldlab.com | 5

Page 6: SOLD July'2012
Page 7: SOLD July'2012

http://www.salescrunch.com/

Page 8: SOLD July'2012

confidence comfortor

8 | July 2012

Page 9: SOLD July'2012

HoW CoMFoRt iS MiStakEN FoR CoNFiDENCEYou’ve been there, the person talks about how great they are at some-thing and how confident and compe-tent they are. Oh, if only I could be as

confident as they are, life would be wonderful!Often times we think about what it takes to change and become an “expert” like the one on stage or cre-ating the fabulous outcome. It looks easy, they seem competent and confident! Or are they?Over the past weeks I’ve had several conversations and incidents around the topic of “comfort” versus “confident” and what the difference is. Question to you; Is there a difference? see if you agree with me by reading on…

LEt’S takE tWo PEoPLE, John and Jeff. Both are similar educations, family backgrounds and his-tories.

John has been a teacher for 10 years and has been Teacher of the Year just recently. He is very competent, great with the kids and very well liked. He appreciates the regularity of teaching, a set sched-ule and lots of predictability. everyone feels he is very competent and confident in his teaching role.

Jeff has worked with the company for 10 years and is just getting his fourth promotion up to a divi-sion manager. His climb up the later has been un-precedented in the company’s history and the CeO is very aware of it. When people talk about Jeff they say he is a real go getter and there is not much he will not tackle if handed to him. Many say he is one of the most capable and confident people they know.

thE qUEStioN NoW BECoMES, is John com-fortably confident in his position; or does he possess true self-confidence?

Here is more insight. With the Teacher of the Year award came some interesting opportunities. One was to become assistant principle at a small school. It meant some changes, different thinking and skills, along with more learning and adapting his existing

skills. In talking with John about the opportunity, the responses were all driven by fear of change. “This is going to be a lot of change and challenges, I’m com-fortable with the teaching I’m doing.”

does this indicate self-confidence or comfort guarded by fear of change or the unknown?

Jeff in his last interview before taking on the di-vision was talking with the CeO. “There are a lot of challenges in this position, many you have not yet ex-perienced. How will you deal with these unknowns?” asks the CeO. “I may not have an answer right now, but I know it can be figured out and solved, just as I’ve done in the past, just a bigger challenge and more change in myself is all.” was Jeff’s answer. The CeO smiled.

What does this indicate to you; self-confidence, cockiness, over confident, stupidity?

Here is my take, anyone with enough time and ef-fort can become good at something. They do it so often that it becomes automatic and not a real chal-lenge for them anymore. Yet they are very comfort-able in the situation and enjoy that comfort.

LEt’S takE DRiviNG a CaR, you drive 30,000 miles a year on good roads and weather and feel very comfortable driving, to the point that 90% of your ac-tions are on autopilot. Are you confident or just com-fortable with the norm? suddenly a deer jumps out with a fawn! What do you do, panic; lock the brakes; hit the ditch; hit the deer; go into the other lane? What happened to your confidence? Was the confidence truly there? Was it just comfort and not really confi-dence?

The reality is, most people freeze, lock up the brakes and either wreck the car, hit he deer or hit an-other vehicle, or all three! A confident driver would certainly react, yet depend up quick thinking to find the best alternative and then act on it, even if it might be wrong. Is there a difference?

YES FEaR aFFECtS US aLL. On our way back from sturgis, sd the other week, the group was cruising between 80-90 mph most of the time.

www.soldlab.com | 9

Page 10: SOLD July'2012

Now how would you rate the self-confidence of the people in these examples? How many were running on comfort rather than confidence?

aS i SEE it SELF-CoNFiDENCE BE-havES thiS WaY:

I know there will be change and I’m ready for it

Problems will occur and I will figure out how to solve them

I will have to gain knowledge about some-thing I did not know before

Change will be a con-stant, that is ok

I will be uncomfort-able most of the time

Many things, ideas and actions will be new and different

I know I will have to be alert to the things I do not know yet

Increased stress levels may occur and I will learn to contend with this

My comfort zone will be invaded on a daily if not hourly basis

With all this in mind, when do I start!so my question is, are highly successful people “comfortably confident” or truly “self-confident”?Imagine having this type of discussion with a group of high earning sales professionals and how they could use this to increase their sales productivity. What would that do for you? Look for more information on the upcoming sales Leadership summit.

by harlan Goerger

This is on country two lane highways with little traffic (rural sd where Buffalo use to roam). At first the curves were a bit intimidating as I hadn’t ridden for a few years, yet soon I found myself having to slow as I came to close to the leaders out of the turns. Along the river road there were curves and hills and no guardrails of any kind, yet it was comfortable looking at the great scenery. Now some will say this was crazy, or I was falsely over confident, and both may be right. What I had been doing is ev-ery turn and curve the current envelop was be-ing pushed a bit. skills, reactions and insights were being learned and de-veloped. A lot of old skills from 30 years ago were coming back fast! You can develop a lot of skills on an 8 hour ride.

Another rider was in front of me most of the time and had been keeping up. Then one incident of not leaning enough got them close to a guard rail on a very wide turn, nothing like the sharp curves we had just been on, and the speed dropped to 60 mph and even slower on other turns. They now had fear running through their veins. rather than learn from the incident, they allowed the incident to control them. Forgetting the hundreds of curves they had just been through and conquered with ease, this one shut them down. Were they running on comfort or confidence?

LatER that WEEk a conversation about motor-cycles came up with a business owner I know. Yes they had owned a road bike a few years ago, but ev-ery time they were on it they thought about getting hurt, rather than the enjoyment of the ride. They sold the bike. Was this man confident in his own ability to learn, adapt and apply in a new situation?

President, h. Goerger & Associates, aka AskHG.com Performance

Changer in Leadership & Sales.

Learn more about Harlan at

www.askhg.com/leadership

I know there will be change and I’m ready for it

10 | July 2012

Page 11: SOLD July'2012

In years gone by most companies would provide their sales organizations with an on-going training. It would run the full gambit from full-blown multi day training sessions on the latest sales process and methodologies du Jour to basic sales tech-niques to product and pricing strategies.

On rare occasions there might be a special training session utilizing one of the many available sales gurus covering prospecting skills, objection handling, clos-ing skills, etc.

But in recent years, with the eco-nomic downturn, cost cutting mea-sures, and massive reductions in force (layoffs), sales train-ing has become a rarity; even considered by some organi-zations as a luxury.

Problem is, the sales game has changed dra-matically over the last couple of years, and what used to work two or three years ago, may not be relevant in today’s selling environment.

To be relevant in sales today, it is incumbent upon the indi-vidual sales professional to self-educate. In other words, you need to invest in yourself.

so what are you doing to invest in you? It’s time to take your education to a new level. You, as I like to say, need to some continuous innovation and continu-ous improvement?

Here are (5) five things you can start doing to investing in yourself:

1read constantlyremember the expression, “The more

you read, the more you know, the more you know the further you go”. Invest the

time to read as much as you can. There is so much valuable information available today.

read sales books (e-books or traditional), sales blogs, white papers, and case stud-ies. I make it a point to read at least two

hours a day. Is it all at once? No. I read when I can wherever I am. read something first

thing in the morning or over lunch. Instead of wasting time watch TV at night, pick

up a book. If you read just one hour a day you can read approximately

50 books a year. That’s powerful!

2 Jump on a webinarYes a webinar. This is an

easy way to pick up some in-valuable knowledge. It doesn’t take much to find a good we-binar these days. There are all types covering a variety of top-

ics. Most are an hour in length and are held at a variety of differ-

ent times. Being in the Mountain Time Zone, I’m fortunate that many

are held during the lunch hour. Grab a sandwich, invest in you, and learn

something new.

3 Get on the Social Media

BandwagonIf you aren’t using so-

cial media today you are missing a major

opportunity. I have learned so much via the various

social media platforms

Are you inVeStinG in... you?

www.soldlab.com | 11

Page 12: SOLD July'2012

over the last year and a half. I have also, met some awesome individuals, from all over the world, that have taught me so much. If I can adapt to the new reality of selling, so can you. It’s true; an old dog can learn new tricks. Great sales skills + social media = social Business.

4 network, network, networkreach out and talk to as many people as

you can. Network with co-workers, your cus-tomers, old acquaintances, friends and even your neighbors. If you’re in sales, you are ac-customed to meeting and talking to new peo-ple. You never know who you might meet or talk with. The old saying “it’s not what you know, but who you know” is a fact!

5 Be a Mentor or coach Being a mentor or helping to coach a new

sales person is one of the most rewarding things you can do as a sales professional. Not only can you help a fellow sales pro, you just might learn something along the way. There are many different ways that people learn but there is a school of thought that says: learn it, do it, teach it. For me, this method has always worked well.

With the changing dynamics of the buyer/seller relationship, the reduced amount of sales training, and with the claims of a dramati-cally drop in the need for direct sales profes-sional; it is incumbent on you to make your-self relevant. Take the steps necessary to arm yourself for success. Take the responsibility for your own training program. remember the saying “If it’s meant to be, it’s up to me”!

by Bruce Zimmerman

Bruce Zimmerman is a

seasoned Sales and Sales Manage-

ment professional who is passion-

ate about sales and helping other

achieve success. He shares his

thoughts, perspectives, and expe-

riences on a variety of topics related to sales, sales

leadership, and sales enabled technology on his blog,

www.brucezim.wordpress.com.

Be like WarrenBuffet:

Turn Failures intoOpportunitiesand Eliminate

Rejection

At age 19, his application to Harvard Business school was rejected. He was devastated at the time.

However, exploring other options, he quickly re-grouped and sent in a late application to Columbia, where two investment experts that he admired were teaching. He was accepted. There he learned the val-ues and principles that guided his investing.

Today he is the second wealthiest man in Ameri-ca and the most famous stock investor in the world. Of course I’m talking about fellow Omaha native, Warren Buffet. (No, I do not know him, and he does not call me for advice.)

Buffet is a big believer in looking for the opportuni-ties in setbacks. Which is what all great salespeople do as well.In a Wall street Journal article, Buffet said,

He said that with the exception of health prob-lems, setbacks teach "lessons that carry you along. You learn that a temporary defeat is not a permanent one. In the end, it can be an opportunity."

Buffet has many examples of negatives becoming positives. He said when he was young he was terri-fied of public speaking – so much that he sometimes threw up before an address. Knowing he needed

The truth is, everything that has happened in my life…

that I thought was a crushing event at the time, has turned

out for the better.

12 | July 2012

Page 13: SOLD July'2012

to do something, he enrolled in a dale Carnegie speaking course, and says the skills he learned there enabled him to woo his future wife, who was a cham-pion debater.

"I even proposed to my wife during the course," he said. "If I had been only a mediocre speaker I might have not taken it," meaning that the extreme negative-ness of the situation is what resulted in the positive.

I have a process I have used for many years that enables me to keep my own personal attitude up dur-ing even the most difficult situations, find positives in negatives, and although it sounds cliché, turn prob-lems into opportunities. I believe it would do the same for you.

two Magic Questions Whenever you experience something that you per-ceive as being negative – many fall into this cat-egory… really now, many people blow things way out of proportion – or, you are faced with some-thing that truly is devastating, take a deep breath, stop, clear your mind, then ask yourself these two questions:

Begin implementing these two questions today, and I know you will view things differently, and see more opportunities where they might not have been there otherwise.

eliminating "rejection" How about never experiencing "rejection" again in sales?

That’s in the title of three of my books, and I’ve been berated by critics over the years for making that claim. Of course, those people never took the time to read the part of the books where I show exactly how you can avoid rejection. I’ll give you the simple pro-cess right now. What is rejection anyway?

Is it a ‘no’ you hear at the beginning of a call? Is it losing out on a competitive proposal? Is it being hung up on?

If you think it is, it is. Now, I’m not going to get all out-there-philosophical on you, but let’s keep this simple: -stuff happening TO you in sales (getting no’s) is in-evitable, if you are placing calls. -What HAPPeNs to you is not rejection. -rejection is the definition that someone attaches to what happens to them. -No one person or situation can cause you to feel re-jected unless you allow it/them to. -Change your definition of rejection so that it does not include getting a no on a call. -After no’s, ask yourself the two questions I present-ed earlier. -ensure you get a win on every call by accomplishing something, or even attempting something, regardless of how minor. This is what I call your secondary Objective.

More than almost any other profession, how you feel when you are performing your job affects your outcome. Coupled with the fact that all day long we proactively put ourselves in situations where the outcome may not be the one we desire, there’s little wonder most people would never consider sales as a career, and many have left because they couldn’t handle what they defined as "rejection." This under-scores the need to follow processes like I’ve outlined.

You are a special person for doing what you do. To continue surviving, thriving, and ensuring you will have your best year ever, implement these ideas for turning challenges into opportunities, and never ex-periencing rejection again!

by Art Sobczak

art Sobczak helps sales pros use the

phone to prospect, service and sell more

effectively, while eliminating morale-killing

"rejection." He presents public seminars and

customizes programs for companies. Art has

a number of books, CD's and other learn-

ing resources to help sales reps. See free

articles and back issues of his weekly emailed Smart Calling sales

tips at www.BusinessByPhone.com. Also ask for a free

copy of his monthly Telephone Prospecting and Selling Report

newsletter and Telesales Success magazine by emailing [email protected], or calling (402)895-9399) Also go

to Art's Telesales Blog www.TelesalesBlog.com where you

can hear actual recordings of good and failed sales calls.

"What can i learn from this?" "What good can i make from this?"

www.soldlab.com | 13

Page 14: SOLD July'2012

Think of an athlete, for instance a long dis-tance marathon runner. This athlete didn’t just wake up one day and start running competi-tive marathons, there was a steady build up in the distance he ran, from 5 miles per week, to 10 miles per week, to 20 miles per week, to 40 miles per week and then finally to 26.2 miles in a few hours. This build up or growth process would have been hard work, and by hard I mean wretchedly tough and ongoing, day in day out, week in week out, year in year out. This ongoing discomfort is the price the athlete pays, to grow mentally and physically tough enough to consis-tently compete at the top levels. What’s more, to stay at the top, the athlete has to keep paying the price. There are no short cuts.

Professional selling is no different, as no one ever wakes up one day and instantly becomes a peak sales performer. There will always be an ongoing, challenging and frequently uncom-fortable process of growth, which the sales person has to endure and progress through, to reach the top. Most sales people will always take the route of least resistance, so they won’t go the extra mile, or in selling terms they won’t make the extra sales calls, they won’t ask the tough questions and they allow their minds to adopt limiting beliefs about what they are worth, what they can achieve and the achiev-ability of their targets.

Let’s make no mistake, like the athlete’s world, the salesperson’s world is tough and it frequently hurts. A professional salesperson has to be mentally tough, to continually stretch their comfort zones, to resist the endless on-slaughts of negativity and limiting beliefs and to keep going day after day, month after month and year after year. If you can live just outside

of your comfort zone, you will inevitably grow strong, and in sales that’s the only way to reach and stay at the top. As a very green and rookie rep selling OTC pharmaceuticals to chemists, I learnt to thrive on the buzz of living outside my comfort zone, and my mantra was; “No matter how much it hurts, I can always make one more call”. With that attitude, I could not fail, and my territory soon had the fastest growth rates and highest market shares throughout the entire company. If you want to excel in sales, first get tough with yourself, as you are your own biggest competitor.

There are no short cuts. If it’s uncom-fortable...that’s because you are outside of your comfort zone and all importantly you are growing. Professional salespeople need to be constantly stretching their comfort zones, and they need to welcome the discomfort for what it really is, their own development and progress. Never expect to grow too fast too soon, but have the personal discipline and ac-countability to take small incremental steps outside of your comfort zone, each and every day. A marathon is 26.2 miles long, but it is al-ways run step by step. You can always take one more step, and for the salesperson, no matter how tough it may be, you can always make one more call.

by Mark Pickles

Mark Pickles is the Sales

Director of B2B Sales Solu-

tions www.b2b-sales.co.uk

WhAt you ASPire toWArDS iS JuSt outSiDe

your coMFort Zone...

14 | July 2012

Page 15: SOLD July'2012

SuBScriBe to SolD MAGAZine toDAyitS Free!www.soldlab.com/subscribe

Yes, that’s right . . . you can subscribe to sOLd* magazine right now for Free, and each month receive relevant and practical insights from some of the world’s leading sales professionals, experts and trainers. They will share with you their sales secrets and their best practices for winning in today’s challenging sales environment. each month, learn how you can:

every day we post new articles, videos, podcasts and audio programs on the sOLdLAB.com site that are not included

in sOLd Magazine. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to make sure you don’t miss anything. *s

OLd

is a

mon

thly

dig

ital p

ublic

atio

n de

dica

ted

to h

elpi

ng s

ales

pro

fess

iona

ls r

ise

abov

e th

eir c

ompe

titio

n an

d ea

rn la

rger

com

mis

sion

s.

MAGAzIne

vISIT www.SoLDLAB.CoM now!

• Increase your confidence as a sales professional• Find qualified customers faster, with less effort• Improve your presentation and demonstration skills• Flawlessly negotiate with power, purpose and elegance• Overcome objections and challenges with ease and precision• Increase the level of loyalty from your customers• Close more sales more often (and close larger sales too)• Use the latest technology to streamline your sales process

Page 16: SOLD July'2012

Professional Stalking–Managing Prospect Follow-up

I’m working with a team of sales people right now – good sales people – who have one teensy-weensy problem: follow up.

16 | July 2012

Page 17: SOLD July'2012

The sales process for all of us includes a large number of transactional communi-cations. They may include coordinating a meeting, securing a key piece of informa-tion, getting approval from Procurement

or Purchasing, sign-off from a superior, the review of the proposal, signing the contract and so on. every one of these communications must be completed in order to land the deal. If you participate in the sales process, you understand that rarely have you suf-fered more indignity or unprofessionalism than in this cycle of unanswered, unreturned or ignored emails, voicemail messages and sent and unsigned docu-ments. And it’s done WILLINGLY.

I’ve watched frothy-mouthed-screaming-at-of-ficials-soccer-moms, who when faced with follow-ing up with a prospect who agreed to an action and hasn’t done it, say “Well, I’ll just give it another week. I don’t want to be too pushy.”

I’ve seen bar-pounding-get-me-my-beer-now-guys wait for weeks for a response on a proposal. Weeks!

What is the right amount of time to wait before fol-lowing up with a prospect? Not just any prospect, but a big prospect. I know that you don’t want to be pushy or desperate. I get that. But you also need to keep moving the process along. We are looking for the Goldilocks “just right” level. Here are some pointers before I give you the timing guidelines:aSk. My favorite approach came from a guy in Ire-land pitching me some commercial real-estate. He said, “Thomas, the line between persistence and annoyance is a fine one, and I wouldn’t want to be crossing it. When should I be getting back to you so I’ll know you’ll be picking up the phone.” In every di-rect communication, ask when they want to have you get back to them and be specific. “early next week” is not specific. “Tuesday at 10am” is specific.SEt ExPECtatioNS. It starts with setting ex-pectations. In voicemails, emails, face to face or by phone, never end the conversation without setting the next time. Tell them when you will be calling or sending an email, specifically.BE iMPECCaBLE. Never miss a time or date. Not by a minute. If you are going to set the time for follow up with precision in your email or voicemail, then you have to hit it. You are creating a perception of atten-tion detail and reliability. Just because they are not

impeccable does not give you a pass not to be.aLLoW SoME LEEWaY. sometimes, my calls for appointments and follow ups are missed by the per-son whom I am calling. I leave this message, “I have us scheduled for a meeting today at 9am. I probably just missed you or one of your other meetings is run-ning over. I will call back in 15 minutes to connect. I look forward to our conversation. Thanks.” Then I call back. If I don’t reach the person, my message sounds like this, “I’m sorry we didn’t get connected today, I was looking forward to our conversation. Your day may have just gotten away from you, I know that happens to me sometimes. I’ll call you back at end of day today, say 5:00pm, to reschedule this call. Thanks.” don’t wait for a call back or an email. Keep pressing forward.DRivE, DoN’t RiDE. I don’t expect that people will be calling me back. I’m driving the process, so it’s my job to drive the communication. I am always willing to be surprised in a good way with a responsive person, but my control needs dictate that I can’t be waiting. I have to drive. How about you?WaLk aWaY. Like the movie title says, maybe “He’s Just Not That Into You.” At some point, continued fol-low up is groveling. don’t grovel. (see Brando Don’t Audition)If they are not responding, it means that they have moved on. I send an email or leave a voice mes-sage that sounds like this: “I’ve been in this business a long time, and when I stop being able to connect with someone it usually means that the timing for us to work together is not good. This is my last call to you for 6 months. I’ll circle back around then to see if timing is better for us to work together. If something changes for you between now and then, please feel free to call me.“

Having said all of this, here are some guidelines for proper Hunt Big sales Prospect Follow Up etiquette:

Prospecting calls 1st Prospecting Call – You can call or email an

unresponsive person within 48 hours. 2nd Prospecting Call – Within 48 hours of last

call 3rd Prospecting Call – Within 48 hours of last

call 4th Prospecting Call – Within 72 hours of last

call

www.soldlab.com | 17

Page 18: SOLD July'2012

Final Prospect-ing Call – Within 72 hours of last call

trade Show Follow-up –

This gets trickier depending upon the volume of contacts.

Pre-set Personal meeting – Within 48 hours of trade show closing.

Good conversa-tion on floor – Within 48 hours of trade show

Passing conversa-tion on floor – Within 72 hours of trade show closing

Fish bowl busi-ness card – Within 7 calendar days of trade show closing

Prospect listed in program – do you really have time to chase someone who you never met at the show? don’t be a psycho stalker. Let it go.

PRoPoSaLS. Assuming that you are sending a requested proposal, rather than an unsolicited one, your follow-up cycle should be declared in the cover letter. It should be within 24 hours to confirm receipt and distribution if appropriate. The time should be set at that time for a full review of the proposal within 72 hours. The house goes on fire outside of 8 calendar days – you must get connection and confirmation of interest and progress within 8 calendar days or you are dead.CoNtRaCtS. Who is driving? You are. Contract cycles within clients are a misty and dark area of the sales process. Lawyers think of themselves in this process as the stewards of their company’s risk, which they probably are. Because of this, they are slow, methodical and indifferent to you. First, get an understanding from your champion how long the cycle usually takes. Cut this time by two-thirds and follow up at the one-third mark in the cycle. Work

tom Searcy is a nationally recog-

nized author, speaker, and the foremost

expert in large account sales. Tom is the

author of RFPs Suck! How to Master the RFP System Once and for All to Win Big Business and the co-author

of Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company.

both the attorney and the champion. Your ap-proach should always be helpful: “What areas are of the most concern in the agreement? Which parts of the agreement are we going to be able to leave the same? How can we help to work through this agree-ment?”GEttiNG thE PRoS-PECt’S tEaM to MovE. stuck. I hate being stuck. Usually it’s IT, but not always. The process gets tends to get bogged down while your champion of your new client is wait-ing for someone in his or her organization to do something. Now ev-erybody is waiting. Your follow up here has to be

vigorous and consistent but friendly. You are work-ing within 4 hour cycles of commitments. Any time that a time or date has been missed on a commit-ment, you follow up within 4 hours. If they are not missing commitments, then your follow up is within 1 hour of commitment completion to thank them for completing the commitment. 20 commitments? 20 thank you’s.iNFoRMatioN REqUEStS. Use the same guide-lines as “Getting the prospect’s team to move.”Guidelines are not laws. When in doubt, use your own judgment. Always remember though, YOU Are drIVING.

tom Searcy

never miss a time or date.

not by a minute

18 | July 2012

Page 19: SOLD July'2012

using Social to Sellhow to use Pinterest and instagram to Boost revenues

Two popular social apps that can help your bottom line by creating awareness and free viral marketing for you are Pinterest and Instagram. 27 million users are on Instagram and Pinterest, with 18 million unique monthly visitors, is a huge tool for driving more traffic than Google+ and LinkedIn.

Pinterest It’s the ultimate bookmarking site. People share inter-esting, funny, strange, beautiful information; all with pictures. With your Pinterest account, create differ-ent boards where you post images of your product. Name your boards with keyword rich descriptions and do the same for captions. Make sure your image filenames look like “portland-sales-agency.jpg” in-stead of “dsC_1083.jpg”.

Within each board, you can pin or post the images with a caption from your website or blog. don’t pin too much at one time – you don’t want to fill up people’s walls with your pins and annoy them. You can tie your Pinterest account to Facebook and Twitter, but you should be aware of who you are sharing Pins with and how much.

The big key with images on Pinterest is to have them be high quality. People love sharing great im-ages.

Install the “Pin It” button on your site so your visi-tors can pin your images easily.

Install the Pinterest Button on your site and blog to invite people to follow you.

A great way to increase engagement is with Pinter-est contests.

Follow Pinners in your area and repin and respect-fully comment and like their pins. You don’t need to interact a ton, but just enough to keep people hap-py. The more you give, the more you get back. When people on Pinterest love your boards, chances are that they will create their own board based on your product.

instagramThis fun iPhone visual app, which was recently pur-chased by Facebook for $1 billion is a great way to promote your brand in a visual non-hard sell way.

Create an account as your company and then post pics of interesting angles of your offices, behind the scenes shots of products or people in your office. It’s best to be very creative and use funky filters. Post only your best photos and do this about two or three times per day (early morning, lunchtime and evening).

editing is key in Instagram, so download editing apps to make your photos stand out. some great ones are snapseed ($4.99), Adobe Photoshop ex-press (free), and Frame Magic ($0.99)

Geotag your photos with your location. Instagram is similar to Twitter in its use of

hashtags. A top 100 list can be found at http://web.stagram.com/hot/

Follow other instagrammers and local groups (for instance @igers_seattle) and always like and com-ment on other photos. The more you interact with other instagrammers, the more visibility you get.

A great way to generate comments is to do things like posting a mysterious photo and say “Can you guess what this is?” Or post a picture of a pint of beer and say “The best place to drink this would be (fill in the blank)”

To get even more engagement, have a contest. People love having their photos highlighted. read the Instagram post on How to Host a Photo Content on Instagram.

Host an Instameet in your city to get engagement. Go to meetup.com/Instagram and get started.

Integrate Instagram with Twitter, Facebook, Tum-blr and Foursquare. Whenever you post a great pic-ture on Instagram, make sure you share it, but don’t over share.

by Zeke camusio

Zeke Camusio is the Ceo

of The Outsourcing Company, one

of the fastest-growing Internet market-

ing agencies in the US. Contact zeke at

[email protected] to talk more about promoting with

Social Media Marketing.

Page 20: SOLD July'2012

I meet with sales people all the time and the one thing that is consistent is the lack of systems used to succeed. It’s really a shame because systems are critical to sales success. There’s an interesting pattern that happens to sales people and it goes like this: they start prospect-ing, meeting with potential clients, creating pro-posals and building relationships. so they stop prospecting. It’s as if they are so busy with sales appointments that they don’t think they have time for prospecting. They get stuck in a mindset that tells them they have a lot that’s about to pop.

sound familiar? Of course it does! You’ve probably been there. There are two prob-lems with this. The first is that until you have the business, you don’t have it. We always feel like we had a great sales meeting and that the busi-ness is inevitable. And then weeks and months go by without a decision from the prospect.The other problem

is that you’ve stopped prospecting so you have no other possibilities in the wings. You’re dry as the desert.

There are a myriad of reasons why a prospect doesn’t make the commitment. so, you can’t bank on them. Building structure around how you deal with them and try to get them to make a de-cision is one part of the sales system. The other part is making sure you have a continuous pros-

pecting system that you are always initiating. Take a look at diagram 1 for an example of

a prospecting system. It’s like a flowchart. It’s structured

and easy to fol-low. Moreover,

it’s easy to keep it rolling because you don’t have to

think about it.see, that is the

true value of sys-tems. You create

them so the tasks are au-tomatic. This

allows you to be really

present and aware when you are inter-

acting with prospects,

clients, and referral part-

ners. You won’t be trying to juggle

SAleS reQuireS A SySteM

20 | July 2012

Page 21: SOLD July'2012

activities and thinking about next steps. When we don’t have a system we are basically recreat-ing the sales strategy over and over again. stop! Create a process once that works and makes sense to you. Then use it as a template you can implement in a cycle.

The other great thing about having a sales system is that it makes it easier to track what is working and what isn’t. There has to be a goal attached to the system with a target date. Then as you are navigating your system you are al-ways cognizant of your progress. If something

isn’t working well you’ll find out right away. The alternative is getting to the target date and dis-covering you didn’t hit your goal. At that point you have to retrace your steps to try to figure out where you went wrong. Using a system will help you maneuver more easily; you’ll be able to ad-just and amend in the moment.

Try it out and see how a sales system works for you. It may sound simple but it can simply have a dramatic impact on your results.

by Diane helbig

After a success 20+ year sales and business development career, Diane took her experiences

and launched a coaching practice in early 2006. She is now an internationally recognized busi-

ness and leadership development coach and consultant, author, speaker, radio show host, and

workshop facilitator. As a certified, professional coach and president of Seize This Day Coach-

ing, Diane helps businesses and organizations operate more constructively and profitably. She

evaluates, encourages, and guides her clients. Learn more about Diane at www.seizethisday-coaching.com

target Market – information Gathering

tap Your Networks

(who knows them)

No introduction

Cold Call

Sales Letter

create plan for cold calling and letter sending. When will you leave voicemail; what day of the wk/time of day will you call; what will you do if you never reach your target?

No PotentialPotential

Contact for Meeting

introduction

quote and Close

File

thank

www.soldlab.com | 21

Page 22: SOLD July'2012

Editor Note: “This is the second article in a regular column in SOLD where THE Sales Training Legend, Stan Billue, shares some great secrets of Qualifying” For Part 1 of the article, please check SOLD April-May at www.soldlab.com/archive

use their Favorite Words and Phrases.An advanced technique is to listen for and use the other person’s Fa-vorite Words and Phras-es. The average person uses an average of 3 of their Favorite Words or Phrase during each minute of talking. These will be Words of Phras-es that we recognize however they aren’t necessarily part of our everyday vocabulary. Write them down and the next time you talk with them, feed back their Favorite Words and Phrases. If you ask someone what amount of extra Money would improve their lifestyle and they answer with; “$400 or $500 a month would sure keep the wolves away”, when you are doing your Presentation you would say;

“Most people feel that an extra $400 or $500 a month would sure keep the Wolves away, how about you?”

99% of the people that you use this advanced tech-nique with will have no concept of what is going on. All they know is that they are starting to feel extremely comfortable with you. Why? Because you’re talking their language.

Find their hot Button.If you’re selling any type of Investment, it’s absolutely critical that you determine their Hot Button. Oh sure

you can open some New Accounts without knowing it, however the odds are that you will never do a bunch of repeat business with them unless you know what they are trying to accomplish with their hard-earned dollars. A phenomenal technique to use is the “Banker Ques-

tion”. You’ll need to change the actual amount depend-ing on the Income and Net Worth of your Pros-pect, however here’s how it goes;

“Let’s pretend for a mo-ment that your Banker called you tomorrow morn-ing and said that someone had just put $50,000 in your Bank Account and it’s all yours, tax-free, however there is a catch. You can’t save it or invest it and you have to go buy something. In fact, you have to spend every penny by 5 o’clock tomorrow or you loose the entire amount. Now imag-

ine for a minute that you have $50,000, tax-free, all your bills are paid and you have to go buy something. What’s the one thing you’ve always wanted to buy for yourself or your family?” It might be a Boat, a Cruise, a getaway Home in the Moun-tains, etc., however whatever they say, you simply say; “Tell me about it.” and listen.

They will now describe it in great detail because that’s really what they want to accomplish. You’ve just discov-ered their Hot Button.

Are they conservative or Aggressive?Another advanced Technique when selling Investments is to ask if they consider themselves to be Conserva-tive or Aggressive. Notice that I didn’t say; “are you”.

Success Secrets from a Sales Super StarBuyers are liars

Stan Billue has been a Student of Sales an average of one day for 35 years. Each month he is sharing several Success Secrets with SoLD readers to assis t you to achieve your next level of Success.

You will never do a bunch of

repeat business with them unless you know what

they are trying to accomplish with

their hard-earned dollars

Page 23: SOLD July'2012

Stan Billue The Sales Training Legend

Always ask if they “consider” or “see” themselves as be-ing Conservative or Aggressive. It’s almost like asking someone if they want you to use Conservative words and phrases or Aggressive ones to assist you in making the sale. do a little homework in the dictionary and write down every Conservative and every Aggressive word and/or Phrase you can find. As long as it legally fits to de-scribe your Product or service, use as many as you can from the appropriate List.

Bumping for Big Bucks.Here’s an incredible technique for Qualifying for Money. It’s called the disappointed Technique. There are many variations on my Audio series, however here’s the easiest because it’s only one word. You would say; “If this sounds like the type of opportunity you’ve been looking for and feels comfortable to you, what amount of liquid and available dollars would you consider setting aside as far as your initial position?” Whatever amount they mention, you simply say; “Oooooh”.

A majority of the time they will come back with some-thing like; “Why, do I need more?” which gives you the right to talk about a larger amount.Finally, this next one I learned from a super star mak-

ing One Million dollars a year PLUs in commissions. He would use the exact phrase in the above paragraph and when they respond with a figure, he then says: “Up to?” When they give him the next figure, he now says; “And no more then?” The odds are that you’ve just bumped them by 20 to 50%.

As powerful as this technique is, I added one more choice of words, which is; “And if you really got excited about it, what’s the max you would consider?”If you only learn to BUMP eVerY TIMe MONeY Is MeN-TIONed, you will become successful and wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.

by Stan Billue

Stan Billue is known as the Sales

Training Legend as he is credited with creat-

ing more 6 and 7 figure a year Income earn-

ing Sales Pros than any other living Trainer.

You may subscribe to his free monthly

newsletter and weekly Marketing Tip by

visiting www.StanBillue.com

Stan has trained more 6 and 7 figure a year income earning Sales Pros than any other Trainer.

Visit www.StanBillue.com for a complete catalog of his

bestselling Audio, Video and Printed Training materials.

27 YearS in BuSineSS

Make it a “Fanta$tic” Future!

Page 24: SOLD July'2012

cuStoMerS exPect

More

24 | July 2012

Page 25: SOLD July'2012

What makes a successful salesperson?I’ve often asked that question at seminars, and the answers

have been all over the ball park.“You’ve got to have the right product,” some say.

It helps. But we’ve all known salespeople who went broke trying to move superb products and others who could make fortunes selling ice cream on an iceberg. A really good salesperson can rack up more sales with a mediocre prod-

uct than a mediocre salesperson can make with the greatest product in the world.

“You’ve got to make plenty of sales calls,” others say. “The more calls you make, the more sales you’ll get.”

As a general rule, that’s true, but it doesn’t go far enough. If you think about it, the more passes a quar-terback throws, the more passes he’ll complete.

But a quarterback who completes three out of four passes will put points on the board much more regu-larly than one who completes one out of four, even though both may throw the same number of times. A baseball player who hits .350 will cross the plate much more frequently than one who hits .200, even though both take the same number of swings.

similarly, a salesperson’s success doesn’t de-pend on the number of calls. It depends on the num-ber of sales. An effective salesperson and an ineffec-tive salesperson may make the same number of calls, but it’s the effective one who eats steak and lobster instead of hamburger.

still others say, “you’ve got to master the mechan-ics.” That helps, too. But mastering the mechanics won’t put you on top of the sales charts unless you master the right mechanics.

In today’s market, as in none before, it is crucial that we learn selling savvy. The sales environment has changed radically in four distinct ways:

1 customers are better-educated, more sophisticated, and more

value-conscious.In other words, they are harder to please; they want more for their money.

Think about your own demands as a consumer. You insist on quality goods and efficient service. You don’t want some slick con artist trying to trick you into buying a product or service you don’t want or need. And you don’t want to be abandoned after the sale.

You expect follow-up service. If something goes wrong, you want to know that the salesperson and the company are going to stand behind the sale.

This means that salespeople have to stay on top of their markets. They have to be knowledgeable about the products and services they are selling. And they have to be honest, and sincerely interested in helping their customers find value and derive satisfaction.Customers expect more from us than ever before.

2 competition is stiffer. Customers now have so many options that price

will always be the deciding factor – unless you can of-fer a strong differential advantage.

With companies producing similar products at similar cost, it’s getting tougher every day to offer substantially lower prices than the competition does.

That means that you have to offer something that sets you apart from all the other salespeople who are trying to get your customers to buy from them. You have to provide quicker service, more up-to-date product knowledge, and better follow-up.

It’s not enough to provide products and service as good as those of your competitors. Yours have to be better – a lot better. Moreover, your customers must acknowledge the superiority of your products and services, and the object of your presentation should be to lead them toward that recognition and acknowl-edgment.

If you can’t lead your customers to that acknowl-edgment, you won’t get the sale, no matter how good your product. Your success in selling depends less and less on the product you are selling, and more and more on your skills as a salesperson.

www.soldlab.com | 25

Page 26: SOLD July'2012

3 technology is rapidly replacing peddlers.

People are buying more through direct mail. And such media as interactive television and the Internet are making it possible to buy almost anything you want by pressing a button or clicking a mouse.

Companies are no longer looking for peddlers to handle items that are much easier to sell by phone or through the mail. In many cases, they’re setting up self-service systems that can be operated by clerks.

Of course, there are plenty of very good opportu-nities for really sharp salespeople who can sell with power and skill, especially in the industrial field.

To be successful as a salesperson, you must find ways to distinguish yourself from the inexpensive clerks and the commonplace peddlers. You must rise to the challenge with proficient skills, depth of knowl-edge and a positive attitude.

4 time has become a priceless commodity – for salespeople

and for their customers.Prospects don’t want salespeople wasting their time. And if you’re serious about becoming successful, you don’t have time to wander around showing your prod-ucts or services to anyone who will look at them.

To survive in today’s volatile marketplace, you need a clear and effective strategy. You need the skills to implement that strategy. And you need the know-how to make that strategy work for you.

When you acquire and apply these things, you’re demonstrating selling savvy.

Five Ingredients for selling savvy

What do we mean by selling savvy?The answer lies in five ingredients that are vital to your team’s success as professionals:

1. Selling savvy is understanding the sellingprocess well enough to approach it as ahighly educated professional.2. Selling savvy is understanding people wellenough to influence them to buy.3. Selling savvy is knowing how to execute.4. Selling savvy means developing streetsmarts.5. Selling savvy is having the self-disciplineto carry out every detail of your strategy alday, every day.

Nido qubein is an international

speaker and accomplished author on sales,

communication, and leadership. He is presi-

dent of High Point University which has an

enrollment of more than 4,500 undergraduate

and graduate students. Dr. Qubein serves on

several national and local boards and is the

recipient of numerous awards. He is also chairman of Great Harvest

Bread Company with 220 stores in 43 states. For more information

visit: www.nidoqubein.com and www.highpoint.edu.

Professionals Versus WorkersI often draw the distinction between a person with a worker mentality and a person with a professional mentality.

Workers tolerate their jobs as burdens to be en-dured for the sake of putting food on their tables and roofs over their heads.

Professionals see their jobs as rewarding compo-nents of their lives. Their careers and their personal lives complement and support each other. Their jobs are part of who they are.

Workers wait to be told what to do. They don’t reach out for new responsibility, because they don’t want responsibility. They take care of their own im-mediate tasks without worrying about how their tasks affect others in the organization. In fact, they don’t see themselves as part of the organization. They see the organization as an outside entity that may have a negative or positive impact on their lives. They refer to it in the third person: as “it” or “them,” and not as “we.” The organization is something they have to re-spond to, although they’re not a part of it.

Professionals see themselves as part of the or-ganization. To them, the organization is “we.” When it succeeds, they succeed. When it suffers reverses, they feel the reverses.

People look up to professionals because they recog-nize them as being good at what they do. They’re good because they’ve walked the extra mile toward excellence. They absorb information about their chosen fields, and they share their knowledge with others. They’re jealous of their images and are always careful to avoid compro-mising them. To be a professional, you have to look like a pro, communicate like a pro, and exude the confidence of a pro. You must set a high standard for yourself and never allow yourself to fall below that standard.

by nido Qubein

26 | July 2012

Page 27: SOLD July'2012

1What are the most effective sales techniques and what are some

alternatives to cold calling?The most successful selling is when someone the customer trusts recognizes a need and highly recom-mends a salesperson who can sell a product to solve that need. This means that strategic sales profession-als make sure that everyone they meet knows what they can do for prospects, who is an ideal prospect, and what situation or condition needs to exist so the salesperson can sell something and add value. The best strategic relationships are with other business professionals who sell to your customers and prospects, but don't com-pete with you. Their customers trust these sales profes-sionals and value their recommendation so you shorten your sales cycle when they recommend you.

2how do you make connections with the key players in a certain industry?

The best way is to "mine" your network of contacts and ask who knows someone who knows the person you want to contact. I find that the best place to meet key people is to join the same trade associations, technical organi-zations or business chambers where these people are members. You get to volunteer along with them. They get to know you informally and appreciate the work you do for another organization. These informal relationships often result in business. so get out, join business and technical organizations that are relevant to your business, volun-teer and build strategic relationships for your business.

3What effective customer engagement strategies have you seen?

(Helen, not sure what this really means, but I'll answer it and you tell me if that's what you were looking for.)

The most successful strategies I've seen are the ones I've used and recommend for my clients. I have my cli-ents identify the trade associations where their cus-tomers and prospects are members. They joined those organizations and got involved. Often, a chamber of commerce is the perfect place. rotary clubs are also good for those sales professionals whose business is local. You get to know key business professionals and they get to know you. People do business with peo-ple they know and like when they need your products. so, get out and be the one who is top of mind when someone you know needs what you sell or can recom-mend you to those in his network when they do. Also, see question 1.

4What are the key tools you use to communicate with your customers?

Communicate with customers the way they prefer. Often, with busy customers, email is preferred. The telephone is also appropriate. Be sure to ask your customers what they want. don't forget about "snail" mail, especially for prospects. You want customers to think of you first when they need your products. What's most important in com-munication is regular intervals for prospects so they re-member you and a timely response for customers when they need you. Customers today have many choices and when they need you, they want a quick response--with whatever communication tool you choose. remember, when a customer has a problem, first assure them that you're working on the problem. You don't have to have an answer immediately. But, no response from you is a bad. You frustrate a customer and you just might start them looking for your replacement.

by Maura Schreier-Fleming

ASK the Sales ProMaura Schreier-Fleming, sales strategist and consultant answers your sales questions. What sales issue are you facing that you want some direction? ask Maura.

Maura Schreier-Fleming, is an international speaker and sales consultant. She works

with business and sales professionals on their persuasion and communication skills. Her books include

Real-world Selling for out-of-this-world Results and Monday Morning Sales Tips. She writes the women

in business blog for Allbusiness.com and is a sales coach for them. She's been quoted in the new York

Times, Selling Power and entrepreneur. Clients include UPS, Fujitsu, Capital one, ebby, the Houston

Texans, and Conoco. She was Mobil oil's first female lubrication engineer in the U.S. and sold $9 million

of industrial lubricants when hydraulic oil was under $2.50/gallon. website: www.Bestatselling.com

Page 28: SOLD July'2012

salespeople love to complain that all the customer cares about is the price. When we don’t get a deal, we’re quick to point to our higher price as a major cause of defeat. My friend Anthony Iannarino has written extensively on the topic of price, and he points out that this excuse is usually a lie we tell ourselves. I’d encourage you to link over and read several of his thought-provoking posts about price.

I’m really in tune with the whole price thing right now because one client asked for custom coach-ing content on selling against a lower-priced giant competitor. Another had me do a “success study” comparing behaviors and attitudes of their top-performers against those were weren’t doing as well converting leads. One of the big findings from that study was that those struggling with conver-sions viewed the lead as price shopping vs. reps who were more successful that took a consulta-tive approach, assuming the prospect had a prob-lem that needed to be solved. And a third client of mine is fighting an industry trend of declining prices. Their sales team is hyper-sensitive about being priced at a premium and I’m continually getting an earful from them about being competi-tive. so with all of that as backdrop, my antennae are up regarding price conversations and I’m dis-turbed by what I’m discovering:MoRE oFtEN thaN Not, it’S thE SaLES-PERSoN Who iS MakiNG it aBoUt PRiCE.sometimes it’s intentional. sometimes it’s just habit. Whatever the case, it’s killing them (and me). Time and time again I see the salesperson initiat-ing the price conversation. It’s coming through in their attitude, in their approach to the customer, and in the words they are choosing.SaLESPEoPLE aRE SUPPoSED to BE PRoFESSioNaL PRoBLEM-SoLvERS aND vaLUE-CREatoRS. When we view ourselves as problem-solvers and take a consultative approach believing that our prospects potentially have prob-lems or issues for which we have solutions, then

price should be the last thing on our minds. But time and time again I hear salespeople fretting about their pricing, and starting telephone and face to face calls convinced that the prospect is hugely concerned with price. recently I’ve heard: “give us an opportunity to look at this and we’ll see if we can save you some money.” Another told a prospect “I’d like to quote this for you and see if I can do better.”

What in the world, people? Why would we ever talk like that? Let me be blunt: If all you’re doing is selling price, then why do we need you? You bring NO VALUe as a price quoter. None. No value to your prospect and certainly, no value to your com-pany. If all that matters is price, why don’t we just walk up and down the aisles of airplanes handing out price lists or put our pricing front and center on our websites? If it is indeed all about price, we’re all pretty much about out of a job.

[One disclaimer: I have personally been involved in a sales process where the way we quoted proj-ects, asking killer questions, providing options and alternatives for efficiencies and greater impact, was a significant differentiator. But that's very dif-ferent than what I am talking about in this rant.]tWo vERY DiFFERENt SEtS oF WoRDS that PRoDUCE DRaMatiCaLLY DiFFER-ENt oUtCoMES:I love when a salesperson asks great probing questions. I’ve believed for a long time that we can accomplish a whole lot more selling by asking great questions that demonstrate our expertise than we can with a slick presentation. something magical and wonderful happens in the prospect’s mind when we ask insightful and penetrating questions. They see us as someone who can help them, and it positions us as that consultant and problem-solver I mentioned earlier.

Here are two phrases that two different salespeo-ple who work for the same organization share with prospects very early in the conversation. They use these to set-up a line of questions that need to be

Who’S MAKinG it ABout Price, you or the cuStoMer?

28 | July 2012

Page 29: SOLD July'2012

asked in order to provide pricing. Both have good intentions, but man, are they different in what they communicate to the prospect (and what they say about how the salesperson views his role).“i’D LikE to UNDERStaND ExaCtLY What YoUR SitUatioN iS to SEE iF i CaN hELP YoU.” vS.“LEt ME aSk YoU a FEW qUEStioNS So i CaN GEt YoU a PRiCE qUotE.”Both phrases start out well, but they go in down very different paths after that. One communicates that I exist to solve problems, and I’d love to un-derstand what you’re facing to see if we’re a fit to help. The other assumes the customer is only in-terested in the price and, worse, that you’re only interested in providing a price. Night and day.

so, I ask again: who’s making it about price – you or the customer?

Listen, I get it. There are plenty of organiza-tions working to cut costs. And there are almost as many procurement (one of the worst words on the planet) people trying to prove their worth by making us cut prices! And we’ve all got lame competitors whose only weapon to beat us is price. everyone understands. It’s tough out there. Great. Having said all that, as professional salespeople, can we please make the supreme effort to examine ourselves and our approach to make darn sure we’re not the ones turning it into a price conversation.

by Mike Weinberg

Mike Weinberg's specialty

is new business development. He

coaches sales teams and sales

leaders and consults Ceos of mid-

size companies on issues related

to sales success. Mike was named

a Top 25 Sales Influencer for 2012

by openview Labs, and his first book, published by

AMACoM, will be released this September. He was

the top-performing salesperson is three different

organizations and currently leads The newSales Coach

consultancy. Mike is a transplanted new Yorker who

lives in St. Louis with his wife and three children. Learn

more at: www.newsalescoach.com

How has the current economic tide been af-fecting your business? Are there any posi-tives to come out of it? It’s safe to say this

isn’t the kind of environment that inspires confi-dence. The latest global economic concerns have predicated a mass hysteria that really isn’t anything new, but is a crisis nonetheless. If your business is feeling the effects of the volatile environment you should stay proactive, rather than reactive.

The silver lining of a crisis is that it forces you to streamline your business model. It’s the sort of sink or swim that makes you think about long-term sustainability in a way you never had to before. We have seen the competitive landscape shift as companies reorganize with a sharp focus on rev-enue and cost-cutting initiatives. The low hanging fruit has really been picked and squeezed, selling to early adopters in robust markets, without the need for a focused sales strategy.

You probably understand that economics is cy-clical and this is why the current economic crisis shouldn’t go to waste. More than ever companies are scrambling for those problem solving solutions. What does that mean? More than ever, companies are ready to buy! ergo, you have to be ready to sell your solution in a way that solves those restruc-turing objectives. Just yesterday Cisco CeO John Chambers said his customers don’t see a reces-sion. As they reorganize you can be assured they are going to focus on the value they create and that their customers have come to appreciate.

restructuringwith Sales

www.soldlab.com | 29

Page 30: SOLD July'2012

uncovering ValuerOI alone is not enough to garner attention any-more because everyone presents it and everyone presents a good one. You must align the parts of your message you think are important with what your prospect thinks are important. In effect, it needs to be simple, yet differentiated.

reaching outYou should treat all of your sales as partnerships and by that I mean your customers should get the feeling your success rides on theirs. You aren’t selling widgets, you’re guaranteeing success. start by reaching out to your current and past customers. Getting the right information is about asking the right questions. (Join the discussion in our new sales community and share your best questions!)

Why don’t you buy? Why do you buy? What do we do best?

They will lead you to value you didn’t sell them. For example, maybe you provided new energy efficient windows to a university. You’d be surprised to find out that since installation class attendance has improved by 15% in addition to the anticipated en-ergy savings. discovering what resonated after the sale stirs a positive feeling of surprise and added benefit. Your genuine curiosity also improves your partnership, creating healthy up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.

If that isn’t enough already, remember our goal is to translate this differentiated value to new prospects. The more transparent your positive surprise is to new prospects, the more receptive they will be.

research new ProspectFilter through a company’s annual report and 10k, Google headlines, and scour their website. You’re looking to understand the culture and initiatives in place. If you have a management tool, search for

Brent is a contributing author at the

ZEBRAselling Blog, where he writes

about complex sales, corporate strat-

egy, and technology. He is a graduate of

Marquette University with a bachelor’s

degree in economics. You can follow him

on @ZebraBrent for the latest. Selling

To zebras is the company behind the zeBRAselling sales

process, and provides the tools and training to realize

sales growth. Brent serves a primary role in developing

and automating the financial model used to start a value-

based discussion.

merger and acquisition news. Identify where you can enforce value and how you supplement cur-rent operations. determine who Power is. Change is disruptive to any organization and your ability to recognize and overcome that barrier is crucial. Part of that is speaking to the right person. If you start too low in an organization you get resistance and a small budget. Latch on to current sustainability ini-tiatives and missions that contribute to their long-term vision.

PartneringI mentioned partnering before; it’s important enough that it keeps coming back. Once you have differentiated your solution and distilled it down to what your prospect cares about, you know whether or not you have a zebra. With that in mind, present your business case to the executive you’ve iden-tified as Power. sure you will have your rOI along with other conservative estimates, including eVA, payback period and a monthly cost of indecision…, but you want their critical business issues front and center in the discussion. Your financial benefit claims ride on these rails. Your goal at this point isn’t to sell, it’s to partner. You have to earn trust before you can sell. If you peak interest, ask, and they will grant you executive sponsorship to veri-fy your value. Once they confirm and adjust your figures internally, you will reduce your sales cycle, increase your deal size and improve your pipeline close rate.

To dig deeper into all the steps of our process: read the book and bring your expertise over to the sales community.

by Brent nauer

“Our customers are saying they do not see a recession”~ John Chambers Cisco CEO

30 | July 2012

Page 31: SOLD July'2012

http://www.sellingtozebras.com/

Page 32: SOLD July'2012

sOLdLAB and selling to Zebras have teamed up to pro-vide a platform for our latest eBook; an intriguing story of overcoming the obstacles within the sales/buying cycle that any sales person can relate to. each month, sOLd Magazine will publish 3-4 chapters. It is our hope that the story will resonate and inspire. Please check back each month to follow Kurt’s progression through the “Zebra” methodology from colleague and mentor Kent Clark, (Yes that’s his name). Be sure to check back each month for subsequent chapters. The eBook is also available in its entirety through Amazon.com

-Find Your stripes!

chapters introduction: Why this Book Now? Chapter 1 – kurt is in trouble Chapter 2 – Frustration Chapter 3 – Problems at work,

problems at home Chapter 4 – The new normal Chapter 5 – Kent Clark Chapter 6 – Activity management Chapter 7 – Zebra Chapter 8 – Focus Chapter 9 – Quantity verses quality Chapter 10 – What to measure Chapter 11 – When it rains it pours Chapter 12 – Pursuit of a solution Chapter 13 – Invitation to the east Coast Chapter 14 – Power-level Business Issues Chapter 15 – Force success Chapter 16 – Zebra Buying Cycle Chapter 17 – sales is not a democracy Chapter 18 – self Pity

Chapter 19 – sports-to-business analogy Chapter 20 – Goals of business Zebra Chapter 21 – Zebra Creation Chapter 22 – sales resources Chapter 23 – Courage of your convictions Chapter 24 – The turnaround Chapter 25 – Power penetration, power pre-

sentation Chapter 26 – New lease on life Chapter 27 – Life is fun again Chapter 28 – Zebra for all Chapter 29 – Zebra white paper Chapter 30 – Gaining commitment Chapter 31 – Push button zebra Chapter 32 – How executives buy Chapter 33 – Turning process into action Chapter 34 – Life through zebra glasses Chapter 35 – scotty is fired Chapter 36 – The year of the Zebra Epilogue – Predictable ending

introduction“How can we most effectively approach today’s business sales environment?” This is increasingly becoming the challenging question facing marketing, sales, and sales management, and the challenge is only growing tougher. With each passing year, companies reduce the size of sales territories and the number and availability of profes-sional sales-support personnel. At the same time, com-petition is getting better and more varied, and prospec-tive customers are becoming more sophisticated.

Too often the Customer relationship Management (CrM) system has further burdened salespeople by au-tomating the collection and analysis of transactional data and statistics. This automation has made it easier to

SoLDLaB and Selling to Zebras have teamed up to provide a platform for our latest eBook; an intriguing story of overcoming the obstacles within the sales/buying cycle that any sales person can relate to. Each month, SoLD Magazine will publish 3-4 chapters. it is our hope that the story will resonate and inspire. Please check back each month to follow kurt’s progression through the “Zebra” methodology from colleague and mentor kent Clark, (Yes that’s his name). Be sure to check back each month for subsequent chapters. the eBook is also available in its entirety through amazon.com

Selling to Zebras. the untold Story … For salespeople

chasing Zebras

Page 33: SOLD July'2012

quantify sales activity, but if that is all the CrM is used for its use is ultimately counterproductive. Only rarely does a CrM technology solution have a profoundly positive ef-fect on sales. Problematically, companies end up using CrM systems to measure the quantity of sales activity rather than the quality.

The average company closes 15% of its forecasted sales pipeline. This means that sales, marketing, presales, sales management, post sales, and many administrative and pro-fessional employees waste 85 percent of their time on activi-ties that will never produce revenue!

Unlike waste in advertising, most waste in sales can be eliminated. In fact, it is possible to close 90 percent of the potential deals that appear on your sales pipeline forecast. Although a work of fiction, this book is based on techniques that have been used in real-world situations to achieve pipeline close-rate effectiveness of up to 90 percent.

The sales organization can fix broken processes cross-functionally throughout the company. selling to Zebras will help you address your organization’s sales-related issues, which might include the following:

eliminating “non-decision” sales cycles

A repeatable best-practice approach to sales

Focus on executive-level Business Issues that drive high-margin business

Creating solution differentiation

shortening sales cyclessuccessfully addressing these issues will increase sales.

chapter 1 – As I arrive at work early this morning, an unfamiliar sight catches my attention. scotty (known to the world as William Neversale scott, president and CeO of C3 Technology) is at my office. scotty’s red Maserati in the parking lot gives him away. The Maserati is one of several vehicles scotty owns, and it’s the one he leaves at his summer home in Chicago.

Although this isn’t scotty’s office, he requires us to keep a labeled parking space for him. Usually, I have the office to myself for the first hour and a half of the morning, and sud-denly I feel an invasion of my space.

I park my Toyota Celica in its customary spot, which is always open – not because it’s labeled with name and title but because no one else cares to arrive this early. Walking into the office, I sense something isn’t right. I be-lieve everyone has a sense for knowing when things are amiss; profiting from this sense is just a matter of paying attention and learning to listen. Over the years, I’ve par-layed this sense into an ability to predict when we would win a sales opportunity, but recently I have let it slip into the background. Our sales quota numbers have grown so large and seemingly unachievable that we are forced to chase every prospect that moves, regardless of whether it seems viable. still, we are not making our numbers.

Walking through the entrance and around the corner, I see that a light is on in my office. My stomach churns. Is scotty in my office? did someone die?Link to remaining chapters.

by Jeff Koser, chad Koser

The average company closes

15% of its forecasted

sales pipeline

Jeff koser has more than thirty years of experience

in consulting, executive sales management, business

strategy, and sales enablement. In addition to his many

speaking engagements, Jeff is co-author of the award

winning book, Selling to zebras, How To CLoSe UP To

90% of the BUSIneSS YoU PURSUe, FASTeR, MoRe eAS-

ILY and MoRe PRoFITABLY. And the recently published,

Selling to zebras The Untold Story, for salespeople. And In 1999 founded

Selling to zebras, Inc. Selling to zebras, Inc. is a sales enablement company

offering unique, effective and winning sales solutions to businesses. Using

the zeBRAselling Process, Jeff and Selling to zebras, Inc. have established

a proven track record of successfully helping companies increase sales in a

variety of industries. The zeBRAselling process is chronicled in the book Sell-

ing to zebras. Learn more at www.sellingtozebras.com

Chad koser Chad Kos-

er, Co-authored Selling to

zebras after over a decade

of experience working with

zeBRAselling philosophies.

Using zebra principles, Chad

established a reputation for

exceeding sales targets at organizations includ-

ing Baan Supply Chain Solutions, voiceStream

wireless (now T-Mobile) and Ge Medical Systems

Ultrasound. Chad's contributions have helped

Selling to zebras, Inc. customers to penetrate

Power-level decision makers, thus shortening

sales cycles and increasing average deal sizes.

Page 34: SOLD July'2012

Death by PowerPoint

34 | July 2012

Page 35: SOLD July'2012

As members of the Information Age, we may have come a long way in our pre-sentation technology, but one could argue that some reps are no better at creating visual presentations than their

ancestors who first carved visuals on cave walls 30,000 years ago.

electronic excessNo matter how many flying bullets, builds, or fades you can produce with your computer, if buyers are con-fused or bored by what they are seeing, you will have struck a bad visual chord with them. don’t go over-board with the technology. Keep it simple. You’re there to make a sale, not to win an Oscar for special effects.

do you remember the term “visual aids” from school? The screens in your PowerPoint presentation are just that: “aids.” They are meant to clarify and com-municate a message, not to muddy and overwhelm it.

the KillersPeople make many mistakes with visuals. Below are three of the biggest ones that I see in my seminars. Compare these to the ones in your current presenta-tions. Are they working for you as sales messengers or sales killers?

Killer No. 1: drowning with words. “Hey, I know. I’ll include as many full sentences as I can to describe what my site/service does.” If you want to know how effective that is, may I suggest that you put a phone directory on the floor, turn to the page where you think your name is likely to appear, put the directory opened to that page on the floor, and try to find your name looking down at the page. Now you know what it feels like to an advertiser who is trying to make sense of what you are showing when you show all text pages. instead of using text-heavy visuals:

Use bullet points; have a maximum of five to six per page

ruthlessly edit – a maximum of five to six words per line

separate with white spaceCompare the following:text-heavy visual:

We have 23 million unique users per month, which makes us No. 1 in our category.

Another advantage is that we offer an undupli-cated audience for your advertising.non-text-heavy visual:

No. 1 – 23MM unique users per month Unduplicated audience

When you present text-heavy pages, you tend to read them, which becomes remedial reading. so not only are you boring your advertisers, but you are insult-ing their intelligence as well. Moreover, since the hu-man eye moves faster than the human mouth, your advertisers are reading point number four, while you are still presenting point number two, so they are not even listening to you. A disaster all around. Hit that space bar, and edit, edit, edit!

Killer No. 2: smothering with visual sameness. Bullet-point visuals are best used for lists and sum-maries. Page after page of even good bullet-point pages becomes numbing to listeners. Graphs, charts, and pictures have much more impact.

Pick up a copy of your favorite business publica-tion, whether it’s Business 2.0, Business Week, or The Wall street Journal, and look at the business-to-business advertising. The overwhelming number of ads show a picture with the text because copywrit-ers know what good presenters know: The eye picks up and remembers pictures far better than it does words. Look at any publication’s graph, chart, or ta-ble, and invariably there is a pictorial element to it, for example, oil wells used in an energy growth bar chart. (some call that the UsA Today effect.)

use the guidelines below to liven up your message.explaining trends? Use line graphsdescribing a series of steps? Use a diagramComparing capabilities? Use a table

Putting PowerPoint (or any of its presentation cousins) into the hands of some sales reps is like putting matches into the

hands of some children. The results often lead to disaster.

www.soldlab.com | 35

Page 36: SOLD July'2012

showing comparisons? Use a pie chart or bar graphexplaining how your site works? show the site

In all of these, include color and, where pos-sible, pictures. The bottom line is that by showing real visuals versus screen after screen of words, you will be helping your advertiser truly understand your message. even einstein preferred real visuals. He said, “If I can’t see it, I don’t understand.” If ein-stein had problems with words-only information, think about the effect of your wordy visuals on just us regular folks.

Killer No. 3: Torturing advertisers with meaning-less titles. The last thing in the world you want is your advertiser thinking “Why is this person showing this to me? Who cares about a headline that just describes what’s on the visual?”

Give meaning to the information you are present-ing by replacing descriptive headlines with headlines that sell.

Headlines That Tell versus Headlines That sellOur statistics versus reach Your Best CustomersAdvertisers versus Be With the Bestreporting and Targeting versus Tailor to Your

Needssince many of you leave hard copies of your

presentation with advertisers to review, you want to be sure they get the selling story straight. The proper headlines will do that job for your informa-tion.

In summary, Peter drucker quite rightly said that communication takes place in the mind of the listen-er, not the speaker. Look at the visuals in your pre-sentations from an advertiser’s point of view. Are they sales killers, or are they as strong as they can be to help sell your story?

by Anne Miller

anne Miller is a leading sales and

presentations specialist. She works with

people in high stakes situations sell mil-

lions of dollars worth of products, services,

and ideas in one-to-one or one-to-a-

thousand settings. Her clients come from

financial services, professional services,

and the media. Anne is the author of four books. Her latest

is "Make what You Say Pay! The language that opens doors,

closes deals, and wows crowds." Learn more about Anne at

www.annemiller.com

"It’s a scenario played out in millions of sales meetings every year. The eager consultant (or lawyer, accountant or salesperson) has finally managed to get a meeting with one of his A list target customers. The customer meets him at reception, takes him to a meeting room and opens with “tell me a little about your company”.

“I’m glad you asked” says our hero as he brings out his pack of slides (or perhaps a glossy brochure, or even worse, his computer) and proceeds to give a thoroughly professional presentation – which unfortunately, does noth-ing to further the client relationship. After a brief discussion afterwards the client offers to “call you when we need something in your area”, and the two never speak again.

Of course, it’s hardly news that initial meet-ings with clients need to be about establishing relationships and trying to identify the client’s critical needs. The problem is that far too many of us rely on the use of slides or a pre-prepared presentation as a crutch – without realizing that the presence of the visual aid radically changes the dynamic of the meeting.

Firstly, the potential client is no longer having a face-to-face dialogue with you – they’re look-ing at your slides or brochure – or worse still, they’re looking at a screen and you’re not even physically close to them.

17 8IP3

Selling Without

SlideS

36 | July 2012

Page 37: SOLD July'2012

secondly, if you present material, the meet-ing changes from dialogue to presentation. From a peer-level discussion to a “master-servant”, “I’m trying to impress you” dynamic.

Finally, the most likely outcome of a presentation is that they begin to ask questions about the presenta-tion – when in fact you re-ally need to be questioning them, trying to find out what they’re looking for, what their challenges and problems are.

A far more effective approach is to be able to briefly describe your company in a few sentences, then turn to asking the client about their company, their challenges and what they are hoping to achieve. You can establish your and your company’s credibility far more with intel-ligent questioning and a few “that’s interesting, we worked with a client who had what looked like a similar issue recently, they…” follow-ups.

If you need to illustrate points, try a “pencil selling” approach. Have a few blank sheets of paper situated between you and the client and sketch out what you want to show them. It’s far more effective and demonstrates your knowl-edge of the subject rather than just your ability to show slides which could have been prepared by someone else. Better still, you can hand the pencil to the client and get them to share in the process – adding in their thoughts and taking co-ownership of the solution or plan you are creating together.

And without the distraction of slides, bro-chures, or even worse, a computer to look at; you can begin to establish real human to human rap-port. This may be the most crucial aspect of all as a potential client is highly unlikely to begin to open up and tell you about any significant prob-lems they have until you establish a base level of trust and credibility with them. And that’s so hard

to do when you are presenting preprepared material.

so why do we rely on slides and brochures so much?

Very often it’s because we have neither the confidence, nor have we done the homework needed

to allow us to work without our vi-sual aids. We can’t remember all the key points they we to get across, the

major benefits to the customer, and our great testimonials. We put all our preparation time into creating the presentation – rather than in thinking about how we should present it.

Ironically, we need to know our presentation and our slides absolutely off-pat – so that we can then do without them and begin to build a real dia-logue with our potential client and stand a much better chance of turning that potential client into a paying client."

by ian Brodie

ian Brodie is a marketing and

sales specialist who works with consul-

tants, coaches and other profession-

als to help them attract and win more

clients. He was recently named by Top

Sales world as one of the Top Market-

ing and Sales Influencers Globally for

2012, and by Salesforce.com as one of their euro-

pean Social Business Dream Team. For more articles with

practical, effective marketing and sales tips, and for free

access to Ian's Pain Free Marketing Blueprint, head over to

www.ianbrodie.com.

If you need to illustrate points, try

a “pencil selling” approach

www.soldlab.com | 37

Page 38: SOLD July'2012

Why did you write this new ebook?Cold calling is a basic sales skill set. It is the ability to quickly communicate with a prospect and have that pros-pect immediately grasp how

the product or service might help them. Yet, every day I hear from sales professionals who are struggling to with this basic skill set. And to make matters worse for these struggling sales pros, prospects have become less and less accessible.

The old disproved chestnuts of cold calling, “smile and dial,” “It’s a numbers game” and “Go through the ‘no’s’ and hang-ups till someone says, ‘yes’ to you” never really worked very well. Today they do not work at all.

Cold calling does work today, but it has changed. What used to work, doesn’t.

I wrote the Cold Calling survival Guide to help sales representatives who are struggling. The subtitle of this book is start setting Appointments in the Next 24 Hours. It is an easy-to-read, step-by-step guide about what works today, in 2012 to reach prospects directly and gain their agreement to meet – and what will simply create frustration and angst and waste your time.

With so many other ways to reach prospects – email, social media, webinars – why cold call?If you really want to build a solid sales pipeline that is packed with qualified prospects, there are only four ways that you can do so:

1) MaRkEtiNG aCtivitiES. Most large sales organizations have marketing departments that function to generate qualified leads, to drive traffic to the company’s web site and/or to the company’s inside sales team. If you’re a solopreneur or small business owner, you’re the marketing department. email, some social media and webinars fall in this category.

2) LEvERaGiNG (REFERRaL SELLiNG): Contacting existing customers and/or people within a representative’s or business owner’s circle of influence and asking for referrals. This is an excellent way to develop new business. 3) NEtWoRkiNG: Joining leads and/or net-working groups and/or using social networking sites/Web 2.0 resources. 4) CoLD CaLLiNG.

While all these activities will generate leads for sales, only one is directly under your control. The first three are essentially passive, in that once you initiate the ac-tivity you must then wait for someone else to take ac-tion – a prospect to call in or a customer or networking contact to come through with a referral. Because you have to wait for the results – that is, for prospects to come to you – these processes also take longer to gen-erate sales.

When you cold call you can target the companies with which you are interested in doing business, make a phone call and begin your sales process. While cold calling is not as easy as say, clicking a link on a social networking site, the good news is that cold calling is a communication skill (heavy emphasis on the word, ‘skill’) and like any communication skill it can be learned and improved upon.

People who say that cold calling does not work today or that cold calling is dead are a little like someone play-ing softball that when up at bat, swings and misses the ball. They throw the bat down in disgust and say, “The bat doesn’t work.” The bat works fine… it’s just that you missed the ball.

Cold calling is a lead development process that works very well. The way it works, however, is differ-ent from the way it worked 20 years ago. It is no longer enough to rely on sheer volume of calls. And this is still the strategy employed by most people who are making cold calls. And, if that’s your strategy today, then cold calling won’t work for you.

SolD interVieWthe cold calling Survival Guide: Start Setting Appointments in the next 24 hours

NEW Book BY WENDY WEiSS: The Cold Calling survival Guide: start setting Appointments in the Next 24 Hours. www.coldcalling911.com.

Page 39: SOLD July'2012

In order to be successful in 2012, cold calling must be strategic, targeted and skilled. A cold calling campaign that is all three will succeed in developing new business. Anything else will waste your time.

I call and call and call, and finally I get through, but they say, “I’m not interested” and then hang up on me. What did I do wrong? The number one reason that prospects say, “I’m not in-terested” and then slam down the telephone is that the caller is not saying anything that the prospect finds to be interesting.

On the telephone, you have approximately 10-30 sec-onds to grab your prospect’s attention – and if you do not do that, your call is probably over. 10-30 seconds is not a lot of time.

From the moment your prospect says, “Hello,” your goal is to gain your prospect’s attention so that prospect is hun-gry to hear more. Ask yourself: Whom are you calling? Why should they be interested? You’re looking for hot buttons, those issues that are so important to your prospect that

when they come up, that prospect will stop in their tracks to listen. When you are trying to hook someone, you have to have some sense of what’s important to them.

Ask yourself: What is the value that I (the company/product/service) bring to customers? How do they ben-efit? How do I (the company/product/service) make cus-tomer’s lives easy, stress-free, happy, profitable etc? Once you’ve determined that value, however, lead with it.

The answer to this question is deceptively simple: do your homework. do what ever is necessary to truly understand your prospects. Before you ever pick up the telephone, have the answer to the question: “Why should this prospect be interested?” If you have that answer, you will never again hear: “I’m not interested.”

by Wendy Weiss

Wendy Weiss, The Queen of Cold

Calling™, is an author, speaker, sales

trainer, and sales coach. She is recog-

nized as one of the leading authorities

on lead generation, cold calling and

new business development. Her clients

include Avon Products, ADP, Sprint

and thousands of entrepreneurs throughout the country.

To download her latest e-book, The Cold Calling Survival

Guide, at no charge, go here.

Cold calling is a lead

development process that

works very well

Page 40: SOLD July'2012

It’s often basic communication principles we inadvertent-ly toss aside in the heat of “presentation panic” that get us into trouble. I’ve done it, too – thrown up bullet point af-ter bullet point to support a presentation without thinking about how my audience takes in information. Big mistake. Boring doesn’t sell. Neither does the thing we gravitate towards – logic – in most cases.

What does sell is your ability to conjure up images in the minds of your audience – their images, not yours. If you can engage your audiences’ imaginations, you’ve got them! There is absolutely nothing more powerful in the art of persuasion.

Here are three rules that should serve as the founda-tion for your visual support decisions:

1 Pictures are memorable; words are not.

We don’t think in words; we think in pictures. It’s images that engage minds.

Think back to caveman days (not personal memories, but rather what you know about how they communicat-ed). The walls of their caves were filled with rudimentary visual images of their exploits. They shared stories in pictures.

Of course, they hadn’t invented language yet and so this was the only means they had to share their knowl-edge. But language is only a set of symbols that repre-sent pictures in our mind.

Take this example: If I were to ask you to think of an “ice cream cone,” it’s pretty likely you won’t think of the words. rather, you immediately conjure up a visual im-age of an ice cream cone.

You see, when we read a word, we actually see it as a whole bunch of little tiny pictures. We look for features like horizontal or vertical lines, rounded corners, etc. and then we think back to our “brain library” of letter im-ages and match it up to what we’ve stored from the past.

Over time, we get pretty darned good at this process and it takes us milliseconds to do all the calculations and read a sentence. reading text is highly taxing on our brains. As a result, text presentations are simply not very effective for transferring information.

Whether we read or hear words, the impact is much the same. In fact, if information is presented orally,

we remember about 10% three days later. However, if a picture is added in, that figure goes up to 65%. We don’t remember words. What was the last series of word screens you remember from a presentation? exactly!

The point? Keep your screen text to a bare minimum and use powerful words (or phrases of no more than three to four words) that conjure up powerful images in the minds of your audience.

2 carefully select your visuals for impact.

Visuals can sometimes detract from the emotional sub-stance of your talk. For example, real emotional impact comes from the use of your audience’s imagination. The more concrete you make an image on a screen, the less it “belongs” to your audience. It’s your image, not theirs. They don’t “own” the image because they’re not emo-tionally connected to it.

In the 1930s, radio plays were today’s film block-busters. They drew far greater audiences than any other format – “radio for the mind.” You would listen so intently as actors portrayed scenes so vividly writ-ten that you were completely drawn in. sound effects helped make them “mind candy.” Talk about engaged!

You can do the same with words and images, but only if they’re carefully selected to involve the audience.

Here are some questions to ask yourself as you at-tempt to integrate visual support with your message:

Is this screen critical in helping me make my point? If not, it likely detracts.

What level of emotional impact will this screen have on my audience? Is it a screen that’s neces-sary to my main point? Or is it just “interesting?” Interesting is clutter.

does this screen reinforce, or add clarity to my point? remember, “Less is more.” If not, let it go.

3 emotion sells, not facts. We make decisions based on emotion and justify

them based on facts.The majority of people don’t buy a car based upon

how economically it will get them from A to B. It’s usu-ally something else … like the most new gizmos,

Visually Speakingthree Powerful rules to “Visually” engage your Audience

Page 41: SOLD July'2012

the color, the speed … or just the way it makes them feel. If they can imagine themselves enjoying driving that par-ticular car, the sale is made.

even in the corporate environment, emotion is most often the factor that will sway your audience. How they feel about the information presented will likely be the de-ciding factor as to how they react. The fact that it might be logical to follow a certain behavior or action often has little to do with the result you’ll achieve.

Olympic athletes overwhelming need to emotion-ally connect themselves with a win; they must mentally imagine themselves crossing the finish line. Once they do this, they’re fully committed and convinced they can do it. It’s the power of engaging the imagination.

In the same way, you can use visual support to en-gage your audience. But it’s their minds that are the target. Capture their imaginations and you’ve captured their hearts and their minds.

Are you engaging your audience’s imaginations with the screens you’re using? Are they simply there to fill space? do they add to the point you’re making? If not, they’re likely making you less effective.

It’s important to base your presentation on logic, on facts and figures, but don’t forget to include a bit of emotion, as well. Yes, even in business presentations.

I’ve won many a contract based upon emotion, be-cause I offered security … a guarantee … something to make them feel more comfortable saying “yes.” Or I sim-ply made them laugh.emotion engages. Facts do not.

so … lead with the head … but don’t forget a good dose of heart.

by Peter temple

Peter temple has been a writer/

producer/director in the corporate world for

over 35 years. He has designed and written

countless presentations and speeches

and now helps executives, managers, and

salespeople use technology effectively in

presentations. For more articles and video

about using speeches and presentations effectively, go to:

www.presentationsforbusiness.com

Text presentations are simply not very effective

for transferring information

Page 42: SOLD July'2012

Presentation 2.0introduction

This is the first article in a regular column in SOLD where Phil Waknell, one of Europe's foremost experts in fan-tastic presentations, will share sales-specific presenta-tion tips to help you present better and sell more. Most presentations suck. Ask most people to close their eyes and imagine themselves in the audience for a presen-tation, and they will break into a cold sweat. Presentation should rhyme with communication, inspiration and fasci-nation – but all too often, it simply rhymes with boredom.

This means two important things for salespeople. Firstly, if an audience is bored, they're not interested, they're not listening, and they're not buying. secondly, if most presentations suck so badly, those salespeople who make an effort can rise above the crowd, communi-cate better, and sell more.

so upgrade to Presentation 2.0, and make your pre-sentations interesting, effective, and memorable. Here’s how – four disciplines which others ignore or suck at: preparation, storytelling, visual design, and delivery.

PreparationAny great edifice needs a strong foundation. For a pre-sentation, that foundation is the preparation. This is where you analyze your audience and their needs, set clear and concrete objectives, and choose a few key messages to help you achieve those objectives.

The audience will forget most of what you say. They might recall three things. don’t leave it to chance and hope they remember the right things – choose the three key messages you want them to remember.

Storytellingstorytelling is the art of structuring your presentation to communicate messages effectively and interestingly; and using narrative techniques and devices to make them memorable.

When steve Jobs pulled a Macbook Air out of an en-velope, that was storytelling. It was a technique designed to communicate a key message – “The world’s thinnest notebook” – and make it stick.

I once sold a print services contract to a major Brazilian customer, but first I had to convince them they had a prob-lem. so I demonstrated that each year, their printed pag-es laid end-to-end would stretch from the source of the

Amazon all the way to the Atlantic (mouths gaped open) – and then back again (jaws hit floor). That’s storytelling.

If you think hard enough, you can find a way to make anything interesting and memorable.

Visual Designever suffered “death By PowerPoint”? Buyers face it ev-ery day, so they dread the moment when a salesperson asks to switch on the projector.

Most slides obstruct communication. They assume the audience can read and listen simultaneously, that bul-let points are memorable, and that the audience doesn’t mind the presenter using slides as speaker notes. Wrong, wrong, and wrong again.

But it doesn’t need to be that way. A deck of slides can assist communication and make your key messages memorable. It’s just a question of good design.

DeliveryA great presenter can make anything fascinating. It’s about voice, speed, gestures, comfort, eye contact, movement, humor, charisma, and above all, preparation and rehearsal.

You can learn this. We’re not born orators. As emerson said, “All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.”

Working hard at each of these four disciplines will make your presentations interesting, effective, and memorable. It’ll help you stand out from your competitors. If your cus-tomer sees four boring and forgettable 1.0 presentations, and one effective and memorable Presentation 2.0, it’s clear who has the advantage. Make sure it’s you.

by Phil Waknell for SolD Magazine

As Partner at Ideas on Stage, the leading

presentation design and training firm,

Phil Waknell trains executives,

entrepreneurs, celebrities and sales-

people to create and deliver memorable

presentations, and speaks regularly at

corporations and business schools about

the need for a new way of presenting. He also shares ideas

on his popular blog www.philpresents.com.

Page 43: SOLD July'2012

[email protected]://ideasonstage.com

Page 44: SOLD July'2012

Pearls of unconventional Wisdom: Business

leaders Share negotiation Best

Practices44 | July 2012

Page 45: SOLD July'2012

Best Practice #1 – Get past needing to compete

This was the first best practice men-tioned that morning. everyone was in agreement that competition, while a

part of the negotiation process, can destroy long-term relationships, which in turn can destroy your bottom line. Therefore, you must be able to balance competition against the desire to foster long term relationships.

Critical aspects of this balancing act are, building trust, meeting people half way in the end, and com-ing to the table with the underlying premise “I want to be fair.”

One gentleman talked about his negotiations with very competitive, high networth individuals. He found that while highly successful individuals liked the competition of getting a good deal, many were not interested in ruining him or the company he worked for. In fact, the more emotionally secure the individual, the more likely they wanted him get a fair deal too. The less emotionally secure people tended to want to drive bargains that were overly onesided.

The end result was that the business man did not want to develop a longterm relationship with those highly competitive individuals. He decided that the repeat business was not worth the hassle of working with these people.

Ultimately, you have to be able to trust the peo-ple you do business with. That means that if you

drive too hard a bargain, distrust will develop into a real fear of being taken advantage of. That fear will lead to a complete breakdown in the relationship. Their advice to you: Get past competition.

Best Practice #2 – Get down to the real issueOne business man talked about the importance of being able to separate the real issue – the driving force of the negotiation – from the all the less im-portant issues that take up time. It seems that like cats, business people can be diverted from impor-tant issues by shiny objects. These shiny objects in the business world often take the form of tangential issues.

These issues appear to be important, but at the end of the day, focusing on these issues takes time and energy away from the real issue – reaching an agreement.

Our attention gets diverted when we try to get our point across about “facts.” Facts appear con-crete, when in actuality what we talk about are our perceptions of the facts. Our perceptions can vary widely based on our position, education, and moral underpinnings, like our definition of fairness. By ar-guing the “facts”, you are diverting your attention away from the underlying reason you want or need to negotiate.

Many shared stories about their customers’ un-reasonable requests, or the unreasonable things

seven business men and women gathered recently in seattle over an early morning breakfast

to discuss negotiation best practices. Over the course of two hours they discussed a wide variety of negotiations that they had been a part of over the years. The seven best practices that follow

share one thing in common: Much of the advice is unconventional.

www.soldlab.com | 45

Page 46: SOLD July'2012

that their direct reports did. In the end, the business leaders agreed that all the squabbling about the “facts” supporting the position obscured the real is-sue. Their advice to you: Get down to the real issue.

Best Practice #3 Know and use your leverageIt seems obvious to encourage business people to know and use leverage, but is it surprising how lit-tle people really know about their leverage. Once people know that they have leverage, very few know how to appropriately use leverage. A busi-ness man shared a story in which he had leverage and used it appropriately. The business man hired a company whose job is to evaluate buildings for significant flaws.

Years later, the business man learned about a significant flaw in his building. In fact, it was the kind of flaw that would have influenced him not to pur-chase the structure. When called about the failure to uncover the flaw, the company owner did what a lot a business owners do: He denied responsibility.

The business man had leverage and used that leverage to get what he wanted. The business man was aware that he could sue the company. But, hir-ing an attorney, pursuing the litigation, and getting a judgment would not solve the immediate problem. The real issue was getting the flaw fixed immediate-ly. The man used the legitimate threat of court ac-tion to persuade the company to work with him to fix the flaw. The company was smart enough to un-derstand that it could not afford protracted litigation and returned to the bargaining table. At the end of the day, the company paid for the repairs. Their ad-vice to you: Use your leverage appropriately.

Best Practice #4 – Don’t assume that people will act in rational waysThis best practice received the most discussion. We’ve all dealt with people who are emotional and irrational. Yet, we continue to use reason to make our point. The bottom line is that you cannot use ra-tional arguments with people who have an emotional charge. It just doesn’t work.

Strong emotions, whether positive or negative, can

create a fog

46 | July 2012

Page 47: SOLD July'2012

To be perfectly clear, no one advocated break-ing off the negotiations. What people talked about was recognizing that some issues cannot be solved using reason alone. You must be able to separate the emotional from the rational. strong emotions, whether positive or negative, can create a fog.That fog actually acts as a barrier to rational arguments. As a professional mediator, I’ve been trained to rec-ognize emotional fogs.

The best advice I can offer you is to address the emotional content by naming the emotion as you see it, and without judgment. One particular emotional fog that we talked about is Loss Aver-sion. People who are suffering from Loss Aversion will take riskier and riskier bets to recuperate their losses. Imagine gamblers who bet everything for the next big pay off rather than walking away with the little they have left.

This particular emotional fog plays a significant role in business transactions that have gone awry. rather than accepting a negotiated settlement, a business might try their luck in court. Naming this fog helps business people recognize that the bet is too risky and they should come to an agree-ment. Their advice to you: don’t assume people are rational.

Best Practice #5 – things are not black and white.The scientist in the group reminded us of this impor-tant lesson: Life is lived in shades of gray. Americans in particular like to talk in terms of the “bottom line”, bullet points and principles. The reality of the situ-ation is that what you are negotiating is not likely a black and white issue. There will be nuances and shades of gray.

Your success in business will be recognizing that issues lie on a continuum somewhere be-tween black and white. This could play itself out in any number of ways. Working with customers who are late on their payments is such an issue. Your inclination might be to say that this is a black and white issue. You provided a product, and it’s a good product. No problems there. Therefore, they owe you. That simple.

The economy has changed and so must you. You might choose to look at ways that you could accom-modate their payment schedule with your needs for cash flow. One client of mine was able to balance ex-

tending payment date to a customer against the vol-ume discount they had offered the customer. In the end, both got what they wanted. By recognizing that there are many factors that result in customers not paying, you are inviting people to brainstorm solu-tions. Those solutions are the gray areas. Their ad-vice to you: Things are not always black and white.

Best Practice #6 – Don’t let bad things linger.This piece of advice got the most laughs as they remembered times when matters got really ugly. A former COO for a franchise company talked about situations where his company was in the wrong somehow. He took the position, “Let’s get this set-tled before matters get any worse.” He did not have to take that position. In fact, he could have used his corporate power to let things linger hoping that the customers would give up. What he learned was that matters just get worse the longer they linger. They don’t go away. This is in direct opposition to what another business man experienced. In best prac-tice three, a business man related a story in which the business owner denied responsibility. We all came to the conclusion that intentionally allowing a situation to linger will only create a much bigger mess in the end.

People are generally forgiving. If you extend a hand to resolve some situation, you will likely have an easier time getting the problem resolved. You may also avoid the situation from turning into a pure-ly emotional issue. Their advice to you: resolve bad situations quickly.

Best Practice #7 – let bygones be bygones.This is the best practice that generated the most heated discussion.

some business people said that they’d rather let go of hard feelings once someone did something to correct a wrong. Other’s disagreed, stating that they would have a hard time trusting the other per-son again.

In the end, all agreed that letting go of past hurts is a good practice at the bargaining table.

People make mistakes. People also do really stu-pid things, like denying responsibility for their obvi-ous mistakes. People are also forgiving by nature. We would want someone to forgive us if we’d made

www.soldlab.com | 47

Page 48: SOLD July'2012

Many sales people, managers and sales leaders spend a lot of time and energy wor-rying about “buyers’ objections”; making this even a worse problem, is the fact that much of that time and energy is spent on trying to avoid “buyers’ objections”.

realistically however, there is only one way to avoid objections, it works every time, with the only side effect being a lack of revenue; the se-cret is to stop interacting with the market. If you don’t make or go to the call, you will not face rejection. surprisingly, many is sales have cho-sen this path, and have maintained employment with some pretty lackluster companies. But as-suming you are looking for revenue, growth and success, the above is not the strategy for you, you are much better off dealing with or manag-ing buyer objections as they come up.

The fact is, I don’t really understand why it is sellers want to avoid objections to begin with, after all objection indicate the beginning “engagement” at some level, and isn’t engage-ment what we are after? Ideally quality en-gagement, but without a beginning, it is hard to build quality.

Once you accept that objections are not the enemy but an opportunity to leverage and expand on a point or a line of discussion. How you do that will differ slightly based on you current relationship with the buyer, and when in the cycle the objection surfaces.

Mr. Buyer – PleASe, oBJect!

Jeanette Nyden, author, negotia-

tion coach and mediator, is the president of J.

nyden & Co., Inc, a Seattle based negotiation

skills training company. For more information

about her coaching services visit

www.jnyden.com. Jeanette can be reached

at 2067233472 or [email protected].

7 PeArlS oF unconVentionAl WiSDoMBESt PRaCtiCE #1 – Get past needing to competeBESt PRaCtiCE #2 – Get down to the real issueBESt PRaCtiCE #3 Know and use your leverageBESt PRaCtiCE #4 – Don’t assume that people will act in rational waysBESt PRaCtiCE #5 – things are not black and white.BESt PRaCtiCE #6 – Don’t let bad things linger.BESt PRaCtiCE #7 – let bygones be bygones.

by Jeanette nyden

a mistake. For the good of business, it is wise to let bygones be bygones.

The one area that everyone agreed was not suitable for this best practice was in using supe-rior knowledge to take advantage of the situa-tion. In other words, if someone else has access to superior knowledge, and uses that knowledge against you in some way, it is an unforgivable act. It violates trust to such a degree as to warrant some sort of decisive action for your own preser-vation. Most other circumstances, including high-ly aggressive behavior, competitive behavior and even rank stupidity can be forgiven in a business relationship. Their advice to you: Let bygones by bygones.

I’d like to thank the men and women who took time to attend the negotiation roundtable. Their contributions to negotiation best practices will help improve business to business relationships.

48 | July 2012

Page 49: SOLD July'2012

early in the cycle, the initial call, maybe even a cold call, you are likely dealing with two dy-namics, first their need to avoid yet another in-terruption from a sales person. As has been dis-cussed in this blog before, the one thing you and the buyer have in common is the 24 hour day, how you use it will determine success, our call, is an attempt by an unknown party to steal some of that precious time, so unless you are calling the exact right person, at the exact right time, you are an interruption, a time thief, something to be avoided.

second, the basic instinct of reluctance to change. even if you can get past the point above, change requires time, money and effort. What you hear as an objection, often is a vocal-ization of their weighing the pros and cons of considering and/or acting on the change. If you can look at it that way, you can also understand what you have to do to help them take on the consideration for change, and move the pro-cess from prospecting to selling; in the edGe vernacular, from engage to discovery.

Late in the cycle, objections are manifesta-tions of another factor, but one that extends from the risks and realities associated with change. even though you may have effectively dealt with this earlier, it comes up again just be-fore they agree to move forward. In other words, the objection is good, and ripe with opportuni-ty. Unless you blow it by getting defensive and

start “justifying things”. If you executed the dis-covery stage well, and used what you learned to gain commitment, there is no need to be de-fensive. Just reiterate points you agreed to and gain agreement before moving on or glossing over the point.

remember, they are about to bring on a change, while they may be comfortable with it, they carry the risk if something goes slightly wrong, even if only a temporary glitch, they are in the spot light in their organization and in front of customers. Their objection is more a cry for reassurance than indication that they do not want to commit. Give me that objection any day, as it is a clear opportunity to reassure and win.

by tibor Shanto

tibor Shanto – Principal – Ren-bor Sales Solutions Inc., is a recog-

nized speaker, author of the award win-

ning book Shift!: Harness The Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers, and sought after trainer.

Tibor is a Director of and a contributor to

Sales Bloggers Union, and his work has appeared in numerous

of sales publications and leading websites.

Tibor can be reached at [email protected]. This e-mail

address is being protected from spam bots, you need

JavaScript enabled to view it, or +1 416 822-7781; blog: The Pipeline; Twitter: @TiborShanto.

what you hear as an

objection, often is a vocalization of their weighing

the pros and cons

www.soldlab.com | 49

Page 50: SOLD July'2012

A PoWerFul WAy to hAnDle the SPouSe

oBJectionHowever, in situations where a couple is not the

dM (decision maker), then you have, in most cases a stall, sometimes an objection.

the real DMYou have the business owner and you know that the spouse has absolutely nothing to do with the busi-ness. Yet the shop owner tells you that he has to speak to his wife. Or the doctor or accountant tells you that she has to “run it by” her husband first. In these cases, try the answer below.

This answer, however, is not for the faint of heart. It takes a strong sales person. As always, the words are nothing more than an example of the concept and not meant as a script. Also, it will work for either spouse, as well as for other uncon-nected people that the prospect wants to use as the basis for a stall.

“W ell, everything looks good. But I just have to ask my wife about this…”

“Yes, it is a great offer, but I always discuss things like this with my husband first…”

is it an objection, a Stall or a condition?We are all familiar with the spouse objection, and be-fore I give you a great way to answer this stall, let me first make one thing clear: You first must make sure that you are dealing with an objection or a stall and not a CONdITION.

What I mean is that if your sales process is such that to have a qualified prospect, you need both the husband ANd wife together, then you are not dealing with an objection or a stall. If you are doing a “one-legged” presentation, that is a condition. In such a case, you need to strengthen your qualifying and ap-pointment setting. Closing is not the issue.

50 | July 2012

Page 51: SOLD July'2012

Sean McPheat is the founder and

Managing Director of MTD Sales Training.

MTD have delivered training to over 2,000

different organisations around the world

and to over 50,000 staff. Sean is well known

within the sales industry and the media as

the “Go To MAn” that business owners,

directors and sales people turn to for advice on how to improve

their sales and marketing and has been referred to in the media

as “The UK’s #1 Authority on Modern Day Selling”. Sean has

been featured on the BBC, ITv, Cnn International, scores of

radio stations and has been in over 250 different media publica-

tions. Learn more at www.mtdsalestraining.com

Shame on you!As soon as you get that stall, your reaction needs to revert to one pure shock and utter disappointment. You cannot believe what you are hearing. Then, very sincerely and almost defeated, come back with something like this…sales Person“Ah…wow. Um, I really just don’t know what to say, steve. I mean, I ah…I really don’t know what to even think about that.”Prospect“What? It’s no big deal. I always talk about things like this with my wife.”sales Person“steve, let me get this straight…you run this business every day, and make all the decisions every day, is that right?”Prospect“Well, yeah…”sales Person“And, you have your finger on the pulse of this busi-ness. I mean you know what is going on every minute; you manage the daily operations, correct?”Prospect“Yes. But like I said, I like to talk to her about things like this.”sales Person

“steve, you know this business inside and out, and more intimately than anyone on earth can know this business, including your wife. Then, on top of that, you have me, right here in front of you, giving you ALL of the information you need to make an informed, in-telligent business decision…ANd I’m right here, now, to answer questions.

Now, with all of that, YOU are apparently sTILL not able to make a business decision.

so, you are telling me, you are going to go to your wife; who knows one-tenth of what you know and un-derstand of the needs of YOUr business…then you are going to give her just a small fraction of the information.

steve, I have spent three years learning how to de-liver the information I just gave to you in the last 45 minutes. There is simply no way possible for you to give her the same information and you will not have all of the material I have either.

But, you are going to ask your wife; sarah, right? Who has but a fraction of the knowledge and under-standing of your business, and you are going to give her but maybe 10% of the information needed to make an educated decision…

And you are going to PUT 100% of the resPON-sIBILITY to make YOUr business decision on Her shoulders?! steve, I just cannot believe you would put that type of PressUre on your wife.

I’m shocked and a little disappointed. I’m sorry.”

the truthWhile that example may be a bit exaggerated, that is exactly what the prospect is saying. When you make it clear to the buyer what they are actually telling you, usually you will get the truth.Prospect“Well, no. I mean. I make the decisions. I just wanted to talk to her. Actually, the main thing I want to talk to her about is the monthly payment. I’m just a little con-cerned about that…”If it is a one-legger, you done. If not, this close may salvage a few sales you may have thought were lost.Happy selling!

by Sean McPheat

when you make it clear to the

buyer what they are actually telling

you, usually you will get the truth

www.soldlab.com | 51

Page 52: SOLD July'2012

Advice from the Master negotiatoryou can Be a Super negotiator

What does it take to become a super negotiator? You have to be aware of which tactics and strategies to implement in the appropriate situation and implement them at the appropriate time. In addition, you have to know how to balance playing offense and defense.

To the degree you implement the role and strategy you’ve set for yourself in a negotiation, you’ll employ a specific set of strategies versus others; there’s always a fine balance between utilizing the right strategies that cast you in the right light compared to being perceived as overreaching in a negotiation. By using strategies that cast you in a combative versus agreeable position, with a negotiator that has an opposing perspective, you di-minish the chances of a successful negotiation outcome. If the balance between being perceived as equitable and overbearing is not struck amicably, your negotiation ef-forts will be fraught with pitfalls.

This article examines a few strategies you might con-sider implementing based on with whom you’re negoti-ating, their negotiation demeanor and style, and what’s being sought from the negotiation.

Defense Versus offense:In a negotiation, there’s a fine line between being per-ceived as playing offense versus defense, and yet in ei-ther case, you can turn such a position into a winning ne-gotiation outcome.

When a negotiator is playing defense, he will tend to be more cautious and less aggressive. Thus, he will cre-ate the impression that it’s more difficult to sell his nego-tiation position from what should be perceived as a less than tenable perspective. Turning that position into a suc-cessful negotiation outcome is dependent upon how well he implements such a position, which is partially due to the person with whom he’s negotiating. If the opposing negotiator is strong-willed and likes to project an “I’m in control” demeanor, allow him to believe he’s in control. do so until he displays his strategy for the negotiation (i.e. bullying you into submission) and then take control by turning his strategy against him (e.g. the only way you can receive ‘x’ is if I receive ‘y’).

When a negotiator is playing offense, he tends to proj-ect that he’s in a leading position, which implies the op-posing negotiator is being moved along a trajectory that

leads in the direction that the leading negotiator wishes him to go. If you’re playing offense, be tentative until you’re sure the other negotiator will not spring a trap door that causes you to display the strategy you have for the outcome of the negotiation. There’s a fine balance be-tween playing offense and defense and the roles can flip instantly. Know what role you and the other negotiator are playing and be mindful of when/if the role switches.

In your negotiation, consider if it’s beneficial to allow the other negotiator to perceive himself as leading or fol-lowing. depending upon the demeanor of that negotiator (i.e. wishes to be in control vs. amenable) he’ll be more disposed to display the tactics that he’ll utilize to achieve the outcome he seeks. Once you’re aware of his tactics, you can decide if you’ll reverse the roles by adopting a dif-ferent perspective then you’ve shown of your negotiation characteristics.

Anger Versus Passive:You can also influence a negotiation by displaying anger or by being passive.

screaming, pounding objects, or constantly frowning, can be a way of displaying anger and/or dissatisfaction during a negotiation. It can be contrived but when executed correctly, it can become a potent tool in a negotiation. You have to be cautious when exacting such a display, because you may be perceived as being out of control, which could cause the other negotiator to adopt a rigid negotiation po-sition, or one whereby he walks away from the negotiation.

After displaying the characteristics of someone that’s been angered, you can become passive. The lat-ter position would be reflected in you appearing to suc-cumb to the wishes of the other negotiator (i.e. making minor concessions). When it’s appropriate, do so to ex-tract a concession of your own from him. In so doing, you give the impression of allowing the other negotiator to mollify you with concessions. Psychologically, he’ll be rewarding you for bad behavior (i.e. you switching from anger to becoming passive), which he should not do, but if it works, use it. Once he’s in such a mindset, you can maneuver him into giving you one concession after another. Just be cautious not to overplay your hand and avoid giving the impression that you’re taking advantage of him, as he perceives it.

Page 53: SOLD July'2012

reading Body language: By being able to read and interpret body language, you can more readily convince the other negotiator that your demeanor is authentic. An added bonus in accurately readying and interpreting body language is the fact that you can gain insight into his mind and thus evaluate to what degree he’s buying your performance.

In order to assess how he’s interpreting your actions, observe to what degree and when he sits forward, leans away from you, tilts his head, rubs his eye(s)/ear(s), and/or twiddles his thumbs. such indicators will give you in-sight as to the degree he’s engaging you, disengaging from you, or comforting himself. When he’s displaying an engaging gesture (i.e. leaning forward) he’s acknowl-edging through his body language a desire to be more embracing, which is an indication that he believes what you’re saying. A tilting of the head could indicate that he’s in a quandary state of mind and evaluating what you’re saying. The rubbing of the eye(s) and/or ear(s) is an indi-cation that he doesn’t believe what he’s seeing or hear-ing respectively. If he starts to twiddle his thumbs, he’s performing a comforting gesture, which means he’s at-tempting to make himself feel better. As in any situation in which you’re interpreting someone’s body language, you must first establish a base line of that individual (i.e.

determine how they use their body in different situations – stress, non-stress, etc.)

In conclusion, in any negotiation, you should plan the path upon which you might travel in order to achieve the results you seek. In so doing keep in mind that per-ception is reality. Thus, the way you’re perceived is dependent upon how you position yourself in and dur-ing the negotiation. Based on that positioning and the strategies you implement throughout the negotiation, you’ll enhance or decrease the probability of a suc-cessful outcome. If you implement your strategies in the appropriate manner success will await you … and everything will be right with the world. remember, you’re always negotiating.

by Greg Williams

Greg Williams, a member of national Speakers As-

sociation, is a people-oriented business professional, with

an extensive background in Public Speaking, Training, and

delivering Keynotes, in the subject areas of: Motivation, ne-

gotiation, Interviewing Strategies & Techniques, Strategies to

becoming Successful, The plight of small, minority businesses

in turbulent economic times. Learn more abot Greg at www.TheMasterNegotiator.com

The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert wants to know …

http://tiny.cc/qwqn4

Would you like to be more successful in life? Do you want to earn more money, gain more respect,and be perceived as someone with prestige? Are you someone that wants to achieve more in life?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above … YOU need to become a better negotiator and discover how to read body language.

Uncover how you can use negotiation tactics and strategies to get more out of every negotiation, while reading body language to enhance the process.

For a Free negotiation assessment and insight into how you can become a better negotiator, contact…

Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator

& Body Language Expert at …

www.TheMasterNegotiator.com (609) 369-2100

Scan with Smart Phone to watch –

“Seven Steps To Negotiating Successfully”

Page 54: SOLD July'2012

Get LoyaLty

throuGh royaLty

how to create an Amazing Sales experience that Builds loyal, long term relationships

54 | July 2012

Page 55: SOLD July'2012

In his book Marketing Imagination, dr. Theodore Levitt, professor at Harvard Business school, makes the case that making money is the goal of the business. The function is to get and keep cus-tomers. The problem is that if you confuse the func-

tion with the goal, you don't always achieve your goal.so the focus of this article is going to be on keep-

ing the customer. In other words, building a long term relationship and creating customer loyalty. And, here is one of the most important strategies on creating loyalty: keeping the customer doesn't start after you have made the first sale. It starts at the beginning of the sale.

The key is to start creating confidence and trust at the beginning of the relationship. This will build over time to the point when a customer will buy from you. However, you still have quite a ways to go. The word that will keep coming up is confidence. You must cre-ate confidence. While the customer may be confident enough to buy from you the first time, it will take some after-the-sale follow through to give the customer enough confidence to buy the second time. And then a third time.

After a period of time, the customer who continues to buy from you will eventually own the experience you provide to them. They will know what to expect. And as long as what you sell is doing what it is sup-posed to do, be it a product or service, and you are delivering it in a manner that meets, if not exceeds, the customer's expectation of customer service, you have a shot at loyalty. so, why focus on loyalty? The rewards are strong. some of them include:

1) More sales from existing customers (frequen-cy of purchases).2) Higher sales per transaction (higher average sale).3) Word of mouth referrals from happy custom-ers (your evangelists).4) Price becomes less relevant. That means the sale is based on the features and value you bring to the table, not the price.5) Profit – More money to the bottom line.

Before we go any further I want to share some impor-tant concepts about customer loyalty.

First is my Customer Loyalty Formula: Great service + Confidence = Loyalty (or at least potential loyalty)In other words, you can deliver great service, but without confidence, you may not get the next sale. Your customers must own the experiences they have with you. They must be confident that they are going to get what they expect. By the way, customer service is not just a department. It is a philosophy that is focused on the relationship you have with your customers as well as the way you meet and exceed their expectations.

second, no matter how good the product or service you sell is, if you don't deliver it with great customer service, the customer will find another person or company to buy from that makes him/her feel better. Conversely, no matter how good the service experience is, if your product or ser-vice doesn't do what it is supposed to do, the cus-tomer will seek out another source. You need both: a great product and great service.

Imagine that you are walking on a busy downtown street during lunch hour, surveying random executive looking

people and asking them one simple question: "What is the function of a business?" How do you think most people

would respond? Most people would say, "To make money." Unfortunately, they would be wrong.

www.soldlab.com | 55

Page 56: SOLD July'2012

Third, most people think that loyalty is about cre-ating a customer for life. They are wrong. At every interaction you have with your customer, you should be able to positively answer the question, "Is what I'm doing right now going to make sure that the next time the customer needs whatever it is that I sell, they will buy from me?" You see, loyalty isn't about a lifetime. It's about the next time, every time.

Fourth, the goal shouldn't be customer loyalty. The goal should be 100% customer loyalty. That takes you to a higher level, and that is partnership, which is loyalty on steroids. Loyalty may mean a customer buys from you again and again, but may still be buying similar products from a competitor. Partnership is when a customer trusts you enough to give you 100% of their business (or close to it). You may think this is a play on words, but let me give you an example. The majority of people who have investments have more than one account with more than one financial institution. A retirement plan may be at a bank. Indi-vidual investments might be with another broker or firm. A company 401K may be at even a third loca-tion. You get the idea. My financial advisor's goal is to be so good that his clients invest 100% of their in-vestible assets with him. He wants to be so good and create so much confidence that his clients are willing to let him be their partner in their life-time investment goals. You want a relationship that is so strong that your customer wouldn't think of doing business with anyone else.

Understanding these simple premises are keys to building customer loyalty. But so far, this is all just theory or concept. so, what comes next are some strategies – twenty of them. Many of them you are already doing, so this list will serve as a reminder. Most of them are common sense, but unfortunately, they are not always so common. so, take out a pencil or pen and put a check mark next to the ones you are currently doing and circle the ones you want. I'll even allow you to cross out a few you might disagree with.

1 Keep the customer in the loop. Letting a cus-tomer know what is going on is important to

their comfort level, which bolsters confidence.

2 stay in touch, especially at off times. Out of sight, out of mind – it’s true. The goal is to al-

ways be "top of mind."

3 Follow through. Always do what you say you will do.

4 Meet deadlines. Maybe even come in a little bit ahead of schedule. And don't be late for

appointments either in person or on the phone. Be-ing late is one of the quickest ways to erode confi-dence.

5 Just be polite. say please and thank you.

6 return phone calls, emails and social media comments quickly. expected response time

seems to be getting quicker and quicker, as we live in a world where technology allows us to easily stay connected.

You can deliver great service, but without

confidence, you may not get the

next sale

56 | July 2012

Page 57: SOLD July'2012

7 Under promise and over deliver. This cliché, if you follow it, will serve you well. set an expectation

that is agreeable with the customer, and then exceed it.

8 Create value in the relationship. For example, show up early, stay late, and do something

more than expected.

9 Build rapport. Get to know your customer on a level past business.

10 Be accessible and easy to reach.

11 Be a problem solver. Make the customer's problem your problem.

12 speaking of problems, if you can catch a prob-lem, call the customer before they call you.

13 Practice pro-active service. Think about the server at a restaurant that fills your water glass

before you have to ask.

14 Care about the customer. If you care about the sale more than the customer, you may not have

the customer long term. eventually they figure it out.

15 Ask yourself, "Why should someone do busi-ness with me instead of my competition?" What

makes you different? educate the customer on why he/she made the right choice to do business with you.

16 Be a great communicator. Ask lots of ques-tions. Make your customers feel as if you un-

derstand them.

17 Pay attention to the details. don't let anything slip by.

18 don't blame others or make excuses. Be ac-countable.

19 Be consistent. Consistency creates confi-dence.

20 Always show appreciation. don't forget to say thank you. It can be a thank you note, a phone

call, or if appropriate, even an email.so, after this list of common sense strategies, I thought it might be interesting to think about what can kill loyalty. I once wrote an article focused on "loyalty killers," and the list I came up with warrants repeating in this article. While this may seem nega-tive, please don't view it as such. Look over this list to confirm that you are avoiding any of these behav-iors. Avoiding these "loyalty killers" will help build and maintain your customer's confidence.

1) Uncertainty is a loyalty killer.2) Complacency is a loyalty killer.3) Apathy about your work is a loyalty killer.4) Lack of confidence is a loyalty killer.

Shep hyken is a professional

speaker and new York Times and wall

Street Journal bestselling business author

who works with companies who want to

develop loyal relationships with their cus-

tomers and employees. For information on

Shep’s speaking programs, books,

and learning programs please contact (314) 692-2200.

web: www.hyken.com – Click here for information

on The Customer Focus™ customer service train-ing programs (www.TheCustomerFocus.com).

5) Bad customer service is a loyalty killer.6) A bad attitude is a loyalty killer.74) An aggressive attitude is a loyalty killer.8) Indifference toward a customer is a loyalty killer.9) Lack of enthusiasm is a loyalty killer.10) A communication breakdown is a loyalty killer.11) Inconsistency is a loyalty killer.12) A weak relationship is a loyalty killer.13) A long wait time is a loyalty killer.14) A slow returned phone call or email response is a loyalty killer.15) Arguing with a customer is a loyalty killer.16) Making a customer feel that they are wrong is a loyalty killer.17) Making a customer feel ignorant is a loyalty killer.18) Being impatient with a customer is a loyalty killer.19) Using unfamiliar jargon or acronyms is a loy-alty killer.20) A failed promise is a loyalty killer.

As we come to the conclusion, here is something im-portant to remember:

customer service is not a department. it is a philosophy.When you tie it to sales, customer service takes on an interesting spin. It is no longer about just creating a "nice experience." It's selling with service, which is taking care of the customer throughout the sales pro-cess. sure, you can give them a "nice experience," but if you look at the strategies listed above, it is more about building a relationship and creating confidence.

Practice the loyalty strategies listed above. Avoid the "Loyalty Killers." And watch your customer's con-fidence grow, along with your sales, your reputation, and your overall success.

by Shep hyken

www.soldlab.com | 57

Page 58: SOLD July'2012

www.hiken.com

www.AmazementRevolution.com/special

Page 59: SOLD July'2012

The goal of any business is to attract and retain cus-tomers. And customers actually make it very easy for you. No customer walks into your establishment and says to you, “Here is my money. Now, dissatisfy me please.” In fact, your customer comes in with an expectation that what you offer could be more valu-able than his money. Nobody knowingly expects to pay good money for a poor product or service.

If it’s so easy, why isn’t your business doing so well that you are literally turning away customers? It’s because you already are turning away custom-ers and you may not even know it. You cannot think you are only selling a commodity or service to your customers. You are not in the product business. You’re not even in the service business. You are in the experience business.

Think of your top three competitors. They have a similar product. In fact, if your competitors really wanted to, they could come pretty close to repli-cating it. What they can’t replicate are your people. And it is your people who deliver your experience. A recent American express survey found that 70 percent of consumers are willing to spend an av-erage of 13 percent more with companies they believe provide excellent customer service. so the good news is that if you understand that your company is in the experience business and you get the experience right, you reap more revenue and repeat customers.

The bad news is that, in the same survey, 78 percent of consumers claimed they have aban-doned a transaction or not made an intended pur-chase because of a poor service experience.

Ultimately, for you are to retain your customers you have to think like your customer. You have to understand that you are in the experience busi-ness and the customer is paying for his experi-ence, not yours.

so how do you create an experience that will re-tain your customers and attract new ones? Here’s how in just three steps:

1) No surprises.2) No excuses.3) One Percent more.

No SURPRiSES. Find out what that expectation is of your customer. Then deliver it plus one per-cent more. That’s a take on the “Underpromise. Overdeliver” service mantra. As a hotel general manager, I defined that the restaurant could never run out of any item that was on the menu. Think like the customer. The menu is actually our promise in writing. The customer orders and the server says they have just run out of it – an unexpected bad surprise for the customer. The server, manager and chef thinks it’s OK to run out of something – our experience. If they kept everything in stock be-yond demand it would lead to higher food costs – still our experience. But the customer sees

the cuStoMer iS PAyinG For hiS exPerience,

not yourS

www.soldlab.com | 59

Page 60: SOLD July'2012

it on the menu and expects that he can get it with no surprises – his experience. And the bottom line is the customer is paying for his experience, not ours.No ExCUSES. Of course, on busy nights, we did sell out of certain items or it took too long for an order to be served. step two: No excuses. “I’m sorry, we had more people order that than we ex-pected.” or “I’m sorry, we’re a little understaffed tonight.” All that is really the restaurant’s experi-ence – our experience. Think like the customer. The customer decided to eat in the restaurant with the expectation of being satisfied. Any reason the restaurant gives to the customer is “heard” as an attempt to explain why the restaurant could not

deliver – an excuse. Here is what the customer is hearing “so what that you’re sorry. I still don’t’ have what I wanted.” No excuses. Better to re-spond to your customers with an “I apologize.” since you could not deliver their expected expe-rience, you need to give them something, at the very least, a sincere apology. Then follow up with a gesture of atonement.oNE PERCENt MoRE. deliver an experience that is just a bit more than what the customer ex-pected. For example, customers expect your busi-ness to open on time. As a customer doesn’t it frus-trate you when you go to a store that clearly posts that it will open at 8:30 a.m. and it actually unlocks the door for its first customer at 8:45 a.m. – their experience. And if you were that customer on your way to work, didn’t that 15 minutes seem more like an eternity with each passing minute – your expe-rience. And as the customer, you were paying for your experience, not theirs. Your customers ex-pect the same from your business. so what’s the 1%? Just make it a Best Practice to open 10 min-utes before and stay open 10 minutes after your posted times. remember, to the customer, it is not the one big wow that will separate you from your competitors; it will be the 1001 little “wows”, those one percents, that will make the big difference.

so remember, the customer is paying for his experience, not yours. deliver their experience with no bad surprises and if there is a surprise for the customer, apologize and fix it with no excuses. And always add just that one percent more.

by Bill Quiseng

Bill quiseng, Chief experi-

ence officer at billquiseng.com, is an award winning writer,

blogger and professional speaker

in the areas of customer service for

front-line associates and associ-

ate engagement and leadership for

managers. Bill's blog offers tips to improve your

company's customer experience. His Facebook page

and tweets are your #1 source for practical tips,

insight and inspiration from various sources to improve

your personal delivery of customer service.

To the customer, it is not the

one big wow that will separate you from your competitors

60 | July 2012

Page 61: SOLD July'2012

Not long ago, Verity did a retail survey asking about up-coming trends in retail store technology. As usual, we found the usual list of new technologies that were plan-ning to be deployed, emerging issues that the industry was addressing, etc; however, we did find one thing that I think anyone in sales can benefit from:

Their #1 concern – which over 2/3rd’s reported – was the fear that their company might be falling be-hind the competition in regards to not keeping up with emerging technology.

This turned out to be the over-whelming – and primary – motiva-tion for companies that were con-sidering a technology upgrade. The thought that competitors might be finding better ways to ad-dress long queue’s, get merchan-dise into stores more quickly, de-termine the needs of customers, deliver goods more efficiently… all kept our respondents up at night.

As a result, 67% planned to deploy initiatives that they might not otherwise have considered, specifically to keep up with competition. Their reasoning was that the retail competitive horizon moves so quickly that falling behind would quickly cost them money and quite possibly put them out of business, which is of course, quite true.

The interesting thing about this though, is that we then went back to other opt-in respondents in other in-dustries and asked them similar three questions to see if this mindset transferred to other industries, it did.

Verity found that 91% of fleets who were planning to upgrade their technology to keep up with perceived pressure from competitors. We found that 54% of com-

panies involved in shipping/logistics felt the need to update their technology to adapt to remain competitive with emerging technology in their industry. And finally, we found that 47% of wholesalers were considering new technology to better compete in their industries as well.

In short, companies now know they must adopt new technologies and solutions in the new economy quickly, or else run the risk of being left behind. And in today’s business climate, that’s simply not an option.

As a result, smart and sincere (emphasis on sincere) salespeo-ple can help their prospects and customers by bringing an informed understanding of current market conditions to the table, and helping them better navigate the competi-tive waters in their industry.

Illustrating to prospects and customers emerging trends within their industries – and in turn, helping them stay ahead of

them – has tremendous value to them. They realize that this information can be the difference between them staying in business and remain competitive, vs. having several quarters of reduced revenues and profits.

so what’s the good news for you if you’re involved in sales? That simply helping your prospects/customers, providing them with business intelligence as to emerg-ing industry trends, and in turn, assisting them to be more competitive is a way that you can provide genuine value to them. And according to research, if you do that, the rest should take care of itself.

by errol Greene

Sales researchFuD – research Shows it Just May Be the Salesperson’s Best Friend

Errol Greene is Principal and founder of verity Insight Partners, a company that specializes in sales

and marketing research and demand creation for businesses in a variety of industries. After a career in sales

and sales management, most recently at Psion Teklogix, errol founded verity Insight Partners in 2009, where

his vision is to provide companies with insight into their prospect and customer database that can be used to

dramatically improve their sales and marketing efforts. For more information contact [email protected] or call 800-599-8740, ext 101.

Сompanies now know they must adopt new

technologies

Page 62: SOLD July'2012

Have you ever met someone who makes you feel like you are the only person in the room, who gives you their full attention, makes you feel good about yourself, listens in-tently, expresses good will and is empathetic? If so, you have met someone who is a charmer. How does this relate to customer service?

There is a saying that everything being equal, peo-ple deal with people they like and trust and everything being unequal they still deal with people they like and trust. In other words, your communication, charm, cha-risma and personality will play a big role in getting cus-tomers, keeping them and getting enthusiastic refer-rals.

so how do I improve my charm to improve my customer service? Here are a few things you can implement right now

1Keep your atti-tude adjusted at

all times. everything begins and ends with your attitude. If you are in a bad mood, your words, tone and body language will reflect your feelings and it will be felt and observed by your customers. To alleviate this and keep your attitude adjusted at all times, I would like to recommend the “flip-side” exercise. I have used this for a number of companies I have worked with to do customer service makeovers and I have noticed any-where from 17% to 47% less customer complaints the following year. In a nutshell, the flipside exercise focuses on the fact that no matter how bad things are there is always a flip side. Therefore, if you “hate your job”, the flip side is “I at least have a job” or if you put a “dent in your new car” the flip side is “ at least I wasn’t hurt or if “I have to pay a lot of taxes” the flip side is “I am thankful that I did well enough to pay taxes.” And here is a sure-fire way to keep your atti-tude adjusted. If anything is going wrong, ask yourself immediately, “what am I grateful for at this moment?” If you ask that question, you can’t but help stop feeling sorry for yourself.

2Be interested, not just interesting – Become a great conversationalist by being genuinely interested in the

other person. don’t just talk about yourself, find out about them. To improve your ability to converse with anyone, anytime, anywhere, focus on the fact that a conversation is about you, them or the situation. Be prepared to talk about all of these.

3Be responsive – Being accessible, available and will-ing to help will put you leaps and bounds above the

competition. something simple like returning a phone call makes you look like a customer service genius. It’s not that big of a deal, however since so many people don’t do thisyou look good.

4 show you care – If you don’t care about me,

I don’t care about you. In other words take your time with customers, be interest-ed in them and don’t inter-rupt. recently in doing some mystery shopping for one of my clients, I noticed that one of the staff was talking with a customer. His phone rang and instead of ignoring it,

he ignored the customer and took the call. He didn’t even apologize!People have walked out for less!

5 show empathy – empathy means putting yourself in the other shoes. The more you can understand

where your customer is coming from, what her needs, challenges and concerns are the more you will build rap-port, relationships and charm.

6 Create Connections by paying attention to proven “charm” qualities – Make a positive impression and

strengthen your people-connecting power by regularly projecting the following qualities; authenticity, apprecia-tion, compassion, confidence, engaging style, enthusi-asm, friendliness, good communication skills, humor, neat appearance, positive attitude, social skills, respect and sincerity. On the flip side, if you slip into any of the negative behaviors listed below, remember that these traits typically turn people off or turn them away; abra-siveness, apathy, coldness, insensitivity, insincerity, lack of appreciation, lack of confidence, lack of humor,

Don’t just talk about yourself,

find out about them

up your charm iQcharm and customer Service

Page 63: SOLD July'2012

negative attitude, poor body language, poor communica-tion skills, poor social skills, profanity and rudeness.

7 Practice the art of conversation – do you sometimes find it challenging to strike up and carry on a conver-

sation? do you experience anxiety from long, uncomfort-able silences? Have you ever missed opportunities to meet someone intriguing or important because you didn’t know what to say? Are you ever afraid of saying some-thing that might make you sound stupid? If you feel con-versationally challenged here are some tips to improve your conversation IQ and increase your charm:

Observe your surroundings – talk about the furnishings, pictures, awards, family members, office space

Go fish! – Probe for areas of common interest. Hobbies and special interests – do they like to

golf? ski? climb mountains? Volunteer? Are they history buffs?

reading interests – Ask, “What do you like to read?”

Weekend activities – see what they are doing on the weekend.

Goals and dreams – see what goals they may be working toward and what inspired them to pursue them.

Travel – Ask, “do you have an opportunity to travel often?” “What are some of the biggest travel challenges you have encountered?” “What other places would you like to visit?”

Current events – Keep abreast of local, na-tional and lifestyle concerns.

Advice – Ask people for advice related to their expertise. People enjoy being acknowledged for their wisdom, experience or perspective.

Getting customers to love you is not about you. It’s about how you make them feel about themselves. By fol-lowing the above guidelines you will increase your charm and as a result your customers will keep coming back and singing your praises.

by Arnold Sanow

Arnold Sanow, MBA, CSP (Certified Speaking Professional) willdeliver a customized, entertaining, information-packed,interactive and non-boring presentation with plenty of “walkaway” information that can be used … Immediately!

Arnold has delivered over 2,500 paid presentations to more than500 different Companies, Governmental Agencies and Associations.Over 90% have hired him again. He is the author/co-author of 5books to include, “Get Along with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere”, the“Charisma Card Deck,” and “Marketing Boot Camp”. He is a frequentguest in the media (USA Today, Wall Street Journal, CBS eveningNews) and a former adjunct Professor at Georgetown University.

www.arnoldsanow.com • [email protected]

“Arnold’s program was perfect. He was terrific with lots of humor, relevantinformation, and effective examples. Overall A+.”

~ Lorelei Long, HR Manager, Mayer, Brown, Rowe Law Firm

When You’re Looking For:

�More Than Just Another Rah-Rah Rally

�More Substance and Less Hype

�More Humor, Interactivity, and Content

�Specific Strategies and Solutions You Can Use ... NOW!

arnold Sanow, MBA, CSP is a customer and workplace

relationship expert who speaks, trains and consults for compa-

nies and organizations worldwide. He is the author of 6 books

to include, “Get Along with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere” and

“Present with Power, Punch and Pizzazz.” He was recently

named as one of the top best “bang for the buck speakers “

in the USA by Successful Meetings Magazine.

www.arnoldsanow.com – [email protected]

Page 64: SOLD July'2012

Much has been written about client focus. We hear about sophisticated clients who will leave if we don’t focus on their needs.

We hear about the virtues of client loyalty, and the virtues of measurements like

client profitability. The key to competitive success is to do a better job serving clients than

the next guy. And so on.But there’s a dark side to that

theme. The reason to be so client-focused is almost always phrased

in terms of the benefits to the seller. And that changes

everything.Client focus, as it

is too often practiced in business today, is the

focus of a vulture. It is all about the benefit to the firm

– not to the client. When client benefits are discussed, they are as discussed as a means to the seller’s ends. Yes, we want to serve clients better – but for our sake, not theirs.

should we be surprised, then, when clients become cynical, send out rFPs, and refer us to third-party buying agents? In our rush to dissect

the client brain, we have forgotten that motives matter.

I’m not talking about ethics – I’m talking about the simple facts of trust. We trust those we believe to

have our interests at heart, and we distrust those we believe to have their interests at heart. But we particularly distrust those

Are you clientFocused or a

client Vulture?

64 | July 2012

Page 65: SOLD July'2012

who pretend to be the former, while behaving like the latter.

sometimes it’s hard to see trust faults in our own business. By way of metaphor, consider an in-dustry recently hard-hit by trust issues – pharma-ceuticals. One of the drug manufacturers’ wounds is self-inflicted – the failed relationship between physicians and reps.

doctors long relied on reps to keep them up to date on new drugs – an important and valuable advisory role. In recent years, the drug companies tried to increase reps’ sales effectiveness. They increased the number of reps per doctor, focusing on hiring young and attractive people. They intro-duced complex measurement systems to evaluate rep performance, and purchased so-phisticated statistical data to calibrate the impact of rep visits on physician prescriptive behavior.

sensible steps all, it would seem: but they’ve produced negative results.

Less than one rep visit in 10 now results in a conversation with a physician, and lasts on av-erage only 90 seconds;

Personal relationships have been reduced and curtailed; reps are valued only for the samples they leave, turning them into pill-pushers;

The doctors have little respect for the reps, which in turn is debilitating for the reps.How did this happen? each change in the sys-

tem was motivated largely, if not entirely, by a desire to increase physician prescription-writing of drugs produced by the pharmaceutical company. That motivation was very clear to the doctors – and they saw no benefit evident to them. Like most clients, the doctors reacted negatively. A past trusted rela-tionship was degraded because the seller was moti-vated only by the seller’s needs.

relationships and Fake trustWhen client focus becomes a tool for seller profit improvement, clients notice and become cynical. Lately, the language of client focus is adopting the language of relationships, fostering yet another layer of cynicism.

Think of “relationship,” “loyalty,” and “trust.” All once had significant emotional connotations –

for “loyalty,” think “semper fi” or “’til death do us part.” For “trust,” think the bonds of a handshake, or of fiduciary responsibilities.

Today, loyalty gets defined behaviorally as re-peat purchasing behavior. “Client relationship management” software is sold on the basis of

its ability to create client profitability analyses (to the software owner,

that is, not to the client).In the dating world, it’s consid-

ered forward to say you want a re-lationship on the first date – but in business, some firms have gone one better and built “relationship” into a marketing slogan before even meeting the client.

relationship concepts have been hijacked in service to selfish mo-

tives. When a company’s ad copy says, “you care about your children; that’s why we here at XYZ cor-poration are doing blah blah blah” the company is not only lying, but lying baldly and shamelessly about their motives.

What is at stake here is no less than the meaning of words, and therefore the credibility and trust of the company saying them.

Being truly client-FocusedThe most difficult act for us as sellers of profes-sional services is to stop viewing everything from our own perspective. And it has to be a personal act – a self-willed, psychological belief or attitude.

The economics of trust-based selling™ rest on a paradox: if we do what is good for the consumer, we will eventually gain more than our proportionate share of business. It may not come from this transaction, in this quarter – or even from this client – but it will come. Nothing motivates repeat business or refer-rals better than a trust-based relationship with the provider.

If our motives for being trusted are not truly client-focused – then it all falls apart. This is the paradox. Great results come from client focus – but only if you stop doing client focus in order to achieve results for yourself.

In today’s business climate, “best practices” and financial analyses are defined in ever-smaller, ever-shorter, ever-narrower slices. They are often not “best,” but among the most insidious.

www.soldlab.com | 65

Page 66: SOLD July'2012

Charles h. Green is a speaker

and executive educator on trust-based

relationships and Trust-based Selling in complex businesses. He is author of

Trust-based Selling (McGraw-Hill, 2005),

and co-author of The Trusted Advi-sor (with David Maister and Rob Galford,

Free Press, october 2000). Visit his website

These practices are harmful because they blind us to opportunities to serve our clients.

In the perennial Christmas movie Miracle on 34th street, Macy’s santa Claus is nearly fired for recommending that a client go to competitor Gim-bel’s for a particular product. That is, until Macy’s Chairman realizes the profound increase in client trust produced by santa’s approach – having faith that doing right by the customer will end up helping Macy’s anyway.

Being truly client-focused means believing in the superiority of client relationship strategies over competitor-focused strategies; the medium- and long-term over successive short-terms; and truth-telling over spinning.

The good news is the field is wide open for firms willing to practice what everyone else only preaches – serving the client, believing that to do so will ultimately return more than the self-serving narrowly calculating strategies of the vulture can ever hope to do.

A truly client-focused relationship strategy built on trust is the best deal going. It is rare; most com-petitors are afraid to try it. It is powerful; ask any suc-cessful salesperson about the power of trust. And it is proven – just look at your own behavior as a buyer in relation to a seller you trust.

Trusting relationships have to start with the selling firm, not the client. Go ahead, take a risk. The ultimate paradox is, taking a risk ends up being the lowest risk. Being trusted is a very low-risk, high-return strategy.

by charles h. Green

when client focus becomes a tool for seller

profit improvement, clients notice and become

cynical

66 | July 2012

Page 67: SOLD July'2012

new

NOW Practices for Professional Selling

www.soldlab.com/subscribe