Category: Sales & Marketing

Article Contributed by Mark Hunter

Salespeople love to complain about buyers. One of the complaints salespeople share the most is that buyers never seem to make up their mind. Just about the time it looks like they’re going to make a buying decision, they suddenly hold off.

Yes, there are times when a buyer legitimately can’t make a decision. Many times, though, the delay is nothing more than a tactic on the part of the buyer to get a better deal.  This is especially true of professional buyers, who see numerous salespeople on a regular basis.  Why should anyone make a decision quickly if they don’t have to? More often than not, the buyers believe that by waiting, they will get a better deal. The salesperson will get scared and will think the only way to secure the sale is to offer a discount.  Buyers believe this because experience has shown them that it works!

Salespeople by nature are scared.  Don’t take offense to my observation, because I include myself in this profession as well.  We, unfortunately, can view things too quickly in a negative manner. For most salespeople, the way out of a situation like this is to immediately offer the buyer a price reduction.  This is exactly what the buyer wants!  They are looking for the salesperson to show some fear and some sense that the sale may not happen at all. Once the buyer smells fear, they know a better deal is about to appear.

This is also a key reason why many professional buyers love to ignore phone calls, emails and all other forms of communication from salespeople. Nothing can make a salesperson more scared than a buyer who doesn’t communicate with them.  If you’re a buyer, it’s hard to find any activities that can result in a higher return on investment than ignoring a salesperson or holding off on making a decision. These tactics usually result in saving money.

Now let’s look at this challenge from a salesperson’s perspective.  Salespeople love to close sales and they also love to close sales quickly, preferably with as little effort as possible.  But effort – particularly mental effort – can make the difference.  This is the ability to understand and rationalize objectively what is happening and what is not happening.  This means understanding why the buyer does need to buy from you and how what you’re selling will allow them to achieve their needs and objectives.  The more you can build this kind of objective thinking into your attitude, the better equipped you are to keep negativity at bay.  Negative thinking is the culprit that takes the biggest toll on a salesperson’s level of success.

As soon as the salesperson begins viewing the situation negatively and how the sale may not occur, it’s only natural for them to think the solution is to lower the price or offer something extra in the form of service.   When the salesperson does this, two things happen. First, it confirms in the buyer’s mind why the smart thing to do is to slow down the decision-making process. Second, it destroys profit margin for the salesperson.
While there are several techniques to counter these outcomes, there really is only one that is foundationally most important – the confidence of the salesperson.   If the salesperson is not confident, then every other tactic or strategy is useless and will have little effect. Everything starts with the salesperson.

Confidence begins with the total belief in your own skill set as a salesperson and total belief in your ability to help the buyer fill the needs they have.  If you don’t believe in both of these, then there is nothing else you can do to prevent the buyer from taking advantage of you by delaying their decision.  Buyers, especially professional buyers, can discern very quickly how confident a salesperson is. If they sense the salesperson is not confident, then they’ll delay their decision. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing so.

On the other hand, if you as the salesperson are determined to regularly and intentionally strengthen your own resolve and your own confidence, your natural reaction to stalling buyers will not be to cave under the pressure.  Your reflex will be to wholeheartedly believe in your product, your price and your potential to help the customer achieve their goals.

Are you going to let fear or confidence determine your future? The choice is yours, so choose wisely.  And profitably.

About the Author:

Mark Hunter, “The Sales Hunter,” helps individuals and companies identify better prospects, close more sales and profitably build more long-term customer relationships. Since 1998, he has consulted nationally and internationally with thousands of salespeople and global companies. You can follow his Sales Motivation Blog at www.TheSalesHunter.com. You can also connect with him on Facebook www.facebook.com/TheSalesHunter, Twitter www.twitter.com/thesaleshunter, and Linkedin www.linkedin.com/in/markhunter.

Article Contributed by Lisa Cherney

If you were trying to find your soul mate through a dating site, a description such as, “Looking for someone 35-45 in Seattle who drives a red car” isn’t going to find you your Prince or Princess Charming.

The same is true with your marketing materials. Generic marketing will only attract generic clients.

To find those people who get you excited about your business and what you’re doing, you have to laser in on what I call your “ideal client.” You have to be very conscious about what you are saying so you can attract the clients who get the best from you and get the best results from your unique services.

“Well, Lisa, I do that by marketing to my target audience,” you might say. That’s great, but it’s not enough. And it’s not enough to market to your niche – you have to go further!

Picture a pyramid. The bottom or widest part is your target audience – let’s say women, age 35-45, living in Seattle. The niche is the next part of the pyramid, such as women going through divorce. Many people stop right there in defining their clients, but not everyone fitting that niche is ready to invest in your services. You need to reach the ones who are ready – your ideal clients who are at the sharpest point of the pyramid.

A great way to start pinpointing your ideal client is to ask yourself the following questions: Which clients are my favorites (you’d want to clone them, that’s how much you love them) and why?

Once you start creating this profile, you’ll start thinking of the words your ideal clients need to hear. If your favorite client is super ready for change, then which do you think will resonate more with them?
1.    “Are you going through a divorce?”
2.    “Are you going through a divorce and ready for that life transition to catapult you on a new journey?”
I’m guessing you’ll agree with me that it’s number two.

The next step is to channel your ideal client into your marketing. You should know them so well that it should be as easy as writing to your best friend. You’ll be amazed how your marketing will be transformed when you connect with your ideal clients.

About the Author:

Lisa Cherney is a Marketing Intuitive and President & Founder of Conscious Marketing™.  Lisa has helped thousands of business owners tap into their intuition and market their businesses from the ‘Inside Out’. For 15 years she worked at Fortune 500 companies and top advertising agencies.

Lisa tells her story in her co-authored book “Inspiration to Realization,” available at www.ConsciousMarketing.com. Conscious Marketing also offers workshops and coaching. Visit her website for more details or call 887-771-0156.

Article Contributed by Mark Hunter

If buyers could get by without salespeople, do you think they would?  It is an interesting question if you stop and consider the role of the salesperson. Of course, considering the role in an abstract way is one thing, but what about when you consider it from a personal perspective?  What happens as a salesperson when you put your emotions aside for a moment, relax, take a deep breath and honestly ask yourself, “What role do I play with my buyers?”

When I ask salespeople what value they bring to their buyers, I usually get a typical answer that is full of a lot of smoke puffery.  When I ask this question of buyers, and in particular professional buyers, I get an entirely different answer.   For professional buyers who see a wide variety of salespeople, the value they place on them is usually very minimal.  Are you wondering why?

There’s one simple reason that can sum it all up:  Most salespeople bring to their buyers only information. Interestingly, information is something any buyer can gather from other sources. At the end of the day, you as a salesperson must ask yourself, “Am I merely a conduit of information?”  If you are, then you’re wasting your time, your company’s time, and your customer’s time.  You might as well just email your buyer the information and then go play golf.

If you can’t as a salesperson honestly lay claim to problems you’ve helped your customers overcome, then you really have to begin questioning the role you play.  Yes, I’m being quite harsh, but with the advent of technology and communication, the role of the salesperson has changed. If you as a salesperson have not recognized and embraced this change, then you are nothing more than the walking dead.

Buyers don’t want people who bring them nothing more than information. They want solutions. Unfortunately, because buyers often have far too much to do, they don’t even know what their problems are or what challenges their company is facing.   This is the role the salesperson needs to play — the role of helping identify the problems, whether blatant or obscure, and turning them into opportunities you can solve for the customer.

So how do you go about identifying problems? You as the salesperson must become an investigator – someone who is determined to find out what really is happening in an organization, industry and global marketplace.  Then, you need to show your customer how what you found is impacting them now or will be impacting them in the future.

Start this process by shifting your focus. Instead of just delivering information to your customer, begin to ask more questions.   A very simple rule I tell salespeople is for every minute you spend gathering information to share with a customer, you need to spend an equal amount of time developing questions to ask that customer. Don’t develop questions for which you already have the answers or could easily find the answers.  In fact, those are the wrong type of questions.

Instead, you need to develop questions to which you don’t have answers. More than likely, these will be questions to which your buyer doesn’t have answers either.  By asking these questions, you’re helping move the buyer to viewing you differently.  Your role is to be seen as the one salesperson who is genuinely committed to helping them move themselves and their company to a higher level. This may be by growing their sales or helping them reduce their costs.

When you can clearly identify ways you’ve helped your buyer achieve either of these outcomes, then you will know you’re no longer the type of salesperson that buyers love to hate. Plus, you’ll be growing your bottom line at the same time.  And that’s a lot better than simply doling out information!

About the Author:

Mark Hunter, “The Sales Hunter,” helps individuals and companies identify better prospects, close more sales and profitably build more long-term customer relationships. Since 1998, he has consulted nationally and internationally with thousands of salespeople and global companies. You can follow his Sales Motivation Blog at www.TheSalesHunter.com. You can also connect with him on Facebook www.facebook.com/TheSalesHunter, Twitter www.twitter.com/thesaleshunter, and Linkedin www.linkedin.com/in/markhunter.