Category: Sales & Marketing

Every effective sales training course teaches sales professionals to ask their prospects open-ended questions. These are the questions that start with who, what, why, when and how.

Open-ended questions are universally taught because they:
•    Solicit great information
•    Get the person talking
•    Allow you and your prospect to find out if there is an opportunity
•    Can show your expertise, IF you ask the right questions

All that sounds great, doesn’t it?  Most of the time, open-ended questions really ARE effective, but not 100% of the time. When used incorrectly, they can make a needs analysis seem more like an interrogation – they can be leading, forced, narrow, product-focused and irrelevant. Sales pros can come off like militants drilling a suspect to get to the information they want so they can pitch their product. And this is definitely not the way to make a sale.

There is a way to demonstrate professionalism by using the 3 ‘I’s with open-ended questions:
1.    Intent
2.    Intelligence
3.    Interest

Intent. We have seen sales pros launch right into a list of questions that might seem irrelevant to the prospect, and the prospect thinks, “What does this have to do with anything?” It’s essential to explain the intent of the line of questions so the prospect can put it in perspective and answer thoughtfully.

Sharing intent can sound like this:  “We’re meeting to talk about your human resource needs. What we have learned is that understanding how HR fits into the overall company’s goals and objectives helps us give you a more accurate picture of how we can help as valuable resource for you. The first questions we’ll cover are focused on the broader picture and then we’ll get more specific into your training needs.” Once the intent is shared, we go into the list of questions with better understanding from the prospect.

Intelligence. Your questions reveal a LOT about you. Here’s how to raise your ‘perceived’ intelligence level:
•    Explain the intent of your line of questioning and ask questions that broaden the dialogue to a bigger, more strategic discussion.
•    Focus on the solution or value desired versus just the product.
•    LISTEN once you have asked a question. When you ask intelligent questions, the person may need to think before responding, and this is usually a good thing.  How long? According to research, they might need 15-25 seconds to think and respond. That’s a long time to wait, but it can pay off.

Interest. Your questions should be interesting to the person. How? Make them relevant to the situation and person. When it’s about THEM, it’s interesting TO them. Every aspect of the sales process should be focused on what’s in it for THEM – and this includes your questions!

Open-ended questions can make your needs analysis productive if you use the 3 ‘I’s to guide your line of questioning. And with a little forethought and preparation, you will be seen as informative and not an interrogator.

About the Author:

Sharpenz is dedicated to providing sales managers the resources and tools they need to energize, engage and equip their sales team to sell each week. Our 30-minute power sales booster meetings help companies increase sales by providing the right tools and training – fast. Designed with the busy manager in mind, Sharpenz ready-to-go sales training kits will give your sales team the opportunity to grow and earn more – all in a half hour of power.  To learn more, visit www.sharpenz.com and sign up for your free ready-to-go sales training kit today!

Many sales professionals and sales leaders are so busy handling day to day challenges that they forget to formalize their sales career aspirations and goals. Make the time to do this today. Spending just 10 to 20 minutes on this 5-step sales coaching process could make all the difference in the world.

You might already have some ideas floating around in your mind, and now it is time to get them written down. Or maybe you have even completed something like this before in the past, but you have not looked at your notes or updated your sales career goals in years.

1. Think about what you’d like people to say about you at your retirement party. This general concept comes from Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Begin with the end in mind.” Imagine you are at the end of your sales career, looking back. What would you like to have accomplished in your career? How would you like to be remembered?

Start acting now, how you want to be remembered. Be now, how you want to be remembered, and don’t wait! You want to be a VP of Sales for a major Fortune 500 company, then start acting like one. What do you think a top VP of Sales was doing when she was in your shoes?

2. Brainstorm and write down some specific sales career goals you would like to accomplish before you retire. This exercise should flow much easier after completing step #1. There are many areas you could focus on, but here are some general topics to get you started: responsibility held, freedom created, impact on others, income made, started own business, moved into sales leadership or management, #1 performer, helped others to be a #1 performer.

3. Pick 3 sales goals. Take a look at your list and choose up to 3 goals that really stand out to you. Pay attention to the energy around each goal and find which ones really get you excited. Don’t get rid of the other goals, but just pick 3 to focus on, for now.

4. Break it down and make these 3 sales career goals very specific. What do you have to accomplish in the next month, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, and so on, to reach these goals? Plan it out step by step so you know exactly what needs to get done to accomplish your goals.

5. Action! Start with what you need to accomplish this next month and create specific action items or a to-do list for each week of the month. Ask yourself what can I do to accelerate these goals, and if I only get one very important thing accomplished each day this week, what would that be?

Follow this simple 5-step process and you will be taking positive steps towards your sales career goals and dreams.

About the Author:

Jeremy J. Ulmer is one of the most dynamic and requested sales coaching experts in the country. His company specializes in working with executive sales leadership, organizations, and individual sales performers to transform their sales results. They deliver customized sales coaching programs and sales management coaching seminars. Sign up for free sales tips and free sales coaching webinars at: http://www.SalesCoachingHabits.com/

It’s very exciting to win a job or sell a product. The sale signifies that the customer believes in you. It’s especially gratifying when the sale is associated with a new customer, because that broadens your client base. Making sales and having a broad base of customers is a good way to “keep the pipelines” filled with work and revenue, even in the face of marketplace perturbations.

One of the keys to keeping the pipelines filled and enjoying a prolonged “feast” is to think in terms of series when it comes to sales. Let me suggest that the most important job you have is to work towards the sales that are yet to be made, but are waiting there for you to simply “connect the dots.” In other words, always have a focus on upcoming opportunities, and create them with an eye towards serializing your efforts. Let me give you a couple of examples from my experience.

Writing and Selling a Book

An individual who wrote an Ebook was selling it on their website and had an aggressive sales campaign in the works. Part of the sales campaign caught my eye, and I ended up reviewing the book in anticipation of becoming involved in promoting and selling it. The book was in three distinct sections, each one addressed a relatively complex subject. The writing was satisfactory, there were lots of photos and graphics, and the price was right. But, there was much more information that could have been added to the first section of the book to make it comprehensive and worthwhile. It seemed clear to me that anyone who purchased the Ebook would be quite disappointed as the average reader would be looking for this missing information as a natural complement to what was already written.

From a series of sales perspective, the book could have been created in three standalone parts, thus allowing the author better focus when creating each section as a standalone book, and allowing customers to buy any one part in the series. Three books would have provided more opportunities to meet the needs of prospective customers, and a sale of any one of the books in the series could lead to follow-on sales in the series.

It’s possible that the book might sell hundreds of copies as-is, but each buyer will likely be sorely disappointed with the first section, and would never buy again from that author. My take on this is simply that the author was so fixated on making the first sale, that the potential for a series of sales wasn’t given adequate consideration. Updated editions, new Ebooks, seminars, training, paid subscriptions to a newsletter or website, and other related sales activities will never see the light of day because there likely won’t be any satisfied customers interested in anything else that might be offered in the series.

Professional Services

Years ago I hired a couple of competitor employees as part of my consulting team because I had an over-full pipeline of work. To facilitate “technology transfer” to my staff, and help ensure that projects got off to a good start, I made it a practice to always be with the project team when we started a job for a new customer. This also gave me an opportunity to get to know our customers and their needs through direct interactions.

While driving to our first meeting with a new customer, I went over some of the activities for the kick-off meeting, and mentioned three major activities that we needed to get involved in during our first few days on the job. My new employees were taken aback a bit and mentioned that some of the activities were out of scope. Indeed they were. After confirming our official scope of work, I reminded them  that we’re always looking for related work that we can propose as part of a series of tasks to help our client and keep our pipeline filled.

They looked at me a bit astonished, and remarked that we hadn’t even started the job, and yet I was already working on the next several scopes of work. I confirmed that they had assessed the situation correctly, and then inquired as to how they used to do it at their former company. It was just as I had suspected – they worked a job to completion and then went looking for more work. I suggested that the “feast or famine” rollercoaster of billable work at their previous employer was probably one of the reasons that company was their former employer.

Putting it All Together

Getting in the door with a new customer is difficult. Once you’re in place, it should be much easier to make additional sales simply because your talent is known, and you have greater insight as to what your customer might need. Make good use of that valuable information by planning your sales as a series of efforts that naturally follow or are otherwise related to one another.

When you think in terms of an entire series of sales related to a particular product or service, you’ll be better able to see the true value in your work. This will also help you decide how best to sequence your work, and create spin-off work that makes use of your previous efforts. All of this will help you identify more sales to keep filling the pipeline. When we think in terms of a series of sales, we’re making good use of our customer base, and we’re creating future sales based on proven performance and knowledge of what our customers might be interested in next.

About the Author:

Clair Schwan writes www.Sensible-Small-Business-Ideas.com to help encourage others to own and operate their own enterprise as a way of enhancing their success in the world of business. Regardless of how much you feel a part of your company as an employee, he knows that the only business you’ll really ever be part of is your own.

Too many salespeople view their buyers as anything but smart, especially those salespeople who deal with purchasing departments. In far too many sales communities, there exists an attitude that buyers and purchasing departments are nothing more than barriers that need to be broken down.

Well, yes there are barriers. Ironically, though, they are barriers that more often than not are there due to the very actions of the sales community. One simple thing salespeople need to keep in mind is the fact the professional buyer sees far more salespeople in the course of a week or month than most salespeople realize. Buyers have every reason to put up barriers, because the sales community in general can crank out some pretty pathetic salespeople.

How do I know this? Simple – buyers have told me (not just once, but often twice. And not just in one industry, but in several industries). As a consultant, I often have access to buyers in a way that most salespeople don’t. More importantly, the people I meet share with me insights they would never share with the sales community. The buying community is really quite smart. They do their job well. Stop and think for a moment about this question: If they didn’t do their job well, wouldn’t their company let them go, especially in today’s economy?

Buyers are smart . You should also know that they’ve seen every trick and every sales pitch known to mankind. I never cease to be amazed at how well many buyers can play back to me specific examples of sales techniques used by salespeople. What’s even better is that not only have they shared with me examples of what they’ve seen, but they also have shared how they have responded to these sales techniques.

I know it may be painful to hear, but you are not as smart as you think you are, and the new trendy sales approach you have learned probably isn’t as revolutionary as you believe it is. It more than likely isn’t going to equip you to blast through barriers the purchasing department has in place.

It’s for this very simple reason why I tell salespeople the number one thing you can do when dealing with professional buyers and purchasing departments is to be yourself and be positive. Your buyer will see right through you if you’re not being yourself. They’ll also see right through you if you’re putting on a front and not genuinely showing interest in their business and the concerns and needs they have.

If you’re not genuine, it will show. Sure, you might be able to pull off your trick for a one sales call or maybe even a couple, but your trick will be exposed. When it is, the consequences you’ll face will be severe. This is something to always keep in mind. Many times when a professional buyer decides to cut you off, they may not tell you right away – they may leave you hanging in the wind for days, weeks or even months. One reason they may choose to do this is to simply see how you’re going to respond or, more likely, to continue to gain information from you that they can then use to negotiate a better package with your competitor.

When a professional buyer does this, they’re doing their job. You may naively think they’re being stupid, because they’re not being more forthcoming with you. This is where the real stupidity starts to come out with the salesperson. Because the salesperson believes the buyer is not smart, they start to play bullying games back with the buyer. Such examples include trying to go around them or opening up other doors. The only thing this does if further alienate the salesperson from doing any business with the purchasing department, because the buyer with whom you first began working alerts the rest of the buying department about you and what you may potentially try to do.

All of this comes back to my original point: Buyers are smart and purchasing departments have a job to do and they do it well. They’ve seen the games that can be played and they know how to leverage such games to their advantage.

As a salesperson, you can thrive with buyers and purchasing departments if you follow these simple approaches: Be yourself, be professional, and be engaged in genuinely wanting to help the buyer and their company. If you can’t do these things, then you shouldn’t be selling. If you are not sure if you’re already doing these things, then I hate to tell you this, but you’re probably not.

Don’t walk around telling people you care about them and that you are so concerned about helping them. The salespeople who truly do care and are concerned let it come out in their actions day in and day out. Other people see it and do not need the salesperson to offer a verbal alert to it.

Do you think I’m way off base in these observations about the buying community? Don’t take my word for it. Ask your buyer. They will give you a straight answer – but only if you are being yourself, demonstrating trust, and genuinely caring for them and their business.

About the Author:

Mark Hunter, “The Sales Hunter,” is a sales expert who speaks to thousands each year on how to increase their sales profitability. For more information, to receive a free weekly email sales tip, or to read his Sales Motivation Blog, visit www.TheSalesHunter.com. You can also follow him on Twitter www.twitter.com/thesaleshunter, on Linkedin www.linkedin.com/in/markhunter and on his Facebook Fan Page, www.facebook.com/TheSalesHunter.