Most sales people know that they need to develop a relationship with their clients. If they don’t know this in today’s society and business climate, then they are probably living in a coal mine in Tibet. However, what they may have difficulty with is knowing what to do to develop that relationship and how to do it. Sales training and a sales process are the keys to knowing the “how”.
The “what” to do is addressed by a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) strategy combined with CRM technology. This strategy and technology combination helps sales reps with knowing what they need to do next in order to move the relationship forward. For instance, given the right contacts at an account, they may need to establish a meeting with the decision maker, schedule a demonstration, and develop a proposal. However, these are just the mechanics of a sales process – the “what” to do for each step of the way.
While the mechanics are critical to the sales process, what they don’t address is the “how”. How do sales reps reach the decision makers to set up a meeting? How do they develop the best solutions-based proposal? How do they demonstrate the product in a fashion that reveals the best solutions to the prospect’s problems? The way to build a relationship with a client is to learn the “how” of selling, which is obtained through sales training. Sales training comes in many shapes and forms, but the best ones are those that follow a process. Each step of the process moves the relationship one step closer to a win-win solution and encapsulates the selling skills necessary within each step.
A basic flaw in many sales rep’s style is to try to solve the client’s problems by educating them with a product pitch. Customers, especially decision makers, are not interested in the technical details. What they need to understand is how your solution will fix their problems and remove their pains. What often happens is that sales reps tend to make these product pitches to lower-level employees who are not the decision makers. Obviously, this wastes everyone’s time. What needs to be done instead is to focus more on asking the right questions, listening carefully to what the client is saying (and implying), developing the right solution using your products or services, and presenting those solutions as they directly relate to the client’s problems, all done with the right decision maker.
Each of these steps, and more, are learned processes and skills. The saying, “Good sales people are born, not made” is false. Selling is a science, not an art. With proper sales training and a solid sales process, nearly anyone can become a successful sales professional. So what does a good process look like and what are the skills needed for each step?
Let’s look at one in particular, the PEAK Sales Process. PEAK is an acronym, which stands for: Prospect, Engage, Acquire, and Keep. This pyramid diagram below depicts the steps in the PEAK Sales Process where each step builds upon the prior.
Step one, Prospect, is where the initial contact is made which involves cold calling in order to find a candidate client. At this point, this is really just a raw lead rather than a qualified prospect. Here, the training would involve how to make cold calls, your attitude, the first impression you make, and the approach you make during the first phone call or meeting. Once you’ve prospected and found a candidate, you need to Engage them in the process of the sale. This training involves learning how to qualify what is now considered to be a suspect by asking the right questions and listening carefully to their responses. Listening skills are paramount at this stage since the next steps in the process are based on what information is discovered in this engagement stage.
The goal of the engagement stage is to understand the client’s problems and requirements in order to match the right solution to their needs. As a result of good questioning and listening, the sales rep will not only understand this critical information, but they will also ensure that the suspect is fully qualified. To be qualified, the client must have a budget, have the authority to make the decision or at least introduce you to the decision maker(s), have requirements for which you have good solutions, and be able to make a decision and purchase within a reasonable timeframe.
Once qualified, the next stage is where you Acquire them as a new client. This involves moving them from being a suspect to a prospect. In the acquisition stage, the sales rep presents and proposes their solution, negotiates with the client, handles objections, and closes the sale. If the prior stages were handled correctly, then this stage becomes much easier since the client’s needs are fully understood, they basically told the sales rep what they need, the sales rep’s trust and credibility should already be established, and the close becomes a natural progression of the process, as opposed to the typical “dreaded event” that most sales reps fear and loath. Hence, the goal of the acquisition stage is to get the prospect to become a customer.
The final stage is where we Keep the customer. This is where they become a full-fledged customer and when the relationship is most important. Unfortunately, many companies do not have a customer retention strategy and lose the long-term relationship, and hence any forthcoming business potential. An on-going relationship after the sale is critical to your future business and viability. There are several steps and skills necessary to ensure this relationship continues and to make sure your customer becomes, and remains, loyal to your business.
Having a clearly defined sales process with specific skill sets for each stage will ensure that your sales reps will replicate their successes and become more consistent and effective. Regrettably, many sales reps are not trained or experienced with these skills, nor do they perform them in the right order because there is no process. They ask the prospect questions when they should be closing or they try to close when they should be qualifying or they do a myriad of other actions at the wrong stage of the sales cycle. Performing the right actions at the right stages of the process is the key to successful selling.
With proper sales training and a first-rate sales process, your sales team will not only learn the appropriate skills but also when and where to apply them to become more successful. Thus, they will learn “How” to sell better. Combine this with “What” to do by developing a CRM strategy and using CRM technology, and you’ll have an unbeatable, world-class sales team.
Russ Lombardo is President of PEAK Sales Consulting, LLC and an experienced CRM and Sales consultant, trainer, writer, speaker and radio show host. Russ works with businesses to help improve their customer acquisition and retention for increased revenue and success. Russ is author of the books, “CyberSelling”, “CRM For The Common Man” and “Smart Marketing”. He can be reached at 702-655-5652 and emailed at russ@peaksalesconsulting.com.
Category: Sales & Marketing
Using Your (small) Size as a Competitive Advantage
Are you ever frustrated or hesitant when you talk to prospective customers because you can’t readily explain why they should come to you rather than go to your competitors? Sure, you might have your 30-second elevator speech, but then they ask you that dreaded question, “So what makes you different?” Then, all those self-doubts creep in, and you just aren’t sure what to say. Differentiation can boost confidence–yours in yourself and that prospective customer’s confidence in you!
Dif-fer-en-ti-ate v. tr. To perceive or show the difference in or between; discriminate.
In business terms, to differentiate means to create a benefit that customers perceive as being of greater value to them than what they can get elsewhere. It’s not enough for you to be different–a potential customer has to take note of the difference and must feel that the difference somehow fits their need better. (Other words that mean virtually the same thing: Competitive Advantage; Unique Selling Proposition; or Value Proposition.)
As you are building your business, you can use differentiation to attract more customers. Once you have momentum, differentiation allows you to charge a higher price because you are delivering more value to your customers. Make a point to evaluate and adjust your differentiation methods at least annually.
The various methods of differentiating your businesses fall into four general categories:
Price Differentiation
Focus Differentiation
Product/Service Differentiation
Customer Service Differentiation
Price Differentiation
Differentiating on price is probably the most common and easily understood method. HOWEVER, for Solo Entrepreneurs, caution is in order. On the one hand, potential customers might expect a lower price from you than from your larger competition because they perceive you as having less overhead, etc. On the other hand, cheaper prices can evoke perceptions of lower quality, a less-stable business, etc. And if you compete on price against competitors with deeper pockets, you can price yourself right into bankruptcy. Be creative with this differentiator by competing on something other than straight price. For example, you might offer:
- More value–offer more products or services for the same price.
- Freebies –accessories, companion products, free upgrades, and coupons for future purchases.
- Free shipping, etc.–convenience sells, especially when it is free!
- Discounts–includes offering regular sales, coupons, etc. (see cautions above)
Focus Differentiation
For Solo Entrepreneurs, this is the most important method of differentiation, and in many ways, the easiest. Why? Because as a Solo Entrepreneur, you simply can’t be everything to everybody, so you must pick a specific way to focus your business. Once you have done that, you have an automatic advantage over larger companies because you can become more of an expert in that one field –and you can build close relationships with key customers that will be hard to duplicate. For example, you might differentiate yourself through:
- Location–take advantage your closeness to prospective customers.
- Customer specialization–be very specific about what characteristics your customers will have – for example, racing bicycle enthusiasts or companies with a spiritual conscience.
- Customer relationships–know customers really well, form partnerships with them, and get them to speak for you!
- Affinity relationships–associate your product/service with a well-known person or organization.
- One-stop shopping–offer everything your target market needs, in your area of expertise.
- Wide selection (within your niche) – although this one may seem to be the opposite of focus–the key is to be very specific in one dimension and very broad in another.
Product/Service Offering Differentiation
How much you are able to differentiate your product or service offering will vary based on what type of business you are in. For instance, if you are in a highly regulated business, your options may be limited. Explore a totally new market or type of product or service, however, and the possibilities abound. The key to successful differentiation in this category, again, is to know your customers, really, really well. Talk to them often, and you will know what they need most and be able to offer it, long before your competitors know what is happening. For example, your product or service could stand out in one of these ways:
- Quality–create a product or service that is exceptional in one or more ways.
- Lasts longer
- Better features
- Easier to use
- Safer
- New/First–be the first one to offer something in your location/field.
- Features/Options–offer lots of choices, unusual combinations, or solve a problem for a customer in a way no one else does.
- Customization–as a Solo Entrepreneur, you may be able to more easily handle special orders than big, mass-market competitors.
Customer Service Differentiation
Have you noticed how customer service seems to be out of vogue these days? This situation makes excellent customer service a great opportunity for differentiation and another natural advantage for Solo Entrepreneurs that already know what’s important to their customers. Build your reputation on making customers feel really good about doing business with you. Works great with referral marketing, too. Examples:
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Deliver Fast–next day, or one-hour–make it faster than customers think possible.
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Unique channel–offer a service over the phone or Internet instead of in person or in their office rather than yours.
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Service-delight customers!–it may seem expensive to offer exceptional service–but it pays off in word-of-mouth advertising.
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Before/during/after-sales support–provide technical or other support to customers using your product. You might use joint ventures to provide that support–but customers will perceive it as being from you!
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Guarantee/warranty–offer 100% money-back, or free replacement parts.
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YOU–offer yourself, your unique blend of talents and skills, to attract customers. Make sure they get access to you, too!
Keys to Successful Differentiation:
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Know your customers, really, really well.
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Pick a blend of differentiation methods that, in the eyes of your customers, truly sets you apart.
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Talk about your differentiation in terms of customer benefits.
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Tell everyone about what differentiates you–often.
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Keep your differentiation fresh by listening for changing customer needs.
Categories
Educate Your Customers
AllBusiness.com: I remember as a young college kid (yeah, I’m old enough to say that now), I worked in a ski and patio furniture store (it was the Midwest so skiing in the winter, patio furniture in the summer). What I learned quickly in selling the goods was that most people had no working knowledge of skiing or patio furniture and it came down to a price game with our competitors.
So I educated them first and foremost about patio furniture. I explained why an aluminum frame was better, how powder coating lasted longer than any other finish, and why the manufacturer felt comfortable offering a five year warranty.
So customers weren’t given the hard sell, but an education. And that invariably turned into customers checking out the competition and then almost always coming back to us to buy (even if another store was selling the same thing). Here are a few ways you can better educate your customers.
Touch each customer while they’re in your store – spend a little time explaining why a certain product or brand is unique or better than everything else that’s out there (or teach about the entire category (biking, skiing, patio furniture, etc.)).
Host a special event – It doesn’t have to be sales-oriented. Create educational events and the sales will follow.
Use your database and email – I’m a big proponent of emails that aren’t about selling something, but about educating someone. What’s relevant to your customer base? Speak to that and include the selling part as a mention at the end. For instance, you may want to educate your customers about sunscreen and the importance of wearing it. And then at the end just add, “here are three products we recommend.”
Educate Your Customers to Increase Sales [AllBusiness.com]
Categories
Tell Them About Quality
Small Business Buzz: The number one rule for advertising quality in your product or service is to not use the word “quality.” Because this word is overused by the general business public, consumers ignore it. In fact, using the word “quality” can often invoke suspicion, much like when a business uses the phrase “you can trust me.”
Here are some tips for effectively conveying quality to potential customers:
Alternative Descriptions
The word “quality” in general is a limiting term, despite the negative connotations that it’s overuse has produced. It’s hard to do (I just caught myself using the term in my own advertising for my photography services), but instead you should go with alternatives like these:
premium, unparalleled, superior, impeccable, exceptional, unmatched, excellence, distinguished
Also, keep in mind that, the more expensive your product/service, the more sophisticated your “quality” word should be.
Speaking of Price. . .
Accept the fact that, if your product or service is truly of the best quality, then it won’t be the cheapest on the market. It takes money to provide a worthwhile product, which means that you will have to charge your customers a bit more. But, if you do things right, your customers will understand that they are getting what they pay for. So be careful. Saying that your product is “inexpensive” or cheap implies poor quality to the consumer. You cannot use the two concepts together. Instead, try words like “affordable” or “reasonable.”
Advertising Quality in Your Product [Small Business Buzz]
Categories
Fighting the Saw-Tooth Effect
Is this a familiar scenario? You’re this close to landing the biggest deal you ever encountered. The solution you are pitching is nearly one hundred thousand dollars and will keep you busy the better part of the long Winter months ahead and possibly into the Spring. You planned about 4 months worth of consulting and are eager to begin. Now, at the final meeting with your client, you are about to get the sweet answer you’ve been working hard to get for months. There’s not much else that compares to the excitement of getting a signature on a huge deal you’ve been working on for what seems like forever. But here you are, actually watching the client sign your order.
You’re set. You go out and celebrate that night with your spouse and talk about how much you deserved this and what it meant to your income and, of course, your business. The long hours. The pressure. The sacrifices. But now that’s all over and you got what you deserved. A huge contract that will yield a lot of consulting dollars for your relatively small operation.
The next day you order the products or materials from your vendor. It arrives in a couple days and having already set up the first meeting with your client, you set out with everything you need to begin work. The first few weeks would include discussions and interviews for the discovery analysis. Then the planning phase. And finally the customizations, implementation, training, and roll out. The plan is perfect and you are the right man, or woman, for the job.
Reality Hits
Did you ever wake up out of a dream and have no idea where you are or how you got there? Well, that’s how you feel months later when you realize that your project is coming to a close. It is a great success. Your client loves you. The users are getting on board with the project and are very enthusiastic. The program works like a charm. Everything is coming together. Except for one thing — Your Business! You suddenly realize as you finalize this long-term project that your business is totally stagnating, and you have no idea how you got to that point.
As if you were a prisoner being paroled after a 20 year sentence and seeing how society has totally changed in your absence, you emerge to find that you have absolutely no opportunities lined up to pursue. Worse than that, your vendors thought you went out of business. You lost all your status as a premier reseller or buyer, which means you lost all the privileges from your vendor’s reseller program; such as leads, special promotions, co-op dollars, attention from their local field representatives, and most important, a higher discount rate that is based on volume sales. You also shot yourself in the foot by not generating any leads yourself through marketing activities you could have been doing over the past several months. So your pipeline is dry, no one in the area knows of your business any more, and you are back to ground zero.
Has this ever happened to you? If it hasn’t it could. In this example, months ago you thought you were such a huge success, pulling in a large deal involving huge revenue for your business. How were you to know that at the same time you were destroying the very business you were trying to build?
What To Do?
If this, or something less dramatic yet similar, has ever happened to you, then you could be experiencing the Saw-Tooth Effect. What’s the Saw-Tooth Effect? It’s all very simple to understand. But not many businesses realize it until it is too late. Here’s how it works. Draw a horizontal line. Above the line are marketing and sales related activities. Below the line are technical and implementation related activities. In the beginning of your sales cycle you spend all your time above the line marketing your business, generating leads, and closing a sale. Then you “disappear” for a finite amount of time below the line implementing the solution you just sold. When that job is completed, you go back to the above-the-line activities and start all over again. This up-and-down process repeats itself until something breaks – usually your business.
While below the line, you do nothing above the line. And, when above the line, you do nothing below the line. Pretty simple and quite binary – you do one or the other. But the problem is, when you’re below the line, no one is above the line generating business and finding your next opportunity for when you rise above the line again, or re-emerge from your project implementation.
Recommendation
This scenario is a classic example of what happens to smaller businesses who haven’t staffed up properly. To resolve this self-defeating situation you, as the business owner, may need to do a lot of soul searching to decide what it is you are really good at versus what you really like to do. You may realize that you really enjoy selling solutions and would benefit most by concentrating all your energies on the sales and marketing activities (above the line) that your company will need to do to succeed.
Let’s say that is the case and you decide to focus on sales and marketing. You’ll then need to hire staff to do all the technical work. Now, you shouldn’t go overboard and hire more people than you could initially put to work. Let’s say you remember how important it was to do the up-front planning and discovery analysis, not to mention the on-going project management. So you first hire a project manager who is experienced with doing the planning phase. Next, you hire a technician who would concentrate on implementations. Your project manager, or even you, would do the training initially until you have enough business to sustain a full-time trainer. But first things first.
Your plan will be to spend your time marketing, selling, and running your business, all above-the-line activities, while your technical people spend all their time below the line. While they are doing the implementations, you’ll be generating new business for them to implement. You will build and feed your “Pipeline”.
You have to go out and catch the lion. Then you bring it back and throw it into the tent where someone else skins the lion while you go back out and catch the next one. The question is – Do you want to “catch” the lion or “skin” the lion?” This will, and should, have a dramatic effect on your business; specifically its growth and success. In time, as your business continues to grow you can start hiring sales people, which will allow you to focus more on running your business, or even taking some well-deserved time off.
Summary
You have undoubtedly looked at a saw and noticed how the teeth go up and down and up and down and so forth. But, have you ever noticed a similarity in how your business might be following the same pattern? Sales go up for a while, then down, then up again and down again, repeatedly. If you haven’t noticed, you might want to take a closer look.
One telltale sign that you suffer from the Saw Tooth Effect is your purchasing patterns. Do you purchase a lot of products or material every other quarter, for instance? Or, is there some sort of pattern that has you purchasing something now, then nothing for a while, then something again, then nothing for a while, and so on? These are signs that you might be going through a specific mode of operation of buying product, implementing it, then buying more, and implementing it, over and over again, instead of having a consistent and perpetual flow of selling and implementing on a continual, parallel, and steady basis. You cannot do both selling and implementing. You never see a NASCAR driver get out and change his own tires, do you? If he did, he’d lose the race every time. You need a team of specialists who focus on their own aspect of the business.
The Saw Tooth Effect is not a healthy business model for your company since it doesn’t allow you to sustain a consistent revenue flow. The scenario discussed earlier was perhaps an exaggeration of what is happening in your business, although I have seen this happen to various sizes of business. Even if it reflects only partial reality, it is something to be concerned about. It’s all a matter of balancing resources. Some resources should be dedicated to marketing and selling, while others should focus on installing and implementing. Using the same resources to do both can cause the Saw Tooth Effect and result in inconsistent revenue and growth for your business, which can lead to a variety of negative effects including poor customer retention and harmful relationships with your vendors, not to mention your accountant.
As you plan your business’ future, be sure to take into account the Saw Tooth Effect and how you can avoid it. It will truly liberate you from the prison of inconsistent business growth.
Good luck and good selling!
Russ Lombardo is President of PEAK Sales Consulting, LLC and an experienced CRM and Sales consultant, trainer, writer, speaker and radio show host. Russ works with businesses to help improve their customer acquisition and retention for increased revenue and success. Russ is author of the books, “CyberSelling”, “CRM For The Common Man” and “Smart Marketing”. He can be reached at 702-655-5652 and emailed at russ@peaksalesconsulting.com.