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Waiting is the Hardest Part

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By Brooke Green

What’s the hold-up?
Almost daily, I hear that one of the hardest aspects of selling is waiting for the prospect to catch up with you.  “Why do they take so long to make a decision? “ “They said they needed help.  I laid out my solution to fix their problem.  So what’s the hold up? “  Maybe this dilemma is a gift.

Discovery
Think about it.  Sometimes when we talk to prospects, we uncover problems that they didn’t realize they had; or, the problem is much bigger than what they had thought. Shortly thereafter, we work with them on how to solve that problem they didn’t realize they had – asking them to invest time, money, resources.

Then, when they can’t tell us immediately that we are the people they believe can help them fix this problem that is bigger or new to them, we get frustrated.

What is your intent?
We need to meet people where they are.  What does that mean?

A really good salesperson is really good at uncovering problems.  He/she also operates from a place of “how can I bring value to this situation?” not “how can I sell something?”  If your intent is to help, truly help, you’ll wait until the prospect can accept your help.

We’ve all been in the situation where we’ve pushed our solution on someone, and if they aren’t ready, it’s more painful for everybody than the original problem.

Sometimes it’s about the prospect believing that the problem is real, and then believing that you are the person that can help them solve it.  If you can help them get to that place (and be patient in the process), you become an invaluable resource, a trusted advisor.         

So remember, if it doesn’t happen on your time, it’s probably happening exactly the way it’s supposed to.

Sales Strategies For The New Breed of Seller…

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I love this business!!! Where else can you invite total strangers into your office and have an intelligent, inspiring conversation about sales problems and how to fix them? And have everyone leave with hope that one can change outcomes–by changing their thinking.

Well, we just did that in a recent series of seminars. We had more than 100 people take part in the program over four days. Although this is a marketing tool for us, we used it more as a training forum for best practices.

Consequently, I thought our blog readers would like to know what the biggest challenges were (according to the input of the group). And then a few thoughts on what we recommended.

1. How do I position our company (and it’s value) when my customer continues to see us as how we were, not how we are?

2. How do we differentiate our solution and stop being a commmodity?

3. How do we keep the sales process moving–avoid it getting stuck in corporate games?

4. How do I train my people–who sometimes don’t think about selling in the right way?

5. My buyers are more sophisticated, having access to information, prior to our sales team showing up.

Without getting into detail on each one, here is the bottom line (as I see it):

1. You can’t communicate value if you don’t know it and believe it. Most of the time sales people want to “jump to the words.” What do I say to help customers get our value? Perhaps that’s not the first question.

Instead the first question should be: “what is our value”? Or, “how does our solution solve a problem the customer has?” Or, “What are some trends that are causing my customer problems in my area of expertise?” Ask the right questions.

2. Bryan Neale brought up this–if you are constantly talking in sales meetings about “how we get the prospect to say yes,” then your intent is out of whack. Stop doing that. Exchange that worn out intent, with the intent of helping your customer solve a problem. Then, and only then, will you take control of the process.

One of our attendees said it best when he said, “It sounds like the only way to control the sales process is to give up control.” There’s a good student. Simple to talk about. Tough to do. But if you want to accomplish obscenely wonderful things in your business life, you have to change your perspective around intent.

3.  Our capacity to innovate has exceeded our ability to communicate. This kind of goes back to #1. How do we communicate the REAL value of what we do? We do it quite simply–by stating it in a way that allows the prospect to say (or feel), “that’s me.” If you communicate your value by pleading and convincing and persuading, is it surprising that no one’s saying “that’s me”?

A Brief Audio of The Program (20 minutes)
Here is a brief audio of the upfront portion of one of the workshops. It’s only 15 minutes (out of 2 hours) but wanted to at least give you a taste.

Download ExecSemBNBCAbridged.mp3

A Sales Tactic for the Complex Sale

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Just a short post to tell you something I heard yesterday that was actually quite profound.

I had a client tell me that he has come to realize that when you’re selling something that is a significant shift in thought for the prospect, you have to do much more work upfront in the pain finding and economic justification step. Why?

Because the customer knows there will be a  ‘high cost to changing’ methods. Therefore part of the proposal needs to address this shift and how the selling company can help the customer implement the solution.

Your Solution
Does your solution require a shift in how your customer thinks about things? Does the solution affect many people in your customer’s organization? If so, then think through your sales process upfront so that you aren’t getting ‘objections’ late in the sales process.

Comments?

Your Value Is All You Have

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(As sent out in our October New Rules Newsletter)

Your Value Is All You Have–How Competent Are You At Expressing It?

I was looking through some old training handouts …  and came across one called “How To Express Your Value.”

Although I don’t have space here to review the entire module, there was one part that I thought you’d like to hear about. It had to do with how you get hold of your true value to your clients. It seems that every sales organization has a tough time communicating their value. One exercise we do when we begin working with a company is to have each person “write out” their expression of the value they bring to clients.

We usually have as many different expressions as we have ‘people in the room.’ That’s no good. So, this exercise is designed to help you know ‘where to go to get clear about your value.’

PROSPECT TRENDS. What are the trends that your prospect faces in the running of their business (department)? Trends cause pain. And you fix pain. So it pays to know trends. These trends could be macro/industry trends or trends within their company.

PROSPECT PAINS. What kinds of pains/problems do you help people solve? Do you have a list of those? No? Shame on you. How can you be a problem solver if you don’t even have a menu of the kind of problems you fix? Start that list today.

PROSPECT POSSIBILITIES. Selling is emotional. What’s more emotional than dreams? How can you help–through your service/product–create future possibilities for your prospect? Don’t laugh so quickly. If you sell a solution, then you solve problems. And if you solve problems, you advance your client to a new future. Shouldn’t you know what that might be?

STORIES. Most sales teams overlook case studies and stories. You have a wealth of those stories inside your company. But they don’t get accessed. Make a point in the next week to talk to 10 people in your company about a project that went well, or a customer that became overjoyed at your solution. That becomes a story you can tell as you talk about your value. 

PICTOGRAPHS. Those who are in our training get tired of this story, but I’ll tell it anyway (in case you forgot). I read a book once called The McKinsey Way (about McKinsey Consulting). In it, they revealed that when you first get to McKinsey, you are responsible for creating a graph/ picture/ drawing every day on something you worked on. You might say that’s absurd, but they understood something you should understand. That we are all VISUAL people. And pictures do represent thousands of words.  So if you can reduce your stories, examples and value to pictures, you’ll be helping your prospect “GET” your value at a deeper level.

Hope that’s not too much for today.

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Other Resources:

Advanced Selling Podcast: Thanks to your referrals, we’re up to over 7800 world-wide podcast subscribers.

Caskey Blog: We post when we see fit (and have time). Usually the topics come from training we have just done.

Same Game New Rules–E-Video Course (Free). Sign up for our 5 part course on the book, Same Game New Rules.

Regards
Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale

Blog Authors

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We love to hear from our readers. If you’d like to contact our authors privately to suggest story ideas or critique their writing, here is their information:

Bill Caskey: mailto:[email protected]

Bill is a sales development leader and experimenter. His ideas about selling are convictions about life, money and meaning. He has coached sales professionals and executives for over 20 years. And his philosophies and strategies have fueled explosive growth in sales and profits for clients.  Click here to learn more about Bill Caskey.

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Professional Services Sell, Too…

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“Oh, Bill, we don’t sell at our accounting firm. We prefer to wait until the phone rings with referrals. Besides, selling is so unprofessional.”

Believe it or not, I actually heard that once–from a CPA. Can you feel the fear in his voice?

Absurd I know, but talk to some young attorneys or accountants today–or anyone who sells professional services–and rarely will they say they’re prepared for selling. It was never taught in grad school–so it must not be important.

In fact the way they get around it is they call it “marketing.” Well, let’s set the record straight. Selling is the discipline of communicating your value (solutions) to a potential client with the intent of determining if they have a need for it.

If you’re a professional services deliverer (technical / subject matter expert) you sell, every day.

Whether it’s talking to new prospects, getting referred by your current clients, uncovering problems your clients have, or getting a fee increase, you are selling.

In my work with services firms, the first thing they must do — and the only point of this message –is reframe the discipline of selling. Right now, you must start thinking of selling as the “finding and solving of problems.”

Once you do that, you will be set free.

You won’t have to convince, persuade or defend your price. You’ll be liberated to go find problems. If you show up and the prospect loves his current lawyer (insert “supplier of your product” here), has no problems now or doesn’t anticipate problems, then he is not a prospect. And you can leave. Don’t stick around and tell him how great you are and how smart you are (we know you are).

I’ll go even one better than that—become effective at articulating that position to your client. Say to him, “I have no idea if I do anything that could be of service to you, but here’s the kind of people we work with–with these issues–do you fit?” It may not be quite that straight, but it’s pretty close.

If you really believe you help your clients solve problems, then you are obligated to ask for referrals.

If you don’t, you’ll leave a lot of people on the sidelines, unable to take advantage of your value. You’ll leave them laying in the muck of their own pain.

So you see, it’s time to ask for referrals and go find problems. Stop selling and convincing and start solving. You’ll get paid a lot more for that anyway.

What Do You Need To Be Good At?

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What do you really need to be good at to earn more income in selling? After many hundreds of hours of reflecting, I’ve come up with “7 Core Competencies of the High Performing Sales Team.”  I’ve even attached it to this post.

How to Use It                                                                                                 If you’re a sales manager, there is a page near the front that you can use to assess your people. If you’re a sales executive, read through the detailed descriptions of each of the areas and assess yourself–honestly.

Download CoreCompetencies.pdf (12 ppg)

Integrity Demands Integrity

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You get what you tolerate. Agree. But how can you limit what you tolerate from others? You can tolerate nothing but high integrity and high intent from yourself. Here’s how it works: You go see a prospect hoping to sell something. You are behind this quarter and need the sale.

He begins his ‘lying dance’ which results in you reluctantly agreeing to quote him on your solution. You want to get out of the ‘game’ but you can’t. Why? Because you are operating out of :low integrity: which is why you can’t expect anything more from him. We can only get what we give. You had an intent going into the call that was about “selling him something to meet quota.” How high is that intent?

That’s why when the sales people I coach come to me and say their customer is lying to them, I always say “Why did you force him to lie to you?” You force the behavior you get. Later we’ll talk about how to adopt the “high intent” mentality.