Sales Training

I can almost hear it now “Yeh, yeh, yeh – I’ve done loads of sales training courses, they’re all crap and you can’t teach me anythingnow, that may or may not be true about you – but one thing is for sure, if you could increase sales in an ethical way that was enjoyable for both parties and that created a win/win situation would that be beneficial for you and your customers?

Yes? I thought so..

You see sales has a bad vibe attached to it, but to me it is simply the partnering of ‘people with a problem’ (the customer) and ‘people with a solution’ (you) and if this partnering is done in the right way, both people win – you make money and the customer solves their problem.

So I don’t like to look upon myself as a sales person, I view myself as a person that allows people to want to buy from me, in their own time, in their own way and when it is right for them – doing this means I never have to sell anything at all – people just buy.

Do you want to never have to sell again and allow people to just buy?

So, how do we do this?

  1. Get your ‘pre-sales’ marketing BANG ON THE MONEY. Understand what problem your customers are trying to solve – this is a really key point. If you are a butcher, your customers are NOT buying just meat, they are buying comfort, enjoyment, a great time with friends. All these reasons for buying have attendant emotions and your marketing needs to tap in to these emotions. Be VERY clear about who you DO want and customers and who you DON’T want – be confident to get rid of the people you don’t want – they sap your time, money and energy and leave you less able to dedicate time to the people to do want!
  2. Get in to Rapport. Match and mirror their body language SUBTLY. This will ensure you are in tune with one another. Repeat this process until you are leading the conversation i.e. if you scratch you nose then the other person will mirror with a similar involuntary movement if you are in rapport.
  3. At the first contact, listen to their preferred language patterns. Are they motivated by ‘towards’ pleasure or ‘away from’ pain? Then reflect this back to them. Are they buying out of ‘necessity’ or ‘possibility’ of what you can do for them? Then reflect this back to them. Using your clients language will show that you care and understand their problem.
  4. Ask them “When you’ve previously made a decision to buy a product like this how did you know it was the right one” This will tell you their convincer strategy i.e. do they need to be told a number of time to be convinced, a length of time, are they never convinced or are they automatic convincers. Store this information for step 7.
  5. Talk about benefits. Classic sales stuff here, but this time embedded within a highly effective structure. We are now talking benefits but have gained rapport, know the problem the client is trying to solve and we are speaking their language.
  6. When talking about price be congruent. This means, leaning forward, with eye contact and speaking with a confident tonality. If you do the opposite it will give the impression you are not confident on price.
  7. If the client want to think about it, let them. OK, so you’ve been told to get the signature at this point in all other sales training, well not this time. You now need to get your data from step 4. If they are a number of times convincer then follow up a number of times after the meeting, if they are a length if time convincer then follow up after the elicited length of time. If they are an automatic convincer you won’t get to this point as they will have bought already!
  8. Follow up in the correct manner for the client. Do this using a robust procedure that takes in to account the value of the purchase so you can calculate sales funnel value.

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