What Is This Thing We Call Selling?

In a meeting last week with a group of business executives, we discussed the definition of sales. It was very interesting to hear their perspectives and to help them realize the true meaning of selling. I later shared this definition of selling with a new student of mine who is committed to learning the principles and skills of salesmanship. Simply stated, “selling is helping the prospect understand their true needs and then helping them achieve those needs.” The actual process is more complicated and detailed, but the meaning is basic and simple. Selling is not about what the salesperson wants for him or her self. It is not about what your company wants. It is one hundred percent about discovering what is best for the prospective customer and then working to help them achieve it.

Along the way, you want to make a profit for your employer. After all, the only reason a company is in business is to generate a profit. Without a profit, companies cease to exist. It is the process of creating profitable sales that allow companies to provide a wide variety of employment opportunities. Production, distribution, finance, management, marketing, legal counsel, human resources, customer service, sales, and many other positions exist because companies generate a profit from the sale of their products and services. The responsibilities of selling do not fall only on the shoulders of salespeople. Every employee within a company should consider themselves a salesperson because every word, act or deed becomes part of the process of persuading the prospective customer to engage your company to discern and satisfy their needs.

In order to be successful at selling, your must focus on what the customer needs and not what you want, even though helping the customer will allow you to achieve what you want. The focus of selling must be on the customer. The customer doesn’t care what you want. The customer is not concerned in the least about your company. They are only interested in one thing: solving their needs. Let me tell you about a sales experience I had the other day. This experience reconfirmed the need for sales training and the commitment I made eleven years ago to improving the financial performance of my client companies, one salesperson at a time.

After several phone contacts from a salesperson representing a company that I was familiar with, I finally conceded to meet with him. The salesperson was enthusiastic and persistent so I decided to spend a few minutes with him. Because of my busy schedule, we established a broad time frame in which I would stop by his office. When I arrived, I was greeted by staff members and then introduced to the salesperson. I received a welcoming handshake, but was not called by name. As we sat down at the conference table, the salesperson immediately pulled out a product-pricing sheet, handed it to me and began talking about the services his company had to offer. He went into great detail describing exactly what was offered in each package and made a recommendation as to which package he thought would be best for me. I could tell that he was very focused on selling me one of his service packages and he wasn’t going to let the pressure off until I committed to his desires.

Let’s step back for a minute and evaluate this situation. He didn’t call me by name, or spend one second to build even the slightest amount of rapport with me. I asked him a few questions but he never showed any personal interest in me. Further, the only question he asked about my company was the number of employees I had. That was it! It was very obvious from his presentation that he knew nothing about my business, my needs, customers, or objectives. He was only focused on telling me about his product and why I should buy it. I felt like I was in a doctor’s office being told to take a prescription and to report to the hospital for surgery without once being examined to determine my illness. There was no introduction to company or self. There was no building of rapport or common interests. There was no diagnosis of my needs. There was no understanding of my business and customers. There was no resolution of concerns or objections. There was, however, disappointment that I didn’t buy after several attempts of telling me why I needed his product. He gave me his card, accompanied with the promise that he would be in touch.

Selling is a process focused on the needs of the prospective customer. In a very simple and abbreviated fashion this is what should have happened:

1. Greet the prospect with a warm smile a firm handshake and call him by name. 

2. Spend a few minutes to build rapport and demonstrate genuine interest in the prospect. 

3. Ask questions that will allow you to diagnose the needs, wants and desires of the prospect. Focus on what is important to them. 

4. Present your product or service as a solution to their specific needs. If your product is not the right solution, make a recommendation for a better solution and then pack up and leave. 

5. If your product or service meets their need, resolve any concerns they may have. 

6. If the prospect has not already asked you, ask for the business. 

7. If the prospect is not ready to purchase, set the agenda and discuss the next steps. 

8. Romance the sales and help the prospect feel comfortable with the solution you have mutually discussed. Build value and close the sale if appropriate.

Remember, people buy from people they believe, like and trust. One of the best ways of building that type of relationship is to understand their needs and to help them meet those needs. And finally, telling isn’t selling. People don’t want to be sold, they want to buy and they will buy from you when you discover their needs and provide a solution to those needs. You won’t make every sale, no one does, but you will make far more sales by following the steps of this sales process than any other way.

Selling Is A Process

Just as making a cake requires following a recipe to get the perfect result, selling successfully also requires that you follow a recipe or a process. The process dictates what needs to be done while at the same time determines the result. Several years ago when I lived in Ohio, our neighborhood decided to have a summer street party. Games were planned for the children and activities were organized for the adults. The food committee had previously circulated a recipe for lasagna to those neighbors who had volunteered to make the main dish. The recipe had been written with exactness with the expectation that ten people could make the same main course without variation. That was a real eye opener. The food was delicious, but did not resemble coming from a common recipe. It looked different and tasted different. We had ten different lasagna dishes all from the same recipe. The recipe was not followed with exactness and order.

Why would I recite this incident relating to selling and its process? Too often salespeople look at their efforts and activity as isolated events with no common thread. They are reinventing the sales process with each new sales opportunity. These salespeople start all over again with the closing of each new sale. They don’t know how to follow a pattern of success based on each proceeding sales situation. The secret to achieving more profitable sales is to develop a sales process and repeat it each time. Experiment with it and fine-tune the process until you achieve the exact result you are seeking. Then, by following the process with each new sales opportunity, you will be maximizing the result and those results will become highly predictable. Here is a list of activities that should become part of your sales process, your recipe for sales success.

1. Plan and schedule your time and activities every day. Begin by making a list of those things that must be done today. Then determine other activities that should be done. Once you have made the list, schedule a time to do each activity.

2. Prospect every day. Look for new sales opportunities in every situation. You will find them with current customers, past customers, past prospects, current prospects, leads, referrals, introductions, etc. Sales opportunities are all around you if you will just pay attention. Set a goal for the number of new prospects you will find each day.

3. Meet with prospects every day. The key to being successful at selling is centered on “see the people.” If you were to meet with and tell four or five people each day about your products and services, you couldn’t help but be successful.

4. Follow-up with your prospects every day. The number one cause for poor sales results is lack of follow-up! When you plan and schedule your day, plan and schedule who you will follow-up with that day.

5. Identify which prospects you can close each day. You may not close a sale every day, but you will at least be aware of each of your prospects and be planning when the sale will be completed.

6. Ask for and receive no less than one new referral each day. Receiving referrals is the difference between average and excellent salespeople. Make the process of asking for referrals part of your daily sales process without fail. If you knew that for every two referrals you asked for and received that you would close one sale, how many referrals would you ask for each day?

7. Review your sales process and activity every day. Know where you stand and what is needed to get to where you want to be. Estimate your success for the day and week and month. Work towards the achievement of your goals and get excited about your success.

8. Review the status of every prospect every day. Even if you won’t be doing anything with a particular prospect every day, review their status and make sure you have a detailed plan for turning each prospect into a customer.

Selling doesn’t just happen because you are a salesperson. The act of selling is a process of doing the right activities in the right order at the right time. Closing a sale is the result of following a process even if you are unaware that the events followed a process. As you follow the recipe for sales success you will achieve success; more success than you ever imagined.

How To Make This Year Your Best Sales Year Ever

Ever salesperson has made the silent declaration that this year will be the best sales year ever. You hope and you wish and you think about it and talk about it, you might even think about it a little bit more. You have a great day one day and the next day turns into a disaster. After a few weeks you can’t possibly believe that anything will be different, so you consul yourself by believing that your past results are about as good as anyone could expect–considering the circumstances, whatever they may be. You have rationalized (rational lies) your results instead of truly calculating what efforts are necessary to achieve your goal.

Let me share with you my approach to making this year the best sales year ever. There are several steps that must be followed to turn your dream into a reality. You have already tried your approach with less than satisfactory results, so open you mind to a different method. Here are the steps:

1. Review your historical sales by month and by customer. Come to an understanding of what you have done and what it took to achieve those results.

2. Based on your prior sales results, set a goal that could be achieved this year if you were able to reach the average of the top six sales months of the past year, each month of this New Year. You have achieved those results six times in the past, so you ought to be able to do it again.

3. Evaluate the lowest performing six months of the past year. How much more would you have needed to sell to raise those results to the average of the best six months of last year? Is it humanly possible to achieve that kind of an increase? Would it have taken just one more sale, or two or even three?

4. Take a few minutes and evaluate the amount of effort you put into your sales last year. Did you prospect effectively? Were you asking for referrals and introductions to prospective buyers? Did you assess the needs of the prospects as well as you know how? Was your focus on solving the prospect’s needs? Did you follow-up effectively? Did you resolve all of the prospect’s concerns? Think about your sales process and how well you performed each step of the process. If you believe that you could have done better, then determine by way of a percentage, how much better you could have performed.

5. Make an honest evaluation of the amount of time you spent last year focused on selling and following your sales process. National statistics reveal that the average salesperson spends only about 4-5 hours each day working their sales process. The rest of the time they are busy, but not selling. Could you spend more time this year actually selling than you did last year?

6. What did you sell last year? Do your have products or services that could have been sold but you didn’t focus on them? Did you sell the easy items, the low priced items; those things you felt most comfortable selling? Sometimes it doesn’t take any more time to sell multiple items than single items. As an example, if you are focused on selling parts, maybe you could also offer service.

7. Evaluate your historical balance between finding new customers and servicing existing customers. Are you spending too little or too much time with either group? Remember, you lose existing customers if you don’t spend time with them and you will soon wonder where all your sales have gone if you don’t develop new customers. Are you getting all the business possible with your existing customers? How much more business could you discover if you just spent the time and asked the right questions.

8. Top salespeople are not born that way. Selling is not a genetic trait. Like most other professions, the skills and knowledge are learned. “Get your self some learning.” Read books, listen to CD’s, enroll in sales training programs and improve your skills. A Doctor will study and train for ten to twelve years and then spend an average of ten hours each week learning new techniques just to stay current with their profession. Attorney’s, Accountants, Professors, Engineers and every other professional person spend years in college to qualify themselves in their profession. How much training and education do you have to qualify you for a career in sales? Let me say it again–educate your self in the field of selling. To be great, takes more than experience, it takes knowledge applied correctly. You will never be the best salesperson you can be, until you have studied and practiced those things that the best salespeople know and do.

Make this year your best sales year ever. Follow the steps I have listed and commit yourself to them. They are simple, yet basic principles that will allow you to achieve a level of success that you never thought possible. By breaking down each aspect of your sales process and activity, you can clearly identify those things that will produce the results that have escaped your grasp until now. The only thing standing in the way of realizing your best sales year ever, is you.

My Wife Hates Salespeople

That fact alone makes my life complicated.  We have been married for the most wonderful, incredibly happy 39 years of our lives.  Four of those years I was a student and for thirty-five years I have been a salesperson.  When I act like a salesperson, Peggy suffers tinges of regret.  When I ask her what it is exactly that she hates about salespeople she said, “When they try to sell me something!”  Risking bringing emotions to the surface, I asked her what she meant by that.  She continued, “You know, when they try to make me buy something I don’t want!”  I know this is true because I recognize those same feelings when I try to persuade her to watch a movie or go to a restaurant that I want to go to, knowing that she really doesn’t want to.  Peggy will often bristle and tell me to quit trying to sell her.

When you really take the time to think about it, my wife isn’t any different from any other person in the world in one respect.  She doesn’t want to be sold.  She loves to buy, and she truly respects people who help her discover what is best for her, but she doesn’t want people telling her what to do if they don’t know what she needs or wants.  Salespeople can learn a great lesson from Peggy’s experience.  First, build a relationship with the prospective buyer by letting them know that you care enough about them to understand their needs and wants.  Second, after learning their needs and wants, help them find that specific need or want.  Third, once they have discovered what they are looking for, give them the opportunity to buy it without feeling the pressure of being sold.

When Peggy and I go shopping, it is truly an adventure.  Throughout the process, she is critiquing the salespeople, and I am taking mental notes of her interaction with them.  When they do their job properly, she will tell me the sales associate was great.  When they try to sell her, she will tell me that she really doesn’t like that salesperson.  She has made a mental and verbal distinction between good and bad salespeople and even calls them by different names.  Being referred to, as an associate is good and being called a salesperson is bad.  We all have different names for the good and the bad of any profession and Peggy has certainly found her names for the sales profession.  Here are five suggestions that if followed, will earn the respect of buyers and will generate the income that only the best in our profession of selling will ever realize.

1.     People buy from people they believe, like and trust.

2.     People don’t want to be sold; they want to buy.

3.     Discover the other person’s needs, wants and desires.

4.     Do everything within your power to help them acquire those desires.

5.     Give them the opportunity to buy without feeling the pressure of being sold.