Many years ago, I was selling a product I did not believe in. You guessed it, I did not sell it often. The product was dictation equipment. Since I didn’t use dictation equipment for my correspondence, I didn’t have a deep belief in the benefits of the product. Consequently, I did not sell it. However, once I began to use the equipment, I began to see the advantages it offered. It saved time and energy when I produced proposals and letters. I began to believe and I began to sell dictation equipment. You have to believe.
Principle #6: If it is to be, it is up to me.
Selling is a very personal activity. If you work hard you will be rewarded. If you do not work hard, you will not be rewarded.
Principle #7: Pressure selling is caused by a lack of prospects.
Prospects are the lifeblood of any sales organization. For new salespeople, prospects are the foundation on which to build a career. Most new salespeople don’t receive a long list of existing clients. Therefore, it is important to always build your “prospect funnel.” That is, create a list of potential buyers.
When you have a short list of prospects, you put pressure on those people to buy from you. That is not the reputation you want to create in the marketplace. If you have a short list of prospects, I don’t want to be on that list. Why? Because you are going to call me all the time, you are going to push to meet with me. By always having a long list of prospects, you have more people to contact and you put less pressure on the ones on your list.
A key point about prospecting: you are always prospecting. You are not always selling, but you are always searching for potential buyers.
Principle #8: Your customers don’t buy what you do; they buy whatyou can do for them
This concept will be covered in “Sell the Value.” In that chapter the strategy of selling values, advantages, and benefits is addressed. These have to be sold from the perspective of the prospect. Once you identify what the person wants, you can then present how your solutions meet those needs.
Principle #9: You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want!
Zig Ziglar built his entire career on this simple, yet powerful statement. Salespeople should embrace this philosophy. As a sales professional, you are trying to strengthen the prospect’s position or environment or situation. If you can put a person in a position to reach his or her goals, you earn the prospect’s trust and become a “trusted advisor.”
Principle #10: Timid salespeople have skinny kids!
This is a humorous saying, the purpose of which is to have you smile or chuckle. However, there is a lot of truth in this sentence. It simply means if you aren’t stepping up to the challenges, you aren’t putting bread on the table. I will never suggest you be aggressive. I will tell you to be assertive in your sales activities, believe in yourself and your skills, and have certainty in your ability to solve prospects’ problems.
It also means to be serious about your sales success. Be serious enough to ask questions of your company’s sales leadership. Be serious enough to seek assistance when you need help.
Principle #11: You are only as good as your information.
Sales are not closed because you have a lot of facts. Sales are closed because you have a lot of information. The prospect may claim he has no money in the budget. That is a fact. However, if you understand why he is out of budget, perhaps you can better understand his concerns and place him in a position of avoiding budget problems in the future.
Principle #12: Whoever has the most information has the most influence
Information is powerful. The more information you have, the better you can understand and relate to the prospect. The more information you have, the greater your chances of influencing the purchasing decision. In order to beat your competition, you don’t have to be 10 times better than they are. You just have to have a bit more information than your competitor in order to push the decision to your side of the equation.
Principle #13: Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice in any profession.
This is the challenge for people new to sales. It is often more comfortable to talk about your products and services than it is to talk intelligently about the prospect’s issues and concerns. Therefore, we are more comfortable talking about us than we are asking questions to find out about them. The key is this: don’t tell all you know until you know what to tell.
You wouldn’t trust a doctor who prescribed a treatment without identifying your pain and the source of your pain. Your prospects are the same way. They will not trust you unless you first perform some type of diagnosis. This is accomplished by asking questions, listening to the answers, and then connecting those answers to your solutions.
Principle #14: Process takes pressure off the person.
This is a huge principle for the new salesperson. Why? Because we often believe the personality is more important than the process. If I have the choice to tweak a process or a personality, I would rather tweak a process on a sales call than tweak a personality. You should put pressure on the process and take the pressure off of your personality.
Principle #15: Don’t quote price until you ’ve established value.
When you quote your price before you ’ve communicated the values, advantages and benefits of your product or service, you will reduce your solution to a “commodity.” This means you are just like every other competitor trying to win the prospect’s business. If you’ve not established value, then no matter what price you quote, the prospect will believe it is too much money to spend for the return she is receiving for the money.
You should postpone talking price until you have established enough value in the prospect’s mind to make a positive impact.
Principle #16: The intent behind your technique determines your ethics!
New salespeople are often concerned with “coming on too strong” with a prospect. I hear this all the time: “Oh, I couldn’t use that question, I don’t want to sound too salesy!”
Let's say you have a product that enhances the prospect's current situation. In fact, you believe with all your heart that this solution is a good match for the prospect and you know by purchasing from you the prospect will greatly benefit. Now, let's say you do not ask that question because you are too uncomfortable to ask it. If that were the case, wouldn't you be doing the prospect a disservice, or an injustice?
If your intent behind asking a question is to help the prospect, then any question you ask is ethical.
On the other hand, if you are not sure this solution is the best for the prospect, you should cease your selling efforts until you know for sure this purchase will definitely contribute to his or her betterment.
This next section is based on a model taken from Abraham Maslow's "Four Stages of Learning." Maslow's theory states that when learning a skill, we generally progress in four distinct stages. For our purposes, we will call these the "Four Stages of Sales Growth."
The first stage is where you do not know you do not know. This is called Unconsciously Incompetent. You may have found yourself in this stage when you were exposed to your company’s products or services. You did not know the meaning of industry-specific terms or “buzz words.” For example, later in the book you will be introduced to a sales concept called “upsetting the prospect’s homeostatic balance.” If you are not familiar with that term, or you have not heard it used in a sales context, you are at the first stage of growth: