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Take Note

September 25, 2008 in Communication, Sales Skills

I would like to focus on something, that at first glance, may appear rather trivial. In fact it might seem so inane that you are wondering why I am even writing about it.

It’s ‘note taking’.

I learnt a very salient, if not embarrassing, lesson in my early 20’s. When in my first sales consulting role I turned up to a sales meeting with a prospective client with no obvious note taking materials. Up until that time I had never been told to take notes by my managers. I hadn’t thought about talking notes myself. I relied on my memory.

However this call was different. I sat down and proceeded to ask the client questions without taking notes. This client stopped me in my tracks and said:

“Why aren’t you taking notes? How can you possibly understand me and my business if you do not take notes? Bloody sales people never take notes. What do they teach you anyway?”

I didn’t know what to say. I was in shock. After a long silence he handed me a note pad and pen and we picked up where we left off with me taking notes.

It has to be said that I have taken notes ever since and for good reason too – it really works.

OK so we can put my faux par down to youth, however, it never ceases to amaze me how many sales people (of all ages) still do not take notes when they are speaking to clients over the phone or face-to-face. For the last 10 years we have been running a true-to-life sales fitness simulation exercise where we have tested 1,000’s of sales people. Part of the exercise requires people to listen to a body of text which has vital information in it. Sadly the vast majority of people (over 90%) do not take notes which severely impacts their ability to successfully undertake the remainder of the exercise. When we debrief the exercise many confess to not taking notes in the field either.

Note taking is one of those small but really important things you can do in any client sales interaction.

Note taking:

  • Helps you capture what the client is actually saying in their own words
  • Keeps you focused on your client
  • Gives you something to refer back to when verifying your understanding of your client’s needs
  • Helps you prioritise yours and your client’s thoughts
  • Helps the client feel confident in you as they see you making an effort to really understand their priorities and requirements
  • Helps the client feel ‘listened to’ and understood
  • Shows you are paying attention
  • Gives you good content to work from when pulling together a quote or proposal
  • Means you don’t have to rely on memory alone
  • Gives discipline to the person taking the notes ensuring they get everything they need to know (and the client is willing to let them know) from the client

Rule of thumb:

  1. Ask permission to take notes: Let the client know that you would like to take notes and check that this is OK with them. Sometimes clients may want to say something to you but do not want it recorded. By asking permission you show you are working together on gathering the right information.
  2. Draw little flags against the key areas where you know you can make a sale or be of service: Too many sales people jump in at the first sign of a sales opportunity often missing additional information that could lead to bigger or more sales. To prevent this from happening I draw a little flag against each potential ‘sales opportunity’ I come across. When I have finished gathering all the information from my client I go back over my notes and let them know what I have flagged. This helps both of us get a clear picture of their situation and where I could be of service.

I find clients respond very favourably to note taking and my verifying their situation. Firstly they seem pleased to hear someone else repeat back what they have just said and secondly they feel more confident in my ability to work with them and help them in the best manner possible.

With B2B sales becoming more complicated and consultative in nature you need to take notes to keep a check on all the different facets of the client’s needs and priorities.

Give you and your client an easy break – take notes.

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Client Buying States

July 4, 2008 in Sales Planning, Sales Skills, Uncategorized

Selling can get quite confusing sometimes. Prospects or clients saying one thing and doing another. It’s hard enough that you put in all that effort and have your sale go nowhere.

It might help you to know, if you don’t already, when selling that there are mainly four different Buying States. They are classified as :

  1. Opportunity
  2. Problem
  3. Static
  4. Blinkered

Two Buying States show that a sale is possible.

Two Buying States show that a sale may be difficult or unlikely.

Opportunity: Your prospect recognises there is an opportunity to move forward or progress to a goal. This is a powerful motivator for the key decision maker clients who are independent, self sufficient and confident.

Problem: Your prospect recognises that there is a problem that must be rectified and addressed. This is a powerful motivator for the key decision maker clients who are concerned, responsible and accountable.

Static: Your prospect feels that business is going well and that significant change is unnecessary. They cannot see a reason to change. And even if you can see they need to change, if they can’t or don’t then you cannot make them change.

Blinkered: Your prospect feels that they are already doing everything to an optimum level and that almost nothing could improve upon their performance.
It should be noted that: Static and Blinkered buying states indicate a sale is unlikely if held by people of sufficient influence over the decision. If a new person enters the sales process with one of these buying states the sale is in jeopardy and a strategy needs to be developed to overcome that resistance (if possible).
Options to change Static and Blinkered buying states could include:

  • A change in a situation
  • Their viewpoint is swayed by another key influencer of the sale
  • New information changes their viewpoint
  • Other forces such as market changes, customer comments and competitors can force change

No relationship ever works effectively if it is forced. You will just have to bide your time in some cases. For instance I am waiting on the outcome of a large tender / proposal that has taken me 10 years to get to work on. The client has finally realised they need a contemporary selling culture. Did I prospect them every week? NO! But I kept them in my sights, made contact every now and then to see if they were ready and waited while I worked on other projects in the meantime.
I hope this helps you navigate your way on your sales journeys.
Happy selling.

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Making the most of Up Selling & Cross Selling

December 11, 2007 in Sales Skills, Value Creation

Do you sell one thing and one thing only? Probably not. I suspect your business has a range of things it can offer. And I suspect that many of these things can be integrated together to make an end-to-end solution or various combinations that lead to much larger sales.

If this is the case, then how well are you selling in the size and scope of your business offerings?

Too many times sales people get fixated on the immediate sale in front of them not really seeing the potential of that sale now or into the future. If they would only ask the right questions and get a bigger perspective to work from they might get more and bigger sales for less effort.

If you do not ask the questions you will never know. I learned that if you ask, at best, you can get a lot more back in return and, at worst; they can just say ‘no’. At least if you ask you never die wondering.

So I thought I would share a personal story about one of my up selling and cross selling experiences and what I learned from it. I share this story because it continues to remind me not to settle for second best.

A while back I made a presentation to a large group of people from large Australian corporation. My topic was about the ‘Huge Cost of Hesitation’. This was my first entrée into this business and I really wanted to do a great job for all the obvious reasons. Whilst the topic was challenging, the presentation was well received and my sponsoring client was very happy. I knew this could lead to great things.

Well within three days, I received a phone call from one of the senior managers who attended the presentation. He wanted to know if he could use an assessment tool I referred to in my presentation for the recruitment of new sales staff. I replied ‘yes of course you can’. He then said ‘OK so how do I go about using it?’

Now at this point, I could have set him up to use the tool and only sold in that tool, instead, however, I asked him to tell be more about what he was trying to achieve. To which he replied that he was setting up a whole new business area and wanted to hire a different type of sales person than they had traditionally employed in the past. He thought the assessment could help him do that. I asked him if I could ask him more questions to which he replied ‘yes’.

I wanted to see how open minded he was so I asked him had he defined what this new type of person would look like. He said ‘no’. I suggested there were a number of ways he could approach this and I proposed two options to him:

  1. At best we could develop and map the ideal sales person profile for his business model, build a recruitment kit he and his managers could use to properly assess the candidates, supply the right assessment tools and then provide feedback.
  2. At worst he could just use the tool and we provide feedback as originally requested.

He was very happy to explore this further. I committed to getting him a detailed proposal that day. Which I did. Besides everything mentioned previously, I also included 2 bullet points outlining sales and sales management training which could form part of their induction training. (you just never know)
After I sent the proposal, I received a call the next day asking me to elaborate on the 2 bullets points around the sales and sales management training piece as well. Which I did.

They then rang back the following day and asked me what my best price was. I said what they had was my best price. They said they were used to working in markets that always bargained on price. I said that was fine but that I didn’t do that in my market. My price was my price. It was transparent and they knew what they were getting piece by piece. They said ‘OK, that was fair’ and then asked when could we get started on the project. We agreed a date and that was the beginning of a very fruitful relationship.

So what did I learn? If you take things at face value that is all you are likely to get. By asking a few more questions, getting an understanding of their bigger picture and knowing how my products and services worked in concert and separately I was able to turn a $1,000 sale into a $90,000 sale.

Did I do anything special? No not at all. All I did was ask more questions and tried to understand their whole issue. Oh and I knew how my products and services all worked together.

By the way, whilst they paid more, it was worth it to them because their new ‘breed’ of sales people achieved:

  • Achieved a sales closing ratio of 4:3 within 2 months ·
  • Sold the annual sales budget within 5 months.

My client was very happy and said he and his team had learned a lot about how to select in and develop sales people; skills they hadn’t had before and could now take with them anywhere they went. In turn, he referred me on to other areas within the business and so the journey and sales continue.

Here are some handy hints to help you up sell and cross sell:

  1. Product Knowledge: know all your products well
  2. Product Associations & Combinations: Know how your products integrate with each other and how they form a bigger picture. This goes with this goes with that, etc.
  3. New topics: know how to introduce relevant new topics and products into the conversation.
  4. Education: Don’t underestimate your value in terms of the education you bring to clients
  5. Pricing structure: know how your pricing works: the structures, bundling, unbundling, volume pricing, various product pricing combinations, etc


For more information try this research site: www.findarticles.com.

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Learn to say ‘NO’

October 18, 2007 in Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Skills, Value Creation

Giving away the margin and undercutting your prices because you can’t say ‘NO’ is no good for anyone. It devalues you, your product, and your market. If done on mass then customers expect ‘cheap’ all the time, not fully appreciating the real value of the products or services they buy. All you do is risk devaluing you and your business.

Just look at the ‘perpetual sales’ going in retail all the time. No one ends up making any money and people go out of business. If you are in retail check Debra Templar’s website www.retailservices.com.au and read what she has to say about this. She is appalled at the state of many Australian Retail businesses and their inability to hold their prices and run successful businesses.

Let’s face it; there will always be someone offering their products or services cheaper than you. But are they offering exactly the same as you? Make sure you know how you compare to the competition. It’s worth it – are you comparing apples with apples?

If your customer is saying “I can get the same thing much cheaper down the road” don’t just accept this as truth. Too many sales people accept these statements at face value not bothering to check if it is true or not. And some customers try this tactic to see if you will cave in or not so they can get something at your expense.

A particular example springs to mind for me:- I recall, in the early days of starting my business, meeting with a recruitment consultant with the express need of helping me find an admin person. I needed an admin person and I didn’t have the time to find one myself so I was ready to buy. The meeting went well and I thought she would do a good job for me. Having been a recruitment consultant myself I knew what was good value in this field. So I asked her how much her fees were. Her immediate response, with no prompting or bargaining from me was this “Oh it’s 12% but you can have it for 10%!’ I was quite shocked. Not only hadn’t I haggled, I didn’t even say anything to indicate I wanted a discount. I would have paid 12 % but instead, took advantage of the discount. Why not was I going to say ‘oh no I’ll have it for 12%’? She was clearly at fault here and had assumed that I would try and beat her down on price so she got in first.

This got me thinking about what is the real price for things and why do so many sales people drop their prices time and time again. If sales people continually do this it can leave the customer doubting the people they are buying from and questioning the real value of what they are getting.

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of “The Little Red Book of Selling” points out that more than 74 percent of all people are willing to pay the recommended price. He suggests that your prices need to be fair and your need to be firm. You need to be able to stand your ground and know how to prove your value. He then recommends that you ditch the other 26 percent and let them hammer your competition into no profit and bankruptcy, and concentrate on the customers who are willing to pay.

I recall my days working as recruitment consultant for Morgan & Banks. We were not the cheapest in town, in fact we were in the upper quartile for fees and service. When I met with potential new customers to see if we could work with them we would also discuss the fees we charged. We charged 15% and upwards for recruitment assignments as compared to the industry average at the time of 10% or 12%. Many prospective customers assumed that we recruitment consultants were all alike and baulked at the idea of 15%+. Now I could have crumpled and said ‘ok you can have it for 12%” but I didn’t. Instead I asked them what they were getting for their 10-12% so I was able to understand what was on offer and what they saw as value. Once I had that information I was then able to compare our service offering to what they were getting. What they found was there was more on offer for our 15%+ than what they were getting for 12%. And they were able to compare and contrast the various offerings using evidence not just hearsay and make an informed decision. And so was I.

More often than not they went with me and paid the 15%+.

Don’t forget The price is just an arbitrary figure until it is ascribed a value. It means nothing in of itself. Sure the pricing of your product or service needs to be pitched in the right market level, however, make sure you can articulate the value of your product or service offering using real evidence. If you do your homework you might find that you are selling yourself, your products anfd services too cheaply. Here are some hints:

  • Make sure you know how your products and services compare and contrast with that of your competition.
  • Make sure you fully understand what the customer needs and what they value so you can build a sound business case for using you and make sure you have an economic case to justify your price point. Know what your Return on Investment (ROI) offering is.
  • Stand up for your business. Do not fear confrontation or conflict. Be proud of what you do and tell your customers that you do not discount unless it is based on volume. Make sure you can always make money.
  • If your strategy is to buy market share then be very careful as lifting prices from a lower base is much harder. And you don’t want to end up like Visy or Amcor.
  • Do not give things away to keep the customer ‘sweet’ either, they will not respect you and will keep trying to take advantage of you at your expense.

Learn to sell to the ‘right’ customers:

It helps to identify a ‘Viable’ customer – someone who can buy from you right now for the right reasons. Do they have the following three conditions operating simultaneously?

  • MONEY – the willingness & ability to pay for it?
  • AUTHORITY to make a decision, and
  • A real NEED for your product or services?

If so then sell to them, if not move to the next customer but always leave the door open so they know to come back to you when they are viable.



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Your pre-call & post-call checklist

October 8, 2007 in Sales Planning, Sales Skills

How well did your last sales call go? Did you achieve what you set out to achieve? Do you know what your next course of action will be with that customer/prospect? Do you have evidence that a real sales opportunity exists?

Using a pre-call and post-call checklist is a very useful process when assessing the effectiveness of your sales calls.

Too many sales people, however, invest too little time thinking about and planning their approach to developing prospective sales opportunities. Many sales opportunities involve a range of variables that need to be accounted for and acted upon if they are to achieve a successful sales outcome.

Most of us do not work in businesses where you can get an immediate sales result from one contact only. There are often several steps to achieving a successful sale, and like a good chess player you need to think several steps ahead.

So why leave your sales opportunities to chance?

Showing up with little or no plan leaves you looking unprofessional in the eyes of the customer. And you can’t afford that in today’s tough and competitive market place.

You may like to use the following checklist to maximise your sales efforts.

Pre-call checklist:

Questions to consider before calling on a new prospect or an existing customer:

  • What is my call objective?
  • Who do I need to speak to in this business/division/partnership/family?
  • Who is the key decision maker(s)?
  • Who is a main influence(s)?
  • What potential obstacles exist that will threaten the sale?
  • What stage am I at in the sales cycle?
  • How will I open the call?
  • What information do I have?
  • What information do I need to find out?
  • What sort of objections emerge out and how will I handle them?
  • What’s my fall back position?

Post-call checklist:

Questions to consider when reviewing your customer sales interaction:

  • Did I achieve my objective?
  • What went right?
  • What went wrong?
  • What information did I gather?
  • What evidence do I have that this is still a viable sales opportunity?
  • Did I advance the sale to the next stage?
  • What will be my next move?
  • Who else needs to be involved in the process?
  • What else do I need to do to progress the sale to the next stage?
  • When am I next going to see or speak to this customer?
  • What will be my next call objective?

It is important that you review each of your calls to determine how you went and how you could improve. This tracking process is important for two reasons:

  1. It allows you to determine where you are at in the sales process with that particular customer, paving the way for key action items.
  2. It results in a process of continuous improvement, allowing you to continuously improve upon your prospecting skills as you review what worked well and what did not work well.

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