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Selling to Today's Customers

What is selling? In its simplest terms, selling is the process of helping a person to conclude that your product or service is of greater value to him than the price you are asking for.

How Markets Work

Our market society is based on the principles of freedom and mutual benefit. Each party to a transaction only enters into it when he feels that he will be better off as a result of the transaction than he would be without it.

The Three Options

In a free market, the customer always has three options with any purchase decision. First, the customer can buy your product or service. Second, the customer can buy the product or service from someone else. Third, the customer can decide to buy nothing at all.

Convincing the Customer

For the customer to buy your particular product or service, he or she must be convinced that it is not only the best choice available but he must also be persuaded that there is no better way for him to spend the equivalent amount of money. Your job as a salesperson is to convince the customer that all these conditions exist and then to elicit a commitment from him to take action on your offer.

"Deliver a Winning Presentation! Learn to influence and persuade others to take action now!" Your ability to deliver a winning presentation, to influence and persuade others to take action can move you ahead more rapidly than almost any other skill you can develop. Would you like to learn this invaluable skill and dramatically improve your life and your career? How to Deliver a Winning Presentation Join me in a training session and I will show you how to speak effectively, and influence and persuade others to take action -- immediately! Learn How to Deliver a Winning Presentation Today!

Customize Your Sales Presentation

The field of professional selling has changed dramatically since World War II. In a way, selling methodologies are merely responses to customer requirements. At one time, customers were relatively unsophisticated and poorly informed about their choices. Salespeople catered to this customer with carefully planned and memorized sales presentations, loads of enthusiasm and a bag full of techniques designed to crush resistance and get the order at virtually any cost.

Treat Them With Respect

But the customer of the 1950s has matured into the customer of the 21st century. Customers are now more intelligent and knowledgeable than ever before. They are experienced buyers and they have interacted with hundreds of salespeople. They are extremely sophisticated and aware of the incredible variety of products and services that are available to them, as well as their relative strengths and weaknesses of those products. Many of them are smarter and better educated than most salespeople and they are far more careful about making a buying decision of any kind.

The Need For Speed

In addition, they are overwhelmed with work and under-supplied with time. Because of the rapidly increasing pace of change, down-sizing, restructuring and the competitive pressures surrounding them, customers today are harried and hassled. They are swamped with responsibilities, impatient, suspicious, critical, demanding, and spoiled. To sell to today's customer requires a higher caliber of sales professional than has ever before been required. And it is only going to become tougher and more complicated in the months and years ahead.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, think continually about how you can convince your customer that your product or service is the very best available. Why does he buy, or refuse to buy?

Second, upgrade your knowledge and skills every day so you can sell more effectively. Remember, your customers only get better when you get better.

The Law of Accumulation

The Law of Accumulation: how your financial fortune accumulates slowly over time and then becomes enormous, like a snowball. The Law of Accumulation: Every great financial achievement is an accumulation of hundreds of small efforts and sacrifices that no one ever sees or appreciates.

Develop Discipline

The achievement of financial independence will require a tremendous number of small efforts on your part. To begin the process of accumulation, you must be disciplined and persistent. You must keep at it for a long, long time. Initially, you will see very little change or difference but gradually, your efforts will begin to bear fruit. You will begin to pull ahead of your peers. Your finances will improve and your debts will disappear. Your bank account will grow and your whole life will improve.

Build Up Momentum

The first corollary of the Law of Accumulation says: "As your savings accumulate, you develop a momentum that moves you more rapidly toward your financial goals."

It is hard to get started on a program of financial accumulation, but once you do get started, you find it easier and easier to keep at it. The "momentum principle" is one of the great success secrets. This principle says that it takes tremendous energy to overcome the initial inertia and resistance to financial accumulation and get started, but once started, it takes much less energy to keep moving.

Start Slow, Finish Fast

The second corollary of the Law of Accumulation says, "By the yard it's hard, but inch by inch, anything's a cinch."

When you begin thinking about saving 10 or 20 percent of your earnings, you will immediately think of all kinds of reasons that it is not possible. You might be up to your neck in debt. You might be spending every single penny that you earn today just to keep afloat.

If you do find yourself in this situation, instead of saving 10 percent, begin saving just 1 percent of your earnings in a special account, which you refuse to touch.

Increase As You Go Along

This small amount will begin to add up at a rate that will surprise you. As you become comfortable with saving 1 percent, increase your savings rate to 2 percent, then 3 percent, then 4 percent and 5 percent and so on. Within a year, you will find yourself getting out of debt and saving 10 percent, 15 percent and even 20 percent of your earnings without it really affecting your lifestyle.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do to apply this law immediately:

First, decide upon your long-term financial goals and then resolve to work toward them one step at a time. The first steps are the hardest and you must discipline yourself to avoid backsliding into old habits.

Second, practice the law of accumulation in other parts of your life as well. Resolve to master a subject one page at a time. Lose extra pounds one ounce at a time. Learn a language one lesson at a time. The cumulative effect can be enormous.

Advise On How To Handle ‘KNOW IT ALL’

Tell It Like It Is

If you’re not a know-it-all but feel like you may be working with one, there are things you can do to address the problem. The first thing you must do is speak up about it. If no one knows there’s an issue, nothing will change. At the same time, with a sensitive subject that involves presenting difficult feedback to a colleague or manager, diplomacy is crucial to a successful outcome.

With Colleagues: If it’s a know-it-all co-worker you’re dealing with, you have a few options to raise the subject. If you feel comfortable enough with her to have a heart-to-heart discussion, you might start by requesting a private meeting, perhaps over lunch. During the meeting, let your colleague know how much you enjoy your working relationship, and that you’ve been thinking about ways to improve it. Mention that you sometimes have a difficult time expressing your ideas to her, and ask for support in voicing your opinion and getting equal airtime.

Try to get buy-in during the meeting for changing the dynamic going forward, so that your ideas won’t be overshadowed in the future. You might suggest discussing ways to alternate taking the lead on certain projects, or creating distinct time slots in meetings for each of you to offer ideas, as well as to listen.

Be sure to ask your colleague for her thoughts on how to improve the situation as well—but be wary of her denying the problem or dominating the discussion once again rather than listening to you. If this happens, you may need to shift to another option: raising the subject with your colleague’s supervisor.

Save this approach as a last resort to consider only after you’ve determined direct resolution with your colleague is not possible. Reporting a problem to someone’s supervisor can jeopardize your working relationship, and may also cause political challenges for you in the office, so this action should not be taken lightly.

With Managers: Often the problem of dealing with someone who always has to be right comes not from peers, but from supervisors or managers. Many managers think it’s their duty to have the last word and the opinion that matters the most—but these aren’t usually the best managers.

If your supervisor or another executive who is senior to you in the organization is making it difficult for you to share your ideas, you’re in a tough—but not impossible—position. By nature of your role in the organization and the hierarchical structure of corporate management, you are in the position of needing to listen to your boss and other managers. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also be able to express your viewpoints. In fact, it’s part of your job to do so in order to help your managers and your company.

Though it may feel difficult to raise the issue with your boss, you might try approaching the matter as something you’ve thought about to improve your contribution toward your boss’s goals. You could suggest scheduling a regular time on the calendar with your supervisor for the specific purpose of offering your ideas. By carving out a regular time for this to occur, you’ll have a better chance that you’ll have a chance to express your viewpoints to your manager on a regular basis.  

The Acid Test of Listening

Paraphrase Your Customer's Words

The customer is only sure that you have been listening when you paraphrase what the prospect has said and feed it back in your own words. This is where the rubber meets the road in effective listening. This is where you demonstrate in no uncertain terms to the prospect that your listening has been real and sincere. This is where you show the prospect that you were paying complete attention to what he or she was saying. Paraphrasing is how you prove it.

Question for Clarification

When the prospect has finished explaining his or her situation to you, and you have paused, and then questioned for clarification, you paraphrase the prospects primary thoughts and concerns, and feed them back to him or her in your own words.

Use the Right Words

For example, you might say, "Let me make sure I understand exactly what you are saying. It sounds to me like you are concerned about two things more than anything else, and that in the past you have had a couple of experiences that have made you very careful in approaching a decision of this kind."

Feed it Back Accurately

You then go on to feed back to the prospect exactly what he or she has told you, pausing and questioning for clarification as you go, until the customer says words to the effect of, "Yes, that's it! You've got it exactly."

Earn the Right to Sell

Only when you and the customer completed a thorough "examination" and have mutually agreed on the "diagnosis" you are in a position to begin talking to the customer about your product or service. In general terms, this means that you can not pull out your brochures and price lists and begin telling the customer how your product or service can solve his problems or achieve his goals until about seventy percent of the way through the sales conversation. Until then, you have not yet earned the right. Until then, you don't even know enough to begin an intelligent presentation without embarrassing yourself.

Be a Good Listener

The more and better you listen, the more and better people will like you, trust you and want to do business with you. The more they will want to get involved with you as a person and the more popular you will be with them. Excellent listeners are welcome everywhere, in every walk of life, and they eventually and ultimately arrive at the top of their fields.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, remember that your first job in the sale is to get the customer to like you and believe that you understand his situation. Paraphrasing is the way you accomplish this.

Second, be sure that the customer agrees with you completely when you feed back his concerns to him. Only then can you really start selling.

The Law of Futurity

The purpose of a negotiation is to enter into an agreement such that both parties have their needs satisfied and are motivated to fulfill their commitments and enter into further negotiations with the same party in the future. This is a foundation law of negotiating, and it applies especially to negotiations where you will be dealing with the same party again. In business, it is quite common for people to be in and out of business transactions and negotiations with each other over many years. This fundamental futurity must be kept in mind at each stage of each negotiation.

First Purpose

Let's break this law down into its constituent parts. First, "the purpose of a negotiation is to enter into an agreement." It is assumed, but not always true, that both parties want to do business together. If one does not and is merely negotiating for some other purpose, the other party can be at a considerable disadvantage.

Second Purpose

The second part says, "such that both parties have their needs satisfied." This means that an agreement where one or the other party feels that he or she has lost does not fulfill the basic requirement of a successful negotiation. Both must feel that they have come out ahead.

Third Purpose

This law then goes on to say, "and are motivated to fulfill their agreements and enter into further negotiations with the same party in the future." This means that both parties are satisfied enough with the outcome that they are motivated to fulfill whatever commitments they have made, and they feel positively enough about the deal that they are willing to negotiate again and enter into subsequent agreements in the future. Your job in every negotiation where you will be dealing with this person again is to assure that the other party will want to continue doing business with you in the future.

The Final Agreement

Look for ways to make the final agreement acceptable to the other party. Think of negotiating with this party again in the future based on the terms and conditions you are finalizing today. How could you improve the terms without sacrificing things that are important to you?

Action Exercise

Analyze your current negotiating style. In what areas have you been more focused on winning in the short term without really considering the long-term damage that you might be doing to the relationship?