I remember hearing someone say once ‘Bernadette, the answer is always no, unless you ask’ and I have always remembered that.

Whether I am lost in the car and can’t get the directions right, I will stop and ask someone for help, whereas my husband would rather keep driving until he finds the right road – and dare I say, wastes time and gets frustrated in the meantime and it has nothing to do with women not being able to read road maps!

If I am seated at a restaurant that is near the door and it’s a wet and windy night, I will ask to move whereas a friend won’t want to be an inconvenienced, won’t ask and is prepared to be miserable all night.

If I feel that something is wrong in a conversation, I will ask what the matter is or call the elephant in the room, whereas another salesperson won’t want to put someone on the spot and so puts incorrect meanings onto comments and ends up with pipeline bloat.

Most of us feel uncomfortable when we ask someone for a favor or for help.

The story of Amanda Palmer, a living statue whose job was to sell her art and connect with people by standing on a milk crate, dressed as a bride, handing daisies to those passer-by’s who tipped money into her hat struck a chord with me.

Some of us may see these street artists and immediately jump to the conclusion that they are beggars, or bludgers or lazy (get a real job) as they stand in the popular tourist spots attracting passer- bys.

But whose story is that – theirs or yours? And if it is your perception, then how does that belief serve you when it is your turn to sell your product or service.

You see, their story is that they are allowing people to choose to buy their art. And we, as salespeople are also artists. We are not managers, we are not all entrepreneurs risking our capital for the cause, we are wanting people to buy what we believe will make a difference in their worlds.

And the street artist’s story is that they are selling connection with the people whose eyes they look into as they stand statue like still. They’re selling trust as they reach out and they are also selling themselves on vulnerability by placing themselves in a position of potential rejection.

And isn’t that the same as us? Are we not asking the question of our buyers that they tip money into our hat? That we are artists selling a product, a service or an idea that will make a difference in the world of our buyers? That our buyers also buy our connection, our trust and our vulnerability as we ask them to buy increased profitability, improved productivity and proximity?

I read an article by Jeb Blount, from Sales Gravy, this afternoon on ‘The ONLY Closing Technique that Really Works’ and I, too, can share this biggest secret with you on how the top salespeople ask for the order, even though I haven’t sworn on Jeffrey Gitomer’s Bible and I am in total agreement with Jeb.

The biggest secret to winning business is to ask for the business and the biggest choke-hold to asking, running in parallel, is fear.

Let me share a ‘close’ with you that will work EVERY SINGLE TIME and you won’t have to swear on anything for me to share it with you – ‘How can I help you?’

Simple. Straightforward. Sincere.

And it doesn’t just start and stop with a close for business. I had a coffee this morning with a corporate sales manager turned start up entrepreneur and we aligned a lack of collaboration and marketing ideas, products and services to fear, as well.

Before coffee, I was on a Google Hangout and the interviewer Jenny Munn from Business Marketing Association, Atlanta GA, who asked me why people don’t publish their content to position themselves as experts when the platforms are right there, free and convenient. My answer was, ‘the same as what prevents them asking for the next logical step in a sale – fear!’

‘The Art of the Ask’ is not about closing or trapping or conning your buyer

Asking for the business is about learning to say ‘no’ and learning to say ‘yes’ and knowing the magic lies somewhere in between, but only after you are ready to say ‘Bring It On’ to uncertainty when your buyer asks you to go a little deeper with your request.

So, it’s over to you now…

And so ask all of us!!

The post The Answer Is Always No, Unless You Ask. appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Some salespeople when they feel they are not going to get the sale can get into the habit of offering discounts.

The client was sold. You gave a price. They asked for a discount. You gave it. No reason given.

Why? Why would we discount our solution?

It comes down to the value you hold – not your client – on your solution. And whether you think it should be cheaper.

The first time price and discounts come up is before you have even spoken with a client. That’s right, you have made the decision to discount or not discount based on your value of your offering.

You have made this decision in your office. It may have been impacted by:

• A colleague saying ‘This is a bit pricy, people often want it discounted’.(The price is too high, we need to bring it down to what it should be) .
• Your boss saying ‘Offer a discount, just get in the business’. (Discount is a word that’s important. Value of our offer isn’t).
• A client saying ‘I can buy it cheaper elsewhere.’ (You believe that, and don’t question whether the solution is apples for apples).
• Marketing/Brand saying ‘This is expensive but …’ (‘Expensive’ is never a word you want used in your business)
• Colleagues always discounting to get in the business. (This normalises discounts).

The reality is the subtle message you picked up is  ‘the value of what we have isn’t as high as the price we are charging’, or, simply ‘we are charging too much’.

And … you believe it.

You are not sold on that price. And next thing you know, you too are thinking the price is too high, you too have taken your eye from value and onto price.

You are driving the price down. If you sold it at full rate, you might occasionally feel guilty as you know you would have given a discount.

What can you do to counter this as a sales person and as a leader?

 Solution/product training on the value of your offer—what the client is getting, and what the value is to the client.

 Internal language—always about value, rather than about discounts.

 Success stories—share case studies about what the client gains through this solution.

 Reward success based on keeping the price at a premium not on getting the business in.

When you are sold on the value, you won’t be discounting. Instead you will be investigating the clients’ issues and educating them on the value of your solution.

As the trusted provider, when you have such certainty than they are sold on it too. They will trust you and believe your offer is worth the price.

The post Discounting Erodes Trust appeared first on Head Of Sales.

In a situation like this, many a salesperson starts to feel pressure and loses faith in their pricing. They take their eye from the value of their offering and get consumed by price. Sometimes they become demoralised and demotivated. The kneejerk reaction is to discount the price to get the sale.

The issue for the salesperson is they are focused on closing the sale instead of helping the prospect.

Because the real issue with ‘I don’t have the money’ has little to do with the price. It’s because the client with the money doesn’t have trust in the salesperson.

When the client does have trust in the salesperson, the relationship shifts to something like a doctor/patient scenario where the client is waiting to be advised what solution will fix their problem.

They are expecting the ‘expert’ to give them the most suitable solution. In turn, the salesperson feels an obligation to provide a solution that aligns best.

Often this solution is substantially more money than what that client was originally going to spend … and (insert drum roll) the client buys (cue crescendo) because it’s the right solution for them (release the doves!).

When we are engaging with a prospect, they are looking for someone to understand them. Someone who gets what they need. The client wants to feel confident the seller is 100% aligned with them and will only present a solution that fits what they are actually looking for.

As a salesperson – ask yourself these two questions:

1. Are you 100% sold on your solution? If you are not 100% sold you can’t expect your client to be. 

• Do you know your solution, inside and out?
• Do you know the alternatives the client could buy instead from competitors?
• Do you know the value of your solution to the client?

2. Do you seek to understand? Your intent is to be a partner, the solution provider, the trusted advisor

• When you are with a potential client, are you mentally and physically beside them and seeking to understand?
• Are you 100% present and focused on them?
• Do you ask relevant, meaningful questions to really assess the situation?
• Are you are listening and absorbing everything the client is saying and how they are saying it?

Often a salesperson is selling at the buyer. We call this ‘spray and pray’—spraying all the features and benefits of their solution with repetitive banter without adapting to this client. They are not making it clear what’s in it for them. They are not linking the benefit and value to how it will help that person’s situation. And they can’t know as they haven’t asked enough insightful questions. ­­­­­

The post “I don’t have budget” – what to do next appeared first on Head Of Sales.

It’s the culmination of weeks or months of blood, sweat and tears and determines whether all that effort was really worthwhile or not.

For a seasoned sales professional, with a well-honed gut instinct and plenty of sales battle scars, the close phase of any deal is often the most tense and stressful period. Even for these battle-hardened sales veterans, things can and do go wrong at the 11th hour. For less-experienced sales reps, closing deals is often an achilles heel, where even the slightest misstep can turn a hot prospect to ice, faster than Jon Snow can say 

“Winter is Coming”.

Regardless of where you are on the sales experience spectrum, it’s likely you’re missing out on some proven strategies to increase your close rate, overcome objections confidently, and protect your most important asset – ‘time’. –

What’s the main cause of lost sales?

A lot of factors can contribute to lost sales, but what’s interesting is that the issues we often perceive as the root cause of our losses are often just symptoms of a bigger issue.

What if I told you the reason so many of your leads are going cold isn’t that your customers aren’t ready to buy what you are selling, but that they aren’t ready to buy you? This is a bold statement, but in the B2B sales world, make no mistake customers are buying you, as much, if not more, than what’s in your kitbag.

The B2B sales world has been turned on its head over the last few years, as technology and buying behaviours have shifted the balance of power from sellers firmly in favour of buyers. Prospects no longer take a back seat in sales conversations; they are extremely savvy, leveraging peer reviews and easy access to research material. They are also highly sensitive to unethical sales tactics and phony sale pitches.

At the first sign of dishonesty or high-pressure sales, most B2B customers will disengage with a vendor. To close more sales, you must become the sort of salesperson whom customers actually want to buy from.

Where do you start? Well, we’ve done some of the legwork for you.

At Trinity, we spend our days focusing on the intersection of your sales cycle and your customer’s buying cycle, that magical place where the deal actually gets done. By speaking directly to your customers at the conclusion of the sales process, through our Win/Loss Review services, we’re able to help B2B sales companies answer one simple but profoundly important question: “Why do we win and lose the deals we pitch for, and what can we do about it?”

After years of interviewing senior decision makers across a wide variety of industries, we’ve identified several factors which can turn a hot deal cold and have also identified a number of characteristics consistently displayed by successful salespeople.

Here are five of the best sales techniques we’ve observed for closing a deal and why they work.

5 sales closing techniques for success

Play the long game. The reason so many sales people fall short when closing sales is often related to being too aggressive or too eager to prove yourself. It can work against you and send the message that you’re not focused on building a relationship. Contrary to what you might think, closing the sale starts long before your customer agrees to sign on the dotted line. It begins in the discovery phase and continues to build as you get to know them throughout the sales cycle.

There needs to be a shift in focus from conquering the sale to taking your time to listen and connect with your customer and earning the right to progress to the next stage of the sales cycle. This is a crucial step to developing sufficient trust, credibility, and authority to do business with a prospective customer.

At its simplest, B2B sales doesn’t actually require any selling, you simply earn the right to progress to the next stage of the process, until you run out of stages and the deal is done.

This may sound simplistic, but then again, sales can and should be a simple process.

Become a great storyteller.  One reason deals go cold so often is that we fail to establish a proper connection with the people we’re trying to sell to. The most successful salespeople understand that stories have the ability to create an emotional connection and fire up the limbic side of your customer’s brain, where feelings and memory reside.

These individuals are avid collectors of war stories, quotes, anecdotes, and case studies, anything in fact that can act as a hook and aid in articulating a compelling story. Being a great storyteller makes you more memorable, a more effective communicator, and establishes rapport with your prospects. By equipping yourself with an arsenal of interesting and relevant stories to pepper your conversations, you will cement your position as a leader in closing the sale. Listen to how Bernadette Jiwa explains the power of stories in her fascinating TedTalk – The Secret to Spreading Ideas

Scrap high-pressure sales. Remember when you last felt pressured into doing something you weren’t ready or comfortable doing? It might have been signing a petition, answering a survey, or listening to a pitch for a product or service you had no interest in.

Your response may have been one of anger, defiance, or simply quiet frustration. It’s human nature to resist high-pressure sales tactics, which is why so many countries have created ‘do not call’ registries for consumers who don’t wish to be called at home by telesales people. If a sales technique is being regulated against by the government, it’s probably time to find a new way to create traction with your customers.

Being too pushy gives the impression of desperation, which in turn leads to doubt and mistrust. If they feel pressured, prospective customers will start to look for an escape route, which in the world of B2B sales is invariably what happens when a deal goes quiet.

Customization is key. If you’ve been relying on canned sales methods, it’s time to trade in your outdated sales techniques for a more personalized approach. Customers are tired of canned sales presentations that aren’t pertinent to them. This method only repels interest in what you have to offer and can quickly make a deal go south.

Instead, the most successful salespeople seek out creative ways to add value to every customer engagement, and customize it to show you are addressing their specific needs. A simple strategy is to apply the “So What” test to all of your customer presentations. During your dry-run before a customer presentation, ask your colleagues to hold up a sign which reads ‘So What’ every time you say something which either a) isn’t relevant for your audience or b) may be relevant but where you have failed to create the connection for your customer.

This one simple strategy could serve to transform the impact of your sales presentations and ensure that win, lose, or draw, your customers will be very happy to invite you back in to present to them in the future.

Customer memory is king. What sets sales all-stars apart from the rest is their ability to recall details about their customers, and utilize these insights to form a clearer picture of their customers’ needs. Nowadays, with easy access to CRM systems and digital information, you are expected to be able to capture, retain, and apply personal information and insights that your customers share with you.

By capturing and leveraging these details, you should be able to establish a deeper and more personal connection with your customers and prospects. It also serves to help you close more sales and increases the likelihood of gaining warm referrals from their network.

If you really want to succeed in sales, then you need to reach the elevated heights of ‘trusted advisor status’ with your customers. Where they not only know, like, and trust you, but value your opinion, your network, and your commitment to helping them achieve a great outcome from your product or service.

To do this, you first need to solidify yourself as a credible source of valuable information, and eventually be seen as an extended member of their internal team. By putting these five best sales techniques into action, you can start closing more sales and building lasting relationships with customers based on rapport, trust, and credibility.

The post Why Do The Hottest Deals Go Cold? appeared first on Head Of Sales.

The average client spent $175,000 annually. Some spent more in some years and less in others, but the number was relatively stable over time. I soon found, however, that our lowest-billing client averaged so little that there was no reason to call them a client. A reasonably-priced hotel would charge more for a two-night stay. At the other extreme, our number one company spent just over $1,000,000 in a typical year, making it the most exciting and vital client in our portfolio—and we definitely wanted a killer portfolio.

With those figures, there was no way I could meet my goals by simply doubling the number of clients we won in a year. Instead of winning more deals, I decided we would pursue much larger contracts, something that would produce greater revenue even if we won fewer opportunities in a year. To execute this strategy, we would have to forego spending time with small potential clients, many of which took as much time and energy as the larger clients that could actually help us reach our revenue goals. Instead, we had to target clients that spent many times our average per-client revenue.

Since we had a million-dollar client, I set the target at a million dollars, calling these clients “anchor accounts” because they could sustain an operation. In our first year pursuing companies that needed to spend more, our average billing climbed from $175,000 to $475,000. The next year, it reached $775,000.

The Leader’s First Mistake

One of the first mistakes a sales leader might make is not setting the parameters for which clients they want and why they are essential. If you don’t build territory, establish account plans, and target the clients you want in your portfolio, your salespeople are on their own to decide whom they pursue. This laissez-faire approach can waste time on insignificant deals that distract an entire sales force from pursuing meaningful clients. As a result, many clients end up in the pipeline only because they were willing to engage with the salesperson.

When your job is to create opportunities, you need prospects. But not all opportunities are equal, and many are not worth your time or effort. Once you determine what kind of clients will help you meet your goals, you must ensure your team focuses their time and effort on acquiring them.

Cold Should Be Hot

This approach can be challenging, as I document in Eat Their Lunch. To start with, large clients already have a partner, likely one of many years’ standing. Their partners, your competitors, have built deep relationships with the contacts, and even though they may have some weaknesses, they are difficult to displace. These targets are the very opposite of a warm lead: they are as cold as ice at the start unless you get very lucky with timing. Larger clients also tend to be more complex, so they require salespeople who have the chops (sales effectiveness) to create a higher level of value than their competition.

It takes time to develop relationships and become known as someone with real insights and a provocative perspective. It also takes time for your dream client to suffer some setback that prompts them to consider buying from you. The fact that it takes time to develop these prospective clients should not dissuade you from pursuing them; instead, it should motivate you to start now. The sooner you begin to use a prospecting and nurture sequence to develop the relationship, the faster you’ll have an opportunity. The sooner you start Year 0—the year you become known to your contacts as someone who can help them produce better results—the sooner you will have an opportunity.

In my experience, for any set of prospective clients, some are compelled to change, others are immune to any attempt to talk about changing partners, and some might be persuaded. Sometimes it takes years pursuing a large client before you create an opportunity and win their business, and sometimes you happen upon them at the right time, winning their business in short order.

You Can’t Quadruple Your Activity

As you pursue your targeted clients, you will naturally find singles, doubles, and triples. Acquiring and serving a small client might cost more than you can make from their business. If that is true, you might avoid calling on them at all. Doubles and triples often grow up to be large clients, so you can pick them up along the way.

Much of the time, companies assume that their sales force can always do more—creating and winning more deals—even when they didn’t hit their prior year’s goals. Increasing your average deal size is one meaningful way to increase your revenue, and it prevents you from needing to triple or quadruple the number of deals you need to reach your goals.

The post Why You Need to Increase Your Average Deal Size appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Do you know why they make recruits in the ARMY crawl under barbed wire on obstacle courses?

I was in the ARMY, and I loved it, tank driver & assault trooper (M113), it was enormous fun. The reason they do the barbed wire trick is, so you learn to stay low when moving around the battlefield. BECAUSE if you stay low, you’re much less likely to get shot. The number one thing a soldier needs to do is …. stay alive….. if you get shot, you can’t do much else. Therefore, a critical skill you need to master is moving around the battlefield without being killed. – Make sense? Stay low and go, go, go.

The way they trained us in this skill has some merit in today’s business world. The ARMY leaders (SGTs, CPLs) made us do this repeatedly and slowly increased the level of difficulty of the skill.

And as a result, we got better and better at this critical skill.

My point is. If you need to be good at something, to do your job well, practise it.

Objections are a pretty good example of where this works well.

Objection training (Basic drill).

Step 1 – Figure out what the top 4 objections are you, and the rest of the team are getting every week.

Step 2 – Find who, in your team, is doing the best job right now at handling these objections and get them to tell everyone else what they are saying or doing to get past these objections.

Step 3 – Practise it, then increase the difficulty to secure the learning.

If your objection response strategy is sound and you’ve practised it. Then you and your team should be able to handle ‘standard’ objections with ease in your everyday selling situations whenever they come up.

Most sellers say they’re handling objections correctly, but I’d argue they’re not really. My observations indicate most are easily ‘baulked’ by the very simplest of objections. No time, No need, No budget, We use someone else. Stammer, stammer, stutter, pause… crickets. Ask a team member today what their objection strategy is for “we’ve already got one”?

Does this all sound too hard? Well, chances are you’ve already done it.

Remember the McDonalds, 2 All Beef patties competition from the late ’80s? – I do. They said if you could say the entire ingredients of a Big Mac in 4 seconds or less, you ‘won’ a free coke. This was an example of marketing genius. To this very day, I can easily rattle off the recipe for a Big Mac in well under the 4secs. Just as most of us could back then.’

I’d argue if you can force yourself to remember, practise and regurgitate a burger recipe for the equivalent reward of about .90cents of Coke. Do you think you should practise your objection response strategies so you can sell more, make more commission and have a better week/ day/ life? So why haven’t you?

I don’t know why you haven’t either, but you really should.

The post Objection Handling – The Special Sauce appeared first on Head Of Sales.