Give Yourself a Sales Pro Tune-Up Today!

Our work habits, over time, determine our levels of success. Use the following checklist to get an idea of your strengths and weaknesses as a salesperson. Be honest with yourself, and score realistically to get an accurate picture of your professional strengths.

1. Do I take responsibility for my own success?  Do I blame someone else if things aren’t going well? If I am, I am misleading myself.  No one ever has the best price, product or service all of the time. Superstars succeed despite periodic shortcomings of the company, or swings in the economy.

2. Am I truly knowledgeable? Am I doing my homework? Do I understand today’s environment, my products and my direct competition? Prospects are more concerned with knowledge and service than they are with product and price.

3. What am I doing that my competition is not?. Am I continuing my education? Do I have a reading program? Am I continually self-renewing and sharpening my skills? A professional who ceases getting better ceases being good!

4. Am I really sensitive to the needs of those with whom I interact? Do I truly understand their social styles? Am I versatile? People do things for their reasons, not mine. My future success depends on my people skills.

5. Do I understand that I can’t just sell anything to anyone? People buy only what they want. Do I work to learn their most important needs, and how I can help meet them? Am I mastering the sales process and do I know why it works? Do I really understand that selling is the transfer of trust?

6. Am I of good cheer? Is an interaction with me a positive experience? Do I maintain a positive attitude? Do I take myself too seriously?

7. Do I create a good professional image? Do I project whatever my message does and with whomever I meet? Am I visible, available, professional in my presentation, and am I businesslike? Do I exhibit self-esteem and competence? Am I known for resolving the problem – now?

8. Am I a good manager of business relationships? In my career, have I built loyal clients or just occasional customers? Clients give me 50 percent or more of their business while customers give me business sporadically.

9. Am I living on my own fat? Do I add a trusting client at least every quarter? Do I continually prospect for new client possibilities? Have I been a career salesperson for three years, or have I had a one-year career three times? Do I do my marketplace research and pre-market myself before I approach a prospect?

10. Do I make only quality calls? Do I avoid comfort calls with those who don’t produce? Do I understand that I should never make a call without a clearly defined purpose? Do I target my prospects and develop business opportunities, or do I do business with whoever will do business with me?

11. Do I conduct meaningful customer interviews? Do I determine my prospect’s or client’s highest value needs? Do I ask meaningful questions to focus on my prospect’s or client’s urgencies? Do I really listen and elicit what he or she is communicating? When on sales calls do I listen twice as much as I talk?

12. Do I provide quality solutions? Do I remember that the client’s needs come before mine? Do I know that no worthwhile effort is ever lost? If I do what’s right for my clients, I’ll be rewarded, and soon! Do I strive for win-win outcomes?

13. Do I exceed the expectations of those with whom I work-both inside and outside the office? Do I do exactly what I say I will, when I say I will, in the way that I say I will do it? Exemplary service builds customer loyalty and rich dividends.

14. Am I really goal oriented? Are my goals and objectives in writing? Have I defined a strategy to reach each goal? Do I know how much each hour of my time is worth? What motivates me? Am I controlling my time so as to be ruthlessly effective with it?

15. Do I make non-negotiable commitments to my family, my company associates, my clients, my friends, my industry, and myself? At times each of these must come first, and deserves my undivided attention. An absolutely balanced life is probably impossible; but we must continually try for it.

16. Do I express my sincere congratulations to those who have achieved greatness? Do I sit at the feet of the masters, sublimating my ego, and model them? Do I praise good deeds in my family members and support staff every day? Do I always remember to say “Thank you”?

17. Do I understand and practice the Japanese concept of Kaizen? (Constant—if only minimal—improvement) My future will be determined by my success in getting a little bit better every day!

Go ahead, run through all of these questions and give yourself that sales pro tune-up that you know you need.  If you’re willing to be honest with yourself and make the adjustments necessary, the exercise can pay huge dividends.  Or….you can just make some more cold calls!  Your choice.

Stop ‘closing’ the sale. Start ‘opening’ the customer.

How do you transition from the value proposition, or presentation, to the close? From telling them what we’ve got to actually asking them if they want to buy it – or from the dance to the romance as we like to say.

I hate to use the word or the term “closing.” Because we’re really looking to “open” a customer. We’re opening the relationship. We’re opening the right to do business with these people on a regular basis.

So in the smart selling process, we focus on the customer. To visualize, it, we first imagine a pyramid that’s upside down. And the upside down pyramid is broken into five specific horizontal lines going across it equal in width. I’m trying to paint a picture for you here.

So you have the upside-down pyramid standing on the tip, so the base is at the top. And the first chunk of that base is made up of five equal sections, if you can picture that. They’re not really equal, but the width of them is equal. It means we’re going to spend the most time where there’s the most space in that pyramid. At the very top, where the biggest chunk is. And that’s the relationship part. So this is the first part of discovery.

We’re looking for a few things to happen here:

Listen for red flags. And never, ever interrupt.

When you’re listening well, something amazing happens: You begin to see connections between apparently isolated statements.

Can you see how that might be useful in a sales situation – to be able to discern red flags? Because those red flags are opportunities.

Look for contradictions or connections between things. So in a conversation, you may find yourself saying, “Excuse me. You said this just now. Is that right? Now, earlier in the conversation, you said this. Those two statements seem to connect. Those two things seem to create a common theme here. Tell me about that. Take me a little deeper on that.”

Or, “Wait a minute, Mr. Customer, you said this just now, but earlier in the conversation you said this. Well, which one is it?”

It shows that you listened. So you’re looking for connections or you might be looking for contradictions. But it shows that you’re listening now, it shows that you listened then. It helps you call them on the mat. You’re not just automatically agreeing with everything that they say.

If you can reconnect with something they said earlier or, again, look for that contradiction between what they’re saying now and what they said earlier, you’re demonstrating that you heard. And that is so important.

One last rule for listening well: Never, ever interrupt when your customer is talking.

Show that you’re listening: Take immediate action

Do you know how to show that you’re listening? By taking immediate action.

That might be picking up your phone in the middle of a sales call and calling the home office to find out where that delivery is.

Or going outside after your meeting, sitting in the parking lot and handwriting a thank you note, putting down two or three of the main points you discussed  and stamping it with stamps that you brought and putting it in the mailbox right then so the customer gets it the next day.

Immediate action.

It might mean leaving that call, going back to the office, taking some action on some of the things that you said you were going to do and immediately sending out an email or dropping a phone call or a voice mail to that customer letting him know those are done.

Immediate action will differentiate you from all of the competition. And the action I’m going to take tomorrow is going to be based upon what I was listening to today.

Listen better by restating what’s been said

Here’s the next tip on how to be a better listener:  Restate the key points of the conversation throughout the conversation. Say back to them what they just said. Like this:

“So let me get this straight, Mr. Customer. All right, let me see if I’ve got this right. Let me see if I can put us on the same page. All right, let me give you a snapshot of what I heard. All right, let me make sure that, bottom line, this is what you said. All right, before I go forward here, let me make sure I got this right.”

Toward the end, to make sure that you’re listening all the way through the conversation, restate the action items, the things that you’re going to do, and the things that they’re going to do.
And when you’re doing that, include the level of importance of each one of those action items for both the customer and you. “So the hottest item here, Mr. Customer, is this. Let me make sure I can correct it here.”

Listening to add value

Now that you’re listening with intent, it’s time to up the ante: Listen with the intent to respond and add value.

So we’re not just listening to our prospects until they get their point out, and then spewing our point — showing up and throwing up.

We’re listening with the intent to respond and add value. Not reacting.  Actually responding in a thoughtful way to what they’re saying.

So instead of barking out a scripted list of features and benefits, you might respond with:

• A solution
• A clarifying question
• A probing question

Your response is an opportunity to go a little bit deeper. And if you ask the right kind of question, often that will add more value than the solutions you offer.

The power of listening with intent

When you’re meeting with a prospect or customer, begin listening from the very first word.

Not when it gets interesting, when you think it’s going to be time for an important sales point to come up, or when you want to interject with one of your superstar questions.

Listen from the very first word to what the customer says. Listen with your eyes as well as your ears.

Why? Because certain things are going to come up throughout conversations you have with your prospects, customers, and clients. Things are going to come up that are pivotal to your relationship and the solutions that you can provide to your customers.

If you’re not listening from the very first word, then you’re going to have a hard time gauging where the client is coming from, gauging what the understanding is behind what they’re going to say.

When you listen from the very first word, it’s going to make things that come up later in the conversation a bit more evident. It’s going to make potential contradictions that may come up later stick out a little bit more.

To hear your prospects better, listen on paper

We’re covering how to listen better so that you can serve your prospects and clients better. And the first habit to develop here is listening on paper. How do you ‘listen on paper?’

You write down what your customers are looking for, so you have an actual record of what they want — and there are powerful benefits to this.

You make this a habit by having three essential things with you at all times. The first one is a pen, the second one’s a notebook, and the third is a business card. You know why you need the business card, so let’s address the first two.

Having a pen and a notebook with you shows that you’re there to do business. It indicates that you’re going to jot something down, to take notes, because you or you’re prospect are going to say or do something that is truly noteworthy. You’re going to say something that’s worthy of taking a note, worthy of your attention, worthy of logging.

The number-one skill in professional selling

What’s the all‑important, number-one skill in the profession of selling?

Listening. Nobody’s ever listened themselves out of a sale, right? On the other hand, a lot of us, every day, talk ourselves right out of a sale.  Remember  this: Your customers don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.

And you can’t let them know how much you care until you really start listening. When you’re doing all the talking, the only thing you’re learning is what you already know.

Your customers have the answers. Only they know:

• what their pains are
• what their fears are
• what their goals are

And they know those things better than you do, so stop assuming, talking and worrying about what you want to say, and start listening to what they need to say and what you need to hear.

You don’t need to remind yourself of what you think. You need to find out what the other person thinks. You’ve got to listen your prospect into buying, listen your customer out of their problems.

We often miss opportunities because we’re broadcasting when we need to be listening. What if you were just a bit more aware of the things your customers need from you? What if you had a little more understanding of their situation?

Show your best clients that they are special

Think about how the airlines treat you a little bit special if you fly with them all the time. It’s good for business, right?

So how do you show your best customers that you’d like to move them into the client bucket? How can you show them that they deserve a little special treatment?

Not that all the rest of your customers, the ones that aren’t in your client basket, should be treated like crap. It just means we move that up a notch. When they’re better customers, they move to clients.

So identify your top-tier clients. Identify them by profitability, or frequency of purchase, or after-sales service required, revenue, whatever it might be. And do some things to spend a little bit more time with them. Support some advisory councils, offer some incentive programs. Show some additional incentives, love trips or dinners or events.

Don’t worry about dropping prices for these people. If they buy more it tends to mean they’re getting more value from you.  Keep the margins where they are. Don’t drop price, add value instead.

Have some value-add training events. Go in and work with their staff, their people. Spend a few additional days with no strings attached. Have a client appreciation dinner. Give them a feeling of importance. That feeling of importance breeds a feeling of loyalty. The best way to get loyalty is to give it.

We’re looking to move people from customer to client so that our relationship with them is stronger, based on the value that we provide. And it really is about the way that they look at us in the end. But it starts with two things. It starts with the way that we look at ourselves and the moves we make.