The Executive Sales Coach: Keith Rosen’s Sales Blog and Business Blog On Selling, Leadership, Managing Your Team, Business and Life » sales articles

With all the talk about the economy heading towards a recession, I’m busier than ever. And so are my clients. So, what gives? How much of this is fact and how much hype? Either way, I’m certainly not disputing that it’s affecting how some business owners and companies are spending lately.

So, what tips do I offer to companies, salespeople and, more specifically retailers on how to weather the recession? The same coaching I deliver to my clients, which is keeping their recession blues at pay, enabling them to drive and close new sales, and most important keeping their mental edge.

‘Weathering a recession’ sounds like surviving a storm and waiting until it passes. The “wait and see” or “lets hope things get better soon” is putting retailers out of business every day. I see it in my community. Stores that were opened one week are closed the next. Sure, you can ‘batten down the hatches’ when the eye of the storm lands but keep in mind when you open them up, there won’t be any customers sitting there waiting around for you. Instead, here’s what you need to do.

1. First, get out of your own head.
Businesses are closing their doors not due to a lack of effort but because they are still attempting to sell, manage or run their business the way it was, not the way it is today. If your marketplace has changed, then you need to change with it. Friendly reminder, don’t get sucked up into what you’re hearing on the news every day. Turn it off if you have to! What is real for you in your business in your local economy? Get out of the type of mindset that keeps you stuck in obsessing on what you need to do to survive and focus on how you can thrive. Remember all those great business ideas you were going to implement; the training your wanted to take, the marketing you wanted to do, the team building you felt would surely to make a measurable impact on your growth and success but daily business responsibilities always seemed to take precedent? Now is the time to blow the dust of those ideas and start executing on them. This begins with a change of thinking, accompanied by a change of strategy and topped off with a strong dose of reality.

2. Get back to basics.
Do you remember when you first opened your doors and achieved some measurable success? Why were you successful in the first place? What did you do then that you may not be doing now or unwilling to do now? Get on the floor of your store, cold call, prospect, do some grunt work? You need to turn around your business, fast, so time is not a luxury. Therefore, if you think there are any activities which are beneath you, then you already have one leg of your business in the grave.

3. Actually learn how to sell.
No, selling for 30 years is not what I’m suggesting as a training platform. Experience is important but experiences doesn’t equate to engaging in the healthiest of sales techniques. I’d be willing to bet (and I’m not a gambling man) the majority of retailers out there have not been coached and trained to be a sales champion, do not have a defined sales process they consistently engage in and as such, don’t know how to truly sell. And by no means consider this an attack on the retail sector. However, given that the majority of daily purchases we make are at a retail level, this is what I’m experiencing both as an executive coach and as a consumer. The “I’ve been successful in spite of myself” theory would apply here.

4. Work your leads and earn a sale.
Just a short time ago, in many sales driven companies, your salesperson can have a pulse and still get a sale simply by your customers showing up and having the money to spend. We were fooled into thinking that, “Hey, since I’m bringing in the business, I must be a great salesperson.” In today’s business climate, the same people are now struggling to generate the results they were, realizing that the marketplace has duped them into thinking they were better then the really are when it comes to professional selling. It has been the economic climate that made many salespeople seemingly productive, rather than their skill set or the core competencies needed to truly become a high performance sales professional, regardless of economic or market conditions. With today’s ever evolving market, if you are selling, managing or running your business the same way you’ve been running it for the last several years, you’re overdue to reevaluate your philosophy.

If you sell consumer products or services that is a more substantial purchase than going to the supermarket (home electronics, furniture, bridal/wedding venders, travel, boutique stores, computers, home appliances, home furnishings, clothing/shoe stores, etc.) don’t let a potential customer walk out the door without collecting some data points and permission to check in. Learn to position yourself as your customer’s trusted adviser throughout their decision making process. Abandon toxic thinking and get beyond the fact that you can afford to let any potential customer walk away from a conversation, thinking they will actually call you back on their own accord. Earn the right to call each person who buys from you - a customer. It’s during times like these where you literally have to earn their business rather than simply be an order taker.

5. Get into action. Work with a coach.
Hire a coach. With a coach, it’s not about weathering the storm. You can do that on your own. A great business coach can assist you in developing the strategy and skills you need to not only sail through the storm but actually even profit during it.

In a recent interview, I was asked what companies can do to ‘boost their close ratios’ within the specialty retail market. Here were the questions as well as my responses.

Question: What exactly is a close ratio and why is it important for retailers and their employees to pay attention to their close ratios?

Response: While you may find that the definition of a “closing ratio” vary dependant upon the industry and selling cycle, broadly speaking, your closing ratio is the number of prospects you’ve met with/spoken with divided by the number of sales you made. So, if you speak with 10 prospects and make 5 sales, then your closing ratio is 50%.
Regarding the importance of paying attention to their closing ratios, retailers need to be able to answer the following questions:

• How many calls do I need to make to generate one prospect?
• How many prospects does it take to generate one sale?
• How long will each prospecting or cold calling effort take?
• How much time do I need to devote to new business development every day?
• And how many sales do I need each month to attain my year end financial goals?

If you don’t know the answers to these essential questions, that’s perfectly fine. Realize that if you do not have the answer to some of these questions, it may require doing some conscious tracking of your cold calling efforts before you are able to accurately answer them. There are many tools available today to help track these numbers. Once you do, imagine how much easier your life would be if you were able to identify the specific and measurable actions you need to take on a daily basis in order to reach your yearly income goal. Now, you’ve created your success formula. You will then be able to determine how much prospecting or marketing/advertising is needed and and the number of appointments/presentations needed each month, even each day to attain your goals, as well as the time commitment it will take to do so.

If you can measure it you can then manage it. Let the numbers in your success formula determine the amount of activity you need to put into your daily routine that will ensure your selling success. It sure beats scratching your head at the end of every month, wondering why you didn’t meet your sales goals. Now, you will have a defined, formula to follow so that you can generate the results you want. You can’t refine what you don’t define.

Objections are a part of selling. Every salesperson can readily admit they’ve come face to face with objections throughout their sales career. Interestingly, salespeople define the word, ‘objection’ a variety of different ways.

In a seminar I delivered last week, I asked the audience what the word, ‘objection’ meant to them. Here’s what I heard in response:

1. It means “No.”
2. It’s an excuse.
3. It’s a smokescreen.
4. It’s a concern.
5. It’s a sign of interest.
6. It means “Get out. I’m not interested.”

While I’m a firm believer of the fourth and fifth definition above, salespeople still continually fall into the trap of creating objections themselves; the very obstacles they are looking to avoid in the first place. After all, if the prospect is not saying flat out “No” (and they’re being honest and upfront), then there’s a concern that you have not addressed and defused in a way that provides them with the confidence and peace of mind to move ahead and buy from you.

Salesopedia just published one or my articles on this very subject entitled, “Stop Creating The Objections that Kill Your Sales.”

You can read the article here.

So, in the end, developing a greater sensitivity around the obstacles and objections that you create during your selling process will assist you in eliminating certain roadblocks that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

However, what about the valid concerns that you hear from your customers and prospects? You know, the objections that sound like, “Your price is too high,” “I need to shop around,” “Let me think about it,” “Now’s not the right time,” “It’s not in the budget,” “We’re happy with our current vender, service provider, etc.” and so on. How adept are you in responding and actually defusing these common obstacles to the sale?

Here’s an exercise I would encourage you to do. List all of the objections you typically hear. Then, write down how you respond to each of them. If you find that your rebuttals are not effective enough to defuse these objections and create new possibilities for a sale, then it’s time to give them an overhaul. Take the time to create a more effective response for each objection you hear.

Remember, salespeople don’t overcome objections, your customers and prospects do. (After all, when was the last time you actually ‘convinced’ someone to do something that they really didn’t want to do?) So, your response to each objection will contain questions to better understand exactly where the prospect stands, rather than a defensive statement that simply creates an adversarial posture between you and the prospect.

Once you’ve developed the appropriate language to handle each objection, take them out for a test drive and gauge your results. Remember, if you don’t define it, you can’t refine it. How else can you determine what works and what doesn’t? Put your shotgun away. Shooting from the hip is a dead strategy. Developing a conscious process for handling each objection gives you the power to continually reinforce best practices that have been proven to work which will ultimately lead to more sales.

The Top 10 Most Common Mistakes in Selling:

Do you wish that your selling strategy and efforts to earn more customers were more rewarding for you? It will be if you avoid falling into these top 10 common pitfalls in the New Year.

Mistake #10. What is Your Most Valuable Proposition (M.V.P.)?

Having great products, service, and prices is no longer enough in today’s competitive marketplace. Although important, this information often falls upon deaf ears, since most salespeople are saying the same thing. The trend of companies today is to become more specialized by creating their own unique “niche.” A unique selling proposition is what you offer your clients that not only clearly separates you from your competitors, but allows for long term partnership that keeps your clients coming back. What is unique about your company, product or service that either no one else or only very few other companies can claim or offer?

The Top 10 Most Common Mistakes in Selling:

Do you wish that your selling strategy and efforts to earn more customers were more rewarding for you? It will be if you avoid falling into these top 10 common pitfalls in the New Year.

Mistake #8. Do you use excuses to mask your failures?

Sure, we are real good at coming up with a million reasons why the customer didn’t purchase from us. But all we really need is to come up with just one reason why they will buy the next time. Excuses aren’t helping you the next time you run into a similar challenge. Look at a failed sales attempt as an opportunity to begin again more intelligently. What can you do the next time you run into that similar problem? By anticipating and preparing your presentation around certain objections, you have the ability to shift from overcoming objections to actually preventing them from arising.

The Top 10 Most Common Mistakes in Selling:

Do you wish that your selling strategy and efforts to earn more customers were more rewarding for you? It will be if you avoid falling into these top 10 common pitfalls in the New Year.

Mistake #7. Do you have a systematic approach to selling?

The shotgun approach to selling does not provide you with the ability to become consistent in your performance. If you are constantly trying something different every time you’re in front of a customer, you are never allowing yourself the opportunity to become skilled in using a certain system. What needs to happen is you must systemize your approach. Think about the steps you take when engaging in an activity. It could be a sport or a hobby. How do you know what to expect as an end result? Because you consistently performed the same way over and over again.

The same goes for perfecting the art of selling. Salespeople who follow a system are not only successful in generating business, but exert a lot less effort because they know what results to expect every time they run an appointment. Salespeople who are disorganized in their presentation often leave a sales call confused and unsure of where they stand. This happens because they don’t know “where they have been” and what the next step should be or where they need to go. Following a specific sequence, and controlling the steps through the selling process, is vital to an organized, professional sales effort. A system is what takes you from point A to point B with the least amount of risk or error. A system spells out what you need to accomplish from the time you are first face to face with that customer until the time you leave the appointment. It is your strategy, which gives you the freedom in knowing what the outcome will be. When you have a system in place, there is no room for second-guessing.

There is a saying, “Begin with the end in mind.” Think about it. If you begin a sales presentation knowing where you want to wind up as an end result, and can even envision all the steps that it will take to get you there, you will have much more control over the outcome. It is like running a race. You know where you start and you know where you need to finish.

The Top 10 Most Common Mistakes in Selling:

Do you wish that your selling strategy and efforts to earn more customers were more rewarding for you? It will be if you avoid falling into these top 10 common pitfalls in the New Year.

Mistake #6. Do you prefer to hear “I want to think it over” rather than a “No”?

Determine why they really didn’t buy. The key is to get someone to speak to you openly. This can be difficult, since many clients feel the need to disguise the truth not to “hurt your feelings.” Instead, they use generic reasoning, such as “High price” or “Bad timing.” Get to the real reason by asking questions about their goals this year, problems they are facing, etc. This often leads to a conversation about the potential purchase of your product/service that you would never have gotten otherwise. Remember that there is usually one main reason why a customer will not buy. If you hear “I want to think about it,” chances are the customer hasn’t been given all the information that they need in order to make a purchasing decision. It is up to you to go back, uncover and fill in the areas that are missing. What is it they really want to think about?

Do you wish that your selling strategy and efforts to earn more customers were more rewarding for you? It will be if you avoid falling into these top 10 common pitfalls in the New Year.

Mistake #5. Are you chasing too many dead opportunities?

Are you making too many follow-up calls? Whether it’s because of a stubborn attitude or not realizing when a sale is truly dead, salespeople sometimes spend too much time chasing accounts that simply don’t qualify as a potential sale. This should have been detected during the discovery process in your presentation. If it hasn’t, ask questions to determine exactly where the prospect stands. When discussing the possibility of earning the business of a client, it is crucial that you give them the opportunity to not only say “Yes” but “No” as well. Getting turned down can make you feel rejected, but it also allows you to go on to more promising prospects. Remember the word “No” is simply a two letter word, that’s it.

Do you wish that your selling strategy and efforts to earn more customers were more rewarding for you? It will be if you avoid falling into these top 10 common pitfalls in the New Year.

Mistake #4. Are you reacting to your clients as opposed to responding?

When a customer says something like, “Your price is too high,” salespeople often switch into a defensive mode, thinking about a past experience with a similar customer, and react accordingly. Remember that
re-action is any action you have taken before. So if you are continually reacting from the “same place,” you are going to continue to generate the same result. You might react by defending your quality or value, or with some type of reduction in price. If customers can get a discount by merely making a statement, think about the atmosphere you are creating. The customer will feel that they shouldn’t buy before trying something else to get an even better price; like by checking out your competitor. “Your price is too high” is not a question you need to defend. Instead of answering it, respond with a question such as, “Before you ask me why my price is high, why do you feel the other price you got is lower?”

Mistake #3. Do you make too many presumptions that lose your client’s attention?
Most companies are no longer in the business of selling products but of providing solutions. Unfortunately, salespeople often try to tell the prospect the solution before they even understand the problem because they assume from a previous experience that their solution will fit for everyone. For example, there are probably dozens of features and benefits you could promote about your product or service. What is the client’s primary motivation to listen to you? Determine the advantage or solution your product/service will produce for them. It can be greater productivity, lower overhead, monetary savings or an increase in the quality of life. To stimulate the client’s attention, develop a short, concise message describing the specific problems solved through utilizing your product/service. It is up to you to uncover the one that would motivate this client to continue listening to you. It isn’t enough to simply understand the problem and provide a solution. Anticipate your client’s future needs. What are some of the problems they will face this year? How will utilizing your product/service help solve them? If you want to create a purchasing opportunity, uncover what their current as well as future needs are; needs clients may not be able to even identify themselves.