Keith Rosen’s Executive Sales Coaching Blog on Selling, Leadership, Management » sales tips

Last week on CanDoGo.com was Tony Alessandra week. While a little late on the draw this week, the good news is, you can still access all of Tony’s videos and tips on CanDoGo. This one in particular I felt was so relevant during a time where customer retention and acquisition is top of mind for all companies and salespeople. Below are some best practices when it comes to asking for referrals.

Asking for Referrals
By Dr. Tony Alessandra

Watch the Video

Ask for referrals anytime a customer offers positive feedback about you, your company, or your product. Often, the best time to do so is right after your customer has a problem resolved by you, and you’ve proven that you can and will follow through. Any time you ask for referrals, follow these guidelines:

1. Ask for specific referrals to narrow the customer’s focus. Word your questions so that the customer thinks about a specific environment and a specific situation. For example: “Do you know of any colleagues in your business club whose needs are similar to yours?”


2. Gather as much information about the new customer as possible. In an informal, casual manner, ask about the referrals, business, needs and behavioral style. For example, ask “What did he say to you that indicated he has such a need?”


3. Ask your customer for permission to use his or her name. This should be no problem if you have built a solid relationship with that customer.


4. Ask your customer for help in obtaining an appointment with the referral.


5. Contact the referral as soon as possible, and then inform your customer about the outcome of the contact. If the customer decides to buy, send your referring customer a thank-you gift. If the customer doesn’t buy, send your referring customer a thank-you note for trying.

Here’s one of the photos that was taken at Ziglar headquarters in Plano, Texas in the studio after my conversation with Zig last week that I’m fortunate to say we captured on video. So, keep your eyes out for those clips which I hope to post soon!

Lately, I’ve been getting a high volume of calls from sales managers and their salespeople struggling to meet their sales goals. So, let me paint you a visual of the typical scenario being played out through the eyes of a salesperson; one that you may be intimately familiar with.

You’re on your way to work and during your commute, you’re thinking about what you hope to accomplish that day.

You get to your office, sit down at your desk and open up your calendar. A concerned look sweeps over your face. “Only one appointment this week.”

You look at your pipeline and get that squirmy feeling inside your gut, as you realize your pipeline is not as full as it used to be. You’re wondering where you’re going to find your next prospect.

The uncertainty begins to sweep over you. The stress starts creeping into your body, for you realize you can’t keep procrastinating making the cold calls you need to in order to book more appointments with key decision makers.

You remember what your boss told you. “Your funnel is drying up,” he says. “You’ve got to get on the phone and make more calls to your existing clients and to new prospects if you want to meet your goals.”

“Okay I can do this,” you tell yourself.

You find some people to call.

You take a deep breath and start dialing their number. “C’mon just answer the phone,” you say to yourself.

“Voice mail.” You don’t leave a message because you never get your calls returned anyway.

You dial the second number on you call list. Someone answers the phone and you hear, “Mrs. Johnson’s office, how can I help you?”

“Great, another gatekeeper,” you mutter to yourself. You’re actually caught off guard that a live person answered your call. Thirty seconds later, after your valiant, yet ineffective attempt to connect with your prospect, you hear a pleasant but well trained, “No thank you. We’re not interested.” You’re off the phone with the gatekeeper in less than one minute, as she’s been conditioned not to take unsolicited calls, especially cold calls.

You dial the third and fourth number. No luck. “More gatekeepers,” you say. “Why can’t I get past them?” you ask yourself. You start questioning if luck is actually what you really need or if there is more to cold calling than you originally thought.

“Okay one more shot.” You push yourself to dial the fifth number on your call list.

Someone picks up. Shockingly, it’s the prospect! Maybe you’ll get ‘lucky.’ And knowing that you need to open up this call with something gripping and compelling to grab this prospect’s attention to the point where they stop what they’re doing and want to engage in a conversation with you, you say, “Um, Hi. Mr. Smith? Uh, this is Chris from ABC logistics. How are you today?”

“Busy!” he says. And with that, he hangs up the phone.

Now, you’re depleted, frustrated and annoyed. You don’t understand why you’re unable to set the appointments with the prospects who you know you can help and therefore need to meet with. In a discouraging tone, you ask yourself, “Why won’t they talk to me? I know I can help them. If only they’d give me some time on the phone.”

You feel you’ve just wasted three hours of your day that you’ll never get back. In desperation, you cry out, “This cold calling thing doesn’t work for me! What else can I do to schedule meetings with more qualified prospects who can buy from me?”

And that’s when you ask yourself this toxic question which is often followed with a ‘yes’ that feeds the justification of your performance. “Is cold calling really dead?”

No, I did not have a hidden webcam secretly installed in your office, in case you’re wondering how I’ve been able to paint such a vivid picture that so closely resembles what you may be experiencing yourself. If anything, take some comfort in knowing that you are not alone and you can do something about it.

So, what is the answer? Is cold calling really dead? The answer is a resound, “Not even close.” Therefore, do not abandon cold calling! Cold calling is far from dead and I see evidence of this every day. After all, a majority of all Fortune 500 companies utilize some form of telephone prospecting every day.

Sure, I realize for many people cold calling and prospecting ranks right up there with getting their teeth pulled without the gas.

However, as an executive sales coach who has coached and trained thousands of salespeople over the years, here’s what I’ve learned very early on. It’s not that cold calling doesn’t work. Cold calling works fabulously well. It’s the way you’re cold calling that doesn’t work. In other words, consider that it’s more about your approach and cold calling strategy; what you say and how you say it – that is ineffective and what your prospects are unresponsive to.

So be careful. Most people who feel cold calling doesn’t work in actuality, have learned the wrong lesson.

For example, if I asked you to go outside and dig a ten foot deep hole with a spoon, do you learn the lesson, “Well, I guess I can’t dig holes very well” or is the real lesson; “If I had the right tools I would have been able to accomplish this goal faster, with less effort.” You see, it’s all about the tools you’re using when cold calling. Even if you handed Tiger Woods, one of the greatest golfers of all time, a pair of lefty clubs, while he still may outperform most golfers he would not be able to operate at his best, at the pinnacle of his potential, simply because he’s using the wrong tools. The same philosophy applies to your career and to cold calling.

Most salespeople sound exactly the same as every other person when calling on the same prospect, rather than develop their unique and compelling message that grabs someone’s ear to the point where they are interested in what you have to say. Why should a prospect want to hear the same approach time and time again? How can that possibly distinguish you?

So if you’re not getting the results you need, instead of abandoning a proven selling strategy, it’s time to upgrade your cold calling and follow up system. With a strong prospecting and cold calling model that is mapped out step by step; which also includes the compelling opening statement you need, the reasons why someone should listen to you in the first place (rather than opening up a call by asking for an appointment, demo, proposal, etc.), well crafted questions to determine if there’s even a fit between you and your prospect, as well as a strong voice mail and follow up strategy, you will see what a competitive edge “cold calling” can give you.

Side note: Over the last year, my cold calling book has been gaining more popularity as competition increases and the need to find more qualified prospects to fill your pipeline intensifies. So, if you’re ready to develop a permission based prospecting system that will enable you:

1. Leverage your talents to generate more qualified prospects and schedule more appointments in less time.


2. Get more callbacks.


3. Eliminate toxic cold calling strategies that sabotage your prospecting efforts.


4. My book will show you how to develop a permission based prospecting system that will enable to bring in more sales faster than you ever did before.

Here’s the link to Amazon to read all the five star reviews or you can go to my website here to learn more about this book.

“What do I need to accomplish in the first few minutes of every cold call I make?” “What’s my overall objective of a cold call?” These questions rank up there as two of the top questions I’m asked. If you’ve been following my last few posts, I’ve been hyper-focused on the importance of sales benchmarking and identifying best practices.

In the spirit of simplicity, there are actually five core objectives during a prospecting conversation which I’ve listed below.

1. First, introduce yourself. Identify who you are.


2. Next, provide the person to whom you are speaking with a compelling reason to speak with you. (What’s in it for them?)


3. Third, defuse their resistance. Create a pressure-free environment by getting permission to proceed with the conversation.


4. Then, guide them to your discovery/qualification step to get them involved and determine if there’s a fit.


5. Finally, determine the next step.

That’s it! Now ask yourself, does your system achieve these five core objectives?
 

What a wonderful email to wake up and read.

“I am delighted to confirm that your article, Don’t Sell Like You Buy published by Sales Gravy has been selected as one of the top ten sales articles for April.”

It seems that this article, (actually on of my personal favorites) Don’t Sell Like You Buy has been nominated for one of the best sales Articles of the Month on Top10SalesArticles.com.

You can read the full article here. Below is an except. This article is a result of an experience I had during a training event I was delivering. Another example of learning and sharing the experiences I gain from my clients and every training event I deliver.

“If you’ve never used a certain selling technique, prospecting approach or a particular set of targeted qualifying questions, then how do you know whether or not they will work or how they will be received by your prospects?”

I was building my case. I then turned to the audience and said, “Do not sell the way you buy.”

Now, you may feel at this point that I’m contradicting some universal selling principles. After all, conventional sales wisdom handed down through the ages suggests how important it is to empathize and sympathize with your prospects and clients.

However, there’s a very fine line between understanding and respecting someone’s decision making process; and assuming that everyone makes a purchasing decision in the same manner and using the same criteria that you do. Moreover, there is also the faulty assumption that your prospects respond in a similar fashion to the type of sales approach and the type of salesperson that you respond to and would buy from.

I then shared a personal example of the dangers of selling like you buy. “Folks, if I sold in the same manner in which I make a purchase and then in turn, transfer those values and beliefs on each prospect that I speak with, then I could tell you with great certainty that I would not be up here talking with you today.”

Reason being, when I make a purchase of any substantial amount, I take the time to research my options and learn about the different products or services available. By the time I’m ready to actually make the purchase, whether it’s something for my home, a television a car or a computer, more often than not, I will know more about the product, the competition and the marketplace than the person who is attempting to sell it to me.

My point is, if I started selling the way in which I make a purchasing decision, I am now putting my values, thought process and beliefs on the customer, assuming they purchase the same or in a similar way that I do. The result? More objections, less sales.

Besides, what if I was talking with an impulsive or assertive prospect who was ready to buy? I would be talking myself right out of the sale!”

Lets defuse a costly myth. The old adage of putting yourself in their shoes is really a costly assumption that destroys many a selling opportunity. Why? Because when you “look through their eyes” or attempt to see things how you assume they see them, it is still really what you see, not what they see.

The result? You develop a sales process based on how you think they buy rather than how they actually make a decision. Why? Because how you think they buy is really how you buy. (Is your brain twisted enough yet?)

If you truly want to wear their shoes, then you need to know how they think and what is important to them. Therefore, the only way to uncover how the prospect likes to process information, make a purchasing decision and the criteria they use to do so is by asking better questions.

Now, lets take this same ineffective model of selling like you buy and turn it around for a moment. If this belief of selling like the way you buy is getting in the way of taking certain actions or asking certain questions when on a sales call, then what about other things that you are doing or saying which you think are safe to you but in fact, are not safe or comfortable for the person you are speaking with because you’re still operating off the same tool, costly assumptions!

The lesson; Don’t believe everything you sell, I mean, tell yourself.

Salespeople who sell in the same manner in which they buy are sure to have a lower number of satisfied clients. Take a look at some different scenarios where utilizing your own beliefs, assumptions and value system can have a detrimental effect on your performance and income.

1. Since Carol usually shops around before choosing which company to buy from or which product to buy, she accepted the prospect’s reason for doing the same. Like herself, she couldn’t expect people to make a decision during the initial consultation.




2. When Mike makes a purchasing decision, he usually purchases the least expensive item available. He thinks you can get the same top value at a lowest price. Although he represents one of the highest quality products in his industry, the amount of money he sold for was always at the lowest profit margin. Mike had a hard time asking for more money, even though he was offering the consumer the highest in value.




3. Robert hated hearing sales presentations. When he went out on his appointments, he was always done within thirty minutes. In order to effectively cover all of the necessary information and provide the right solutions for the prospect, the average time a representative should invest during an appointment was between two to three hours.




4. Dana was very indecisive when it came to making a purchasing decision. Because this was inherent in her personality, she offered her customers many different alternatives. The end result was confusion on the consumer’s end, on Dana’s end and no work order.

There are salespeople out there who are even more indecisive than their prospects. Can you see it? “I’ll ask for the order now. No, I’ll wait a little longer. No, I might miss the opportunity to do so later, so I better do it now.” This can clearly put a damper on your performance as well as your mental health.

1. There was never a “right time” for Bob to purchase a new car. When a prospect explains to Bob that they have other commitments, he totally understood and told them that he would call them back when the time was right. 6. Rhonda always bought from salespeople that were overzealous and aggressive. She tried to emulate that same disposition on every sales call she went out on.

Sell in the manner in which you were trained to sell and stick with the proven selling sequence that works for you and within your industry or profession. You cannot expect prospects to purchase in the same manner as you do.

If you sell in the same manner as you buy, you are instilling your beliefs onto the other people. Since every person’s beliefs and buying habits are different, every prospect processes information differently. What is important to one person may not be important to another. Therefore, there will never be two presentations exactly the same.

While one prospect might weigh company stability and the quality or value of the product as the most important aspect in making their decision, another prospect might weigh price as the most important.

Learn to adapt your presentation around the values of each specific prospect. In the end, people make purchasing decisions based on their style of buying, not yours.

You can read the full article here.

Listen to the full podcast here

In this week’s podcast I discuss the difference between prequalifying and prejudging your prospects and clients. This is a critical distinction to get because if you’re prejudging them, you’re already creating a self imposed barrier to more sales and creating more selling opportunities.

To permanently eliminate any confusion, lets draw a distinction between what it means to pre-qualify and pre-judge someone such as a prospect. If you read my cold calling book, you know that I’m a strong advocate of pre-qualifying anyone before you invest your very limited and precious time in meeting with or speaking with them.

Conversely, pre-judging someone is something you do that shows up in the filter or barrier you have in your listening.

Here’s another way to distinguish between the two. When you are pre-qualifying someone you are arriving at a conclusion that determines whether or not there’s a fit worth pursuing based on a defined set of criteria you uncover through the use of well crafted questions.

Pre-judging said simply, is all about you. Here, you are relying on your faulty and costly assumptions, thoughts and beliefs to determine their needs and whether or not this prospect will potentially buy from you.

When you pre-judge someone you’re making assumptions about them before you ask any questions or uncover any facts.

When you pre-qualify someone, you’re asking questions to uncover their unique and specific needs without making any assumptions so that you can determine very quickly if there is in fact, an authentic fit worth pursuing.

Listen to the full podcast here.

Where do buyers go when they say, “I’ll call you back?”

Why do buyers seem so foolish through our eyes for not making a buying decision, when it’s obvious that they have a need that our solution can resolve?

The sales model only handles half of the buying decision – the solution resolution phase. But it has never managed the buying decision phase – that place that buyers go when they go inside, figure out the internal issues they must manage to bring in a new solution, and make sure that there is buy-in for adopting a new solution. And the internal issues are not necessarily related to what we think of as the Identified Problem, or ‘need’. It might involve an historic fight between two departments that have duplicated staffing rather than clean up the fight. It might involve a set of rules that render your solution prohibitive, regardless of the need. It’s the sort of knowledge that only insiders can handle because it’s idiosyncratic to the culture. And as outsiders, we are not privy to it.

Indeed, a buyer’s need sits within a tangle of elements that have created the Identified Problem over a period of time, hold it in place daily, and fight hard to maintain the status quo because otherwise the system would be out of integrity. Think of an iceberg that has a problem with the tip: until the entire iceberg gets engaged, no change will happen. And in the process, it will fight hard to maintain all of itself rather than be diminished or changed.

Sales hasn’t known how to go inside a buyer’s environment and help manage all of those issues. It’s pure systems theory: systems fight to maintain themselves rather than change. And until or unless the system is able to manage the elements that would threaten the rest of the system, no change can happen. That’s why we don’t close 100% of our obvious sales; that’s where buyers go.

And even though we understand the area around our buyer’s Identified Problem, we have had no way of making sense of those idiosyncratic issues that are outside of our solution space and awareness. And until buyers manage these issues, they cannot make a decision.

My friend and colleague, Sharon Drew Morgen, author of the NY Times Business Bestseller “Selling with Integrity” and 6 other books on her ground-breaking Buying Facilitation Method, has developed a model that gives sellers the tools to help buyers recognize, align, and manage all of those elements within a buyer’s environment that need to be addressed before they can make a purchase. It’s the area that sellers have never been able to influence until now. Through books and guided study programs, Buying Facilitation is available to learn. Consider adding it to the skills you already sell with. Not only will it help your buyer make sound, quick buying decisions, but it will make you a true Servant Leader to your buyer, working together to match their values and align their criteria so they discover the solutions that their cultures will accept.

After my conversation with Sharon Drew just yesterday, I strongly suggest making this part of your skill set as well as your mind set that’s going to offer you a competitive selling edge that you may never have considered before. You can learn more about Sharon Drew Morgen, her programs and incredible books at newsalesparadigm.com and buyingfacilitation.com.

In CanDoGo’s latest post, I found a useful tip that my friend and colleague, Tony Parinello wrote that stands out above the crowd as a selling strategy to adopt that works exceptionally well. Here’s the excerpt from Tony, followed by some more tools you can use when you run into the all too familiar price objection.

When VITO Objects to the Price – By Tony Parinello

“Your price is too high.”

Whenever you’re calling on a Very Important Top Officer, you’re bound to run into some first-call objections. Let’s say you place a telephone call, and when the prospect picks up, you launch into your opening statement and you get interrupted with something that sounds like this:

“I’ve seen your solutions before. Your price is simply too high for our budgets.”

Don’t respond with: “We offer specials. This month, it’s 10 percent of list,” or “What would you consider a fair discount?” or “How much would we have to lower it to get your business?” or “I can talk to my manager and see if we can offer a lower price.”

Instead, I want you to respond with: “Ms. Importanta, could you please define price?”

Don’t be surprised if VITO responds with: “Price is what I pay. It’s what’s on the invoice!”

Be prepared to answer with all of the services you don’t typically charge for and be prepared to put a price tag on all of them, including pre-sales studies, evaluations and other services that are valuable to the prospect and would be costly if they were to hire a consultant or industry expert to perform.

So what have we learned? Here are a few valuable nuggets to walk away with.

First, we’ve learned that it’s our assumptions around the sales process that often sabotage our selling efforts right from the start. In other words, “Your price is too high” can mean several different things depending upon who is sharing this perceived objection with you. After all, what exactly does, “Your price is too high” even mean? Certainly something different to each customer, depending on their point of view.

Unfortunately, the majority of salespeople make the costly assumption that the dollar figure they quoted for the service or product offered is what is really in question. And this can be the farthest thing from the truth. Yet, salespeople will continue to forge ahead and react accordingly, based upon the presumption, their honest belief that it’s the price that is getting in the way of earning their business and if they drop their price, offer some discount or “better deal,” they’ll earn a new customer.

Isn’t it amazing that a salesperson can conduct a one way conversation in their own head and come up with a solution to a customer’s objection without even involving the customer! Yes, salespeople can be incredibly creative, even to the point where it costs us sales.

Fact: Dropping the price before validating and isolating the core roadblock(s) to making a purchasing decision often results in diluting your value, damaging your credibility and ultimately losing the sale rather than winning it.

Here are some healthier responses to this common objection, “Your price is too high” that would serve you better than the typical reactionary and adversarial posture salespeople take in an attempt to defend their price. Besides, if this is the selling environment you create, where it’s ‘you vs. the customer,’ we all know who’s going to win in the end.

The next time you hear, “Your price is too high” respond with the following questions. You’ll be amazed at how much more useful intel you can collect just by going a few layers deeper with more powerful and tactical questioning.

• “How high is too high?”


• “Is it the price or the financing terms/monthly installment?”


• “Is it the price or the value/R.O.I. you think you’re going to realize that concerns you?”


• “Are you referring to the price or the budget you’ve allocated for this project?”


• “Compared to what? What are you comparing it to?”


• “I’m sure you have a good reason to feel this way. May I ask what that is?”


• (If comparing to a lower price.) “Before we explore why you feel my price is too high, why do you think the other prices you received are so low?”

After using these questions to respond to this objection rather than react with an adversarial statement, notice how often the real objection that’s getting in the way of moving forward actually comes down to price. Probably only about 15% of the time, instead of what you initially perceived to be much higher. Since the real objection is often several layers deep, it’s going to be the right, pinpoint questions that deliver the relevant information you need so that you can offer a solution that’s going to fit best.

In my next blog, I’ll unpack the second learning point worth integrating into your selling approach. That is, how, exactly, do you build value?

Just Follow Up Wins Sales Article of The Month on Top Sales Articles.

Read the full article here.

You may know what that next step in your selling process actually is. But do you know exactly, when? Are you confident in what that next step is and when it will be taken? Many salespeople struggle when it comes to determining whether or not to follow up and when that “perfect” time to do so actually is.

Have you ever burdened yourself with these internal questions?

• “Do I call them now, or do I wait until next week?”


• “I think they’ll have time to read my proposal by next Wednesday, so I’ll call them Thursday.”


• “I don’t want to appear desperate or pushy, so maybe I’m better off just waiting another week.”


• “They said they weren’t in a hurry, so I’ll put them on my list to call back next month.”


• “Maybe I should call them today. I mean, it’s been a few weeks since we’ve spoken last and I don’t want to lose this sale!”

This ambiguity in your selling process is then compounded exponentially when you finally reach out to this person, just to connect with their voice mail on the other end.

If any of these questions sound familiar, it’s a safe bet you may be missing a critical step in your selling process. Here’s one of the golden rules of selling which, for many reasons, gets violated every moment of every day.

Always, always, always, have the next step mapped out and agreed upon in every selling situation, in every conversation with a prospect or customer.

This removes the toxic ambiguity that pollutes your mind and your thinking and robs you of time that’s better served focused on more meaningful and rewarding selling activities.

Here’s a link to this article, Just Follow Up.

Times are challenging for many businesses, and sales professionals have to help customers and prospects manage risk so buying will continue.

Those salespeople who help businesses successfully manage risk will be able to elevate themselves above the fray of the marketplace to be seen as bringing greater value to their customers. Your customers need to minimize all kinds of risk in many different areas.

I mention this because I recently learned about a brand new eBook by the Sales Bloggers Union (salesbloggers.com) that deals with this very topic. “How to sell more by reducing risk” provides eight different perspectives of risk written by eight of the top international sales bloggers.

They’re actually giving it away for free. Click here to download the free e-book and see what you can learn to maximize your sales.