Communicate Your Value Carefully
IttBiz wrote a post about her trip to England–and paying too much $$$ for a sandwich, surmising that it cost too much because it had adjectives describing it. Here is post.
She’s on to something–not about sandwiches but about how we describe our value. In our sales training practice, I find that your value and the describing thereof, is tricky.
If you sound too proud of what you do, people will just discount it (“Well, of course he would say that. He’s selling it.”
If you don’t give it any ooomph, it sounds like you really don’t care.
My Rule
A great sales strategy is this: describe it with claims only when you can back up with facts.
If your clients have realized an average of 12% cost savings (better to put an amount in, rather than percents), then have at it. As long as you can back it up, it’s fair game.
If your clients have increased revenue an average of 22%, then convert that to dollars and put it out there. But again, you’d better be able to back it up.
DISCLAIMER #1. There is another side to this and that is the disclaimer. In many businesses that sell solutions, it takes more than buying the solution to get a great ROI. So, you must tell people upfront, that these are “averages” only. If they want to be at the high end of that scale, you can work with them to help them get it.
DISCLAIMER #2. If you bring enormous value that, on the surface, sounds too good to be true, be careful.
Results. Not Claims.
People are looking for results today. Not just for a better widget. The question they’re asking is, “How will buying this widget improve my life, financially and otherwise?”
So when you go to communicate your value, be careful about using a bunch of worn-out adjectives to describe you. It might just put you back in the ‘commodity dungeon’ where everyone sounds the same and competes on price only. You don’t really want to be there, do you?
Waiting is the Hardest Part
By Brooke Green
What’s the hold-up?
Almost daily, I hear that one of the hardest aspects of selling is waiting for the prospect to catch up with you. “Why do they take so long to make a decision? “ “They said they needed help. I laid out my solution to fix their problem. So what’s the hold up? “ Maybe this dilemma is a gift.Discovery
Think about it. Sometimes when we talk to prospects, we uncover problems that they didn’t realize they had; or, the problem is much bigger than what they had thought. Shortly thereafter, we work with them on how to solve that problem they didn’t realize they had – asking them to invest time, money, resources.Then, when they can’t tell us immediately that we are the people they believe can help them fix this problem that is bigger or new to them, we get frustrated.
What is your intent?
We need to meet people where they are. What does that mean?A really good salesperson is really good at uncovering problems. He/she also operates from a place of “how can I bring value to this situation?” not “how can I sell something?” If your intent is to help, truly help, you’ll wait until the prospect can accept your help.
We’ve all been in the situation where we’ve pushed our solution on someone, and if they aren’t ready, it’s more painful for everybody than the original problem.
Sometimes it’s about the prospect believing that the problem is real, and then believing that you are the person that can help them solve it. If you can help them get to that place (and be patient in the process), you become an invaluable resource, a trusted advisor.
So remember, if it doesn’t happen on your time, it’s probably happening exactly the way it’s supposed to.
The Changing Face of the Professional Salesperson
===MARCH 22 ADVANCED SELLING PODCAST=== (15 Minutes)
In this week’s episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, Bill Caskey interviewed John Hirth, a sales development trainer from Chicago (http://www.johnhirth.com) John gives us his take on how the profession of selling has changed in the last 10 years. His answers may surprise you. And they will definitely enlighten you.
Everyone wants larger results in their future, but how does your thinking have to change in order to accomplish those big goals? John Hirth talks about “intelligent change.” It will give you the strategy and insight needed to grow your revenue. After the interview, Bill and Bryan Neale talk about what you can do to start changing your approach with your customers, which will keep you running at your peak sales level.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Sales Strategies For The New Breed of Seller…
I love this business!!! Where else can you invite total strangers into your office and have an intelligent, inspiring conversation about sales problems and how to fix them? And have everyone leave with hope that one can change outcomes–by changing their thinking.
Well, we just did that in a recent series of seminars. We had more than 100 people take part in the program over four days. Although this is a marketing tool for us, we used it more as a training forum for best practices.
Consequently, I thought our blog readers would like to know what the biggest challenges were (according to the input of the group). And then a few thoughts on what we recommended.
1. How do I position our company (and it’s value) when my customer continues to see us as how we were, not how we are?
2. How do we differentiate our solution and stop being a commmodity?
3. How do we keep the sales process moving–avoid it getting stuck in corporate games?
4. How do I train my people–who sometimes don’t think about selling in the right way?
5. My buyers are more sophisticated, having access to information, prior to our sales team showing up.
Without getting into detail on each one, here is the bottom line (as I see it):
1. You can’t communicate value if you don’t know it and believe it. Most of the time sales people want to “jump to the words.” What do I say to help customers get our value? Perhaps that’s not the first question.
Instead the first question should be: “what is our value”? Or, “how does our solution solve a problem the customer has?” Or, “What are some trends that are causing my customer problems in my area of expertise?” Ask the right questions.
2. Bryan Neale brought up this–if you are constantly talking in sales meetings about “how we get the prospect to say yes,” then your intent is out of whack. Stop doing that. Exchange that worn out intent, with the intent of helping your customer solve a problem. Then, and only then, will you take control of the process.
One of our attendees said it best when he said, “It sounds like the only way to control the sales process is to give up control.” There’s a good student. Simple to talk about. Tough to do. But if you want to accomplish obscenely wonderful things in your business life, you have to change your perspective around intent.
3. Our capacity to innovate has exceeded our ability to communicate. This kind of goes back to #1. How do we communicate the REAL value of what we do? We do it quite simply–by stating it in a way that allows the prospect to say (or feel), “that’s me.” If you communicate your value by pleading and convincing and persuading, is it surprising that no one’s saying “that’s me”?
A Brief Audio of The Program (20 minutes)
Here is a brief audio of the upfront portion of one of the workshops. It’s only 15 minutes (out of 2 hours) but wanted to at least give you a taste.
How to Take the Sales Out of Selling
It came to me at a peculiar time. I am a sales trainer and I was training sales people. In a moment of uninspired accidental brilliance (that’s an enormous exaggeration) I said something that made all the sense in world, but was completely contradictory in nature.
“My ultimate goal for you,” I said to a roomful of seasoned professional sales people “is to completely remove the concept of ‘selling’ from who you are and what you do.” But wait a minute…..I’m a sales trainer…..a SALES trainer….and these are sales people…….SALES people……..and ALL my clients are SALES people. Was I secretly hoping to put myself out of business? Hardly.
The point is this. The sales process in American business has become painfully stale. It’s wrought with manipulation, misplaced intentions, ego, self indulgence and in some instance, complete fakeness. I certainly don’t mean to offend any professional sales person, but it’s likely time you took a strong, deep OBJECTIVE look at what you do in your role as a professional sales person.
Here’s what I suggest you do about it:
1. Change Your Intent: Completely shift your focus in all sales situation from “getting the deal” to helping the prospective client. Don’t give this lip service. Change what/how you think about the sales process and your role in it. Quit trying to persuade, convince, push, pull and coerce your prospective clients….just focus on making their life better off and let the results just happen.
2. Don’t Think of Yourself as a Salesperson…think of yourself as a BUSINESS PERSON: Lots of sales people will tell you, “I run my territory like it’s my own business.” But do they really? Entrepreneurs tend to think about things very OBJECTIVELY and make decisions using more analysis than emotion. Try to put the same concept into affect for yourself. Be an objective business analyst and you’ll completely change how you sound and appear to prospective clients.
3. Be Yourself: Stop being fake. Stop pretending to be interested in things that you’re not. Just be real. Be yourself. You are likely a very competent, likeable, intelligent person who has a lot of knowledge that others will buy. Just let your ego down and let go of the desire to please them or kiss their ass and just be you.
There you have it.
The Stop Selling Sales Trainer
Bryan Neale
A Sales Tactic for the Complex Sale
Just a short post to tell you something I heard yesterday that was actually quite profound.
I had a client tell me that he has come to realize that when you’re selling something that is a significant shift in thought for the prospect, you have to do much more work upfront in the pain finding and economic justification step. Why?
Because the customer knows there will be a ‘high cost to changing’ methods. Therefore part of the proposal needs to address this shift and how the selling company can help the customer implement the solution.
Your Solution
Does your solution require a shift in how your customer thinks about things? Does the solution affect many people in your customer’s organization? If so, then think through your sales process upfront so that you aren’t getting ‘objections’ late in the sales process.
Comments?
Your Value Is All You Have
(As sent out in our October New Rules Newsletter)
Your Value Is All You Have–How Competent Are You At Expressing It?
I was looking through some old training handouts … and came across one called “How To Express Your Value.”
Although I don’t have space here to review the entire module, there was one part that I thought you’d like to hear about. It had to do with how you get hold of your true value to your clients. It seems that every sales organization has a tough time communicating their value. One exercise we do when we begin working with a company is to have each person “write out” their expression of the value they bring to clients.
We usually have as many different expressions as we have ‘people in the room.’ That’s no good. So, this exercise is designed to help you know ‘where to go to get clear about your value.’
PROSPECT TRENDS. What are the trends that your prospect faces in the running of their business (department)? Trends cause pain. And you fix pain. So it pays to know trends. These trends could be macro/industry trends or trends within their company.
PROSPECT PAINS. What kinds of pains/problems do you help people solve? Do you have a list of those? No? Shame on you. How can you be a problem solver if you don’t even have a menu of the kind of problems you fix? Start that list today.
PROSPECT POSSIBILITIES. Selling is emotional. What’s more emotional than dreams? How can you help–through your service/product–create future possibilities for your prospect? Don’t laugh so quickly. If you sell a solution, then you solve problems. And if you solve problems, you advance your client to a new future. Shouldn’t you know what that might be?
STORIES. Most sales teams overlook case studies and stories. You have a wealth of those stories inside your company. But they don’t get accessed. Make a point in the next week to talk to 10 people in your company about a project that went well, or a customer that became overjoyed at your solution. That becomes a story you can tell as you talk about your value.
PICTOGRAPHS. Those who are in our training get tired of this story, but I’ll tell it anyway (in case you forgot). I read a book once called The McKinsey Way (about McKinsey Consulting). In it, they revealed that when you first get to McKinsey, you are responsible for creating a graph/ picture/ drawing every day on something you worked on. You might say that’s absurd, but they understood something you should understand. That we are all VISUAL people. And pictures do represent thousands of words. So if you can reduce your stories, examples and value to pictures, you’ll be helping your prospect “GET” your value at a deeper level.
Hope that’s not too much for today.
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Other Resources:
Advanced Selling Podcast: Thanks to your referrals, we’re up to over 7800 world-wide podcast subscribers.
Caskey Blog: We post when we see fit (and have time). Usually the topics come from training we have just done.
Same Game New Rules–E-Video Course (Free). Sign up for our 5 part course on the book, Same Game New Rules.
Regards
Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale
