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VIDEO SUMMARY
Empower Your Sales Journey with Essential Steps to Success!
Hey there, sales rockstars! 🌟
Ready to take your sales game to the next level? 🚀
Ever wonder why some salespeople seem to crush it while others struggle to close deals? 🤔
Imagine this: You walk into a meeting with a potential client, brimming with enthusiasm. But then what? 🌟
Do you dive headfirst into a sales pitch, hoping to dazzle them with your product’s features? 🤯
What if I told you there’s a better way? One that involves asking the right questions, understanding your prospect’s needs, and building genuine connections. 😎
Dive deep into the secrets of successful selling with our latest guide. 🔍
From avoiding the dreaded “pitchfest” to qualifying prospects like a pro, we’ve got you covered. 💪
Don’t get left behind in the Jurassic era of sales. 🦖
Embrace the future of selling and join us on this exciting journey! 🚀
Ready to play a big game in sales? Click the link in our bio to unlock the secrets! 🔥
#SalesSuccess #GameChanger #UnlockTheSecrets
Step-by-Step Guide
Step 1: Understanding the Importance of Trusted Advisors
Description:
This step involves recognizing the significance of becoming a trusted advisor in sales and understanding the impact it has on performance.
Implementation:
- Acknowledge the rarity of true trusted advisors: Understand that only a small percentage of salespeople are considered genuine trusted advisors.
- Review data on sales behavior: Examine data indicating that approximately 63% of salespeople exhibit behaviors that may lower performance instead of improving it.
Specific Details:
- Recognize that being perceived as a trusted advisor is crucial for sales success as it builds credibility and fosters stronger relationships with customers.
- Understand that sales behavior plays a significant role in performance outcomes, and behaviors that align with being a trusted advisor are essential for success.
Step 2: Importance of Selling in Building Customer Loyalty
Description:
This step highlights the critical role of selling in establishing and maintaining customer loyalty.
Implementation:
- Analyze data on customer loyalty: Understand that around 50% of customer loyalty is directly linked to the relationship with the salesperson.
Specific Details:
- Recognize that the relationship between salesperson and customer significantly impacts customer loyalty and retention rates.
- Understand that effective selling strategies contribute to building and maintaining strong customer relationships, leading to increased loyalty and repeat business.
Step 3: Adopting New Mindsets Towards Selling
Description:
This step focuses on adopting new perspectives and mindsets towards selling in the current economic landscape.
Implementation:
- Embrace new mindsets: Be open to shifting traditional views and embracing innovative approaches to sales.
Specific Details:
- Understand that the sales landscape is constantly evolving, requiring sales professionals to adapt and adopt new mindsets to remain competitive.
- Recognize the importance of staying informed about industry trends and consumer behaviors to adjust sales strategies accordingly.
Step 4: Implementing Tangible Sales Ideas
Description:
This step involves implementing practical and actionable sales ideas into one’s sales approach.
Implementation:
- Identify usable ideas: Select tangible sales ideas from the discussion that can be directly applied to sales practices.
Specific Details:
- Evaluate the applicability of various sales strategies discussed and choose those that align with individual sales goals and target audience preferences.
- Develop a plan to incorporate selected sales ideas into daily sales activities and interactions with clients.
Step 5: Approach with Enthusiasm but Avoid Over-Pitching
Description:
This step focuses on balancing enthusiasm with restraint during customer interactions to prevent overwhelming them with a sales pitch.
Implementation:
- Maintain enthusiasm: Approach customers with genuine enthusiasm to engage them positively.
- Avoid excessive pitching: Refrain from bombarding customers with an extensive list of features and benefits during the initial interaction.
Specific Details:
- Greet customers warmly and express genuine interest in meeting their needs.
- Resist the urge to oversell by focusing on building rapport and understanding customer requirements before presenting your offering.
Step 6: Focus on Disqualifying Unsuitable Prospects
Description:
This step emphasizes the importance of identifying unsuitable prospects early in the sales process to avoid wasting time and resources.
Implementation:
- Prioritize disqualification: Shift the focus from persuading or convincing prospects to qualifying or disqualifying them based on their fit for your product or service.
Specific Details:
- Understand that not every prospect will be a suitable fit for your offering, and attempting to convince them otherwise may lead to disengagement.
- Use effective questioning techniques to uncover whether the prospect’s needs align with your offering, allowing you to determine if further pursuit is warranted.
Step 7: Adopting a Consultative Sales Approach
Description:
This step advocates for a consultative sales approach centered around understanding customer needs and providing tailored solutions.
Implementation:
- Ask probing questions: Engage customers in meaningful conversations by asking insightful questions to uncover their specific requirements and pain points.
- Provide tailored solutions: Offer solutions that directly address the customer’s stated needs and challenges, demonstrating an understanding of their unique situation.
- Facilitate decision-making: Guide customers through the decision-making process by presenting solutions aligned with their needs and preferences without resorting to pressure tactics.
Specific Details:
- Prioritize active listening and empathy to build trust and rapport with customers, fostering a collaborative sales relationship.
- Avoid traditional objection-handling techniques by preemptively addressing concerns through thorough understanding and solution alignment.
- Encourage open dialogue and mutual decision-making to foster a positive sales experience and minimize customer objections or pushback.
Step 8: Reflect on Competitors’ Approach
Description:
This step involves reflecting on competitors’ tactics to glean insights into ineffective sales strategies and refine your own approach accordingly.
Implementation:
- Mentally assess competitors: Visualize your competitors without naming them to reflect on their ineffective sales tactics.
Specific Details:
- Consider competitors’ approaches that rely on high-pressure tactics or extensive pitching, recognizing the potential negative impact on customer engagement and retention.
- Use competitors’ shortcomings as a learning opportunity to refine your sales strategy and differentiate yourself by prioritizing customer-centric practices.
Step 9: Acknowledge the Reality of Poor Service
Description:
This step involves recognizing the prevalence of poor service in every industry and its potential impact on sales conversations.
Implementation:
- Acknowledge industry-wide issues: Recognize that poor service exists in every industry, affecting customer perceptions and sales interactions.
Specific Details:
- Understand that acknowledging shortcomings in service is crucial for building trust and credibility with prospective customers.
- Avoid overstating the quality of service and instead focus on addressing concerns transparently to foster open communication.
Step 10: Prioritize Asking Business-Related Questions
Description:
This step emphasizes the importance of asking insightful business-related questions during sales interactions to uncover customer needs and preferences.
Implementation:
- Increase question volume: Aim to ask about twice as many business-related questions as average performers to gain deeper insights into customer requirements.
Specific Details:
- Focus on asking big-picture questions that uncover key business challenges, goals, and pain points to demonstrate value and relevance.
- Understand that asking relevant questions not only facilitates solution alignment but also enhances customer trust and engagement.
Step 11: Qualify Prospects Effectively
Description:
This step involves effectively qualifying prospects to ensure that sales efforts are focused on qualified leads with genuine potential.
Implementation:
- Assess fit early: Determine prospect suitability by asking qualifying questions to ascertain alignment with your offering.
- Respect prospect autonomy: Approach prospects with humility and avoid pressuring them into a decision before assessing mutual fit.
Specific Details:
- Prioritize understanding prospect needs and concerns before promoting your offering to avoid wasting time on unqualified leads.
- Respect prospect autonomy by refraining from applying pressure tactics and instead focusing on building rapport and trust through meaningful dialogue.
Step 12: Emphasize Emotional Connection in Sales Conversations
Description:
This step highlights the importance of establishing emotional connections with prospects to build trust and rapport during sales conversations.
Implementation:
- Focus on emotional resonance: Prioritize conveying empathy, trustworthiness, and genuine interest in understanding prospect needs and concerns.
Specific Details:
- Recognize that buying decisions are often driven by emotion, emphasizing the importance of building rapport and trust through authentic conversations.
- Avoid merely stating trustworthiness or commitment and instead demonstrate these qualities through the quality of interactions and the ability to address prospect concerns effectively.
COMPREHENSIVE CONTENT
Salespeople and Trusted Advisors
Only a small slice of salespeople are actually considered true trusted advisors. 63% of salespeople, the data shows us, are behaving in ways that are actually, in some cases, driving down performance.
Importance of Selling
On the other hand, selling is still very, very critical. In fact, the data shows that about 50% of customer loyalty is based purely on that relationship with the salesperson.
Goals of the Presentation
My goal is two-fold. One is that you walk away with some new mindsets towards selling in this very new economy. And then on the other hand, is that you walk away with some really usable, tangible ideas that you can apply right into your sales.
Key to Success in Selling
People always come up to me after this program and they say “Marc, this was great, but what would you say is really the key to success in selling?” And I’m always brought back to a quote by J. Paul Getty. And he famously said, that “The formula for success, is to rise early, work hard, and strike oil”. (audience laughter) Tongue and cheek, but I actually think it’s a really powerful quote when we think about the level of mystification about what leads to success in sales. And then suddenly we connect. (pause) Now I have no idea what happened next, but when I woke up I’m told that it looked something like this. (mild laughter) This was my first experience.
Misinformation in Sales
Now the science tells us that the lower person wins in football every single time. Every single time the lower person wins. What Bill was telling me unfortunately was just misinformation. And what I find is that we salespeople are dealing with a lot of that same information where we’ve gotten books and we read blogs, or wherever we’re getting sales ideas. Or maybe we’ve followed around someone who’s been selling in a certain way and the reality is, is that so much of the information in sales out there unfortunately is dated.
Challenges of Traditional Selling
When I first started to sell these were some of the books that I went to. At the time they seemed amazing, but there are two key challenges to these books which I would consider really the foundation of traditional selling. One, is that it’s just essentially all opinion and there’s very little data to support most of the assertions that are in books like this. And the second which is just as important, which is that the average copyright of these particular books is 1980. And the only reason by the way that it is so recent, is because one of the books is relatively newer. By show of hands who would like the ultimate two-step process to making sure that a prospect or customer never wants to hear from you again? (audience laughter)
The Ultimate Two-Step Process
The two-step process is simply this: It is, to be sure that you come in with lots of enthusiasm when you go in and you meet with that customer. And then secondly, is that you pitch the hell out of ’em.
Characteristics of Top Sales Reps
You talk about all the great features and benefits of your service, your offering, or your product, and how it’s so much better than the competition. The best reps are getting significantly better. And that trend is only accelerating. It’s literally a hockey stick. So what are those top reps doing that is allowing them to have such a bigger access to all of the spoils, while the average sales rep is actually declining?
Disqualifying Prospects
Most of us have been taught that we need to persuade, or we need to convince people to do business with us. I would argue that we don’t even need to qualify, we need to disqualify people. Because the reality is that at least half of the people that you come across are not going to be a fit for business with you. Rob, let me tell you the top three reasons why I think that you absolutely must work with me. We are doing what to that prospect? We are putting what onto them? Pressure! And immediately they are going to feel that pressure and they’re going to want to do what? Push back. Hence, the traditional idea of objection overcoming. We’ve all heard this idea of you gotta overcome objections. We don’t have to overcome objections. What we want to do is avoid those objections in the first place by asking really good questions to understand what they’re looking for, provide a solution that’s exactly what they basically said they need, and then say “So, what would you like to do next?” If you’ve done a good job there are no objections back and forth, there is no arm-wrestling.
Avoiding Negative Impressions
I want to imagine… Please do not say the name of the organization out loud, but just think of one of your absolute worst competitors. I mean I’m talking about these people, they just do a terrible job. They say they’re gonna do one thing they do something else, service is a disaster… Every industry has this person, please don’t say it out loud. Do you think when the salesperson for that organization gets asked by a prospective customer, “Why should we do business with you?” They’re saying, “Oh by the way, about our service. Aaaaah, not very good”. No of course not. That’s ludicrous. They’re saying “We got the best service. Not only do we have the best service but we have the best prices”.
Asking Quality Questions
The data again shows that top performing salespeople are asking about twice as many business-related questions as average performers. Almost twice as many. 10.1 to 6.3. That is a profound slide. Profound! ‘Cause again we’re not talking about top performers versus people that are failing, we’re talking about top performers versus people that are making a living selling. And those top performers.
Importance of Big Picture Questions
Those people that are at the high-end of that curve who are crushing it right now are finding out the big picture questions. Does that make sense? The big picture questions are what make us money. That’s what creates value. That’s something that machines are not going to be able to replace us for a very, very long time.
Spending Time with Qualified Prospects
The top salespeople spend the majority of their time in front of qualified prospects. And the only way that’s possible is that when they come across someone who they determine is not qualified what do they do? They move on.
- [Audience Member] Marc, why should I do business with you?
- You know what Hal? I really appreciate your asking me that question. And quite frankly, at this point in the conversation, I’m not sure that you should. Would it be okay if I just asked some questions to see if we are in fact a fit?
- [Hal] Sure. – Sure. Right? 100% of the time he’s gonna say of course. Now what did I just do in that situation? He expected me to put pressure on him, what did I do instead? I took the pressure off. Which is by the way completely legitimate. I do not know if I am the right fit for him. I don’t. I don’t know if he has the issues or concerns that I solve, I don’t know if he’s looking for the particular technology that I might offer, I don’t know if he’s got money, I don’t know anything until I actually know those questions.
Emotional Aspect of Buying Decisions
No buying decision is made purely logically. Buying decisions are always made based on emotion. Do I feel like this person gets me? Do I trust this person? Do I think that they have my best interests at heart? These are not things that you can tell them to do. You can’t say “Oh, you can trust me”. You can’t say “Oh, you know we’re gonna be there for you”. You have to convey that through the quality of your conversations.
Adapting in Sales
There are going to be dinosaurs in your industry that won’t be here, and I don’t mean companies I mean salespeople, that won’t be here five years from now. Not just at this meeting but in your industry. Don’t be that dinosaur. Take action with some of these ideas.
Categories of Salespeople
There are two categories of people in sales. There are those that talk a big game, and then there are those who play a big game. And every single day it is on us to decide which category we want to be in.
