How To Get Great At Sales – Million Dollar 3 Step Sales Process Revealed
Most entrepreneurs think they are in sales and are closing deals. Often these people are actually order takers and they negotiate and compete on their price. This is not an ideal situation to be in as an entrepreneur because this is what everyone else is doing and that most likely means you will not be making a lot of money.
So how does one become a real type of sales person who avoids negotiating on price and comparisons to others’ pricing?
Benefits of a Better Sales Process
A simple step-by-step process to implement in an in-bound sales environment can be useful for any kind of sales except for cold calling. This will help you go from selling yourself to your customers, to almost allowing you to buy your customer’s business.
First, let us look at the data that I have found from coaching hundreds of people in sales, and also from my own experience.
Someone you have not called or approached yet is going to be 99% price sensitive. This means the customer is 99% likely to care about how much you charge. If you are an order taker – someone calls you and you take an order – your customers will generally be about 60% price sensitive. If you are great with sales and persuasion techniques the price sensitivity will drop to around 1-10%.
The value of learning sales and getting good at persuasion techniques, or hiring someone who is good at these, reduces your customers’ price sensitivities. The difference between price sensitivities of 1-10% and 60% is why these sales skills will always be valuable.
The Right Sales Process
In terms of techniques, most sales books and coaches will teach you all the wrong things. They will teach you that you need to start off the sale by pitching to the customer. If you listen to most sales calls, people will start pitching early in the conversation because they think that sales equates to pitching. Pitching is where you present the actual product or service and is actually a small percent of the actual sales conversation (about 5% from my experience). Some people treat the pitch as 80-90% of the conversation! Do not use the whole sales interaction to do so, but pick the right moment to pitch the product or service.
If you actually find the company’s needs and deliver the solution to these needs before you pitch them, you are more likely to get a sale. This can increase your close rate from 10-20% up to 60-80% if you follow the proper sales process.
How to Implement
For example, you just landed a sales call or meeting. Do not ask questions and pitch right from the start but try to break the ice. First, to soften the mood you can start talking about stuff that is not very important like the weather, the office you are in, or something of the sort. To prevent you from talking too long about meaningless things, only use about a minute and a half during this step. After this amount of time you should proceed into the actual sales conversation.
Second, you need to screen the customer. Ask questions why they will need your product or service so it is them providing reasons to do business rather than you doing so. Now you can ask your customer why they want to do business with you. This forces the customer to give you reasons they want to do business with you – ultimately flipping the script and having them sell to you.
Third, you can ask the person if they are interested in hearing about the actual product. If they say yes, you can explain the process of delivery and what the customer will actually get and when they will receive their value. This will lead to the pitch of your product or service, and possibly you forwarding them your PayPal link or contract.
Try to utilize this sales process the next time you have a sales call or meeting and see the difference it makes in your closing rates.
