Archive for the ‘Tips’ Category

Thank You 

Walk The Walk 

Smile

Be Positive 

Soft Sell

Think Outside The Box 

Try Unusual Marketing Tricks

The saying what’s old is new again works well in marketing.  Often companies follow trends in marketing and by doing so become a ‘me too’ company.  Look back at some old methods to draw customers in.  Try using a postcard that recycles one of your current ad’s.  Push them to your website and follow them through the process by asking them to enter in a special offer code.  This will help track your ROI in your marketing strategy.

Get The Point

Too many advertisements pack every single thing in to them.  You’ve seen them, wordy, cluttered, ‘noisy’ just plain ugly.  After you create an ad re-write it 3 times and reduce copy, graphics by 5% each time and increase white space the same.  You will end up with a clearer message that is easy to ready.

Partner With Other Small Businesses

Almost every business service or product is bought in conjunction with another product or service. Find what your customers are purchasing when they purchase from you.  If you join forces with another company both of you will benefit.  Increase your exposure, reduce your sales overhead and ultimately increase sales.

Get Your Customers Selling For You

Your customers already trust you and value your service and will do more for you then you realize.  All you have to do is ask.  Ask your customers for testimonials, referrals and where they think you should look.  Customers have an interesting insight to your business that is often overlooked.  They will more often point you in direction you never even thought of.  This is your blue ocean of sales.

 Advertise To Sell

Don’t get caught up trying to be like the big guys.  Your business can’t afford to advertise like your larger competitor.  Create ad’s that sell, TODAY!  You can learn from them even ‘borrow’ ideas from them but don’t think you can play in there field.  A simple tip is to always include an offer in your ad.  Make it easy for your customer to respond to it and knock on your door.

Offer What They Will Buy

You may have a great product or service that is at the top of the pile.  Just remember there are customers to be had at the bottom or close by.  Don’t exclude these prospects with over selling or over pricing your product.  Have an option that you can sell for less, make a profit and attract new clients.

Capitalize On Premium Products

Just like some people won’t buy the top of the line others will.  Make sure you clearly differentiate your premium service or products.  Selling up will impact your margins greater then trying to land more orders.  Package for value and clearly show your prospects why you are the one to buy from.

Try Unusual Marketing Tricks

The saying what’s old is new again works well in marketing.  Often companies follow trends in marketing and by doing so become a ‘me too’ company.  Look back at some old methods to draw customers in.  Try using a postcard that recycles one of your current ad’s.  Push them to your website and follow them through the process by asking them to enter in a special offer code.  This will help track your ROI in your marketing strategy.

Get The Point

Too many advertisements pack every single thing in to them.  You’ve seen them, wordy, cluttered, ‘noisy’ just plain ugly.  After you create an ad re-write it 3 times and reduce copy, graphics by 5% each time and increase white space the same.  You will end up with a clearer message that is easy to ready.

Partner With Other Small Businesses

Almost every business service or product is bought in conjunction with another product or service.  Find what your customers are purchasing when they purchase from you.  If you join forces with another company both of you will benefit.  Increase your exposure, reduce your sales overhead and ultimately increase sales.

Get Your Customers Selling For You

Your customers already trust you and value your service and will do more for you then you realize.  All you have to do is ask.  Ask your customers for testimonials, referrals and where they think you should look.  Customers have an interesting insight to your business that is often overlooked.  They will more often point you in direction you never even thought of.  This is your blue ocean of sales.

Relationship Sales: They buy from me.

Customers buy because we are the best in the industry.

We offer the most features.

We’re the lowest price.

So what is the main reason people buy capital equipment?

Relationship

The fear is that the buyer doesn’t want to make the mistake of purchasing the wrong thing.  This fear will drive a person to seek out someone who he can trust.  This trust is what is thought of as a relationship. 

Being the best

Again the buyer sees his neck on the line when they are making a purchase.  The culture within this company may be such that they need the best in order to be successful.  It’s this fear that drives them to seek out ‘the best’ based on their perspective.

Features

Some people are very fearful that they won’t get ALL the bells and whistles in a product.  This is why Chrysler made a product with 27 cup holders.

Price

This is fairly obvious.  The buyer is fearful that they will be ripped off and pay more then they need to for your type of product. 

3 Important Tips In Capital Equipment Sales

1. Find the customers ‘hot button’ 
2. Associate a fear with the ‘hot button’ and describe how you solve this fear.
3. Don’t over do the ‘fear’ association. Plant the seed and let it grow.

How often do you read a book or article on selling and say to yourself, hey I can make all those changes.  It is easy to tell yourself that you can make this change and that change and oh this other one and that other one.  But how effective can you be if you try to make all those changes at once?  The answer is simply you can’t do or make all the changes at one time. 

The strategy to making simple selling techniques work.

Step 1: Practice only one new behavior at a time

Many selling skills are simple in nature.  They all sound easy to do and not a big problem; after all you’ve been doing this for years right!  To successfully learn a new skill you most do so in isolation of learning others. Focus on one at a time to make sure you get it right.  Imagine learning to ride a bike and tie your shoes at the same time.  Crash and burn!

Step 2: Try the new behavior more then 3 times

When learning almost anything doing it more then 3 times allows the brain to form connections for what you’re learning.  Make sure you try your new selling skills on a number of people in order to become natural in what you’re doing.

Step 3: Repeat, repeat and repeat again.  Focus on quantity not quality

Too often we try to perfect the behavior before we even start.  Do you remember what is was like to learn how to ride a bicycle?  Well if you were like most of us you feel and crashed many times before you could ride down city streets.  The more you practice the better you will become, naturally, at what you’re trying to learn.

Step 4: Practice on the right audience, a safe one

When learning a new skill don’t pick your largest account or largest (potential) order.  Pick someone that represents the lowest risk.  Choose either a new account that has a low potential or low sales value.  If you have a long term relationship with a client that knows you well try the new behavior with them.  They won’t judge you as hard if you fail and will be more understanding if you get in to hot water.  The key is to test on people that won’t impact your bottom line negatively.

The key to any good sales pitch is knowing it well. When you come across a new sales technique or sales presentation that you spend the time to figure out how you’re going to learn it.  It is only when you have learned this skill well enough to become natural at it that you will see the benefits of it.

Learning is as critical as finding a new sales pitch.

How can you get more customers to buy from you without selling?  

Well simply you can’t.  You will always have a salesman’s hat on it’s more how obvious and offensive the hat looks.  Neil Rackham wrote an interesting book for selling large ticket products or services and demonstrates through research the differences from small sales.  

The book Spin Selling chunks the process in to an acronym “Situation Question”, “Problem Questions”, “Implication Questions” and “need-payoff Questions”.  My take on the book is that through the process of questioning you can dig deeper to find out what the real pain point(s) are for your prospect.  Once you know what your customer is wanting you then ‘sell’ a solution to solve that pain.  Overall the book covers very well the key pain indicators and the differences of small sales and large sales.  An area where I think the book should have explored more is the more difficult measurable of emotion and behavior. 

These softer issues are often very difficult to recognize during a sales call or even while building a relationship with a prospect.  Successful sales people have a good sense about people and often do well as a result of this.  The question(s) that I think need to be asked are how to you improve your sales team or selling skills when you can’t see these important characteristics.  Should we even group or categorize people in order to sell more effectively.  

The sales process in large capital equipment must combine a number of key elements.  Understanding your customer’s true needs through questioning, knowing your customers emotional behavioral profile, understanding your prospects life views, and knowing your own personality characteristics all play an important role in making the sale.

Often sales people are hungry for the order and will do almost anything to get it.  It’s the drive and desire to win that keeps them going and keeps business alive.  So how can you sell more, keep that drive and be successful?   

To often inexperienced sales people get in to the fight.  The fight against competition is one you simply don’t want to get yourself in to.  This is where you will lose most of your potential orders.  It’s the sales person who listens carefully to the customer and offers what they want, not what the competition is.  I just had a conversation with an experienced international sales manager.  He explained to me how he ‘stole’ an order from the competition.  He won this order by keeping in touch with the customer daily.  He would offer a solution; the competitor would match it and up the ante.  He would return the folly and do the same.  This went back and fourth for a few weeks.  Included in all this were lengthy and expensive trips to the customer’s location.  The order was won because the competitor was flying back on a Friday when our salesman pushed the customer to buy.  It was shear luck that got the order.  Although the salesman may disagree it was just play luck.  If the roles were reversed and he was flying back they would have won.

So what can you learn from selling apples?

Well in the story above both companies were selling apples, they kept on changing slightly the type of apple.  So what should have been done?  From the outset you must separate yourself from the competitor.  You must make a wide enough difference that the customer doesn’t see you as the same.  Now you are selling a basket of fruit and the competitor is selling apples.  I’m not suggesting you selling everything under the sun but rather you sell what the customer wants.  It’s at this point where the customer buys in to your solution.  Too often sales people see only the fight against the competition rather then the order with the customer. Oh, by the way, the order above was for $1 million dollars, not a small deal.

So next time you’re in the fight remember to listen first then react.