Sell or Be Sold(51)

Basically, the sales process is finding out the following about the buyer: Who are you? What do you want? Why do you want it? What do I have that will fulfill your wants and needs? How do I show it to you so that you can make sense of it; make an offer that can be funded; and then close, deliver, and follow up in the hope to repeat the process with you and others? Anything I can get rid of for the sake of speed and simplicity, I will.

The other thing is that the perfect sales process could be advertised. If you can’t advertise any part of what you are doing, then there is something not OK with it. The transparency of the process is a vital litmus test for how much integrity your process has in it. The old adage was control, deceive, and withhold information, all of which would fail the test of being able to advertise the process.

Much of what I have been taught over the past twenty-five years I could not tell the customer because there was always something not OK with it. This is why I believe there is a disdain for sales. But it doesn’t have to be like that. The best salespeople I know are straight shooters. They don’t play games, they tell it like it is, and they know how to get the job done without manipulations and tricks.

The best sales processes are shorter rather than longer. Ideally, the salesperson is sensitive to the client’s time, willing to spend as much time as necessary but never interested in wasting time. The buyer would be able to get in and out as quickly as necessary or spend as much time as needed to get comfortable enough to make a decision. Whether the buyer is coming to you or you are going to him, regardless of whether it is a very complex sale or very simple one, no matter the price or the terms, there are some things you must do and some you cannot avoid.

To determine if your current selling process could be problematic for your clients, ask these three questions: (1) Do you experience lower-than-average profits per transaction? (2) Is the length of time to contract the source of customer complaints? (3) Are you getting customers resisting your process?

Organizations are always looking for new salespeople, but what they should look at first is a new, shorter, more customer-friendly, matter-of-fact, information-focused, twenty-first-century sales process. Sales processes should be built to satisfy the following in this order: (1) Customer, (2) salesperson, (3) management (last).

Most selling programs were designed to satisfy what management wants, but in reality, management isn’t buying the product and in most cases isn’t selling it. An example of an old adage and belief in selling that would no longer apply today is, “The longer you spend with the customer, the better chances you have of selling him.” This is no longer reality, in fact, the longer you spend with them the more likely you are wasting everyone’s time.

If the process you are using cannot pass the first two hurdles of satisfying the customer and the salesperson, it won’t be effective for management no matter how much management wants it, because it will be resisted. It doesn’t matter how much I like my 750-pound Harley Davidson Road King or want my daughter to learn how to drive it, she can’t operate the bike because it’s too heavy for her. The point is that it doesn’t matter how much the owner or upper management wants something done a certain way; if it doesn’t work for the customer and the user is unable to execute, it will fail everyone!

The litmus test for a great sales process is the question, “Can we advertise to the public what we want our people to do?” If you can’t answer yes to that, there is something wrong with your selling process.

I have worked with sales organizations and individuals around the world, and the following is what I believe to be a very powerful and succinct selling process. While it must be customized for you depending on your product or service, the basic format of it will prove effective. These are the shortest number of steps in order to simplify the process, remove waste of time, and still focus on the most important things you want to accomplish. Many organizations have ten to twelve steps, most of which are skipped, and many of them are resisted. Here are the most crucial five steps that you must encounter in every sales situation, whether it be in person, on the phone, or over the Internet:

Greet

Determine Wants and Needs

Select Product and Present/Build Value

Make Proposal

Close the Transaction or Buyer Exits





STEP ONE: GREET


The goal of the greeting is to introduce yourself, make a good impression, and put the buyer at ease. My goal here is to set the stage for the remaining steps. Say “Welcome” if they are coming to you and “Thanks for seeing me” if you are going to them. In both cases you should be interested in time. If you don’t yet have a relationship with the client, you don’t want to waste his time or yours trying to make a great impression of who you are and what you represent. If you do know the person, you don’t want to get caught up in small talk and never get around to business. It is impossible to get rid of this step. What we want to do is use it to open the door to the reason we are there: To move the prospect into a buyer.