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Emotion + Risk in Getting Buyers to React and Act! (#video)0

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Today I feature the third excerpt from my discussion with Ago Cluytens, for one his Coaching Masters Series interviews. Today we look at the roles played risk and emotion in getting buyers to not only react, but act.

In Monday’s clip, I talked about the fact that you don’t need to waste time in waiting for an event to engage with a potential buyer, what you are looking for is the reaction, not the event. Two things that get reactions every time are risk and emotion.

But while it is true that buyers buy on emotion and the rationalize that decision, it is also true that there are other factors such as risk, stories, sounds, and other factors a seller can leverage to get a buyer to react and more importantly to act. It is easy to get a ready buyer to react and act, but you need to use many things to get a complacent buyer to engage, react and act.

Take a look:

If you would like to see the entire discussion you can either visit my You Tube channel, or go the Ago’ site by clicking here. Always open to comments and views.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Be Provocative in Demonstrating Results (#video)0

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Monday I shared a clip from a discussion with Ago Cluytens, for one his Coaching Masters Series. Today’s second clip looks at the need to be provocative in gaining traction with entrenched potential buyers.

The challenge many of in sales face is the entrenched buyer who is reluctant to look at new or alternative means of achieving his/her goals. This is usually due to the fact that they are entrenched in how they are doing things now, feels there are too many resources needed to make a change, and a host of other reasons. In order to get engagement, we need to demonstrate the results we can deliver and the positive and measurable impact we will directly deliver to their business and attaining their goals. In a WIIFM world it is about the What, not how of how they get there.

Here is more:

If you would like to see the entire discussion you can either visit my You Tube channel, or go the Ago’ site by clicking here. Always open to comments and views.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

What Are You Listening To? (Part II)2

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

In Part I of this series, I looked at the importance of asking powerful impactful questions if you are looking to have something powerful to listen to, and impactful engagements. The other attribute of good listening mentioned in the piece was patience. Seems straight forward, but we have all jumped in to soon, unintentionally interrupting the buyer in mid-sentence or mid-thought. By developing the discipline of patience, we can enhance the buy/sell experience for both parties.

In a world where most leading products/solutions look very much the same, how you sell, or more specifically, the buyer’s experience during your sale, could be the best way to differentiate yourself and product from the pack. Sellers have been pitched to death, they unfortunately expect Muzak like questions, and have fallen in to the habit of giving Muzak like answers; in effect they have become conditioned by previous sellers, who have trained buyers to give shallow and brief answers. Every time they start answering a question in meaningful and detailed way, and they are cut off by a seller, they are conditioned to answer with shorter and less detailed and useful answers. The interruption may be rooted in excitement about the fit, unfortunately the message the buyer gets, is “this guy is not interested in the full answer, just what serves his needs”. Each time they are unable to fully express themselves, they “learn” that the seller may not be really interested in the answer, so they provide the bare minimum.

If you decide to take on the suggestions in Part I, and move towards asking very direct and provocative questions, you need to prepare, and more importantly allow for longer and more detailed answers, which requires a patient listening style that encourages the buyer to speak in detail, and create a meaningful dialogue. It is up to you to recondition and reshape the buyer’s expectations and experience.

The reality is that there are a lot of things going on in a sales meeting, sellers have to keep track of and balance various inputs and cues, at the same time analysing and formulating how to piece the information together in a usable way, while at the same time finding ways to move the sale forward. It takes effort and practice not to jump in when presented with an opening. But with a little practice and effort, you can change the experience and the outcome.

In light of the fact that we think and speak faster than people talk or we listen, we need to work hard at slowing down, and being patient enough to succeed, it does take effort not to add to the buyer’s negative conditioning. As a young seller I was taught a simple two step technique that encourages the buyer to speak more and in greater detail, while allowing me to differentiate from other sellers. As you ask provocative and open ended questions, divide your note page in half, on the left side take notes as you normally would. On the left side write down two things, first, all the things the buyer says that you want to jump in and comment on, and save them for later. The other are questions you can ask based on what the buyer is saying. This forces you to listen more intently, not race ahead or make assumptions, but patiently and tactically listening with purpose. Once the buyer has finished (on their) own, you can ask the questions you wrote down, demonstrating that you did indeed listen. You can also go back and review and build on the points you wrote down rather than interrupting, again encouraging the buyer to expand and elaborate further, and see you as a listener, and someone worth talking to.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

What are you Listening To? (Part I)2

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Ask a group of sales people what are the most important attribute or abilities a good sales person needs to master, and “Listening Skills” will usually be near the top of the list. No argument here, the ability and as importantly the patience to listen are crucial. Beyond the common aspects of listening, there is the issue of what you are listening to. Based on the question, you could find yourself doing a lot of great listening, with little progress, or return for the effort.

So while listening is a good discipline, the skill still comes down to the quality of the question. Great questions make for worthwhile listening; crappy questions lead to… well you know.

Buyers have become immune to the most often asked common questions, some may have been fresh the first time they were asked, but by the third time they were asked “if you could change one thing….?” Or any other question of this sort, they develop a standard canned answer, which if not deflected by the seller, will lead to the same predictable outcome, no sale or discounted sale, I guess that’s the penalty for bad questions.

If you want something good to listen to, you need to ask good questions, the better the question, the better listening, the better the engagement. Where there is a range of opinions is around what is a good question. From where I sit, you need ask questions that penetrate the protective shield buyers have developed to protect themselves from the usual lot of overtly self-serving questions sellers ask, of course delivered in a consultative mode.

The questions need to be provocative, spark the buyer to think, at times shock them into thinking. Think of even though a buyer has granted you an hour, they still have a 16 hour work day they are trying get in to a ten hour day, with all the challenges that go along with that. Just like we as sellers are thinking (and listening) ahead of where we are, so are they. Your question need to stop them in their track, get off the tread mill, and actually think about their answers, not just illicit a response, responses don’t make for good listening.

Unfortunately, people don’t like to provoke, they fear making client uncomfortable, so instead they ask Namby-pamby questions, soft and cuddly, almost asking the buyer to be their friend rather than an agent of change, or a person of value. These kind of soft light questions ultimately lead to light listening, like Muzak at the supermarket.

You can build more provocative questions that help you get below the surface of the issues, getting to the root of what the buyer’s objective are and how you can help eliminate hurdle, identify gaps, and mine those gaps to close them in helping the achieve those objective. The goal is to get past the here and now, to where they need/want to be, where you can add value. To do that you need something good to listen to.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Sell What You Have – Sales eXchange 1931

by Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

At the risk of stating the obvious, the job of a sales person is to sell their company’s offering in order to deliver revenue AND Profits for their company. This can be a challenge at times, but should not be so as a result of our doing. Some sales people seem to want to sell things they don’t have, at times they do this on their own, other times they let their prospects lead them down a dead end path.

How many times have you heard sales people say that they could sell their product, or more of their product “If Only…..”. All too many times we allow ourselves to be distracted from what we can sell, and end up losing sales for all the wrong reason. I am always surprised how many sales people act as though they were in product development rather than sales, sadly some would be better at that than sales; but until they do officially transfer, they need to focus on selling what they have, not what they or the buyer wish they had.

Don’t get me wrong, sales people play a crucial role in the feedback loop that helps your company develop and market your offering better. But that should not be at the expense of selling what they have now, that is job one.

Part of this comes down to knowledge not only of your own product, you’d be surprised how many sales people know little more than what’s in the brochure or on their websites, but also that of the competition. It is hard to sell what you have if you don’t know, it is harder to sell if you don’t know how what you have can help the buyer, and harder still if you can’t discuss how what you have applies to the buyer’s world. You quickly go from an exercise in creative selling to being on your heels in a defensive posture.

The challenge is that with an 80% overlap between most leading products, it mostly comes down to how you sell that will determine the difference. Your ability to align the attributes of your “solution” to the real requirements of the buyer, based on their objectives, and their obligations to their organizations. For example, last week I was out with a rep I am tasked with helping, during a routine sales call, the buyer kept interjecting “can your product do this?”, “can your product do that?” Each time the seller apologizing for the products inability to do some of the things the buyer raised.

The seller clearly had not prepared for the meeting by knowing what his competitors offered and did not offer. Most of the things the buyer put on the table with their questions were not available from any of the products in the market. Had he established that this was a wish list, not a requirement, the issue could have resolved. I finally had to ask the buyer, “I am just curious which product that you currently use allows you to do that?” A long pause, and a shrug allowed us to move forward. By asking that simple question we were able to get back to what was required, available and affordable.

Sell what you have, if they are not the right buyer, prospect another, but sell what you have, or you may find that you have all prospects for what you don’t have, and no buyers for what you do.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Open Ended Sales Meetings?4

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Not long ago I posted a piece about the positive side of “closed ended” questions, and their place in the sale cycle. As with many things it is rarely the case of one versus the other but more of which is more appropriate for the scenario, and in sales for achieving the objective you set out to accomplish.

Sellers can and should take the concept of open ended and closed ended, and apply it to actual sales meetings. What you’ll find is that sales meeting properly executed should be more of a closed ended event, but all too often they end up being an open ended, in fact too open-ended, often becoming ever meandering affairs. The kind meeting which seem like they may never end, especially when you add a torturous layer of PowerPoint; or they end without a specific conclusion or direction. The meetings which follow frequently seem to be another try at getting it right, instead of moving things forward.

The problem usually comes down to what the objective is going into the meeting. I have written in the past about sales people not having a handle on the length of their sales cycle, saying things like “It depends”, or offering an unrealistic “oh 3 – 6 months”; that’s a big variable given that time is your most precious resources, and non-renewable to boot. Taken a step further and asking them how many meetings it may take to close the deal, they answer with less confidence and more ambiguity.

Well if you don’t know how many meetings it may take, (live or by phone, webinar, smoke signals), it becomes really hard to have specific outcomes or objectives for each meeting. This is why sellers at time lose control of meetings, leaving the client to take the meeting to a conclusion, one with no real next step.

Knowing what you want out of each meeting allows you to plan objectives, primary and secondary, plan next steps, and build a structure for the meeting, including questions, that will help you and the buyer meet mutual objectives. Absent that, it begins to look like an experience with the “Be found” camp, having abdicate their role as sellers, they are hoping the buyer will find something to continue for, something to buy. I propose they are hoping the client has a need, hoping they can strike a relationship based on something other than the buyer’s objective, hoping for the order.

Having clear objectives, measures and next steps defined and planned in advance will also allow you to do one other thing with great confidence, that is disqualify buyers. If you cannot achieve your stated objective, having executed your plan, you have to seriously consider that you are not dealing with a real buyer, real like the ones who buy when you achieve your mutually stated objectives.

I remember working with a “rock star” in Boston, he confidently told me his deals on average take four meetings, great, what was his measure of success for the first meeting, his objective? With expected bravado, he proclaimed “to close the deal man!” He did not have an answers as to why he bothered going back three other times if he was going to close the sale during the first meeting. Although there is a prospect I have, who will never buy from me, but he loves the same bands I do, and makes a great espresso, I love going there, but I leave my order pad in the car.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Buyers are Not Liars – Sales eXchange 1899

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

A few years ago I did a three day program in California, the first day one of the participants, a very likable fellow, kept repeating a common phrase used by sellers – “buyers are liars”. I told him I did not agree and moved on. The next day, same guy, had switched phrases slightly, and he was reminding me of another popular falsehood that “sellers are liars”; again I questioned the accuracy of the statement. By the third morning I was a bit worried because the only one left in the equation who had not been accused of lying was me, the trainer, all day I waited for him to state “trainers are liars”, while he didn’t, I am sure he thought about it.

There are too many sales people who believe and will tell you that buyers are indeed liars; sadly there are some sales leaders who will reinforce this myth. Buyers are people, and in general people are not liars (can’t speak for politicians), therefore buyers in general are not liars.

The reality is that prospects who do not buy, who lead you on, who go radio silent at a point, and fail to tell you why, are often lying. Not in the evil way that many sales people in the heat of the moment believe, it is more the case of these prospects seeking a merciful way letting a seller down, while they have less than zero intentions of buying, they find it hard to come right out and tell you and break your heart. If they did buy from you, you would overlook a white fib or two, after all you closed the deal, you got the “right” result, they bought. It’s when they don’t buy that you get all out of sorts and resort to calling them liars; so if we’re going to resort names and labels, let’s get it right: prospects sometimes lie.

Most of the time they are not lying, they may be confused or undecided, or again, not sure how to let us down, but in any case the problem is ours, something many in sales do not want to face.

Did we ask the right questions? A common occurrence is a seller going down the path with a buyer only to discover that the person is not empowered to make a decision. Sure I can tell myself they lied, or I can ask myself how I could have discovered it earlier, and moved to engage the right people.

Another is when you “know” they need your product, or “know” they are looking, hey after all you were referred to them, yet they insist that they are “all set”. Are they lying or are we not fully engaged, and conducting an effective discovery process? Just because we are not getting the answers we want does not mean we are being lied to, I think it is more often the case of the wrong or bad question, rather than a bad answer.

As stated above, buyers are people, and people generally do not lie, unless they feel they have no other option in the situation, lying is easier than the alternative. It is up to us as sellers to offer the alternative, and leave the buyer with lying as the only option to stop our assault. Takes work, but pays off too.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Impact Questions – Sales eXchange 1870

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Back in the 80′s or maybe even earlier, the purveyors of Consultative Selling, put a lot of emphasis on Open Ended Questions, for all the right reasons. It took some effort and focus to get sales people to adopt this style of interaction, especially after years of pitching and doing things the traditional (old) way.

Many sales people had difficulty being comfortable and effective in the vast openness provided by this style of questions. It was difficult to fight the urge to regress to their previous comfort zones, many sellers had to be continuously managed to adopt the new more effective question based selling.

One practice was to paint closed ended questions as being inferior, substandard, in those days, even communist in nature; may sound extreme, but in reality, closed ended question were uniformly vilified. In fact the pendulum swung so far that closed ended question were just plain bad. Today, in many workshops, you still hear people demonizing closed ended questions.

Well I am here to tell you that there are no such things as bad questions. There are very few if any absolutes in sales. It’s more accurate to look at how appropriate a question is for a given circumstance. If you look at questions as tools of the trade, there is no such thing as one tool fits all; there may be tools that are appropriate to various tasks, others may be useful less often
Which is why I am here to say that the much maligned closed ended question does have a place in B2B selling in 2013; hell I’ll go further to say it has a place in Sales 2.0 and/or Social Selling. It is about the situation, what is the desired outcome, and what the next step needs to be from both parties perspectives.

Given the above there are regular occurrences in sales where closed ended question makes perfect sense. So I am on a mission to reintroduce this tool to your sales tool kit. A few years ago Timberlake made it his goal to being Sexy Back, so I am advocating the same for closed ended questions (although I am certain they will never be sexy, but the positive results delivered may be).

I am calling the updated version Impact Questions, a marketing friend told me that one needs to rebrand for re-launch; change the name and you change focus from potential negative connotations.

Let’s face it, there are times when you do want to focus things, narrow down the possibilities. Often you want close things off so you can move the process forward, or to realize that there is no forward to move to with a prospect and it may be time to move to the next opportunity.

During a cold call, oops, prospecting call, (need to be politically correct), open ended questions can take you off track; a question that works well in a sales call can be negative during a prospecting call. There are other times when you do want a clear one or the other, a yes or a no. It comes down to how the response serves the purpose. What is the impact of the answer, and how that answer impacts the outcome. For example, when I ask someone I called the first time if they “have ever worked with a third party trainer like Renbor?”, either answer serves to move the process forward, and could prove to be a benefit for both. Rather than using a series of open ended questions to arrive at the same point, a simple impact question focuses bith the prospect and I on the same critical turning point.

So know where you are trying to go, know how you can help a prospect or a customer, then ask the Impact Question, and deal with the impact, not whether it is open ended, closed ended, or some other ended, work to achieve positive impact for the buyer and yourself.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Plan Z – Sales eXchange 1831

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

I think (hope ) it is safe to say that every seller, especially B2B, has a Plan A. A road map or process for how they plan to engage with a buyer, and work with them to mutually navigate the buy and sale process to arrive at a mutually beneficial situation, each party attaining their objectives. Having said that, I still see many who wing it.

What surprises me is the number of sales people or organizations who have a game plan or playbook, that is totally one dimensional in nature. It starts by completing a pastel coloured sheet, same info, same way, every time; some have a Plan B, they go to it based on the push back to Plan A. Now this would not be a big problem if you are selling a commodity, in what can be described as a “binary” sale, but it is an absolute killer if you are selling anything that involves more than a price decision.

Rather than using a “plan” or playbook approach, it is more effective to use a mind map approach. This allows you to evolve with the buyer as you uncover facts, opportunities and aspirations. You can use Plan A to engage, and begin the process, but as each client is different (in big or small ways) you need to adapt rather than try to get the client to fit the plan or playbook.

The way to achieve this is to commit to two basic disciplines. First, is to commit to reviewing all sales transactions you are involved in, whether you won them or not. This will allow you to anticipate broad and narrow trends, and adjust your game in real time. Think of this like watching the game tapes.

To support this, you need to adopt the practice of follow through questions, not question, but questions. Most sellers tend to stay narrow and shallow, they hear something that sounds like what they need to hear, and they go with it. But if you develop the skill to ask several layers of “impact questions”, you not only get to the root of the opportunity, but differentiate yourself from those who stop at the surface or layer two. Combined these give you the grounding to go beyond what you practiced with on the nice coloured sheet, while not meandering, because in the end you still need to bring home the revenue.

Discipline is one thing, rigidity is another, this is why we introduce the concept of fluidity. Visually it may be easiest to think of this approach as a three dimensional “Sales Mind Map”. It forces you to think, anticipate and respond based on client input, while leveraging market and sales experience. It allows you to not only have a Plan A, Plan B, but a method for having options that may take you to Plan Z, all based on the buyer’s objectives and requirements.

Enter the Art of Sales Contest – Win Tickets

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Don’t look around in your office for the answer, look at your prospects.

Who is a better closer, you or the buyer you are facing? In most cases the argument can easily be made that the buyer is a better closer. In more cases than not, they end up achieving their objective more than you do.

In the case of active buyers, those in the market, reaching out directly to sellers, or actively seeking input from their peer network; or passive buyers – those buyers who are not actively looking but are no longer happy with their current situation, making entrees into the market, searching the web for “what’s out there”. The buyers are usually the better closers, simply by closing you on the fact that they have other options, and unless things are done entirely on their terms, you’ll lose the deal. The more one capitulates here, the clearer it becomes that the buyer is closing the seller on the deal they want. Discounting is an issue in most verticals, either you close the buyer on the value you deliver, or they close you on what you have to surrender to win the deal.

In circumstances where there is no deal, either because the buyer bought from someone else, or decided not to make a decision, again the buyer was the better closer because they closed themselves on not buying, where the seller was not able to close them on buying. Assuming you were truly convinced that they had a need, and you qualified them, and they didn’t buy, they were the better closer.

Where sellers seems to be much better closers are with those buyers commonly called as status quo. Where the seller was able to engage in a proper manner, meaning not waiting around to be found by someone with preconceived ideas and price points, but engaged as two peers around a common opportunity. This involves a proactive approach by the seller, doing the research as to who is in a position to benefit from their offering and engaging with them as a potential means of achieving objectives, not as a latter part of a buying process that started long before the seller was aware. Where the seller takes the initiative rather than the buyer, the odds are much more even.

The reason for this is obvious but often overlooked. In the end, it is not about the close but everything that precedes it. All the elements of the EDGE Process; beyond the research, it is the prospecting Engage long before the buyer goes to market; the Discovery to help confirm the buyer’s objectives, and build value through a collaborative process that encourages the buyer to be part of the process – and part of the outcome. Leading to the point where you Gain commitment based on the mutual definition of value, and then of course Execute together with the buyer.

The ability to change the focus from close to outcome allows you to help more clients close on you.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

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What's In Your Pipeline?

Emotion + Risk in Getting Buyers to React and Act! (#video)0

Be Provocative in Demonstrating Results (#video)0

What Are You Listening To? (Part II)2

What are you Listening To? (Part I)2

Sell What You Have – Sales eXchange 1931

Open Ended Sales Meetings?4

Buyers are Not Liars – Sales eXchange 1899

Impact Questions – Sales eXchange 1870

Plan Z – Sales eXchange 1831

Enter the Art of Sales Contest – Win Tickets

Who Is a Better Closer? – Sales eXchange 17946