Sales & Its Principles

Once told is not always sold:

Well as we know that, “telling is not selling”. Explaining about your product and services to your client doesn’t means that your selling the product to them or once you have briefed them about your products and services the client will buy it.

It must be very clear in the salesmen’s mind that client is not that much interested in your company and its product services, all he wants the proper solution for his current business problems.

Once you have listened to the problem of your client, bring practical solutions in front of his so that you can hold his attention towards you.

This can be done by” client problem identification”& not by explaining your product and services.

Now how to detect the client’s problem?

It’s very simple; just ask high valued questions related his business issues. Let the answers be known to you , once you do it you will able to understand your clients problems and you can easily bring out the solutions and can get the sales  deal in. By answering those high valued questions will bring week points of their business in front of them and providing an different unique successful solutions will always help you in giving an positive impression in front of your clients and you will get an successful sales.

Don’t stop at your 1^st failure:

It is always important for a sales person to keep changing his approaches to make his self as different sales person in comparison to other salesmen & these different approaches must be practiced until unless success is not achieved. Most of the sales people know this but still do such mistakes. They prefer to try old and tried sales techniques and are afraid of using new, different and untried sales techniques.

Let’s take an e.g.

A family stays in a hotel room. The hotel room has filter water facility for drinking water. The filter was empty so the family complained at the reception and the filter was filled immediately but again after 2-3 same problems arises. Again the complaint was launched but no one took action this time. So the family went to reception and asked from where we can buy water for us. The receptionist showed a shop in front of their hotel. After that she asked why you want drinking water to be bought we provide filter water free of cost. The family said see the complain number 23, from past 2 days we are not getting water so maybe we thought we need to pay something for buying water. After that day they never faced any room service problems during their stay and their filtered water was changed and refilled on regular basis.

If one approach fails a sales person must always be ready for Plan B & he should be smart enough to switch to plan B easily.

Learn to walk before you start running.

Salesmen must know that sales are never got by chasing it. It’s not always easy to get sales, a lot of hard-work and focus is required. Once you (salesmen) get a lead he must not immediately look for closures. A new sales-lead is just like a new born baby who doesn’t know how to crawl then how can you expect him to run.

Mostly sales work with principle of “crawl, walk and run”, just like a small baby.

Ø  Crawl or problem identification: The first step a salesmen is suppose to do is problem identification, so that he can prepare himself in front of his client. As a buyer is never interested in what you are and to which company you belong to, he is much interested in the fact what that what you have to give which can benefit him or his business.  

Ø  Walk or Providing solutions: Once you have correctly identified the problems of your clients like what stopping him to buy  services from your company then you can prepare your self with an attractive presentations with facts and figures which will have all the solutions for his problems. Once you are done with this you can ask for a meeting with your client. Don’t talk to him as a sales guy. Just provide him solutions which are very much different from your competitors and try to gather more information from your clients that what is the practical issues is he looking for and go ahead with the profession discussion with him. Try to be a good listener.

Ø  Run or closures: Now once you have done problem identification and their solutions to all of the problems which your clients were facing you can grab active feedbacks from them and based on that you can expect your closures with them. This will help you in adjusting your sales clock and based on it you can set sales alarm (correct forecasted time) and get your deal in.

This is what new sales lead is to be done, then only you can expect to close that sales lead.

Don’t rush on the calls

A sales person must understand that it’s all about business which bought them together in this professional relation as you are selling your product to them as they need your product. Sales person must always be focused and bold enough to talk straight to your buyers. It requires lots of focus , discipline and courage to talk straight to your clients straight as no one has time to waste on non business talks so sales person must be straight enough to say ,“ I understand your situation before putting together information when would be the good time to schedule a 20 minute calls. And these 20 minutes will be the time where you can make this client as prospect client or loose the client. Always take an appointment from your clients before getting into sales-business talks, as you and your client both need to spend some time to get this business deal done.

Just do it

Mishandling of cold calling : Most of the salesmen know how to handle cold call but fear of failures and rejections stops them from taking quicker actions towards his cold clients resulting in mismanagement or neglecting of his cold clients.

A sales person must understand that,” no one is perfect in this world”, & should carry the attitude of,” failure is the next step for success”, it means that don’t run away from your cold leads. All they need to work on cold leads and take quick actions before the lead dies.

It’s not necessary that a sales talk will always end in sales closures, sometimes things don’t work as we had planned , so such things must be cleared before only as the more you delay the more chances you create to loose the deal , so why not face it and finish it once for all.

Outside the theory of books

Most of the experienced sales people know all the theoretical knowledge and they don’t have time to get into the theory of sales and then prove them weather which theory of sales will work for them. All they want is a way out to get the sales in their bags of sales. like for example a sales person based on his experience makes some strategies now instead of applying them directly they seek knowledge that weather these strategies will help them to get some sales in or not. They go with the attitude of ,”Yeah I know this but tell me weather this will help me or not “, else no matter how good and attractive a sales strategy looks like if its not going to give some benefit is of no use to sales guys.

Lets take a case at which a sales person looses his/her client in just 5 seconds or even less then that.

It’s a call between you and decision maker. The call starts:

Me: Greetings to you Mr. DSC Mkr (Name of the person). This is amit from xyz limited.

Dsc Mkr: Yes, tell me how I can help you.

Me: self introduction and company profile and product services that your going to offer is spoken of by you.

Here where you can gain the attention or loose the attention of your client. The moment the decision maker recognizes that’s its an ordinary sales call he will loose all interest and can interrupt you in between and gives you a time to call back you again and that time never comes as he will never attend your call again.

To avoid such situations be brief and to the point like what is the purpose of your call and how can you help them in their business. Take some examples of your clients who all got benefited by you and your services. Your call or meeting should be in keeping your client mind and situation in your mind. Don’t make it as sales call, just talk about business and its solutions. That will hold the attention of your client. Always remember the model AIDA. That’s, Attention, Interest, Desire, Action that’s all your client want. Place the 4 keys properly in-front of your clients and see how the cold leads turns into warm leads and the warm leads to hot leads leading to successful sales closures.