1. Get Better Prospects: Analyze your past wins to isolate the characteristics present in short sales cycles. Then find new prospects who have many of these same characteristics.
2. Better Qualify Each Prospect to ensure she has a compelling need and that your firm is a good fit
3. Ask Better Questions: Uncovering decision makers, buying processes and potential obstacles early on will often result in shorten sales cycles.
4. Pre-plan Each Sales Call: Pre-planned calls often lead to more prospect commitments and higher closing rates.
5. Focus on Value: Present a value proposition that shows the prospect that waiting or delaying a decision can cost them a lot of money
6. Sell High: Selling to decision makers generally yields quicker sales and lower price sensitivity!
7. Be Strategic: Creating an account capture plan that helps clients achieve their strategic goals is a proven method for shortening sales cycles.
8. Enlist Inside Help: Getting a “champion” within the prospect firm will maximize your sales effectiveness while shortening decision time frames.
9. Focus on the Business Case: Prospects who can easily cost-justify your solution buy more quickly than those who can’t.
10. Magnify Urgency: Tap into and strengthen the prospect’s sense of urgency in order to make the purchase a priority.

Indeed, compressed sales cycles free up selling time and allow reps to handle more opportunities and boost their results. Since extended sales cycles lead to lower closing rates and wasted time, salespeople and managers alike should aggressively implement techniques proven to shorten them!

1). USE CLEAR, CONCISE SUBJECT LINES that convey the key point of your email message.

2). KEEP IT BRIEF. Just as good business letters should be kept to a page or less, emails need to be short and concise (25-line maximum, but less is better). Be sure to read and edit emails to cut out unneeded words. Likewise, using shorter sentences makes the email quicker and easier to read.

3). KEEP IT SIMPLE. Address only one topic per email and be clear as to what action is expected (or what action you will take).

4). PAY ATTENTION TO FORMAT. Breaking up the email into short paragraphs (rather than one or two long ones) makes it easier to read. Avoid using either all caps or all lower case letters. And be sure to use proper punctuation for a business email.

5). DON’T USE IT TO REPLACE PERSONAL NOTES. While selling over the Internet via email is quick, recipients rarely get the “warm feeling” of a handwritten thank you note or birthday card. So, when the relationship is important and you want the impact to be high, use other means to communicate (e.g. carefully selected cards or a personal phone call).

6). COUNT TO TEN IF YOU’RE EMOTIONAL. Once sent, an email cannot be retrieved. Worse yet, it can be forwarded to many other people without your permission or knowledge. So, if you’re upset or tempted to send a very negative email, think twice befone selling on the Internet and consider the impact if others were to be copied.

7). ALWAYS PROOF AND SPELL CHECK. Your professional reputation is key to your success. Misspelled words, improper punctuation or poor use of the English language can hurt your chances for generating sales, particularly if you sell premium-priced products or services.

8). CREATE TEMPLATES TO SAVE TIME. When you write a good email (e.g. a thank you, appointment follow up or proposal submittal letter), save it as a form or template. With just a small up-front investment of time, you’ll save lots of time on the mechanics of selling over the Internet.

While email can be an effective sales tool, it is not usually a good substitute for things like telephone prospecting, negotiations or personalized notes. Since others can easily be copied on emails, selling over the Internet can be fraught with danger.  Remember, emails that are poorly written, misrepresentative or emotional are permanently irrecoverable!

Since the benefits of email are substantial, all salespeople would be wise to adhere to these “netiquette” tips when selling over the Internet. 

     
All Rights Reserved.  The Sales Alliance Inc.  San Diego, California. 

Twelve Ways to Boost Sales Training Program Results

1. Select a sales trainer who knows, or who is willing to invest the time it takes to learn your business and get to know your people.  Remember, low knowledge = low credibility.  And less ability to boost sales!
2. Base the sales training program on the optimal sales process for your business.  The sales training program should use existing or newly-innovated sales best practices that are specific to your business.
3. Gain “buy in” prior to the sales training program.  Effective sales trainers will interview your staff prior to training them to understand their individual needs and gain their buy in to what’s being taught.
4. Tailor all course materials.  When salespeople perceive the sales training program to be “canned” and they spot sections that are not relevant to their business, they often perceive the entire program to be irrelevant.
5. Spread out the training.  Providing salespeople time in between training sessions helps them practice what they’ve learned, ask the trainer for help when new techniques are not working for them and retain the knowledge longer.
6. Require salespeople to attend all sessions of the sales training program.  Creative methods, such as tying learning objectives to compensation and incentives, may be useful.
7. Commit sales managers to 100% attendance so that they can observe their salespeople and note skills bottlenecks.
8. Develop a follow on coaching and reinforcement plan.   Permanent learning and behavior change occur over time and through repetition.  That’s exactly why post-training coaching is essential for long-term success.
9. Provide the sales manager with management and coaching training.
10. Create an optimized sales process and track each sales rep’s performance against the company average.    This provides a quick way to identify bottlenecks in each salesperson’s sales cycles.
11. Consider using short-term incentives to boost sales activities such as cold calling.
12. Provide a similar sales training program to non-sales staff to ensure consistent customer experiences with your firm.

For a list of our sales training classes, please view the sitemap on the right hand sidebar of this page.

All Rights Reserved.  The Sales Alliance Inc.  San Diego, CA

Consultative selling techniques are key to winning sales where premium prices are the norm. With a focus on value and benefits, this style of selling has an excellent track record for producing results.

Dozens of corporate buyer surveys regularly indicate that price is not the number one or two factor in their purchase decisions.  Other factors, such as vendor reputation, product quality and overall value usually ranked higher than price. 

Yet buyers often convince salespeople that price is their primary buying criteria.  Why?  They obviously want all the benefits the salesperson can provide but at a lower price, further boosting the value they receive.  Indeed, it’s really about maximizing value, and price is just one of the components of value.

In today’s competitive environment, buyers often have the upper hand, especially when a consultative selling approach has not been used.  Many buyers are even taking sales training and negotiations courses to be able to outmaneuver salespeople who try to sell products and services at healthy margins.  Below are just a few of the techniques we teach for selling value.

Avoiding the Price Trap

So, how can salespeople use consultative selling avoid the price trap and instead sell value?

1. Assess how prior purchases were made.  What were the most important criteria at that time?
2. Gather information on expected financial results and perform a ROI analysis
3. Understand the prospect’s buying criteria and ensure you meet that criteria better than your competition
4. Understand how the prospect benefits personally by a successful implementation of your solution, and explain how you’ll ensure those benefits are realized
5. Gain strategic commitments, such as the prospect providing financial or competing vendor data, that boost closing odds

Using Consultative Selling and Concessions Strategically

But, what happens if you do need to make some concessions or help your buyer save face?

1. Practice consultative selling and perform a complete needs assessment prior to entering into a negotiation
2. Make sure you’re dealing with the ultimate decision maker before agreeing to any concessions
3. See if you can trade a reduced price for a higher volume commitment, more favorable terms or referrals
4. Offer high-value, high-margin services instead of cash discounts.  These services could include extended warranties or upgraded maintenance contracts
5. In heavy negotiations, pre-plan your approach with negotiation tactics like the walk-away point or splitting the difference
6. Make sure you don’t grant concessions too early — tie any concessions to a signed agreement

Those adept at consultative selling often out-earn their product-selling counterparts.  Why?  Because value-oriented salespeople are great at selling premium-priced, high-margin products and services.  Typically, these high margins provide for fat commission checks and better job security.

Not only does value trump price in the minds of buyers, salespeople using consultative selling have more success and bigger paychecks than the more product oriented salespeople. 

All Rights Reserved.  The Sales Alliance Inc.  San Diego, CA

 

 A University of Michigan study titled, “The Validity and Utility of Alternative Predictors of Job Performance” analyzed how well a sales interview predicts success on the job. The surprising finding: The typical sales interview increased the chances of choosing the best candidate by less than 2%. In other words, interviewing is just slightly more reliable as a sales hiring tool than flipping a coin!

Sales Hiring using a Sales Interview

Experts cite several reasons why a typical sales interview is such a poor predictors of sales success:

   
1 – Most managers don’t structure a sales interview beforehand or weight interviewee responses against a predetermined set of ideal responses.
 

2 – Sales candidates are skilled at presenting themselves and crafting their responses based on what they feel the particular employer is seeking. Thus, managers are often unable to see through their “front” and find the candidate to be different after s/he is hired. (NOTE: There are salesperson diagnostic tests available to help assess a candidate’s genuine characteristics–we’d be happy to supply you with details)
 

3 – A sales interview is often not totally objective because it is influenced by personal chemistry. Oftentimes, the most qualified and capable sales candidates are overlooked in the sales hiring process because their personalities do not “click” with those of the interviewers.

Given this information, it is clear that in order to increase sales and hiring results, sales managers must carefully think through the sales hiring process and develop a step-by-step system to ensure that hiring decisions are not based on personality fit or a “shoot-from-the-hip” sales interview format.

All Rights Reserved.  The Sales Alliance Inc.  San Diego, CA

We have some great, no-cost ways for you to perform a sales assessment of your entire sales department’s overall effectiveness:

1. Learn and apply the six elements contained in our Sales Improvement Model
2. Subscribe to our Sales Best Practices E-Newsletter (subscribe on right sidebar of our site pages)
3. Contact us for a complimentary sales consultation and ideas
4. Get ideas by viewing the deliverables we include in our Sales Improvement Program
5. Request our list of “50 Ways to Boost Sales Now!”
6. Read the articles in our Sales Articles library by visiting our website archive

 Over 100 clients of ours have conducted a comprehensive sales assessment of their entire sales operation, yielding substantial sales increases and a great ROI!

All Rights Reserved.  The Sales Alliance Inc.  San Diego, CA

Handling objections is a focus of many sales training classes.  However, research indicates that sales objections are usually not good!   

Studies have shown that sales interactions with a high number of customer objections resulted in fewer closes.  Sadly, many salespeople invest substantial time developing customer relationships only to lose the sale at the objection stage.  Ineffective and dated sales techniques like defensive behaviors, saying “but” or handling objections by over-talking often contribute to losing sales.

In many selling situations, salespeople find themselves often handling objections to price. Research indicates that two-thirds of the time, price objections were simply a convenient excuse or a cover for the “real” objection. Unfortunately, many salespeople take price objections at face value and discount their price.  These discounts, however, may result in lowered customer perceptions and propensity to buy on an ongoing basis.    

Salespeople are often handling objections without the benefit of getting inside the buyer’s mind.  Do salespeople understand why the customer is objecting?  Are they personal reasons?  Are they business reasons?  Too often, salespeople focus on achieving their quotas without carefully considering how people make purchase decisions.  Consequently, salespeople proceed too quickly and appear to be pushy.  And buyers that dislike ”pushy” salespeople are known to barrage their salesperson with objections. 

With poor objection handling, the sales process can become a struggle instead of evolving into a pleasant partnership.  Good customer relationships, built on mutual respect, can yield many benefits and result in less time spent handling objections.  Indeed, if you change the way you sell to closely conform to how people buy, you will see a reduction in the number of objections.  More than 80% of the objections we experience as salespeople are related to issues involving a poor understanding of the prospect or low perceptions of value.

So, how can you improve objection handling?

Techniques for Handling Objections

• If an objection arises early in the sales process, respond by asking enlightened questions. These questions help prospects recognize both the gravity and urgency of their issues, thus increasing the value of your solutions. By becoming a good needs assessor, you can prevent many objections.

• List the 10 or 20 most common objections you receive and develop appropriate responses to each.
   
• Then, perfect your objection handling technique by practicing with a colleague, mentor or manager. Needless to say, good sales skills training programs can provide a variety of effective and non-offensive objection handling techniques.
   
• Next, determine which salesperson statements or behaviors, if any, typically precede each customer objection. Then evaluate the effect of eliminating some of these statements and behaviors.
   
• Finally, the entire sales team can track their success handling objections using specific responses and share their best sales techniques.

Price objections occurring late in the sales process are typically caused either by fear or a desire to get a better deal.  Fear is emotional, not logical.  Thus, traditional objection-handling techniques that rely on logic will often not work.  So, draw out the real fear issues and get prospects to open up and share their emotions.  Then, empathize with them and be patient while your prospects work through their fear and resistance issues.   

Indeed, great salespeople receive fewer objections and are adept at addressing prospect resistance.   And the best sales training programs teach a number of successful objection handling methods since no single technique is universally effective. 

All Rights Reserved.  The Sales Alliance Inc.  San Diego, CA. 

Ask any salesperson.  A sales meeting can either be a very positive, motivating experience or a boring waste of time!  While many sales managers make a real effort to conduct an effective sales meeting, many meetings still fall short of salespeople’s expectations.  Below are some ideas for revving up each sales meeting:

Sales Meeting Ideas

1. SET AND PUBLISH AN AGENDA:  Managers have heard this advice before, but it is amazing how many meetings we’ve observed where no agenda existed!
2. START AND END ON TIME:  Each sales meeting that starts or ends late can erode the manager’s credibility and reduce sales motivation.
3. KEEP DISCUSSIONS ON TRACK:  Politely direct people to either address the topic at hand or to suggest a new topic to add to the list of “open discussion items.” Discussions that get off track can derail a well-planned sales meeting.
4. PAY ATTENTION TO SEATING:  If you want to create conflict, let people likely to disagree with each other sit face-to-face where their eyes are in constant contact. To minimize conflict, seat them where face-to-face contact is difficult or not constant.  And be sure to split up friends who have a tendency to chat during a sales meeting.
5. ASK FOR OPINIONS, BUT LIMIT DISCUSSION:  Soliciting salespeople’s opinions can help everyone feel involved.  However, it is important to establish time limits so that discussions don’t exceed the time allotted on the agenda.

Indeed, planning and conducting a great sales meeting can go a long way towards developing a motivated, winning team.

All Rights Reserved.  The Sales Alliance Inc.  San Diego, CA

During dinner, the phone rings and it’s a call from someone soliciting donations for the Fraternal Order of Police. The next day, a high school student. working on closing sales for a magazine contest, rings your doorbell.  And then at work, a salesperson tries the “alternate choice” close on you (“would you like to order this using a company check or a credit card?”). Feeling pushed and annoyed, you bark, “I didn’t even say I’ll order that sir. I think our meeting is over!”

Yes, we live in a world of salesperson-initiated interruptions. When on top of an interruption we feel pushed by salespeople intent on closing sales, we naturally resist.

Since consumers and businesses typically have lots of vendors to choose from, they are becoming less tolerant of pushy salespeople. Increasingly, people are buying from polite, respectful sales professionals rather than the aggressive fast talkers intent on closing sales. As it is said, “people want to buy, but no one wants to be sold!”

Sales Closing Techniques Negatively Correlated to Results

In an exhaustive research study undertaken by a team of industrial psychologists, there was a negative correlation between salespeople who were focused on closing sales and the number of customers who were actually closed! Salespeople found to be highly concerned with “getting the sale” actually performed worse than those highly concerned with “solving customer problems.” In the study, the group of strong “closers” got more objections than the “soft” closers.  This high number of objections was correlated to inferior sales closing rates.

In some industries, like auto and insurance sales, the focus on closing sales has historically been high. But even in these industries, different approaches and newer techniques are being used in closing sales.    Without a doubt, prospects know when they’re being “closed” and may feel manipulated or resentful.  Hence, a new breed of sales closing techniques, which we term as “soft closes,” is gaining traction and yielding superior results.

As a sales training organization, we often get requests for training on closing sales. However, many of the companies that want this type of training are under the impression that stronger closing behaviors will increase sales. While “asking for the order” is always important, assertive closing behaviors are simply a turn off for many. The use of well-known sales closing techniques, like the alternate-choice close, the assumed close and the 3-Yes close, are examples are assertive techniques that lowered overall success rates. It is for this very reason that salespeople need to learn newer, more effective techniques for closing sales and generating repeat business.

Clearly, customers want to buy, not be “sold.” The top 10% of all salespeople spend a disproportionate amount of sales time at the beginning of the sales process developing trust and determining needs, motivation and benefits. With this approach, they save time in the sales closing process and achieve a great sales increase.

American companies, who during the last decade spent about 1.5% of their total payroll on employee training, are implementing ambitious programs aimed at improving how their salespeople approach, present to and close new customers. And rather than hire the sales “closer,” many firms now seek a balance of sales and personal qualities that will enamor customers and boost profits.

Effective Strategies for Closing Sales

Are you looking for ways to enhance your sales closing rate and solidify long-term relationships? If so, here are three concepts to incorporate into your sales process:

• Urgency Detection & Financial Justification: Understand, at the beginning of the sales cycle, how not making or delaying a decision to buy will ultimately cost the customer money. For example, a proposed computer system lease that would save a firm $35,000 per month in expenses yet cost only $20,000 per month would produce a $15,000 monthly benefit. So, the cost to the prospect of delaying a purchase decision is about $750 per business day. Remember, if there is no urgency present, you don’t have a qualified prospect. And if there are no compelling financial benefits, you won’t have a very motivated prospect. Without urgency and benefits, attempts at closing sales will often fail.
• Stakeholder Assessment and Contact: Find out who personally loses if a buying decision is delayed or canceled, and make sure you’re in contact with that person. For example, since a VP of Finance’s bonus may be based on net profit, he or she may personally lose bonus dollars when a buying decision is delayed.  Motivated buyers with skin in the game make closing sales relatively easy!
• Objection Prevention: Objections, particularly when they occur late in the selling process, serve to delay the sale and lower sales closing rates. Successful salespeople have well-rehearsed responses to the top 20 objections they receive. Moreover, seasoned sales pros boost their sales closing rates by actively anticipating objections and then using specific techniques to prevent them from occurring.

All Rights Reserved.  The Sales Alliance Inc.  San Diego, CA