CHAMPION STRATEGIS

Strategies for customer centered selling success

 

August 7, 2010                                                                                Newsletter # 1517

I visited with a good friend last week who officiated the WNBA game I attended in Atlanta at the Philips Arena. Usually I am like the crowd — I am out of there before the court clears — but this time I waited for my friend as he finished his job. As I waited I watched the stadium’s clean-up crew come through. The amount of trash left behind was amazing. The turn-around time for this 20,000-seat venue is tight. Every day thousands of people come in and they want a clean environment.

It costs the city a tidy sum to run daily clean-up operations across the city, but I’ll bet attention to trash pays off in their favor. Tourists and visitors stay longer and visit more often in those places that are well kept. So the city keeps on cleaning and the tourists keep spending.

As is my norm, this got me to thinking about how we run our businesses. We all need to regularly pick up the trash in our sales approach. In other words, do an inventory of how we interact with prospects and customers and unload strategies and selling tools that aren’t working.

A key element of sales success is about accurately meeting the needs of your guests, clients, customers or potential prospects. So what do you need to do to keep meeting the needs of your buyers in this new economy?

Here’s the top-10 most common sales trash I see when coaching sales consultants, managers, and owners.

  1. Hanging on to bad leads who are never going to buy. Many sales consultants keep a long list of poor-quality leads in their pipeline because they believe there’s safety to be had with padded numbers. Bad leads will always be bad and will suck time and resources out of your day. Either you qualify them in your pipeline, or you send that list of bad leads to the garbage bin.
  2. Citing outdated testimonials and client references. Testimonials must be current, compelling, and credible. Do your products and services work in today’s marketplace? That point applies similarly to references. If your references can’t be reached or are not of sound mind, how much credibility will you have? Find new references from your current clients and customers and keep the list updated.
  3. Using a poorly executed script for sales calls. Be objective. Are you using “sales talk” sounding language in your script? Do you sound like a radio ad or a telemarketer? Is your non-verbal communication letting the guest know you are not happy and confident in your career? Are you breaking the 70/30 Listening/Talking rule on your first engagement with a guest, client, customer, or to a potential prospect? If you answered yes to any one of these three questions, you need to trash your approach and start over.
  4. Relying on feature-and-benefits marketing without proof. Effective marketing should emphasize the results you can achieve for a guest. Back this with power of “social proof.” Use testimonials from current clients to prove your claims about results and to answer objections they might have about moving forward with you.
  5. Relying on a single-media strategy for your sales. To get attention and to be memorable, you need to leverage several media channels at once. From websites to social media, from paper-based marketing to face-to-face meetings—invest time in ensuring your message is loud and clear across a number of platforms. Each one contributes something unique to the buying experience of your guest, client or customers.
  6. Depending on Up’s or cold calling as your #1 lead generator. Give your head a shake! Last year, only 3% of all sales were closed from cold calls. The other 97% came from a range of sources, including client referrals, web inquiries; whitepaper/trial downloads, or conversations away from your store. Trash cold-calling as your top lead generator. In dealerships always remember that those who live by an up will surely die by an up. There are field-tested alternatives out there (including the ones I’ve mentioned) that will yield much better returns in less time.
  7. Dropping your price when your guest, client or customer asks for a discount. Trash it! Instead, emphasize the value of what you offer to your customer and offer options rather than discounts. Also, position yourself uniquely in the market so you have less direct competition. Show the guest the ADVANTA-Star product that is on your website.
  8. Asking your guest to do all the work in preparing your referral. When asking for a referral, do away with asking a client “Who do you know that…” The most common reply you’ll hear to that question is this: “I can’t think of anyone right now but let me think about it and get back to you.” Guess what? They rarely ever get back to you. Why? Because they have to do all the work, that’s why.

Instead, try this: “I would like to meet Randy Smith at the ABC Company… can you help me with an introduction?” Or “I would love to meet your VP of Sales… can you help me with an introduction?” Here’s one more winning approach: “I am going to be calling Randy Smith at the ABC Company this week… can I tell him we are doing great business together?” For those who have been in my class, you know referrals are the name of the game. So work smart and not hard.

  1. Forgetting to follow up on new leads. I recently read a study that found that in 2010, 80% of tradeshows, chamber of commerce meetings, seminars, or group meeting leads never get a follow up. In my own experience, I have found that in a vast majority of cases sales leads are not ready to close until after as many as seven follow-ups. Trash your current follow-up system and invest in a multistep approach that uses multiple channels (e.g., phone, email, direct mail, social media, websites, and e-newsletters).
  2. Lacking discipline. A few years ago, some sales consultants could manage to eek out a living while being lazy—sitting by the phone, waiting for an up, and waiting for the manager to do all of the work because the employee was in order taking mode. In this new economy, however, the only way to success is by being disciplined in how you work. Time to do away with lack of scheduling. Replace it with a structured business day in which prospect development and client contact are top priorities. Trash those empty blocks on your calendar and replace it with activities to fill your prospecting pipeline.

If you are selling exactly the way you did five years ago, chances are good your results are suffering. Sure, this message is a dose of tough love, but it’s necessary. Last week at Nalley Automotive Group’s Sales Awards breakfast, the group’s operations director, Gary Dodson, said his managers and sales consultants need to think of more innovative ways of doing business. He is exactly right. But I wonder how many of the team members in the room really understood Gary’s call for action.

Make a decision right now to trash what is not working for you. You can’t afford to be trapped any longer by the litter of sales strategies and business habits that prevent prospects from becoming customers and new customers from becoming repeat ones! Look objectively at how you work and choose three things you can change right now. Measure your results periodically and you’ll find you’ve generated a rather tidy new profit.

Remember: “A business as usual” approach will be the death sentence in tomorrow’s market! Now, go Make It a Champion Day! 

“SALES TRAINING MATTERS”