Being able to sell is an essential skill at every stage and level of business. You need to be able to persuade prospective customers to buy your products or services. You also need to be able to sell yourself to financial investors, and your vision to your shareholders or team. This guide will show you some effective techniques to help you become more successful at selling.
Deals, or sales, rarely fall into your lap. You have to win them. Fortunately, in order to be successful, you do not need to turn yourself into the archetypal over-pushy, foot-in-the-door salesperson.
The keys to successful selling
Buyers have to make a decision. Your job is to help them do so, and to ensure they opt for your proposition. It is something anyone can learn to do well.
Success in selling depends on several factors:
Selling is not just a case of rattling off a prepared script and asking, 'How many do you want, then?' Good selling is as much about what happens before and after you speak to the prospect. Selling is the climax of the overall marketing process, though it has a cycle of its own.
The timescales involved may be short or may take several years. Activities span such tasks as ‘prospecting’ (ensuring you have appropriate potential customers to talk to), and ‘customer relationship management’ (ensuring customers buy again and again).
Here, we will focus on converting an enquiry to a sale. We will also assume you are having a meeting to discuss a significant purchase, if only to bring out the main points.
You need to recognise that:
Confidence is an essential ingredient of the selling process. It stems from two things:
This confidence communicates itself to the prospective customer as professionalism. Knowledge is vital; lack of it is fatal. For example, if a seller shows poor product knowledge, it knocks the customers’ confidence in everything they say to them.
The buying process
Consider how people buy. What steps are involved? Imagine you are buying a car.
Defining the requirement
You review the choices of car: new or used, hatchback or estate. At this point you are defining your requirements, although some of these may, in practice, be incompatible.
Information gathering
You then arrive at a short list and enter the information-gathering phase. You want to know more detail about:
There may be a profusion of pros and cons.
The decision
Having weighed up the balance of factors and probably made a compromise of some kind, you make your decision. You select the overall package that meets your needs, appeals most and provides value for money. You also select the supplier you believe will deliver their promises.
Often there will be a number of suitable solutions and the decision comes down to less tangible factors such as style, brand, image and confidence in, or empathy with, the supplier.
The seller’s job is to help prospective buyers through each step, listening to the buyer’s views rather than imposing their own. Usually a decision will be made, the question is when, and with whom the business will be placed. You can influence both factors. What you need is a systematic approach.
Preparing to succeed
If there is any sort of magic formula about selling, it is here. Good salespeople do their homework. A plan should not be a straitjacket – you must be flexible because you cannot guarantee everything will go as you might like.
So, think through:
With these clearly in mind, you can proceed to a meeting with confidence.
Directing a sales meeting
Start well
The initial moments of a meeting are disproportionately important. They set the scene for what is to come. The meeting must be friendly yet professional and businesslike. Indeed, just being organised – in the sense of volunteering an agenda that will suit the prospective customer – can create the right sort of atmosphere. All you need at this stage is for people to think positively about you.
Other factors are important:
Present a persuasive case
This is the core of the meeting. You must achieve several objectives as you proceed:
Overall the technique at this stage is to remain positive throughout and ensure you present a case that holds together neatly. It must not sound as if you are haphazardly making it up for the first time. It must sound considered, as if you are taking the trouble to do it in a way that is right for the individual buyer.
The customer should feel you are working with them. You want to avoid them feeling you are doing something to them or putting your own interests first.
Keep control
Throughout the sales process you will need to manage objections. Remember that the customer is continually weighing things up. Plan how you will deal with potential snags or objections.
Some objections will be raised by the customer – 'Surely that’s not enough service calls!' Some should be raised by you (where you know the customer is likely to think of an issue and it will automatically become a negative if neither party raises it).
Answers do not necessarily have to demolish objections. They may, after all, be valid. You have to work to adjust the balance. There are only four possible courses of action. You can:
Deal with one objection at a time and aim to keep the overall case positive. Try not to appear panicked.
Gain commitment
Finally, you need to ‘close’, to ask for a commitment of some sort. Closing does not cause people to buy. Everything else you have done does that. However, it can prompt action, turning the interest into action. This action may be to buy, or it may be some other positive step along the way – agreeing to a presentation or a written quotation, perhaps.
Getting from one stage to the next usually needs a positive prompt. Not closing negates your earlier good work. Checking your facts is no substitute for a close. If you ask, for instance, 'Is that all the information you need at present?' you risk them ending matters (at least for the moment): 'Yes, that’s been most helpful, let me think on it. I’ll call you next week. Goodbye.'
Closing is not complicated, though there are several techniques. You can:
There are other ways to close but beware of being too clever; they are not usually necessary and can appear pushy. The golden rule is to shut up when you’ve asked your closing question. If you break the silence, you let them off the hook to make a decision.
Handle delay
Sometimes further action may be necessary. For instance, they may delay their decision saying, 'I’ll think about it.' Always agree: 'It’s an important decision. Of course you must be sure.' But find out why: '…but why particularly do you need to do this? Is anything still unclear?' This may unearth extra information. For example, that something is unclear (in which case, clarify and close again), or that the decision needs ratifying elsewhere.
Always keep the initiative. Find out when a decision will be reached and volunteer to make contact again.
Wrap up
You may have done all that is necessary and have the signed order in your hand. Once you get agreement, thank the customer; see to any administrative matters and end matters promptly. It is all too easy, once your guard is down, to ramble on and suddenly find you have talked the customer out of it.
Be persistent
Be persistent and keep in touch. Take delays at face value. If someone says the buyer is out of the office when you telephone, call again – and again if necessary. You can get orders by persevering after less persistent competitors have given up.
What matters is the success rate. No one wins them all. Some sales demand additional skills – negotiation, formal presentations or persuasively written proposals and quotations. You have to do what is necessary. It may not always be as easy or quick as you would like but, if you understand the techniques and use them appropriately, you have every chance of being effective.
Selling is a necessary part of business. It will not just happen and few people have the qualities of the mythical ‘born seller’. However, it is neither something distasteful nor something to be terrified of. Not only does it bring in business, it can be very satisfying in its own right. And the more you practise the better you’ll become.
