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Monthly Archives: February 2010
5 Steps To Get To the 2nd Best Answer In Sales: Ask Better Questions
What a great day! I was spending some time on TweetDeck when one of the Tweets in the stream caught my eye. It said, “I take pride in the ‘No’s’ that I get (means I am taking action!)”
What was this? Another crusader for “No”? I checked the Twitter profile and found not one but two advocates for our two-lettered friend. What a great connection. This is why I love social media! So keep up the “No” campaign Andrea and Richard, and I’ll be cheering you along the way.
On with the series, then. Today’s step offers you the keys to the kingdom when it comes to getting to “No”. Asking better questions really is the best, fastest, most efficient way to get to the “No” you need to hear and avoid that “Maybe” trap.
Let’s start with the reason you’re asking questions to begin with. First of all, lose the illusion that qualifying questions are supposed to help you close sales. Not so, my friend. Qualifying questions are meant to help you sift the wheat (potential buyers) from the chaff (friendly people who have trouble saying “No” and want to keep you in the “Maybe”-loop). Great questions help prospects self-select so that you can find the ones who really want to work with you.
My First Guest Post!
So my friends Bill Walker and Meghan Wood (and their trusty producer PP) just started a new podcast called The Bill and Meghan Show. Check it out…it’s very entertaining.
Knowing what an attention hound I am, Bill asked me to contribute a weekly post to their blog. Of course I said “Yes!”
And so it’s with great pleasure that I announce my first ever guest blog post!
Let me know what you think (i.e., leave a comment) and be sure to subscribe to Bill and Meghan’s weekly podcast while you’re at it.
5 Steps To Get To the 2nd Best Answer In Sales: State Your Intention
I’d like to make a couple of clarifications before proceeding with the Getting to “No” series. First, when I’m addressing salespeople, I’m including you business owners and entrepreneurs in the conversation. If you’re not doing all the selling in your organization yourself, you’re likely the one managing the salespeople. You need to pay attention to this stuff.
Second, this series is focusing on the importance of getting to “No” faster and more often in the early stages of the sales process, specifically when prospecting and qualifying. In the latter half of the process (presentation and conversion), you’re definitely looking for a “Yes” (look for a follow-up series on getting to “Yes” next week). And if you apply the principles in this series to get more “No”s, you’ll be more like to succed when it comes time to ask for a “Yes”.
That said, thanks for tuning in to part 3 of our 5-part series, “5 Steps To Get To the 2nd Best Answer In Sales”. The third step in the process is simple: Clearly State Your Intention.
Like many of the suggestions you read in this blog, this is really just common sense. The idea here is to get an agreement from the prospect regarding the outcome you’d like to acheive right at the beginning of your conversation. If you state your intention right at the beginning of the conversation, your chances of getting the outcome you’re looking for go up pretty significantly, right?
Simon Says: If It’s Uncomfortable for You, It’s Uncomfortable for Them
OK. I’m a little disappointed. So far, American Idol Season 9 is off to a weak start. I’m not sure what’s happening, but there really haven’t been any stand-out performances so far. I hope it get’s better; I’m really starting to miss Adam.
One thing did stand out though: Simon told one of the contestants (who looked like he was terrified throughout his entire performance), “If it’s uncomfortable for you, it’s uncomfortable for the people who are watching you.” And that’s tonight’s American Idol business lesson: your mood is catchy.
Like it or not, the people around you are tuned in to your mood. This is especially true in a sales situation. If you’re nervous or desperate or distracted, you’re going to make your prospect uncomfortable. And people who are uncomfortable don’t buy. So what can you do?
First, determine what’s making you uncomfortable; then figure out how to overcome it. Is it a lack of preparation? That’s easy to fix: prepare better. Is it a lack of experience? That’s okay: it’ll get better with time if you don’t give up. Is it because you’re afraid they’re going to say “No”? Get over the fear of “No” by having more people say it to you.
5 Steps To Get To the 2nd Best Answer In Sales: Talk To More People
So here we are as promised, Step 2 of the “5 Steps To Get To “No” Faster and More Often”: Talk To More People.
No kidding, right? In fact, I could literally end this post right now. After all, you don’t need four or five more paragraphs to explain to you that if you want to hear “No” more often, the easiest way to accomplish it is to see more prospects. Well, lucky for you I’m in a generous mood and you’re going to get those four or five (possibly six…we’ll see) paragraphs anyway.
It’s become popular lately to discount the idea that sales is a “numbers game”, and to some extent I agree; selling today is far more complex a matter than just who can make the most calls. But at least during the prospecting and qualifying phases of the sales process, volume does count for something. Look at a typical sales funnel report, and you can see that it never looks like a cylinder; they call it a “funnel” for a reason. You have to see a lot of people in the initial stages to get down to those few who could truly become customers in the later stages.
In fact, if you consistenly track your numbers you’ll start to see ratios jumping off the page. Maybe it’s 100 prospecting calls that lead to 25 qualifying appointments that result in 5 presentations that net you 1 new customer. And what does that really mean? It means that for every 1 new customer, you have to hear 99 “No”s. Are you beginning to see why it’s so critical to get to “No” faster and more often? Talking to more prospects and getting them to tell you “No” as early in the game as possible actually improves your ability to get to that coveted “Yes”.
They Never Seem To Learn – Do You?
We interrupt this blog’s 5-part series about getting to “No” to bring you this special “American Idol” update:
American Idol kicked off their “Top 24″ phase tonight, and watching the ladies perform tonight got me thinking.
This is supposed to be when the contestants bust out their “A” games and show the audience what they’re made of. It didn’t happen tonight. Instead, I saw 12 girls make the same mistake made every year: instead of engaging with their audience, they picked songs they thought would make them look good. Do you smell a business lesson coming?
At this point in the competition, the audience hasn’t had much of a chance to form an opinion about the contestants. There’s no history, no relationship. We don’t know them yet. This is really our first impression; we’ve yet to hear a full performance, only snippets played between clips of their family or kids or dogs or whatever “human” element the producers thought would make for good TV.
5 Steps To Get To the 2nd Best Answer In Sales: Remember That “No” Doesn’t Really Mean “No”
I just finished a post over at the Sales Bloggers Union about the importance of getting to “No” faster and more frequently in order to be a successful salesperson. You can read that post here.
As I was writing that post, though, I started thinking of some ways to help salespeople get better at eliciting those “No”s from their prospects more efficiently. I decided to write a series here called “5 Steps To Get To the 2nd Best Answer In Sales”.
We’ll start with the most important step: getting your mindset properly aligned.
Step #1: Remember That “No” Really Means “Not Now”
What Dean Koontz Taught Me About Sales
One of my favorite things in life is a good book, and one of my favorite authors is Dean Koontz.
I first started reading Koontz novels about 4 years ago, and I’ve been hooked ever since. For my money, he’s one of the best fiction writers alive today. His books are incredibly entertaining ,and they always make me think about things I hadn’t considered or offer a new perspective on life and death and being human.
What I never expected, though, was to write a blog post about the sales lessons I’ve learned from Mr. Koontz, but here it is.
#1 – It’s all about the story
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