Transcripts
1. The 5 Minute Sales Coach - Introduction: Welcome to the
five-minute sales coach. My name is Kevin Ford and I'm the creator of the program
and thrilled that you've chosen this as a
means to improve your sales skills and
ultimately your sales success. This is a profession unlike any other than learning never stops. The opportunities
are never ending and I'm hopefully here to help
you along this journey. Why five-minutes? Well, it's based on a
study in 2014 by Deloitte, a large consulting firm
which found that in today's leaner run companies, most employees can only spare about 1% of their workweek
to skills upgrades, which really boils down
to 4.8 min per day. Now, this course is different
from what you're used to. Here we put a laser focus
on practical usable skills, cutting out all the fluff. Getting straight to the facts, you will benefit from this. But I ask that you
adjust your approach. Most people like
myself included, go to a three or four days
sales training at all. The amazing concepts, ideas get excited and within a couple
of weeks, it's gone. We forgot at all. It's not your fault. We humans have the capacity for integrating new concepts
into our lives. A German psychologist,
Hermann Ebbinghaus, conducted an in-depth study into memory and found that
you lose about 50% of, but what you'll learn
in the next day. And as much as 80% is
gone within a month, which is pretty
lousy odds, right? That's where this
course differs. You're not going to forget. You're going to
integrate what you learn immediately and it's
going to stick. Here's how to use the course. There are ten lessons, each of them five to
10 min in length, beginning today, less
than one is available with new lessons
coming out every day. Which means the course is
going to take you about ten working days or
two weeks to complete. Now. Yes, I appreciate that you want to get
it done all at once. Dive into all that
juicy information, but information
overload is not good. That's what we're
trying to avoid. I don't want you
to forget a thing. The best way to
integrate a new skill is to put it into
action immediately. Listen to the lesson in
the morning over coffee, put it to work during the day with every
single sales call. And so important to
practice this immediately. Now I understand the
frustration of watching online courses with a
little tiny video of a talking head in
the bottom while the usual presentation slides
whip by, I won't do that. I decided to use animations instead of the usual
death by PowerPoint. Now I'm not going to be putting Pixar out of business
anytime soon, but I hope it's a little
more entertaining than 20 slides of bullet points and useless stuff. That's it. I wish you all the best. I look forward to meeting
you in the one-on-one. You have any questions? Shoot me an e-mail
and happy selling.
2. Lesson 1- The Sales Cylce: Welcome to the
five-minutes sales coach. And today we start
with lesson one. And I'm going to break it
down into two simple parts. In part one, we're
gonna be discussing the history of sales and how the process has progressed to the modern methods
that we see today. And part number two, we will cover the five
unique steps that happen in every
sales interaction. And when you can
get the handle on these five steps
is going to take a lot of the mystery
out of what you're doing when meeting
with a customer. So to begin with, let's talk about
history and sales has gotten a bad reputation
over the years. We all know about
the plaid jacket wearing used car salesman whose sole purpose
in life was to trick people into buying
their junky cars. What's incredible is even
though this style of sale has been pretty
much gone for 40 years, at least for the most part. There's still lives in
element of distrust of sales. In the response to
the sleazy tactics, there has been a
definite change from the old manipulation model. And we've progressed
into something that is far more collaborative, where we focus on the
customer and not ourselves. Now think about it. You
can trick a customer wants and squeezes
much profit margin out of them as you can, but you'll never see them again. Today, we put effort into form a partnership with the goal
of ensuring future sales. Now this opens the
door to having some genuine
interactions with people in the best sales reps are no longer the ones
that are the best. Fast talkers are the best. Storytellers are the
ones with most tricks. They are the ones
that are genuine and able to have a good, solid, organic interaction
with their customers. This does require
one unique skill. Patients, patients to find out more about the customer and their challenges with the
goal to provide solutions. This is the focus of
this course to teach you the patients and skills to get the customer to tell
you what they need. You're not going to
manipulate them. You're going to work with them. Completely opposite
to the good old days. Moving on to part two, Let's talk about those
five unique steps. And every sales call, there is a logical flow of
events that begins with you shaking the hands
of the customer in the lobby of their
office or whatever, and ending when you
get the order or what we all love to call the close, leads you to making your quota and earning
your commission. Sound too good to be true? Well, it's not. The
difference between you and the top rep in the office is
experienced and attitude. The concept of sales is simple. There are some unique
skills required, and if you adopt the never
stop learning attitude, you will thrive in
this profession. Now let's get back to those
five steps I talked about. They are in a logical
sequence of events that occur in every
sales interaction. Some people call these
steps the sales flow. Others may refer to it
as the sales cycle. If you understand these steps and understand how they work, your success is pretty
much guaranteed. It's time to lift the
covers and what sales is. We will discuss each one of these steps in detail
in future lessons. But for now, let's just
have a quick look. Shall we? The first step
in the sales flow or the sales cycle is quite
simple, yet extremely powerful. Introducing yourself, tell
them why you were there, set the stage for
the entire meeting. Here's an example. When we spoke on the phone just 5 min ago, you said you have a problem. Can we discuss the solutions
for that problem right now? Now, what customers
going to say no to that? The next step in
the sales flow or sales cycle is questioning
and listening stage. And I consider this to be the most crucial of all of them. And it will have
the greatest impact on your success in
the sales meeting. Think of it this way. You are trying to find out what the customer needs
and give it to them. It's that simple questions
and listening are the way you find out what they need and
you cannot skip this step. The next step in
the sales flow is clarifying the customer's
needs and opportunities, which you will eventually
matched to your product. The next step after
that is to present your product and the
unique features of those products and the
value to the customer. If you do this correctly, it will make it almost impossible for the customer
to reject your proposal. Finally, in the sales flow is the close where the
customer agrees to our proposal and will
give us money in exchange for having
solved his problems. While the steps usually are happening in sequence
one to five, it does not mean that you
can't get to the close, find out that there's some
sort of disagreement. You have to pack up and
just leave empty handed. The structure of this
system allows you to re-enter any
one of those steps at anytime and follow the remaining steps to get to
the bottom of the problem. It allows you to fix any problems that you
may have missed in a very non-threatening way in your customer will appreciate
the attention to detail. That's it for lesson one. And before less than
two gets released. But all your attention
on your sales calls over the next
couple of days and see if you can
notice these steps reoccurring and
how they progress. It's not a time to
be concerned about executing the steps,
just observe them. So that's it for today. We're a little over 5 min, but hey, nobody is perfect. I wish everybody happy selling. And remember one thing, you have the skills within you to be a successful
salesperson. My job, I'm just
here to draw it out. Take care.
3. Lesson 2 - Your selling style (see project for the 3 styles): Welcome to lesson two. Little sidetrack here. Before we get into the sales cycle stuff
is we're going to take a moment to understand
you for a moment. Understanding your customer is a very big key to sale success. But if you want to take it to the next level,
look in the mirror. We're all different. We all have different
personalities, we all have different traits. And those traits
affect how you act, how your customer reacts, and it will affect
your sales success. One personality type or one style type is not
necessarily better than another. I'm going to mention
three basic ones. You probably have
a mixture of these three to some degree. But all of us have one that sort of takes
over a little bit more. And like anything in life, unless you're balanced, thinks he can get a
little bit out of hand. So let's just quickly glance over these and then
we can go from there. So the first sales style of the three is something I
call the gift of gab. And these are the social
butterflies in your office. They are the people that
get to know everyone. They are the super extroverts. And when they go on sales calls, they get to know the
people they're talking to. They get to know their kids
names, their family, history. They, they are really
personable people. Challenge with that is, is they don't necessarily focus enough on
getting the sale. They're so wrapped up in talking to the person
in Haiti, listened. I would love to be able
to have that skill. They sometimes forget
to ask for the sale. So that can be a
bit of a problem and something that you
have to be aware of. The second personality
is the no at all. And this is the one I
fell into my early days. They are the people that know every single specification of
the product inside and out. They know the inner
workings of the company. They know, they know it all, and they are not afraid to
share that with the customer. The problem is, is
that they often steamroll right over
top of a customer when they're pulling off their little no at all
act without really checking to see if the customer really needs what they're
so excited about. Now listen, there's
nothing wrong with excellent
product knowledge, that's good, but too much
of it can be a problem. The last one is what I
call simply the best. And these are the
guys. The earliest. They do the most cold
calls in a week. They do the most sales
calls in a week. They have their charts
up-to-date and they've got their CRM all up-to-date
and everything's awesome, and they are unabashedly the
best person in the office. The problem with that is sometimes is they can't see
the forest for the trees, they get a little
impatient with some of the smaller customers and
the slower moving ones. And sometimes just sort of throw things off
to the side onto the next best thing and maybe leaving things
on the plate. So that's the three major
personalities or three styles. And really what you're trying
to do is balanced them all out so that you have a good, healthy dose of all three
of them in your approach. And this really goes
with anything in life. It's not even just sales. In the later part of this
lesson, when you look, you'll see that there are
three video files of a, some animations really
showing how these guys act. And I think you get
a better idea and I think you might see
yourself in one of them. So have a look at
all three of them. Try and think about them. Try and think about this over the next couple of days
while you're talking to your customers and see what really comes out to the surface. And then try and
think of a way that you can sort of moderate at all. How can you bring a little bit of everything into this mix? So I hope you enjoyed this. It's a little bit short
today because we've got those extra videos and we'll see you guys
in lesson three. Happy selling.
4. Lesson 3- Setting the stage for sucess: Welcome back everybody. The five-minute sales coach, and we're up to
lesson number three. We're gonna be starting into the sales cycle steps
or the sales flow, whatever you like to call it those five key steps
that you're going to be going through in
every single sales call. And the first woman to
discuss is step number one. Tell them why you're there. Or some people like to say sort of setting
up the meeting, set the stage, whatever you, whatever you wanna call it. And I know what you're thinking. That's the dumbest
thing you've ever said, tell them why I'm there. Yeah, you do. Even if it's overly obvious, there's still a certain measure
of respect to is showing your customer when you tell them something very simple like
when we spoke on the phone, you said you had this problem. And I'm here to help
you solve that. Can we discuss that now? And nobody is ever
going to say no, it's a simple, silly thing. It really sets up the meeting
in a more positive light. I don't know how
much more I can, I can really emphasize that. But just that simple
task of saying, I'm here, I know that
you mentioned a problem. I'd like to help. And it happens quite often
that you'll see sales reps who understandably are
nervous getting in and immediately launching into
some type of sales activity. Maybe you go past the simple pleasantries
of weather and whatnot. And then next thing you know,
the catalogue comes up. And I have to say having sat
and coach through dozens, maybe hundreds of these things, it's really kind of
uncomfortable to watch this. Now, in a cold
calling situation, this step is absolutely crucial. And the reason being
is that if you just walk into somebody's
office and start pitching, you're gonna be getting a quick U-turn out of
there, I'm sure. And it doesn't have
to be magical. It doesn't have to be something really sought
worthy or anything, just something simple like I saw on a trade magazine
that you've got a contract. I'd like to explore the possibility of us
doing business together. Can we do that? I did business with your
competitor and I saved them X number of dollars
and I thought you might benefit from that as well. We discuss that further. These are so not knowing that it's really
just quite simple, people seem to get the
idea that they have to go into particularly
a cold call and make that one really strong statement that's going to knock
the customer on his butt and open them up so you can sell them something
that is not the case. You are looking for a
very non-threatening, simple human interaction with somebody to basically open up the call and set
the tone for it. Okay. You are going to be
talking to this customer for maybe half an
hour, maybe an hour. If you're lucky, you
want to set the tone for that meeting immediately
as soon as you down. So get through the pleasantries, talk about the weather, talk about the hockey or the baseball game
the night before, and then get into this. I would like to discuss
something with you. Is that okay? And the question you
ask where you're confirming their their
agreement to that is very important because
now they're buying into the entire meeting that
you are now setting up. Another thing that you can
do that is very powerful. And a lot of people
don't do this, is you may already
be taking notes, but just ask them if they
mind if you take notes. It's again, getting them
involved in your process. They are now connecting to you. Do you mind if I take notes? I don't want to miss anything is really what you're saying. And it's a nod to the customer that you're
taking this seriously and more so it's a nod to you
because you now have something that you can go back on and refer to in case
things get off track. And as we get further down
into the lessons within this, and you'll see as the
complexity starts to ramp up, note-taking is pretty
much essential. You cannot get through a sales call these days
without taking notes and just relying on your memory
as you're going to find out how listening is
not the easiest thing to do. That's it. Set the stage, set the
tone for the meeting. Be respectful. Tell them that you respect
their time in a you know, just by asking if you can
talk and the sales call will go much smoother and there'll be much more
engagement with your customer. I can pretty much
guarantee that that is the first stage and our sales
cycle and take a few days, two or three days to practice. This is very innocuous. Just practice it,
just give it a try. I think you'll be
really quite surprised that the customer may
actually seem a little bit. Wow, Really, You said that. And I promise you
it's a good thing. There is nothing
wrong with this, even if it's, even
if it's stupid. And the guy says, Yeah, I
just talked to you 5 min ago. This is the mood.
Before I do go. A couple of other
things to think about. You can use referrals from
within the same company. If you are talking to somebody
in another department, that's another way of
opening the meeting. Another thing that you can do to sort of lend a little bit of credibility and signal your
interests to the customer. So that's it. Try and practice this as much as you can over the
next couple of days. And I think you'll find
that once you get into it, it just becomes a
muscle that to you automatically flex
and it works out. So that's it for
less than three. Look forward to talking to
everybody in less than four. Don't forget to practice
and get out there. And happy selling. And never forget
that you have within you the skills to be the best
sales rep you can be toxic.
5. Lesson 4 - How to be a super-listener.: Welcome back to the
five-minute sales coach. We are now up to less than four, which is the Listening
section of the sales cycle. And I have to say that
this is probably one of the most crucial parts
of the sales cycle and it's also the
most challenging. Listening is crucial
because we can miss an opportunity
that a customer says. And when they come up with
an opportunity, folks, I'm telling you
they do not hold up a banner saying opportunity. It is subtle language
you have to hear. As a sales coach, I've witnessed on more
than one occasion a sales rep completely missing a wide-open opportunity or even a direct Need Statement. And the reasons are very simple why this is so difficult,
particularly for salespeople, because we're sitting
there trying to think of the next best thing that we can say to keep that
conversation going. We have a agenda when
we go in there and we are thinking 1 million mi an hour to try and fulfill that. It's a challenge. It's a problem with the brain working faster than
you're thinking in the customer's ability to speak your light
years ahead of them. And the thing is, is
you can't multitask. You cannot hear and think of next thing to
say at the same time. And of course we all know these customers who are
notorious slow talkers. It makes it even worse. Man, you just want to get
right to the point, right? That is the biggest challenge
for us to sales reps is we feel the need to
lead the conversation, which I suppose we are, but it needs to happen
in a more organic sense. And you don't have to panic
to think that you've got to say something outstanding
to keep it going. If you're getting it backwards, you're not there to
impress your customer. You're there to get
information, and that's it. Now, remember in
step number one, when I said to ask the
customer to take notes, that's where this is really
going to come in handy, where you don't really have to continually think of
something else to say. You've got everything, you writing it down in front of you. And you're allowing the customer to come out and say things. And it doesn't matter if you're the most knowledgeable person or the best performer
in your office, the customers don't care. At this stage of
the sales cycle, you are just having an organic conversation
with another person. What comes out of it
is what you're then going to take and go
to the next step. But right now, you've
got to listen. So the first thing
I can offer you, which is most important, is when you ask a question, let the customer finish, pause, take a breath. And then and only then do
you ask the next question. That uncomfortable silence
that you're panicking to fill. It's not as long as you think. And actually a little bit
of tension like that is good for the
interaction that you're having with the customer. It actually gives you an
opportunity to show that you're giving some serious thought to what the customer
is telling you. And they will in the
end, appreciate it, maybe subconsciously, but they'll certainly know
what you're talking about. One of the other very
important things, and I know this is gonna be
a challenge for all of us. Is dumped the ego at the
door when you go in. Customer doesn't care
about your sales quota. Or if you know the most
about your product or you know the most about
anything for that matter. Really what you're doing
is trying to get them talking so that they will eventually tell
you what they need. And as simple, an
oversimplified as the sounds, you're only Chubb
is that this point is to find out what they
need and give it to them. The only way you can do that is through the listening
techniques. This is gonna be
a big challenge. I can guarantee you
there is a, an, a common exercise
using sales training called the broken
telephone exercise. And I'll leave the
details for this in the assignment notes that
you can practice this, but it will really highlight to you how poorly we
really do. Listen. It's essentially what it is, is somebody tells you something, then you tell somebody else, and then that person
tells somebody else. And by the time he gets
through this thing 34 times, the story isn't even remotely close to what you
started off with. And it just outlines
at how poor as humans, I'm not picking on
you guys for sales. It's everybody or at listening. So that is the importance
of taking notes, and that is the importance
of slowing down. And that is the importance of taking a deep breath
before you ask the next question
and so that you fully understand what the
customer is telling you. I cannot stress
enough that they're not going to come out and tell
you directly, I need this. Particularly if you have a very complex bucket of products that he
doesn't know about, it's going to be subtle and it's your job
to pick up on it. So give this a try over
the next couple of days. Take three if you can. That's very important
to practice. In fact, this will be
something you'll be practicing for a very long time. But once you get it,
your sales interactions, your sales success is going to be completely
different. That's it. The next lesson
is going to be on the other end of the scale
is going to be asking questions and we'll talk
about gins that will make the listening portion
of everything easier. I wish everybody happy selling. And don't forget that you've
got these skills within you. We're just working one step at a time to pull them
out, Take care.
6. Lesson 5-How to ask powerful questions : Welcome back to the
five-minute sales coach, and we are moving on
to lesson number five. And this is, well,
they're all important. I say that this one is going to be the most challenging for you from what I've experienced over the
years through myself, from helping other
people learn the art of sales is the
ability to ask good, solid quality questions is something that
you're going to be practicing for a long time. This is the reason that you
get the job as a sales rep. It's your job to get the customer to tell
you what they need and they do not tell you that unless you ask them
some questions, not just any old
question it'll do. I'm going to give you
an example here and see if you can spot
the difference. So the first question would be, can I help you with anything? Now, if the customer answers No, you're dead, you're toast. Where do you go from that? You pack up and leave. The other question
which is asking the same thing but
at a different way, is, what problems or challenges
are you having this week? Now? That can't be answered
with yes or no. The customer has to
open up and tell you something it provokes thought. And what I've just done is
giving you an example of a closed question or a closed-end question that can only be answered
with one word. Affirmative, negative,
yes, no, maybe last week. Simple answer is simple, very direct answers versus
an open-ended question, which cannot be answered
with just simple yes, no, maybe last week. But it requires the customer to elaborate a little further
to get into detail. And that is the magic of
the open-ended question. And I can tell you
right now that most of us spend our entire life with these simple
closed ended questions, it's just the way society
is for the most part. And I think if you start paying attention through
the course of your day, not your workday, just any day. Any interaction with
your family or friends, pay attention to the type of questions that
you're asking them. And I think you'll notice that
a lot of them are closed. So take heart that this
is not an easy skill. It's going to take awhile for
you to develop this muscle. And I think once you start
getting the hang of it, you're going to notice that your customer interactions are going to completely change. That you're suddenly
going to find out that your sales calls and your sales meetings are going a lot smoother than
they were before. You're not gonna
be sitting there gasping for the
next thing to say. As we talked about earlier
in the listening section, listening and questions
go hand in hand. If you're busy trying to figure out what to ask
next because you're freaked out because
you know that the answer is going to
be a one-word answer. And you're, Oh my gosh, I got to figure out
how I'm going to keep this conversation moving. You're basically going
to miss what they said. But if you can answer an open-ended question that
gets the conversation going, it makes it more. What's the word enriched? Then it's going to be
a lot easier and a lot more organic to
keep things moving. Now I can warn you that you
can go overboard on these. I had a sales rep who work for me that would just walk into a customer's office and
say so what's on the go? And that was pretty much it. That's an open-ended question, but that's a little too open. Try and put some
context into it. For instance, I was talking to Fred and the other
department and he said that you guys were
having challenges with this particular
machine or something. And what's going on? What, what can we
help you with today? It's just a tiny
little more contexts that frames the next
response from the customer. I'm just going to give you
a couple more examples of open and closed questions. Is there you can get an
idea on what you can change to make your questions a little more open and engaging. So here we go. I'll state the closed question first and then I'll give you the open question alternatives. So hopefully you can spot
the difference in this. Number one, can I talk to
the purchasing department? No. Well, dad and write
better question is, who's responsible
for the purchasing? You see the difference. Next example. If I give you a better price, will you buy from us? Know, well that and again, better question is, why didn't you purchased from our
company in the past? Again, we're getting back to the assumption thing that we
talked about and listening. Next example. Can I show you this new widget? No, dead end again, alternative would
be, what kind of widgets do you already
use from our company? Or what kind of
widgets do you use? I would even be a
simpler version. You're starting to
see the difference. And finally, here's one. Can I get a purchase order? No, not right now. Now. Maybe not so deadly, but it kinda throws a
roadblock up a little. A better way is when will you start with purchasing
products for this project? So I think you're starting to see the
difference between the two. Now I do want to point out that the closed-ended questions have their uses and we'll talk
more about the middle. We get into the final portion
of the course on closing. They do have their uses whenever you need to nail something down, you need something
very specific. That's when he asked
closed-ended questions where you're trying to get
nailed into something. But if you're in trying to figure out what the
customer needs, open question, open questions. Practice, practice,
practice, everybody. This is what we'll build that
open-ended question muscle. That's the only
thing you can do. And take a couple of days
to really focus on it. And we'll get up to
the next lesson, which will be talking more about the customers
opportunity and needs. And I wish everybody happy
selling and don't forget, you've got these skills in you. We're just here to get them
to bubble to the surface. So cheers everybody and we'll
see you in the next lesson.
7. Lesson 6-How to recognize and uncover hidden opportunities : Welcome back to the
five-minute sales coach. And here we are
at less than six, we are halfway
through the course. Today we're gonna be talking
about opportunities, which is the reason
why you are doing such a great job of
listening while you're doing a fantastic job of asking open questions to keep
that conversation moving. That's why we've been
putting the emphasis on that listening and
questioning stuff. Because your goal now is to hear those subtle little
remarks at your customer says that are going
to be opportunities that are eventually going
to blossom into a need. And once you have a need, then you've got some product
to sell to match that need. So that is the
phase that we're in the sales cycle is we've opened the door by setting the stage or telling
them why we're there. And then we moved on and listen to what they
were saying and ask them some pretty good
open-ended questions to get them talking. And now we're at the point where we are going
to be listening for those opportunities that
are going to lead to needs. And we're going to be able
to present our product. We really need to discuss
what the differences between an opportunity
in a need. I think the easiest thing, it's a way to put it is that an opportunity is
essentially a wish. I wish I had something
that solves this problem. We've got this problem, but I can't seem to figure
out how to solve it. Anything where the customer
is a little bit vague, but they have some
sort of inkling or idea that there's an issue
they need to deal with. Whereas the need is something tangible
and completely clear. So wish would be, gosh, I wish we could. Okay, I'm using that language, but I wish we could
solve this problem. In the need is I am going
to solve this problem by introducing your new widget. So it's really, it's
really important to know the difference because of a customer provides
you an opportunity. You run with that
than what you've basically done is made
a huge assumption. It's something we call
it an assumed need and may throw you into a corner that you can't
get out of a main. You, you've, you've busted your chops to get into
see this customer. And you want to make the
most of your time and you don't want to be spending
any time backtracking, are trying to get them
off of a misconception, which we will talk more
about in the next course. But that is very important. You don't want to be making any assumptions in this stage. It's easy to do so you
really need to be clear. Is the customer just telling you something
that he wishes is happening or something that he absolutely needs to happen. And that is the big difference. And I can tell you from
experience that most customers, particularly if your product is more complicated and
technical in nature, are not gonna be able to vocalize or pinpoint
their needs. What you're gonna be
hearing from him, I would say 80% of 90% of
the time, our opportunities. And it is your job at that point to be able
to get them to drill down into that opportunity to figure out what
the actual need is. Remember, your product
fulfills a need. Your product cannot
fulfill an opportunity. Your product can
only fulfill a need. So if you're hearing wishy-washy
explanations or taught, then you have to get down
and have them look you in the eye and say, I need this. Now, it's not as
complicated as you think. The number one thing you
have to do is slow down. Don't rush it. And I'm going to be
introducing something that is going to be a common
theme for the rest of the, rest of the lessons here. As a way to talk to the customer
is the step number one, is you going to re-frame the
thing that he just said? Number two is you're going
to say it back to them. Number three is you're going to ask him for confirmation
on what you're saying. So let me give you an example. So your customers basically said to you that
they're frustrated with the operation of a
particular piece of equipment in the factory, Let's assume here and industrial sales or something like that. So you would say
something very simple like here it's frustrating because is this frustration of that equipment a ongoing
problem for you? And then the customer
would respond yes or no. Or you could say an
open-ended question, what is it that you find the most frustrating part
of that, that operation? What you're doing here is
you're digging a bit deeper. You've gotten an opportunity
and you're really trying to get it down to the point
where there's a need. Perhaps the customer is
going to say to you, yes, we've been installing
these widgets into that machine for the last two years and
they're not working. This is a perfect time
for you to clarify where you say I understand and what is it about them
that isn't working? Then you get another answer. Then you can say, so if I understand
you correctly, you need a specific
performance for that machine. Those widgets to work
in a certain way. This is when you can now say, Do you agree with that? The customer will probably
say yes because you've now basically illuminated a need that he probably
wasn't even aware of. At that point. You will be moving on to
the next phase and we'll talk about that in
lesson number eight. There's a few examples of what
you might hear a customer say when they're expressing an opportunity and not a need. And I want you to listen
to the language here of how it's not very
specific, very direct. They may say something like
I might be considering, or we've been awarded that new project or
your service isn't bad. Or my employees
like your product or your competition is actually better price
than you guys were. Perhaps another one is, I'm not really thinking of
getting a new supplier. These are all wishy-washy
opportunities, but these are definitely
something to get excited about. One final point before
we wrap this thing up. It is not just the
positive opportunities you should be zeroing. In fact, if your customer
has a complaint, you should be excited because
that's a great opportunity. If your customer says to you
your last order was late, That's a door opener. You can use that to discuss what their expectations are and how you can meet or exceed
them in your future, you can turn that
negative into a positive. So when a customer says
your order was late, then you dig deeper
to find out that. Okay, I'm overstating
the obvious that they can have orders late, then you've got a framework
to work with to make sure that they're not going
to be laid in the future, that there is an
opportunity for sure. Then you dig deeper
to find out that. Okay, I'm overstating
the obvious that they can have orders late, then you've got a framework
to work with to make sure that they're not gonna
be late in the future, that there is an opportunity for sure even though
it's a negative. So dope don't discount
discount complaints. There, there are a good
opportunity as well. So remember, get rid of all the assumptions,
ask more questions, re-frame the question
and ask it back and get the customer to confirm
what you've just said. And get these
opportunities really clarify to be able
to jump on the need. And the need is what we're gonna be jumping on in
the next lesson. We'll get into
more detail there. Yes, more than
five-minutes, I know, but these these will
run longer sometimes. So give this a practice or
to see if you can start listening to the
opportunities in your sales calls for
a couple of days. And I wish you all happy selling and don't forget you've got the skills and you it's just our job here
to bring them out. Have a good one folks.
8. Lesson 7- Converting opportunities into needs: Welcome back to the
five-minute sales coach and we are on to lesson number seven where we're getting into
the customer needs. As you recall in lesson six, you were spending a lot
of time trying to cover opportunities into needs because opportunity is kind of a
wishy-washy wish kind of thing. Whereas a need is something that you can solve with your product. Now I think it was Tony Robbins many years ago said that sales is a fairly
straightforward process. Find out what the customer
wants and give it to them. Now, it's brilliantly simple. Love it for that. But the problem is, is it's a lot more complicated
than it sounds. So getting the need uncovered
is your biggest job. I'm going to say at this
point you're probably going to be at about a
70% of your time getting to the point where
you actually uncover a need and you're not just
there to uncover one. You could uncover several in a meeting and you never know
the way these things go. But let's assume just
for simplicity sake that you've done
your due diligence, you've listened well, you've asked questions that have kept the conversation,
moving the customers, giving you some challenges
that he's having and he finally figured
out a need that he has. Needs can also be varied
based on circumstances. And I'll use this example of the need to achieve a
particular function or task. Now this can be, in broad terms, a very specific depending
on the customer criteria. And I'll give you an example. A professional
photographer needs a very specific type
of high-end camera, whereas a amateur just needs something to take
a half decent picture. So their needs
generally are the same, but one has something more focused on a particular
task that the professional needs to submit his photos to a stock photo
website or reselling them so they have to be
of a certain quality. Whereas the amateurs needs, he still needs a camera. But it's just based on something that just sort of
take nice pictures. So the need can be affected by a particular function or task needs are also affected
by peer pressure. This is the basis for
mass advertising by creating a need through human desire to be
the same as others. And again, using the
photographer example, they belong to an
association where there's many professional members using a particular type of camera, then they will strive
to own the same. Now, I'm speaking from
experience because I do this as a side hustle and I can tell you that when you see somebody else taking
amazing pictures, particularly with camera lenses, you're all over that lens. Even though it's probably got
very little to do with it, but it's a perceived
need that is affected by peer pressure,
that's a real thing. There's also a need for personal and enjoyment
of a product. So again, the amateur will
just enjoy taking pictures. They're professional, has
got different requirements, but maybe he needs
a camera that's not as cumbersome to use. So is it just enjoyable? Use. Now, if you are in business
to business sales, for instance, you're
going to find a few of these examples popping
up over and over again. And these are needs that whether the customer actually
realizes it or not, he will be eventually telling
you in one way, shape, or form that he's looking after some of these some
of these items. Convenience is a big ones
these days with the ease of ordering an online
shop and whatnot, It's certainly forefront also two as our customers are
getting stretched thinner, so they don't have massive purchasing
departments anymore. Sometimes as a
person that you're talking to is also
doing the buying, convenience is a
big thing for them, uh, features of the product, which we'll get into more in
the next lesson is massive. Will it solved my problem? This is going to be
your job to tell them terms of sale again, that's sort of a
convenience thing, but does it make it easier for me to purchase
something from you? Quality, dependability, don't even have to
explain that one. Design and performance is some customers are more
geeky than others. If you're in a technical
product field, some customers are more
impressed by design than others. So it may or may not be a need. Certainly performance
as if he has got equipment that is depending
on your your products. Of course, price, price is tied to pretty much
everything above that. You do get the customers who
are buying only on price. I was in an industry where I was the most expensive
product in the industry. And I get a pretty good
way of getting around price objections simply
by focusing on the needs. You can defuse these
things easily because the price thing should be at the end of the day
consideration, but not the number
one consideration. I would never accept that. So here's a few examples
of what a customer might be saying when they're
actually stating a need. I'm looking for I'm thinking about I'm
interested in I require, I'm shopping for or most
obvious one, I need. So these are something now that the customer
has told you, you now have gotten down
into something tangible. And when we get into
less than eight, we're now going to
take those needs. And now you get
to fly with your, with your product to
meet those needs. So everything we've done
up until this point in the first few steps is
to get to this point where now you can draw
your products out and present the wonderful values
and benefits of them. Can you think of a time
when you didn't this, you know how much we
have like I said, we've spent 70, 80% of our
time getting to this point. And yet so many of us just
hear that one thing that we think is going to impress
the customer and outcomes. The brochures and
the whole sales call just goes off the rails. So I'm hoping you sort of picked up on the notion
of being patient, thorough and diligence
for all of this. And another thing I
really want to get it to you guys is do not panic. Customers are going to be
throwing a curve balls, so they're not going to follow exactly what I'm telling you. But if you just keep
plugging away at this, just keep asking questions
eventually this stuff surfaces has to and you will
certainly see a change. So that's it. See if you can start spotting
customers telling you needs when you're on your sales calls for the
next couple of days. And when we get into
less than eight, we finally meet those
needs with your products. And I wish you happy
selling and don't forget, all of these skills
are in there, guys. We're just here to
get them a daycare.
9. Lesson 8- Convert Needs in sales using product statements they can't say no to.: Welcome back to the
five-minute sales coach. And here we are in
lesson number eight. We're just chugging along here. This one is finally, the one you've been waiting for. This is when you finally get
to talk about your products. We've gone a long way to
identify opportunities, confirm them as needs. Now and only now can you present your product just
to be clear, going, identifying a whole bunch of opportunities to a
whole bunch of needs, and then presenting
your product is not how I want you to do this. You're going to lock in on
one opportunity at a time. You're going to hear
the need and then you're going to present
your products so you'll be repeating the opportunity need and then product
presentation part. And multiple times
in the meeting, don't save them
all up and do them all at once because the
customer will get lost. So if you finally get to a
need that the customer needs a bright new shiny widget and you just happen to have one. Then you go into
your product part. And the product part is basically presenting
the features, the benefits, or the value to the customer that
fulfills that need. And it's your
chance to show off. You've been waiting
for this point, but there's one
very important rule that you must,
must, must follow. Never present a product feature unless you are prepared to
offer benefit to the customer. It does your customer
absolutely no good. If you tell him my widgets
are painted with gold paint, unless you know that that
means something to Him. This is not a chance
for you to go around, impress people with the
way your products are. You know, there's
a greatest that's otherwise you wouldn't
be selling them. But your customer doesn't care unless it means
something to them. So this is a time
for you to show the true quantifiable value of your product to the customer. That's why you are sales rep. You're translating the customer's needs
into something tangible. We do this through a value-added statement
or a value proposition. I'm sure you've heard
these terms before. I've got a very
simple formula and sentence structure
that you can use to clearly show your
value proposition. And it goes like this. The first thing you do is
you mentioned your product. Then you mentioned your
feature of the product. And then you
mentioned the benefit of that feature to the customer. So let me give you
an example and this is very oversimplified, not trying to disrespect anybody who's
selling light bulbs, but they're very generic product
that everybody has this. And let's assume for a
moment that your company has just invented
the light bulb. I know it's cliche. Your customer told you
that he needs to cut energy consumption
by $4,000 per year. So here's how you work in
that three-step statement. My light bulb, which
is the product, has a special
transformer that allows the LED to operate
at 20% less energy. That's the feature. And it will save you
$5,300 a year in power costs will help to
achieve your savings goal. That's the benefit. Did you see how that worked? I told him about my product. I told them the feature
in the product that was unique and I told them
what was in it for him. It's very difficult
to say no to that. There's no loose ends, there's no room for
misunderstanding. You told me you
needed to save money. Here's my product. It's got this cool
feature about it. This is how much money
is going to save. Do you agree? Now remember I said all
our sentence structures go back to reframing, saying something's as a customer and then checking
for acceptance. So at the end of
this you would say, Does that sound good? If it's not sounding good, they're going to say
no at this point, what happens when the customer
rejects your product? Wonderful product statement
and they reject it? What do you usually do? Your run for the
discounting table? You say I can give you 50% off. What have you just
done? You've made a massive, massive assumption, and so you have to go back
and get the need clarified once the cool thing
about this process as it applies to anything
even service related. If your customer has
a complex problem that he needs to solve, such as inventory
reduction, that's a need. So you could say something
like my company has a warehouse located
10 min from here. That's the product or service. We keep $5 million worth
of inventory on hand. That's a feature. And we allocate $250,000 worth of inventory
just for your company, thus guaranteeing delivery
and allowing you to remove these products from your shelf, reducing
your inventory. That's the benefit. The customer said he needed
to reduce his inventory. You just gave them something. Does this sound like
something that would work? You're gonna get a yes or no. If you get a yes,
then you move on. Get to the next opportunity, get to the next need. This product feature, benefit
structure is very powerful. If you take your time, Don't panic and you keep showing the customer
what's in it for him. Pricing arguments don't
even really come up. Now it will. We'll talk more about
that when we get to the wrap-up in the close
of the sales call. But I think once you
sort of grasp this, it's going to have
a tremendous impact on the way you're
presenting your products. Now, you are going
to have to have some half decent product
knowledge to pull this off. And it may take you
awhile in learning to get to the point where
you're comfortable enough that you
understand that feature. Don't be afraid to maybe
look a little bit. Well, I don't want to say
foolish but unsure of yourself as you're presenting
some of these things. I've often said that
customers will go into the sort of help mode when they understand
that you're a Rookie. And you said, you know,
I was at a training last week and they showed
us this new light bulb. And it had something really
special about it that reduced energy costs
and I'm sure that will, that will benefit you can, when I get back
to you on this is sometimes you can't do it
right in front of them. Customers don't mind if you say you're going to be looking
into it because again, you're showing that
you're engaged with them. So don't get freaked
out if you don't have all these features rolling around in your head that you
could throw it the customer. You do know your products
to a certain degree. You do know the benefit
to the customer. Sometimes you gotta fill
in the blank and that's okay. That's just fine. Follow this no matter what. Even if it means having
to do a follow-up call. That's it for lesson
number eight. And we'll be moving on to lesson nine where we look into
the acceptance of these, the product feature
benefit value statements, and talk about a neat thing
called buying signals. So spend a couple of
days practice this, practice it as much as you can practice it on the
dog if you have two. And I wish you happy selling and don't forget you've got
this sitting inside you. I'm just here to help you get
it out in the open daycare.
10. Lesson 9- Is your customer ready? How to recognize buying signals : Welcome back to the
five-minute sales coach and we're now on to
lesson number nine, where we're getting
the acceptance of our product feature
and benefit statements. And we're starting to pick up on some buying signals
from the customer. Now, we're to the
point where you can almost smell the Inca and
the purchase order, right? We're getting really close. But the problem is, is
the customer isn't just going to stand up and
say congrats all by it. In fact, they'll take 1,000. There's a couple
of more steps that we still have to get through. Now. You can judge the acceptance of what you've
worked on to this point, the actions of the customer. And these are called
buying signals, which I'll get to
actually know what I'm going to discuss
these first day are basically indirect verbal
and nonverbal cues that show how interested the customer is accepting what you've
just proposed. So let's assume you
just went through the light bulb presentation we talked about in
lesson number eight. And we, you've just told
him the benefit of that. And you could hear the customer say things like,
Oh, that's interesting. Or yeah, I agree. That sounds good. Even innocuous things like
what colors can I get? One? Can I get it delivered? Do you do net 30 terms? Can I buy in bulk? These are all something
called buying signals. It is verbal indications from your customer that he's actually interested in
what you're saying. And this is very important
because now you know, I don't want to say
the word hooked, but you've got him very
interested in your proposals. Nonverbal cues happened as well. Let's say your customer is
not that the chatty type. Perhaps he's nodding, yes. That's a q. Raised eyebrows leaning forward. Those are definitely cues that shows that there
is some interests in what you're presenting. And there can also be some, what I call the
antibonding signals, the reverse ones, where perhaps the hill
say, I'm too busy. I can't decide. Talked to Bill over
in that department. I've gotta go to a meeting
or I don't believe you, or leaning backwards
with his arms folded. These are all signals
that say that he's not really buying
what you're saying. Now, it's not really necessary
to panic at this point. Obviously, you've
missed something. I can say that even the best of the sales reps that I
see often will miss something or they
maybe they don't understand the person
they're talking to or maybe they even changed their mind during
the, during the meeting. All you have to do if you're
getting a little bit of these anti-bonding signals or nonverbal rejections
is just go back into the cycle again and find
out to where it went wrong. I'm sorry, I thought
you said you had a need to save money as
something changed. You're not being
argumentative at that point. You're just trying to clarify
things. Don't forget. It doesn't have to be positive
to be an opportunity. Correct? So let's not forget, check for acceptance with
every statement you make, you've presented all your
product features and benefits, makes sure the customer
understands what you said and make sure they
agree with what you said. Don't assume that just
because you came up with a knockdown line of
the year saying that I'm going to solve your
4,500 dollar a year cost-savings in power
was one fell swoop. Don't, don't get too
excited with that. Still, make sure that
he's along with you. Now, at this point, the positive buying signals
can get overwhelming. You're getting
excited, you've got the order pad ready to pull out. Seems like a logical
time, right? Not quite. We've got one small final step that we need to go through. And that is what we're gonna be talking about in less than ten. So we're basically taking everything that we've
done to this point. And then we've noticed that the customers actually buying
into what we're saying or not buying into and giving
us the opportunity to go back and try and correct
whatever they didn't understand. And then in the next lesson, we're just going to take everything we've done
in the previous nine and basically ball it all
up and get them to commit, or as it's often called, the clothes to
purchase our product. So see if you can pick up on buying signals from
your customers over the next couple of days. Most of them are going
to be non-verbal. Certainly the eyebrows
raised and the nodding yes. And the negative arms folded, although that's not
always the case, but I find it usually is
if you can spot them, don't get too freaked out if you can't deal with them just yet, just see if you can spot them. And then the next
lesson we'll talk about how we're going
to wrap everything up. So keep going out there. Happy selling, don't forget. You've got the skills. We're here to pull them
out of a good one guys.
11. Lesson 10- Closing the sale like a pro. : Welcome back to the five-minutes
sales coach and wow, is it less than ten, really? Are we are we at the end? This is where we get them to commit to what everything
we've said or the close as it's most
commonly referred to and also a good time to
set up the next meeting. Now, it's very, very important after you've gone
through all your needs, you've done all your
product's value statements. You've checked that they've
accepted everything, they've agreed to, everything
that you've talked about, then let's say that
you've got like five points or something. This is your chance
to basically tie it all back up into
a nice tidy bow. There'll be that can be
converted into an order. Now there's one thing that kills a sale at the last moment. And again, I keep
harping about this. But one thing that you
cannot do at anytime, at, anytime in the cell
cycle and that's make assumptions
that dorky old sale. If you assume it makes
an asset of you and me, I know it's tired,
but it's so true. You cannot make assumptions, you cannot have
misunderstandings. And when you recap everything that you've
done to this point, you're basically eliminating the chance
of that happening. So here's how you do this point. Number one is you restate the need that the
customer told you. You told me, Mr. customer, that you need to reduce
your power cost by $4,000 a year. Is that correct? And they say yes. Now if they say no, then you've gotta go stop right there and go back into the
whole cycle of questions, listening and
opportunities and needs. Because you've missed
something, you've, you've gotten this far and you're to the
point where you're going to ask for an order, you're finding out that he's
not accepting or he's not to looking for savings of
$4,000, something I missed. Okay. So tell the customer
the need that they told you. Check to make sure that's true. Number two is
restate the value of your product by using
that statement. Or light bulbs have special transformers
reducing the cost 20%, and thus savings you $4,000
a year in power costs. Does this sound good? Again, you're checking for acceptance and you're
basically going to do the same thing for
every single needs that you uncovered and
every single product you, you have presented now, you don't have to go in
exactly the same details as you did when you're doing the product feature
benefit statements. But you do got to come
up with something saying Georgia said you wanted
to say $4,000 a night. I showed you how my light bulbs are going to solve that for you, is that that sounds good. Right? Get buy-in from it. And you're gonna be
getting buy-in from them on the same
point, yes, I know. But I've seen way too
many sales go off the rails because
somebody assumed that. Okay, so I'm saving
you for grand. Here's our price on our bulk LED light
bulbs and the customer, well, what what are you doing? Okay. But if you go through
this this close this wrap-up portion where you're just confirming everything
you've talked about, then it basically closes
the door on any of that assumption nonsense
to creep in and ruined everything that you've
worked on until this point. You've basically now
got the agreement, full agreement of the customer. Now you can move into
the clothes so we've just wrap things up.
Now we're closing. Now in the old days, remember, there used to be a saying
called always be closing. And in the old days it was basically a spend a
couple of minutes butter up the customer and
then spend 80% of your time trying to
close them through deception to see tricks,
all sorts of things. The used car salesman
thing I talked about in the opening
of the course. This is completely upside down. Okay? You see now how much work
we've put in above this, the closes now 10% of the time, the close is basically
just confirming everything and working
at the small details. This is also the time to get very specific answers
on certain things. You've now got them to
buy into your concepts. Now you have to ask
specific closed questions. Like, how many do you need? Can I have the
purchase order today because you said you need
the product by next Tuesday. Which department do
I deliver this to? These kind of things? You need very specifics. Again, we don't want to
have to go back and say, oh, I forgot to ask you. Now let's get it out now. We're with them.
It's really amazing. And I'm not picking
on any one person. I've seen this happen dozens of times where the sales
rep is actually. I'm scared to ask for
the order or they passively wait for the customer to make the clothes for them. Again, I think it goes back
to this trauma that we've, that our profession
has been handed from these these plaid jacket to creepy used car
salesman from the, from the 1950s and 60s. It's still hangs around. So we're not taking
advantage of anyone. We are basically
there to help them. And I know that
sounds ridiculous that you think that you feel
guilty, but gosh, guys, I have seen it so many times, so I want you to drop this guilt thing that
we all seem to have. Consider this too, that if
you do your work, you know, you're going to
leave the customer knowing that you've
pretty much uncovered everything and
you've made one heck of an impression
upon this person that you're very thorough and
you're there to help them. The last step after you've after you've got
the purchase order, after everything is done, aside from go out and pick out the new swimming
pool for the backyard at the new car is thank them for the business and offer some
kind of positive statement. Remember way back
in step number one, we opened up with a
positive statement. Now we want to close
with one as well. Don't forget if
you're in a business, particularly in the B2B
sales where you're trying to form a long-term partnership. Want to keep this humble and just let them know
that you're there for them and don't use the You won't regret this or you made
a good decision stuff. I means, it means save that
for the people with over inflated egos that
are going to be complaining about their
sales numbers next month. I can actually say if
statement like that, assuming that the
that there is a negative or is it the
customer made a bad decision? That's old school stuff and
there's no place for it. So thanks for the order. Simple. I'm looking forward
to working with you. I'm happy I can play
a part in solving your energy cost reductions. Keep it, keep it simple,
keep it friendly, and gather your purchase order and rebel in your closed sale. That's it. For less than ten. I'm going to throw a
little video or video. Yeah, video at the end of this. Just to summarize
everything we talked about, but congratulations on getting
through the ten lessons. And I'm hoping you'll be able to practice this
very simple wrap up and close technique on your
next Successful order and take some notes and put them in the
assignment section. So you've got something that you can go back
and look at later on. That's it. For less than ten, we will
see you guys in the summary. Happy selling and you've
got it in you, right? And I think we've got
it out of you haven't? I hope we have. Take care.
Kevin Ford, Master Trainer
