Getting To Yes!

It’s winning paying customers that makes a business successful…certainly there is more to running a harmonious, profitable business than simply securing up-front orders, however, failing to secure enough quality business is definitely the cause of far more failures that anything else. As long as you are winning lot’s of quality profitable orders you have at least the opportunity to buy in any additional expertise you may be lacking in he admin section. But let’s cut to the chase… if you can’t win customers you will never survive long enough to sort out the back end of you business. Securing profitable business should be your number one priority.

You must become a professional… when you turn professional that’s when you stop playing the game for free and you go out for prize money.

Getting to ‘Yes!’ and bringing back the orders is what business is all about, everything else is academic. No matter how much research and preparation you’ve done and how slick you processing systems are, regardless of your having given a dynamic presentation, if you’re not able to ultimately win the customer’s business, in commercial terms… it’s all to no avail.

As both entrepreneurs and professional salespeople, we are in a continual process of development and growth, so it’s essential that we learn from each experience. At the end of each presentation, regardless of the outcome, we should be asking ourselves, and training our salespeople to ask:

What did I do right?
What did I do wrong?
How can I improve my presentation next time?

In reality, you are never going to sell to every person you talk to. In fact, let me put you out of your misery right now – in the career of every salesperson they’re going to get far more people saying ‘No!’, than they’ll ever get people saying ‘Yes!’ But that goes with the territory, true professionals have learned to live with that situation. It doesn’t really matter how many people say ‘No!’ as long as we can get enough people to say ‘Yes!’

Now, if during your sales presentation you’ve truly built desire for your product or service, then ‘closing the sale’ will be the most natural step in the world – providing, of course, that you actually do ASK the customer for the business. It’s staggering how often I see salespeople that work for me almost afraid to ask for the order.

Some time ago a reputable International sales organisation analysed over 1,000 complete presentations trying to find the perfect sales sequence – what was the common denominator.

To the amazement of many, in 65% of the presentations analysed, the salesperson never asked for the order! So, when all else fails – ASK for the business. You never know, you might run the risk of somebody actually buying something!

Of course it doesn’t always come easily, although it’s nice when it does. Normally we receive varying degrees of resistance. It’s imperative that we master the necessary skills so as to manage this effectively.

We have to learn the art of getting to ‘Yes!’

There are key skills that will help us make the transition from simply giving a ‘good presentation’ into giving one that wins the business.

Firstly learn to identify: Buying signals
It just isn’t always necessary or desirable to tell every customer everything about a product or service. Once a customer knows enough to send out buying signals, then the salesperson should ask a closing question there and then. So let’s have a look at some buying signals:

Buying Signals can take many forms. For example it could be:
Positive Body Language: Like smiling, nodding, eye contact, open hands. All of these can be subconscious reflections of the buyer’s positive attitude toward your product or service.

Demonstrating Ownership: It could be talking about the future in some way that includes your product.

Second Opinion: Sometimes a prospect will call in a colleague to show off some particular feature of your product or service.

Or it could simply be a matter of them:

Asking Questions: Questions to confirm earlier statements and benefits, asking for more information, all of which demonstrates interest.

We find ourselves having to negotiate in so many different aspects of business life.

Negotiation is closely related to selling, quite often in the sales process we find ourselves having to negotiate certain terms. But normally negotiation takes place after the sale is made or at least the ‘in principle’ decision has been made.

We could define selling as ‘providing a product in exchange for money’. On the other hand, negotiation is really ‘trading’. Let’s highlight the key principles to keep in mind whenever you are negotiating:

Know the parameters
Be patient
Get the full picture
Balance what you give with what you gain
Keep your self-esteem

With almost every product or service there are standard objections. It’s useful to become familiar with these objections and work on effective counter arguments. There’s no substitute for product knowledge, and if you want to be competent in handling objections you must be completely au fait with:

Your product and its applications.
The competition – their strengths and weaknesses.
Company procedures, including suppliers.
The customer – their business, potential problems and general needs.

Wherever possible, objections should be pre-empted as part of the sales process. At the same time, be careful not to raise unnecessary doubts in the prospect’s mind.

There are many ways to view an objection. You could see it as an obstacle or barrier, a stumbling block, which the customer deliberately puts there to prevent them having to buy.

But think about it, just as it’s your role as a salesperson to ’sell’, so it’s the role of the buyer to ‘buy’.

Remember, people like to buy – it’s an integral part of every growing business.

However, it’s the buyer’s responsibility to ensure that they are getting the right products or services at the right time, place and price. It stands to reason then, that if you or your salesperson hasn’t made it clear just how these parameters can be met, it’s only natural to expect some comment or questions from the buyer. Frequently these are in the form of ‘objections’.

So then, another way to view an objection is simply a request for more information. It’s a need for clarification. It could be a cry for help, or just some further moral support in helping them to make a buying decision. After all, the true salesperson is a professional ‘mind maker upper’.

Objections could be defined then as: A reason why your customer is not ready to buy from you – at this moment. Don’t view the objection as a negative: it’s not an attack on your company or your sales technique. So let’s deal with this logically. We have already established selling in its purest form as:

Find out what people want, and
Show them how to get it.Once we have established and agreed a genuine need for our product, and we have built desire for our solution in the presentation by matching needs to benefits, we’re fairly sure of the sale.

Logically then, a failure to ‘close the sale’ could be interpreted simply as a miss-match: a miss-match of benefits to needs.

Obviously there must be some fundamental issue we’ve overlooked, or it could be we’ve failed in some way to effectively communicate important information to the prospect. Either way, we need a simple and reliable technique for dealing with objections, for uncovering the real nature of the problem.

It incorporates 4 A’s

Acknowledge
Ask it back
Agree
Answer.

An objection could become a barrier, or potential for confrontation. But by immediately Acknowledging the concerns we help to diffuse the situation.

We now ‘Ask it back’. Our aim should be to qualify the objection and ensure we fully understand it from the customer’s perspective. For example what if the prospect raises concerns about the “guarantee”…

Think about the objection carefully and try to determine the customer’s real concerns. In reality the customer could have been primarily concerned about either:

The product guarantee.
What guarantee there is about savings.
How this product will affect the guarantee on their existing equipment.

By ‘asking it back’ we can get to the core of the problem.

When you ‘ask it back’, it also gives you a little space; it acts as a sort of bridge between the objection and your answer. Also when you ‘ask it back’, the customer assumes responsibility for re-explaining or re-presenting the problem, and sometimes, in the very act of doing this, they answer their own question. But, at the very least, it defines the objection.

Next we have Agreement

It’s important that we agree with and empathise with the customer. Regardless of the customer’s objection we must find a basis of agreement. Even if you can’t agree with the actual statement they make, you can at least agree with the logic they have used to arrive at that statement.

But our aim now should be to turn their clearly defined objection into a question that you can answer and then agree that with them.

Many objections come as very generalised expressions or even excuses. However, by asking it back and then obtaining agreement to your question, you are at least dealing with something tangible. All we have to do now is answer the objection, that’s the tricky bit, but at least we are doing it against a background where we have maintained a good relationship, we have demonstrated a caring attitude and we are fully aware of the exact nature of the objection, and it’s now in a format that we can deal with.

Now we answer the objection in one of two ways:

Remove it or
Outweigh it.

Removing an objection is simple, providing we know our product or service well.

But where an objection can’t be removed, we must outweigh it. For example, if the concern is over price, we can’t just remove it and give the product away free, so we need to reduce the size of the problem in the customer’s mind and then outweigh it with key benefits.

So, when faced with an objection remember:

Acknowledge
Ask it back
Agree
Answer

During our presentation or ‘The Match’ we should be looking for opportunities to close the sale, and buying signals, negotiations and objections can provide just that.

An important part of any negotiation or sales presentation is the pre-close. This is a simple but important step wherein we check that our offer meets their expectations. We are not asking them if they want to buy the product, although the implication is there. We’re trying to make it easier for them to say… ‘Yes!

Closing the sale is probably the most talked about aspect of the selling profession but, to a large extent, a good presentation will almost close itself, providing that we know when and how to close.

We don’t just keep talking, hoping that the customer will say ‘Yes!’ The secret of good closing techniques is to introduce the suggestion of buying in such a way that even if the customer reacts negatively, the conversation can still continue. Having a structured sales approach means that we are working toward the close from the very outset of the sales presentation but like anything else, it takes practise.

In most cases, when you get a specific objection to the close, you can deal with it professionally. Selling must always be 100% ethical – it must be a ‘win – win’ situation, and if you want to help your prospect with the buying decision, you need to get to the kernel of the problem.

To some, the ideas we have shared here will be totally new and revolutionary.
To others, it will serve as a reminder that there is nothing that new or dynamic that can replace hard work and determination.

We can all learn from each other – today, tomorrow, all the time. Only a fool believes he knows it all. We need to constantly maintain a positive attitude as week look for every opportunity to grow our business. The kind of attitude we need to cultivate is one that tells us that no matter how good we are or we become, we can always be better.