Salescraft Training
Learn to sell anything to anyone!
Who is your avatar?
You know what you're selling, but what is your customer buying? Hint... it may not be what you think!
I'll share tips and insights from my years of selling to B2B and B2C clients. So welcome to the Podcast!
And, find out more about my online courses at: https://www.salescraft.training
Salescraft Training
Finding the Right Fit By Understanding Clients
What if you could transform your sales approach by prioritizing genuine understanding over aggressive tactics? Tune in to discover how to navigate sales conversations with ease and authenticity, moving beyond traditional methods that rely heavily on overwhelming lists of questions. We guide you through the art of turning sales into a conversation that feels as natural as recommending a movie to a friend. By focusing on helping clients find the right fit, rather than forcing a sale, you'll learn how to alleviate the stress that often accompanies sales roles. Our approach emphasizes honesty and transparency, ensuring that post-sale complications are minimized and fostering strong, sustainable business relationships.
Throughout our discussion, we highlight the significance of effective communication in establishing client needs. You'll learn how to truly understand client personalities and preferences, using open-ended questions that encourage meaningful dialogue. We cover practical strategies for tailoring your sales process to different personalities and employing a thoughtful client qualification process. By jotting down key insights and actively listening, you'll be able to assess business opportunities with precision and confidence. Join us on this journey to transform your sales conversations and achieve more successful outcomes.
If you have a sales problem you'd like to hear covered in a podcast, please contact me directly. Or, my sales training programme might help!
If you'd like help to improve your sales confidence, please jump onto my free (1 hour) on-demand webinar. I'll teach you three things you can apply immediately, including handling objections and closing a sale.
Graham Elliott
You can contact me at graham@salescraft.training
My website is www.salescraft.training
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Hello, again In this podcast what I thought I'd talk about is questions, because I like to do a Google and see what sort of things are popping up in terms of questions that salespeople might ask. And it's sort of difficult because quite often what I find is a whole list of questions salespeople could ask their prospects, their clients. So that actually got me on to, I guess, a train of thought and I thought it was worth talking about in this podcast, because what I've seen are some fairly impressive in terms of numbers of questions that you can ask. I mean, one of them was 100 questions you can ask a client and I honestly started to despair a little bit because I could just imagine, particularly if you're new to sales, just walking into a client with this list of 100 questions and trying to work your way through it and see which ones are relevant and which are not. So to me that's sort of absurd, but that's my opinion. So there you go. To me it kind of breaks down to certain key areas when you're thinking of questions. It's key areas and you can pretty much apply the kind of questions when you're thinking of selling whatever it is you sell to a client. Think about it if you were having a chat to a friend about possibly providing something of help to them, and the reason I'm using that as an analogy is that the key thing to remember and I think the thing that will make the biggest difference to your sale is a one line really is that sales is about helping people. So if you take the view that sales whatever it is you're selling is about helping somebody else helping them to be successful, helping them to get a good outcome in whatever it is they're doing that you can help them with, that immediately takes all of the pressure off you, and this, I believe, is where many of the problems stem from that.
Speaker 1:Salespeople get All of the stress, the pressure, all of the other things and do I need to know this and all of the possible questions that a client could ask you as a salesperson. I know when I started in sales that would be running through my head and looking back on it, I almost wonder how I dealt with it, because it was technical selling. It wasn't an area of technology I was overly familiar with. I could hold a conversation about it, but once it started diving into the depths, the niches of these different technologies, then I was definitely out of my depth there, and of course, I can think of all these questions that somebody could ask me, that I wouldn't have a clue to what the answer would be, and that's pretty horrible actually, and you may well be able to relate to this. So pretty horrible actually, and you may well be able to relate to this. So that was making it all about me, though, and this is what I find a lot of salespeople do, particularly the ones who struggle, or maybe the kind of people that you think of as the more pushy, sleazy salesperson.
Speaker 1:It's all about them. It's about them getting this deal over the line. It's about closing the client down, it's about answering all the objections, dealing with them, all of this and that all this kind of nonsense that goes on. But it's all focused on them and they're not thinking about the client. It's just how can I get this deal so that I can get my quota for the day, the week, the month, whatever it is they're trying to do? So that's the very first thing Make it about the client, and once that focus comes off you, then you are in a far better space and position to really sit and listen to what the client is telling you.
Speaker 1:So the kind of questions that you need to be asking start to break down, so they become very simple and you don't need a list of 100 questions and this kind of stuff. Honestly, it's all rather silly. It's just like a conversation. And if you're having a conversation with a friend, let's say that you have seen a movie and you kind of want to recommend it to them, but you're not sure if it's the kind of thing that they like, how would the conversation go? Well, probably early on, you're going to ask them about the kind of movies they like, just to understand whether or not this movie would appeal to them and it's their kind of thing. And you do exactly the same at the qualifying stage.
Speaker 1:When you're chatting to a client and I've spoken about avatars before, it's a commonly used phrase to identify your ideal client. I don't care what the terminology is you like to use, but you really need to understand early on is this person likely to fit within the parameters of your ideal client? And the key parameters that you need to identify are can I help them and how well can I help them? Because you might have a brilliant solution for them that solves all of the problems they're trying to get a handle on right now. Or you might have a partial that might do some of it but not all of it now. Or you might have a partial it might be some of it but not all of it.
Speaker 1:And my suggestion, if you have a partial solution, is to be really upfront about it, because if you're not, if you try and bend it a little bit and make it all fit and all of that and they do buy from you that will really come back and bite you later. First of all, that person is likely to require a lot of post-sale support, which might be your time or somebody else in the organization, but essentially means the profitability of that sale is very low or maybe non-existent. It may even cost the company money in the long run. So you really don't want that. You want to be doing good business as a salesperson, whether it's your business or you're working for somebody else. So that's the first thing Be upfront. Let them know upfront how far you can help them, how many of their boxes you can tick, and don't be afraid to walk away from it. It's far better to walk away from a bad fit than to try and make a bad fit work, and that will come back and bite you later on. And another thing that you really don't want is to get a bad reputation, particularly if you're in a fairly small market, be it geographically or in terms of the kind of product you sell. If you start getting a bad reputation, either personally or that gets projected onto the company you work for, then you've just made it far harder to get new business, and obviously without that you don't have a job, which is obviously not the ideal solution here.
Speaker 1:So if you're talking about a movie to a friend, if it's something you've really liked, you would just ask them you know, ask them the kind of thing they like and say, hey, I saw this, do you think you might be interested? Because I thought it was a great movie and I thought you might like it and I certainly had a really good time and there was some interesting plot to a scene and all this thing, whatever it is that worked for you. You'd have that conversation, but you're throwing a little bit out there, but you're really listening to what's coming back from your friend in this case, and it's exactly the same with a client you ask questions and you listen to what the answers are, and, although this sounds pretty basic stuff, I've been pretty much stunned and amazed at times at how certain salespeople who seem completely unable to listen to what a client is telling them and all they're interested in doing is talking at the client and one of the classics for this is the old days of taking a brochure in, and maybe some people are still doing this. But one of the things we would do when I was selling, when I first started, was to take a brochure in. But some salespeople just basically talk through the whole brochure from start to finish, and I've certainly had people do this to me and honestly, I get so bored. I mean, they don't know it but they've already blown the sale.
Speaker 1:Because what I want to do as a potential client and put yourself in the client's shoes is I want to explain what my problem is. Why do I want to explain it? Because I need to know that this person who apparently has some level of expertise in the area where I have difficulty, I want to know if they can fix the problem for me and, if they can, how well they can fix it. I don't want to listen to a whole load of other stuff that, to me, is completely irrelevant and it's just wasting my time. I need yes, no answers to questions. Now, I'm a particular personality type and I like to get to the point.
Speaker 1:There are others who are different and they will ask lots and lots of questions about lots of different scenarios. So this might go wrong, that might go wrong, and as a salesperson, you might think what on earth are they talking about? Why are they talking about something that's so unlikely to happen, that why are we even spending time on it? But you have to understand as a salesperson, that when people are buying from you, they're looking for different things. In my case, I've got a short list of things I want answers to. I want to tick those boxes. If you tick them, you probably got the deal.
Speaker 1:Other people it's a much more labored experience and they want to feel safe, they want to feel reassured and they will come up with all sorts of scenarios that, as unlikely as they may seem to you, they're actually really important. This is all part of their process. So there are other personalities in there as well. There are other types of selling. So kind of having an idea of the personality of the person you're dealing with is certainly useful. It's helpful. It means you can really target the conversation so that it's what they want to have, the conversation they want to have, not the conversation you particularly want to have. So that's another important difference. But if you're not sure about that, you don't really need to know that. At least at first, you can get by by just letting them lead.
Speaker 1:You ask open questions, and by that I mean they're not yes, no, so it would be, could you please? This is always good doing this on the fly, because I immediately go to closed questions, but it would be something like what are you looking for this solution to deliver for you? What are the most important things it needs to do? What are the most important outcomes of this purchase for you? Now, look, I don't know what you're selling, so you'll need to come up with the appropriate questions for that. But the important thing is they're open questions. They're not. They don't have a yes, no answer. You want to get them talking. So if you're not very good at coming up with open questions on the fly, just write some down, and they're generally questions that are what, how? Those kinds of things Avoid questions that use why.
Speaker 1:And having said that, you'll probably think of a lot of questions and now start with a why. But why can come across as a little bit critical, and what you want to do, particularly if it's a brand new client and you're establishing rapport, you're establishing trust, all of those things you do not want to come across as critical of their thinking and their decision making. So the way you style the question, so what kind of could you tell me, what kind of solution you want from this vehicle? You know where are you going to be using it, what's the most important things, what would be the top three important things? Or the top five or the top 10, whatever works for you. But get them to start opening up and you can always add more detail, particularly if it's a replacement item, by asking what they're currently using, what works for them, what doesn't work for them. And, in fact, one trick you can do when you I use the word trick, I don't mean that in a negative way, it's just kind of useful.
Speaker 1:If you ask people what's good about what they're currently using, you might get one or two good points, but most people will almost immediately tell you what's wrong with it. So it means you can avoid having to ask that question what's wrong with your current solution, because that can come across again as you perhaps trying to find an angle, a way to lock this company out if it's different companies, equipment or solution. So just bear that in mind. So avoid asking questions that have a yes, no answer. So avoid closed questions and avoid questions that start with the word why, okay? And then ask them what's good about what they have.
Speaker 1:The other thing is people don't generally expect that. Certainly, my experience with salespeople when I've come to buy things is they're not generally asking me about the good things of a competitive product, is they're not generally asking about the good things of a competitive product. So it's quite a handy question actually, because it's not what people are expecting. So the guard might come down a little bit and certainly, as I've said, they generally go on to what's wrong with it anyway, so you don't need to have to ask that question. So what are you doing with the questions, though? You're establishing their need, you're establishing what need, You're establishing what is the problem that they have and you're at least internally answering the question whether or not you can help them.
Speaker 1:What I used to do one of the things I like doing I recommend this is to have a notebook, and I know you can use your phone or your iPad or whatever it is you're using, but I like to jot things down and there's a couple of reasons for that. One is I can physically write down what the boxes are, what the points are that have to be covered, and then when I reply in the second part of the conversation, when I'm talking about what I can do for them, I can be ticking my way through those boxes so I can show them visually that I'm solving their problem. And the other thing is it actually conveys a sense of importance to that person that they're important to me as a client because I'm actually taking the time to write things down. And if you imagine yourself at a restaurant and maybe you've had this experience you've been in a restaurant, you're giving your order and the serving person isn't making any notes at all. And if you've got a more complicated order, what's your confidence that they're actually going to get the order right, compared to somebody who starts writing it down and maybe even double checking it with you to make sure they've got it right? So if you think of that scenario just ordering food why don't you be the person who's writing everything down and making sure you've got it correct. What are you conveying to your client or your prospect about their importance to you? That you're making them feel more important by taking those steps with them. So writing down the act of physically writing it down I would thoroughly recommend that you do. You've got a written record. It's something you can spin around and show them, let them read it, and I would also actually do that when I was getting family trees of organizations. I would always write them out and then show it to them and more often than not, when I made made a mistake, people just correct it and write themselves. They actually correct the thing for me, so I had a much clearer idea of who the key players were. So involve your clients in that way. So what you're ultimately doing is you're clarifying whether or not this is somebody to do business with, and this is a theme that I've spoken about before another podcast. I will no doubt revisit it again because this is so fundamental.
Speaker 1:The reason for going through this process and getting it as accurate as you can is you need to know how good a client this is likely to be for you. As in what is the value of the sale? Are you looking at a high value sale that's very profitable, or are you looking at a sale where you might lose profit? Because if you're kind of a halfway house solution, you might end up with a lot of additional support work to do or other things. That's just basically going to cost your company money and you don't really want to do that. Particularly if you're an entrepreneur and it's your business. You want to keep those sales profitable and I have definitely said to people on occasion, having gone through this process, that, having looked at what they want, I can do this much of it, but this part we can't do, and my honest recommendation is that they don't go with us because I just feel the gap is too great.
Speaker 1:Now they and this sometimes happens they may decide that because of the way I've handled them, the way I've listened to what their needs are, the way that I've written things down, I've made sure I've got it right, they may feel that they might have a level of confidence in me as a professional. That means they would much rather go with me. So if that's the case, the thing then is to really get some agreement on what level of solution you can provide. So if it doesn't provide certain things, then make sure they're actually excluded. So make sure it's crystal clear about what exactly you can do, what you can't.
Speaker 1:Ideally, you won't be in that situation and you've identified someone correctly. They are your avatar. They're your ideal client. You get a good order value, you get a good revenue from it, you get good profitability from it and they're very low maintenance afterwards, so you don't have to worry about losing money you've made in that sale down the track, because obviously the whole business needs to be profitable. In order for the business to survive, for you to have a job, for you to be able to support clients, to continue to solve people's problems, it all has to be profitable. You might be working for a charity, but most people I talk to aren't, so there needs to be profit, and some people feel that's a dirty word. It really isn't, because it allows you to help more people. It's just another way of looking at that.
Speaker 1:So, in terms of questions, these are the key things I wanted to really cover in this podcast, so I don't think you need a huge long list of questions. There might be certain specific ones that relate directly to your solution that it's really important to get clear. It might be something technical, so things like that. I would write down and if you're new to sales and certainly when I was new to certain products I would write them out as a list and I would have them in my notebook and I would actually place them on one side of my to one side of my notebook and almost use them as a meeting agenda, because that way I could make sure I'd covered everything off. I knew one way or the other whether or not I could help my client and, frankly, I just felt that was a more professional approach, rather than hoping I hadn't forgotten anything really important and then finding out later that I had. And then you have to come back to the client and say, sorry, I need to clarify a certain point. I made a mistake earlier, all this sort of stuff, so it's best not to go there earlier, all this sort of stuff, so it's best not to go there.
Speaker 1:Okay, so in terms of questions for clients, my recommendation for you is that you jot down the key questions that allow you to exclude people. This is at the qualification stage. Make sure you review those when you get into a more detailed and serious discussion to make sure you haven't made a mistake. It shouldn't happen, but occasionally it may well do, but then it's just so important to ask these open questions and listen and write down what the client is saying to you to make sure you get it right, and then you can make a call on whether or not this is good business for you. So I'm going to leave it there and I will speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now.