7 Sales Techniques for Beginners

Seven practical sales techniques help beginners convert more prospects to customers while maintaining ethical standards that create genuine win-win situations. These foundational methods provide immediate tools for overcoming common sales challenges and building confidence.

• Understand your product using Features, Advantages, Benefits (FABs), always tailoring benefits to each specific client
• Master active listening by asking open questions and taking notes to demonstrate attentiveness
• Qualify prospects properly using BANT (Budget, Authority, Needs, Timeline) to focus on viable opportunities
• Use storytelling to place customers in the solution, engaging their senses and emotions
• Handle objections confidently with the "Feel, Felt, Found" technique after getting specific about concerns
• Focus on value over price by understanding what truly motivates your customer beyond financial considerations
• Close naturally with the assumptive close by simply asking preference questions rather than requesting the sale

Please like and subscribe to the podcast for more sales tips and techniques that help you build ethical and effective selling skills.

Chapters

• 0:24 Welcome and Introduction
• 0:58 Understand Your Product (FABs)
• 3:31 The Art of Effective Listening
• 8:04 Qualifying with BANT
• 11:04 Using Storytelling in Sales
• 15:48 Handling Objections Effectively
• 18:17 Focus on Value Over Price
• 19:42 Assumptive Close Technique
• 20:16 Summary and Key Takeaways

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

Well, hello again and welcome to this podcast. Now in this one, I'm going to run through seven points that will help you if you're new to sales. So this is primarily targeted at beginners, people who have not done sales before, but equally it might be for you if you've been in sales a little while, but it's just not clicking for you. So before I get into it, I'm just going to ask you, or remind you, to like and subscribe if you can, because not many people do and it would be fabulous if you did. So let's get into it. The first thing I want to talk about is it's an old standard it's understanding your product.

Speaker 1: 0:52

When I was learning, we used to talk about fabs and that was features, advantages and benefits. So a feature and look, I'm going to use a hands-free phone. I mean, they all do that these days, but again, back when I started, that was very novel. So the feature is just something about the product, so you can set it to speaker and then you can keep. Your hands are free. You're not holding the phone anymore, so that would be a feature of it. What's the advantage of that? Well, the advantage is generally related to some ease of use or it makes some part of your life more easier. Some part of your life more easier. So, for example, it could be or, in fact, in the case of my father, going back a few years, I bought him a hands-free phone because he had hearing problems and the advantage for him was that he could actually hear people on the phone call, which was quite a big one. But it would be something like that, something that directly relates to the feature that you've just identified. And then, finally, the benefit is what it gives specifically to the person who's bought the product. So, in the case of my father, he could speak to somebody in Australia, which is something he would do pretty regularly once he could hear them. So that's just a really brief summary of feature, advantage and benefit. However, there is a trap that you can fall into, and I certainly remember back when I was learning, we would do this for each product.

Speaker 1: 2:26

You would have features, advantages, benefits, but I would suggest that the benefit part of it and this will often be financial may not always be, but in many cases the benefit that is offered is financial. But I recommend that you always tailor that benefit to what your client is trying to achieve, so don't use a generic one, and the benefit in the case of the hands-free phone might be you can hear people on the phone and have conversations with anybody. Tie it back to something more specific, so it could be you can speak to this relation of yours on the phone. Wouldn't that be amazing? Because that makes it a lot more personal. So that brings me on to point two. It a lot more personal. So that brings me on to point two, which is how do you know what the benefits are for your client? And although you might have an idea of what the benefits are that your solution will deliver to this client, you have to be a little bit careful, because there are likely to be generic solutions like broad brush solutions. But where the real power comes in, where the real selling opportunity comes in, is knowing exactly what it is for your client and the way you learn that is to have a conversation with them and keep the questions very open. And keep the questions very open. So in the case of the telephone, you can ask something like what's prompted you to look for a hands-free phone, how do you feel that or how do you believe that a hands-free phone would benefit?

Speaker 1: 4:10

You Get their perception, first of all, of what they think your product is going to do for them. And it does two things. The first one is it makes sure they haven't made a mistake, and I've seen this somebody completely misunderstood what a product did and they weren't qualified properly and it actually slipped right through to sale, unfortunately, and you definitely don't want to get into that situation. So make sure that what they are describing in terms of how they feel your solution will benefit them, is actually realistic for that solution that you're offering. The second reason for doing it is they are starting to give you the reasons why they should buy your products.

Speaker 1: 4:53

Now it also allows you to kind of check them off, and one of the things I like to do in a sales meeting is, as somebody is going through what they believe this solution will give them, I'll be writing those things down and generally there's not a problem. Now, often I would ask them do you mind if I make some notes? And most people don't have a problem with that at all. In fact, it's a real benefit because it underlines that you're listening to them, which a lot of people don't do. So it underlines that you're listening to them and that you're taking them seriously. I mean, think of how you would feel in that situation with a salesperson if they start to write down the key points as you identify them, and then they refer back to them to make sure they've covered them. So that's a very important stage to understand what it is that they are trying to achieve.

Speaker 1: 5:44

And it's also really important to get clarification, get them to be very specific about the benefits or the features or whatever it is they need your solution to do. Get them to be as specific as possible, because in that way you can be really confident that you are a good fit with this client. And secondly, it allows you to be able to go back and recap and often, when they've been very specific, you'll actually be able to overcome objections before they become objections. So you could like price, for example. You can always throw in well, you might be something like in order to provide this particular feature for you. We'd I'd recommend that you have this option now that adds another five hundred dollars to the price, whatever it might be. Would that be a problem for you? You can throw these little things in and straight away, because you've raised them. They're not objections, it's just things you're talking about, but by introducing them. You've kind of headed off that price objection unless they say, oh, that would be a problem. Headed off that price objection unless they say, oh, that would be a problem, in which case you can look at how effective the solution would be without that option if that really is a showstopper, going the extra $500 in this example. So the key thing is to be getting small agreements all the way along and acknowledging what they're trying to do, making sure that you can do it and then, where you can, getting small agreements such as that, just asking if that extra money for that option is likely to be a problem for them and then you'll get a yes or a no and that's all good.

Speaker 1: 7:32

Now, once you've had this conversation and really you probably want to do this early on, certainly if you're having a face-to-face meeting with them there's an acronym I found B-A-N-T, which stands for Budget, authority, needs and Timeline. There are various versions of this floating about, but that one's as good as any and it is important that you have got clarification that they do have budget, so that you know that you are talking to somebody who has the kind of money that is needed to buy your solution. So that's important. It's also important to make sure you're spending your time with someone who has the authority to give a yes or a no to well, primarily give a yes to the sale. You also need to get clear on their needs. So this is what I've just been talking about, really, with the conversation getting absolutely clear that you are a good match.

Speaker 1: 8:31

And then, finally, the timeline. So how urgent is this requirement? Now, these questions, and it depends on the sales process that you're running with. But if you are particularly closing or running a demonstration for somebody, you need to ask these questions before you get to this stage. So you need to qualify them before you start investing any more time with them than a telephone call. And the reason for that is that if they tick all the boxes they have budget, they have authority, they have the need but their timeline is six months away and your typical sales cycle is two weeks, so two weeks from inquiry to order then you don't want to really be spending time with them unless there's some way that you're able to shorten that timeline, that timeline they're working with, into something that suits you.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Now you may have some leverage. You could do that with, maybe a special offer. You might be able to run a special offer for them, but you need to have the order by the end of the week, that kind of thing. Also, once you've had a conversation with them about what their needs are and why they're looking at it, and all that kind of thing, if it's something that results in them saving money, you can always try that as a sort of positive leverage as well, because you can talk about how sure they could wait six months, but that is going to cost them an extra X number of dollars, whereas if they move ahead now, then they will save that money because the delivery installation time will be the same, but you're now doing it six months earlier. So you can try things like that. If you're not confident with that, then that's fine. Maybe that's something you need to either build up through experience or do a course. So I offer a course, but so do other people. So hopefully you'll find one that works for you. But remember, it's as important to qualify people out as it is to qualify them in, because you want to be spending the bulk of your time with people who are likely to buy soon. They're the people you want to spend time with. So that was the third point, that's making sure that they have budget, authority, need and timeline to move ahead.

Speaker 1: 10:52

Now another thing you can do is to use what's referred to as story, and this is where you put them in the story of the solution. So let's say you're selling holidays. That's an easy one. While you're talking to them, you can say just imagine what it's like to just come in from a swim on the beach, just have a really relaxing shower, and then sit down on your balcony overlooking the ocean, drinking a beer, whatever, whatever you want to drink, and listening to the sound of the seagulls. And listening to the sound of the seagulls, feel the sun on you, all this sort of stuff. But make it an experiential kind of story. So talk about the sounds, the smells, what they're feeling, that kind of thing and that can put them in. Now you can make that a little bit more powerful if you are in a situation where you're solving a pain point. So right now, maybe they're worried, maybe they are worried or maybe they've got your selling a system that says, for example, does their accounts for them. And you can spin the story slightly differently and particularly do this after you've had a chat to them to really understand their situation, but you can talk about how right now.

Speaker 1: 12:15

If I understand your situation right now, typically you're working all week and then you get to the end of the week where you're really tired, but before you can really stop and have any even think about any time off, you've now got to work your way through accounts, which you know is going to take you at least another hour and, as you said, you occasionally make mistakes, so that you at least another hour and, as you said, you occasionally make mistakes, so that takes at least another hour to work back, work out where the mistake is, and it's just stressful. All the time You're tired, you're stressful, you can't enjoy being with your family, you can't go away at the weekend, you can't do the kind of things maybe you used to do when you were employed, let's say, and you've moved to self-employment. So what we can offer for you is a way of giving you that time back and reducing the stress for you using our you know Abacus accounting system or software. It's doing the accounts for you as you send out invoices, it's all handled automatically. It allocates the different amounts into the different tax brackets, anything else that they have to categorize, but it does it all for automatically. It allocates the different amounts into the different tax brackets, anything else that they have to categorize, but it does it all for you. And then at the end of the week you can spend 10 minutes just going through the summary for the week and then you're off.

Speaker 1: 13:26

You've got that evening, you can relax, plan the weekend, go away and just come back again on Monday morning ready to start another week and enthusiastic about another week. So hopefully you get the idea about the story side of it. You can kind of spin it. You can concentrate on the good news part. If you know, like the first example where I'm talking about somebody coming back from a swim and all this stuff, or if they've got a real problem and they're actually feeling pain, you can actually build that. Or you can, you can focus on that pain, you know, let's not let them forget it and then go on to the pleasure.

Speaker 1: 14:06

What you can also do and I touched on this in the previous one with Timeline is to say and obviously we can get this happening for you now, we can get things moving today, if we can get your order today, and whatever your process is it might be down payment, whatever we can get that moving for you today. So a week from now you could be in that situation I've just described, or you can leave it and the chances are that a month from now you'll be in exactly the same situation you're even more tired. And we could leave it two months, three months, six months, and it it's just like a downward spiral. It's or it's a spiral of stress. So do you get the idea? Now you need to be careful with those, don't over play them, but they are certainly little techniques you can use if somebody is teetering a little bit. And again, I'm a very strong believer in ethical sales, and what I mean by that is only selling people solutions that work for them. So it's achieving a win-win. And what you're doing with that storytelling is just giving them that little nudge. They need to basically get their problem solved and some people do hesitate a little bit before commitment. So occasionally you can try that and that might just be enough to get the deal signed, and then you can start to deliver for them and really deliver that change that you've been discussing with them. So that's the fourth one, that story. So the fifth one is objections, and uh, so I'm not going to do this.

Speaker 1: 15:42

On the podcast, but certainly on the online course that I offer, we go through a whole section on how you eliminate objections so you can go into sales meetings and never worry about objections again. So if you are in sales and that's a big point of stress for you, it is something that can actually be resolved fairly quickly and fairly easily. However, there is a little technique that you can find. It's called feel, felt and found, and that's where you've. When someone raises an objection, you first of all show empathy with them and it's something like I understand how you feel. And then you move to felt and you can throw in a line which would be something along the lines of many of our customers have felt the same way, experienced the same thing, had the same fear, whatever it might be. And then you move on to found, and then you just finish that little series of sentences off with something like but once they installed the Abaco system or whatever it is you're selling, they found that all of these things happen. So you know, add your benefits. So it's a very simple technique.

Speaker 1: 16:56

What I would say on objections is it's important to get really specific. So before you get into that kind of thing. Just get them to be really specific about what the objection is. Often when you get an objection, it's not a no, and that's what a lot of particularly people who are new to sales fear that getting an objection is a no. Often it's a yes, but a qualified. So there's something that they're not quite happy with, they're not quite sure about and generally from the sales perspective, it means that you've missed something. So you may not have explained something properly, you might have misunderstood one of their requirements, but it's basically. An objection is normally a request for clarification and it is not necessarily a no. In many occasions it's a yes, but they just want some sort of reassurance over a point. So before you get into all of that stuff, the simplest thing to do with an objection is just to get really specific. Ask them to just explain a bit more about what their concern is and then take it from there a bit more about what their concern is and then take it from there.

Speaker 1: 18:05

The sixth point is value, and remember, although we pay money usually for things that we buy, what we're really buying is the value, and the value really wants to be much higher than the financial amount, and often the value might be something that you can't even measure financially. So it could be a feeling, it could be an increase in confidence, it could be status. For example, if you think of a very expensive watch, is that watch, pound for pound, cog for cog, whatever it is worth more than a watch half the price? The chances are it isn't, but the way it's presented what it represents. So if it's, let's say, a Rolex, for example, you know there's a whole lot of stuff associated with Rolex and that's what they're buying. They're buying what they perceive as the value of the Rolex watch, which is being able to demonstrate status, success, all those kind of things. So it's really important, in that conversation that you have with them, you get some feel for what the value is for them and that's what it's doing for them personally, and it isn't necessarily a financial thing.

Speaker 1: 19:24

And then, finally, number seven a very simple closing technique is what we call the assumptive close. So you just behave as if they are going to order and it's as simple as saying you know, once you've asked if there's anything else and they say no, I think that covers it, and then just say something like, okay, well, should we just get the paper? Let's get the paper started. Let's get the paperwork started, I should say. Or would you prefer it in red or green, or would you like to pay monthly or annually? Those really soft closes. So they invite the client to say yes and start doing the paperwork and you haven't got to go through any huge drama to close them.

Speaker 1: 20:04

So that's it for this podcast. These are just some very simple tips to help you. So the first one is to understand your product but be aware that the benefit so I spoke about fabs, but the benefit is likely to be something very specific for that client. The second thing to remember. So you need to explain basically how your solution helps them specifically. The second thing is to listen. That's probably the most important part of this podcast is to really listen and understand what it is they need to achieve. The third thing is to make sure you qualify properly. So make sure they have budget, they have authority, they have the need, they're a good match and that they can operate within a reasonable timeline and don't be afraid to put people on the back burner and go after live inquiries.

Speaker 1: 20:55

Number four was story. Put them in the solution and you may also want to kind of just remind them of the pain, because we tend to be more motivated to move away from pain than we are to move towards pleasure. So sometimes just reminding them of the pain can be enough to nudge them along. But be careful with that. Number five objections. Get very specific on what the objection is, because usually it's because something has been misunderstood or not explained terribly well, and you can always use the feel, felt and found. So I understand how you feel. Many of our clients have felt the same way, but what they found was that et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1: 21:42

Number six is get very clear on the value to them, et cetera, et cetera. Number six is get very clear on the value to them. So I gave the Rolex watch as an example. Is a Rolex watch worth more than something half the price In terms of what's in it? I would say no, but that's not what people are buying. To be clear about what they're buying or what they believe they're buying. And then finally, number seven think about the assumptive clothes. So you've been through everything with them and then just introduce the close. Would you like that in red or green? Would you like to pay monthly or yearly? Just assume that the sale will happen, and that's a very easy and relaxing way to close the deal. So I hope you found that useful and please like and subscribe while I remember to remind you and I'll speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now.