3 tips to increase your sales

Sales success comes from approaching clients as a problem-solver rather than just pushing products, with the right mindset helping to overcome common sales challenges. We share three powerful strategies from our full webinar that can immediately transform your sales conversations and results.

• Approach clients as a problem solver, focusing on their needs rather than just making your sale
• Listen carefully to understand what's keeping clients awake at night and how your solution addresses it
• Introduce potential objections early during conversation to prevent them becoming deal-breakers later
• View rejections as "I'm interested but have a reservation" rather than outright refusals
• Prepare for common objections by listing the top 3-4 issues clients typically raise
• Remember the two-ears-one-mouth rule: listen more than you talk
• Qualify prospects early to avoid wasting time with those who will never buy

For the full one-hour webinar with more detailed strategies, visit www.salescraft.training. If you find this useful, please remember to like and subscribe.

Welcome to the podcast!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing the Sales Webinar
• 2:15 Approach as a Problem Solver
• 6:06 Eliminating Objections Through Listening
• 12:20 Handling Rejection Effectively
• 18:11 Recap and Webinar Invitation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hello again and welcome to another podcast. Now, in this podcast, what I thought I would do is do a short version of a free hour-long webinar that you can access through my website. All you do is jump on the website that's wwwsalescrafttraining, and you'll see some buttons to go straight to the webinar and that's all you have to do. Go straight to the webinar and that's all you have to do. And the idea of the webinar is it gives you three things that you can immediately implement, and they are three things that, in my experience, most salespeople struggle with at one stage or another in their sales career. So, briefly, they are looking at how to approach your client. There's a whole mindset approach, so I'll dive into that in a bit more detail in a moment. The next thing is how to approach your client. There's a whole mindset approach, so I'll dive into that in a bit more detail in a moment. The next thing is how to get rid of objections, and I know a lot of salespeople are very worried about what to do. What do you do if you get an objection from a client Sometimes people will really freeze at that and the final thing is how to handle a no. So this final part is all part of this process of asking for the business, and if you've listened to my podcast before, you'll know that this is something I come back to pretty regularly, frankly, because a huge number something like 70 to 80% of salespeople really try to avoid asking for the order and, honestly, this is why we're here. So you really need to have some techniques that you're comfortable with which allow you to ask for the order when you're with a client. So I'm going to quickly go through those in this podcast and, if you find them useful, please jump on the website. There's a link in the description so you'll be able to do that and go through the full webinar, and that will give you more detail than I'll give you in this podcast.

Speaker 1: 2:00

Okay, so the first thing is to just look at your approach to your client. Now, what I see with many, many salespeople, particularly people who are new they think it's all about selling to the client, and in a way, it is, but what does selling actually mean? So what are you there for? You might think you're there to sell your product to your client, which, from one perspective, you are. Obviously, you need to sell your product to get money into the business, to get a job, keep your job, to live a life, all that kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 2:39

However, there's another way to look at it, and the way I like to look at it is that salespeople are problem solvers. So, using that as a point of perspective, your role is to solve your client's problem. So what I mean by that is that your solution whether it's a product or a service or whatever it is you're offering you are providing a solution to solve your client's problem. Solution to solve your client's problem. And the reason I talk about it in this way is that your client has not contacted you, at least usually, because they want to buy your course or your program or your product, whatever it is. Now, there'll be exceptions to that. So, for example, if you sell cars, there might be some really cool models and people coming because they really want to buy that cool model, but for a lot of the more let's say, day-to-day stuff. For want of a better expression, let's say that I'm getting a plumber in. Usually, I haven't asked a plumber to come around to my home to do work because I want to have a plumber in my house. The reason I've got the plumber in is because I've got a water leak and I really want to stop it and I don't know how.

Speaker 1: 3:53

And that's the approach to take. The main reason that you are sitting there in front of your client is that they have a problem and they hope that you are the person to provide the solution to that problem. That is why you're there. So what they are buying from you is not particularly your product or your service. What they're buying from you is the solution that you are offering them to that problem. So another way of thinking of this is what is it that is keeping them awake at night? That they are hoping that by having you come in and do something for them, they'll be able to get a good night's sleep. So they are focused on their problem. They are hoping that you are the person to bring them the solution. And that's what I mean by a problem solver.

Speaker 1: 4:42

And if you take that approach, it doesn't just help you with how you interact with your client, with how you interact with your client, because I've seen a lot of what I say to a lot of salespeople particularly people who are inexperienced is they get quite stressed about presenting their product and I've seen people just put a brochure on the table and essentially read through it to the client. Now, most of the clients I've dealt with are capable of reading, so I don't need to do that. What I do need to do is have a conversation with them. This is where it tends to go horribly wrong. So the first point, the first tip, is to remember that you are there to solve their problem. The conversation is about them, it's not about you. The reason you are there is to find if you can provide a good solution to the problem they have. You're not there to make your sale and I know that's kind of counter to the way a lot of businesses operate but honestly, if you take this approach, it will make your sales meetings go much more smoothly and you're likely to get a much higher conversion rate, because what happens then is the thing that goes on to point two, which is eliminating objections. So how do we do that? Well, the key way of doing that is to actually listen. So if you've come in and you're meeting with your client and you are there because you are trying to understand the problem that they have, you believe from your initial interactions with them that you are in a position to provide a solution to the problem that they have. But now, when you're face to face with them, now's the time to just get into the detail, to make sure that you really can provide the solution they need. Or, if you can't, it may well be that you can provide a good enough solution that they're prepared to run with you. And there are other factors to that which I'm not going to go into in this podcast, but they are certainly covered to some extent in the longer video in the webinar and they're definitely covered in the sales training course. So if you find this useful, if you find the webinar useful, then there is much, much more information in the sales training course, so I'm not going to be shy about pointing you there.

Speaker 1: 6:56

So what happens when you have a conversation? Well, if you think about it, what happens in a conversation? One person speaks, the other one listens. It doesn't always happen that way. I've been in conversations where there are two people speaking and nobody listening. But when you're in sales, you need to be the listener. And there's again one of these old sayings you've got two ears, one mouth. Use them in that proportion. So it is so important to listen, and this is where a lot of salespeople lose the sale, because they're not listening to what the client is asking for. There might be some subtle aspect of the solution they're looking for that you can't provide and you actually miss it.

Speaker 1: 7:31

And then this is where objections and then getting no's tend to originate. They tend to come because you haven't done the early part correctly and that's the listening part of the conversation. So when you're doing that, before you do it, in fact, a little exercise you can do right now or once you listen to the podcast is to just jot down maybe the top three or four objections that you usually get. If you haven't been in sales before, haven't been in selling for very long, you don't have a list of objections Well, the usual ones there's usually one about price and then maybe just do a little bit of Google, see what kind of objections come up, or maybe you've got some ideas. It's difficult for me because I don't know what you're selling, so I can't be too helpful, but it is very good, it's very helpful to you to have a list of the top three or four objections that typically come up and then what you do while you're having this conversation, while you're asking them questions about what it is the problem that they're trying to solve.

Speaker 1: 8:39

How. Is it a problem for them? Okay, what do they need from a solution? What does that need to deliver? No-transcript, and our deliveries are typically whatever the deliveries typically are. Is that a problem for you? Now you're just talking, you're not selling, but you're trying to get them to either agree early on that this is okay or if it may be an issue later. So, for example, the price might be a little bit on the high side. So you can just explore that a bit further with them, so you can have the conversation about well, okay, I understand that. However, from what you've said, it looks like we can provide a really good solution for you and, as I understand it, this will give you a saving of however many dollars, all this kind of thing. So, looking at it from that perspective, do you think you might be able to stretch to the kind of ballpark we're talking about, or is that still going to be a kind of showstopper for you? So you're not actually trying to close them, but you're having a conversation, and this is the really important difference.

Speaker 1: 9:46

Now, what will typically happen is that, if they are prepared to find the extra money, they will commit to that. They will give you some indication that they will find that money. And the reason that you do this now, at this point, when you're just having the conversation, is that when you introduce an objection, it's actually a point of conversation. When they introduce it towards the end, it is an objection, and that's where you can lose the sale Now, obviously, if they can't afford the product, that really needs to be in your initial qualifying process. So, again, this is separate to what this podcast is about, but that would be where you have an initial usually a phone call might be a Zoom call or something like that and you just run through, you qualify them, make sure they have got the budget that you need, they are prepared to work with the kind of delivery schedules you have. You're really going through making sure there are no initial red flags that tell you this person is not going to go ahead with the sale Because if they are in that category and something else I talk about is qualifying people out and what I mean by that is that you want to get rid of the people who are never going to buy from you because they're just wasting your time, and you really need to get rid of those as quickly as possible, so, as early in the sales journey as you can, you get rid of the people who will never buy, so that the people you go to this stage and this stage is the face-to-face conversation with them these are the people who you know have ticked all of your initial boxes.

Speaker 1: 11:16

They have the right kind of budget available. They will work with the timescales that you have. There might be some key features that they are looking for which separate you from your competition, whatever it might be, and you really need to work all that out. Again, that's beyond this podcast. So the second tip, I guess, is to make sure you're introducing the kind of things that would typically come up as objections at the end of the sale, but you're doing it while you're just having a conversation about what they need. So this you're not even talking about your product at this point. You really want to do this when they are describing the problem. Okay.

Speaker 1: 11:57

Now the final thing and there are other things, obviously, that I could go into at this point, like how do you come up with easy closes, stuff like that, and that's again all in the course. I want to talk about how to handle a no Now. I did do a podcast about this recently, and the reason I'm coming back to it is I think it's one of the aspects of selling that a lot of salespeople are really worried about. I believe it's probably the biggest reason why so many salespeople are afraid to ask for the business. It's simply that if they get a no, they don't really know how to deal with it. Does that mean the sale's dead? Does that mean there's nowhere else to go? Does that mean they just pack up and leave?

Speaker 1: 12:45

So what I'm going to suggest is, provided you've done everything else correctly, so you've done your initial qualification and this person definitely fits your avatar profile. They definitely have the budget, all the other things I've been speaking about, and you've gone through the initial conversation with them and you're pretty happy that you can provide the solution that they need. You have then let's call it presented to them, but this is where you just talk about how your solution fits their problem and again, this is covered in the course, I'm not going to do it here. You've gone through that and they are in agreement with you. So you then go ahead with one of the techniques to do a very easy close. So you've got that far, but now you get a no, what does that mean?

Speaker 1: 13:32

What's happened? Well, generally when that happens, as I say, if you've done everything else correctly often it means that the client still has an issue, and this could be. Generally it's a misunderstanding. There's some aspect they're not comfortable with, but they're not happy yet to go ahead but notice the word yet OK. So if you get a no, what they're really saying is I'm I am interested in what you're offering, but there's something in here I'm not quite happy with, and this is where you just need to go back and re-qualify. So, okay, what is it? Just to help me be clear what is it that's a problem at the moment, or you know, whatever you pick your words, but you need to just get clear on what the objection is at this point, because obviously that would be a pretty strong objection. So that really is something for you to just get clarification on, and once you've done that, now hopefully it's just something that has been a misunderstanding, something that's been left out. You might have forgotten something. I tend to write a lot of notes when I'm with clients, just so that I don't forget things and I can recap with the client to make sure I've covered off everything.

Speaker 1: 14:46

You might have a different way of doing things, but generally a no at this stage of the process simply means there is something they're not comfortable with. There's just generally a small issue that's stopping them from going ahead. So the thing to do is to just get in there, understand what that is and then you go back to the soft close and hopefully that's it. You can then go ahead and sign them up. So, as I said, just to recap on the three things first of all, the first thing when you go in, make it about them. Although obviously you need to make sales, you need to, if you're employed, keep your job, get commission, all those sorts of things. If it's your own business, you need to stay in business, so you need to get the sale. But when you're face-to-face with a client, leave that stuff at the door and make it about the client, really listen and understand what their problems are. And the more you do that, the tighter and the better an offer you'll be able to make to them.

Speaker 1: 15:45

So I spoke before about making compelling offers to people. This is an aspect of it. You can do a generic offer, so your product does a certain number of things or your solution does a certain number of things, but which ones are really useful to this particular client. Well, you only know that by talking to them. So that's the first thing make it about them.

Speaker 1: 16:06

The second thing with objections is to look, just step back, do a bit of, you know, prep work, write down the objections that typically come up you could use a bit of Googling as well, something like that but have a list of normally I'd say three or four is enough and make sure you introduce those objections yourself when you're at the early stage of the conversation, so when before you presented your product, when you are asking the client about their problem and what they're looking for from the solution. So you can throw it in there because you're not closing at that point. In a wider sense you are, but let's keep it simple. So, yeah, you're not closing at this point, it's all about them. But you can throw these questions in because they will typically give you the answer to that question and if that particular issue should come up as an objection later, they've already given you what the counter is to it, what the answer is.

Speaker 1: 17:09

And then the final thing with a no is just to not be worried about it. Don't be worried about no's. Treat a no as simply another way of saying yes, I'm interested, but I have a reservation, and your job is to find out what that reservation is, and from there you can then move everything forward. So I hope you found that useful. If you have, please take a look at the webinar. Just jump on the website and you'll see a couple of buttons right up on the top and that'll take you directly to the webinar. There's an hour's worth there, not just 15 minutes or so of me talking about this stuff. It goes into a bit more detail. If you find that useful, have a look at the course that dives into a lot more detail and gives you closing techniques, all sorts of things, tips for qualifying, all sorts of things there. Okay, so that's it for this podcast. I hope you found that useful and I will speak to you again next time. Oh, please remember to like and subscribe. Okay, speak to you next time. Bye for now.