Two weeks ago, I posted “Top 10 Sales Tips from the Seinfeld Show“. It proved so popular, I thought it would be worthwhile to post an additional 10 tips. Like the previous 10, I think you’ll find them useful in honing your sales skills.
As before, I’ve included polls so you can vote on your favorites. Here’s the first; the link to the rest is at the bottom of the post.
GEORGE SHOPS FOR A CAR
SALES TIP: No matter what you do, some customers are going to dislike you, simply because you’re a sales professional. Usually they’re people with weak minds who are paranoid about being manipulated, BTW.
There’s been a lot controversy about the enormous bonuses going to various folks in the financial industry. The population at large is pretty darn angry that bankers are handing out tens of billions of dollars after running the world economy into a toilet and then accepting bailout money. There’s a lot of pressure from the public to curtail those bonuses.
I disagree. Many of those bonuses are owed to sales professionals who were operating under the understanding that they’d make that kind of money. Since they were hired and employed under that understanding, they should get paid, on time, full amount, if they hit their quotas. Not paying them is the same thing as not paying Joe Salesman because you decide — after he’s brought in the business — that selling isn’t all that difficult.
Now, that being said, I think that these traders and brokers are being MASSIVELY overpaid for what they do. But I don’t hold that against them, I hold it against the idiots who hired them and who are too stupid to realize that they could pay people a lot less to do the same kind of work. If you’re looking for somebody to blame, blame the idiot CEOs that run these firms.
I’ve been following the financial crisis story for the past two years, and when I look at the lamebrains who run the financial services industry, I’ve never seen a bigger bunch of stuffed shirts, empty suits and mooncalfs in my entire life. It’s PAINFULLY obvious that not a single one of them really understand their business, and not a single one of them has the foresight or guts to go against the herd, even when the industry is herd of lemmings.
Just to make it clear how completely stupid these pinheads are, check out the story where Goldman Sachs and Citigroup executives sequestered doses of swine flu vaccines for their employees. Can you possibly imagine doing anything that stupid. Taking flu vaccines from CHILDREN in order to dose up your executive team. As if people didn’t hate these guys enough.
So I say: pay the bonuses to the sales pros, but dump the tonedeaf, clueless fools who are running those companies. Unfortunately, since the U.S. has a government that bought and sold by big business, there will never be a requirement to have truly independent boards of directors. So we’ll continue to have rubber stampers, which means that the idiots running these firms will never get pitched out on their fat cat tuchuses.
Yesterday, in “How to Kill an Objection For Good“, explained how to put an objection permanently to rest. It’s a useful, classic technique. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that there’s another school of thought when it comes to objections.
Some experts in selling techniques believe that answering objections individually is like playing whack-a-mole with hydra heads. You can’t really win, because all objections are actually just reflections of the customer’s state-of-mind. Objections are just another way of saying:
I am not yet convinced of the value of buying.
This school of thought believes that should focus on working with the customer to create a value proposition that makes overwhelming financial sense, and then the individual objections will disappear.
It’s really a profoundly different way of looking at sales. The traditional sales model assumes that the sales professional is actively persuading the prospect to buy, in which case overcoming objections is simply part of the sales process leading to the close.
In the more consultative model, the sales professional is supposed to be helping the customer decide whether or not buying makes sense — and is willing to concede that it might not make sense. In this case, objections aren’t all that important.
READERS: What do you think? Is it possible to sell without answering objections?
The archetype of sales professional is an outgoing, extroverted, “people-person.” Therefore, it’s not surprising that some people wonder whether that personality type is required in order to be successful in sales. A reader from Australia writes:
I have been reading your blog recently and find it quite insightful. I really love the psychology of sales ( I enjoy trying to pick people’s brains ). My biggest fear about the jump is my introverted personality. I am not a natural networker but realize this is an essential skill. Just curious of your opinion.
Interesting question. Rather than just give my opinion, I think I’ll ask the Sales Machine readership.
When you’re selling, it’s not enough to simply answer an objection. If you don’t want to see the objection pop up later, you need to kill it for good. Here’s a typical selling conversation:
Prospect: We don’t have the money in this year’s budget.
You: That’s O.K. We can finance it so part falls into next year’s budget. Does that work for you?
Prospect: I guess so.
Many sales reps would happily (but wrongly) believe they’d killed the objection. However, that objection will very likely to pop up later, because the commitment is weak. An objection is not truly dead until until you’ve help the prospect bury it for good. Here’s how:
Prospect: We don’t have the money in this year’s budget.
You: That’s O.K. We can finance it so part falls into next year’s budget. Does that work for you?
Prospect: I guess so.
You: …and so that’s all taken care of, right?
Prospect: Right.
You: Great! Did you notice that our reference accounts…
Getting prospects to publicly agree that the objection is dead puts them in the position of seeming inconsistent or wishy-washy if they bring it up again. Most people will not do this because it conflicts with their image of themselves as decision-makers.
Please do not pretend that this is NOT manipulative. It’s not.
If your prospects don’t believe you’ve answered the objection, they’ll say so. What this prevents is the emotional off-again/on-again waffling that wastes your time, and keeps the prospect from making a decision quickly and effectively.
Important! Once you’ve gotten the customer to agree, change the subject by asking a question on an unrelated matter. Why? If you continue to focus on the objection past the point of commitment, the prospect may start waffling about the commitment, in which case you’re back to square one.
The above is a classic sales technique as taught by the ever-informative Tom Hopkins.
SCENARIO: You’re tasked with selling CRM solutions to large enterprises. On a puddle-jump flight, you end up sitting next to the Sales VP for a big company. He asks what you do for a living and you tell him. He says that they “have one of those”, but he makes a wry face, so sense that he’s not satisfied with it. Your challenge: turn the situation into a sales opportunity.
Want to really irritate your customers? Here’s are six annoying things that will ensure you not just lose sale, but never get in to see that customer again:
Walk in and wing it. According to a recent survey, only one out of six (!) sales reps making sales call were “extremely well-prepared” and one of out of four (!!!) were “not at all prepared.” There’s no surer way to show a prospect that you’re fly-by-night than not bothering to do your research.
Do an information dump. In most cases, the prospect knows as much or more about your product, and your competitors, than you do. Therefore, a good way to really irritate the prospect is to review your product and its benefits in excruciating, mind-numbing detail.
Be late to the meeting. The prospect’s time is valuable, so wasting some of it needlessly will definitely raise some hackles! When you do show up, be sure to have some lame excuse (like “there was lots of traffic”) that could have been prevented with a little forethought and planning on your part.
Spout unsubstantiated opinions. Why be shy. Tell the prospect that your product is the best in the world, and that other products and approaches aren’t any good. If you’re pressed for facts or studies proving it, be sure to act offended, as if the prospect is calling you a liar.
Show up and throw up. There’s nothing like a detailed PowerPoint slide, with plenty of bells and whistles, to make a prospect wish he’d stayed at home. So be sure throw up lots of slides, with plenty of animations and goofy pictures on them.
Wear something inappropriate. Forget about that “dress for success” look. If you’re a male, annoy the customer by wearing jeans and sneakers. If you’re a female, wear something provocative. The more distracting the outfit, the more annoyed the customer!
With unemployment reaching levels not seen for decades, this isn’t a time to find yourself suddenly job-hunting. If your company is having a layoff — or might have one — you need to know what to look for, and what to do, so that you can land on top. Here’s a quick quiz to test your “layoff IQ.” If you get all four answers right, then you’ll probably land on top, no matter what proverbial substance hits the proverbial fan.
According to John Asher, CEO of the sales training firm Asher Strategies, there are 10 key sales skills, without which you will never reach your potential as a sales professional. I think there’s a lot of wisdom in what he has to say, so I’ve created a post to help you assess your own skill level, for each of these key skill. I’ve also provide a link to a blog post that can help you develop any key skill which needs improvement.
I truly believe that this could be the most useful quiz I’ve ever posted here.
Apple computer just invented the planet’s dumbest marketing idea. It’s a patented form of online advertising that FORCES you to pay attention. It locks up your computer or phone until you take some action (like correctly answering a question about the ad) that proves you’re paying mental attention to the ad.
It’s not just SPAM. It’s Nazi-SPAM. Achtung! You vill read zis ad or else!
The New York Times article decribing the method says that Apple thinks this marketing technique would “enable computers and other consumer products to be offered to customers free or at a reduced price.”
Here’s why this is a seriously dumb idea.
First, the free-if-you’ll-accept-intrusive-ads concept has bombed every time it’s been attempted. (E.g. the “Free PC” in the U.S., the “Henphone” in China.)
Second, Nazi-SPAM is a great way to make prospects and customers hate your guts. When ads go beyond what’s normal on broadcast TV or radio, I think that most people start to actively avoid the product being advertised.
I’ll say this much: if an ad EVER hung my device until I asked answered some jackass question, I would NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER buy whatever was being advertised. NEVER. And I would badmouth that product and that company every chance I got, to anyone who’d be willing to listen to me.
I don’t care if I got the device for “free.” I would deeply resent ANY advertiser who interrupted what I was doing in order to FORCE me to pay attention the ad.
And I believe that would be true for any product sold in any environment. Take B2B for instance.
Imagine doing sales for a company that was creating “brand awareness” using Nazi-SPAM. The only way you’d get a prospect to talk with you would be to claim you worked for somebody else. You’d have to a fake a coughing fit every time the customer asked for your firm’s name.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Nazi-SPAM is the greatest idea since the Ipod.
READERS: What do YOU think? Feel free to leave a comment.
Geoffrey James
Geoffrey James has sold and written hundreds of features, articles and columns for national publications including Wired, Men's Health, Business 2.0, SellingPower, Brand World, Computer Gaming World, CIO, The New York Times and (of course) BNET. He is the author of seven books, including Business Wisdom of the Electronic Elite (translated into seven languages and selected by four book clubs), and The Tao of Programming (widely quoted on the Web as a "canonical book of... more »
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The archetype of sales professional is an outgoing, extroverted, “people-person.” Therefore, it’s not surprising that some people wonder whether that personality type is required in order to be successful in sales. A reader from Australia writes:
