The Business Development Blog

Results Driven Sales – The Drill Analogy

Have you ever sold a complex product or idea that the person you were selling to was not at all interested in the technical facts about why it was better than a competing product or idea? Perhaps you had a comprehensive set of facts and impressive charts that depicted why the thing you had was better and badder than anyone else's was on the market.

To your dismay the client most likely listened to your pitch with that glazed over look in their eyes that reminded you of a gold fish you had in the third grade. Your facts might have been dead on, your enthusiasm might have been high, but for some reason the client just missed the whole point and your pitch missed its mark.

What happened, you might ask? Most likely your pitch focused too much on the product or idea and not on the results that the client could expect from its implementation in their business; big mistake. Although the marketing material and the people who created the idea are rife with statistics and charts detailing esoteric numerical comparisons between your widget and the next one, the client sitting on the other side of the table wasn't interested in how your widget was better. They don't know widgets, they know what widgets do and they don't want to either. Take for example a man who walks into a hardware store to buy a drill. He has a problem; he needs a hole in his wall. In order to get the hole in his wall he doesn't go to a store to buy a hole.

He goes to buy a drill. At the store he is greeted by a clerk who knows all of the specs of every drill in the store by heart. The clerk shows him the drill with the highest rotation velocity and goes into a 10 minute pitch about the virtues of that drill over the others.

While that drill may be the best, it doesn't necessarily tell the man what kind of hole he can expect to see in his wall when he uses it. In the end, the man goes with a cheaper drill, not because of the specs on the box, or the clerk's facts, but because he isn't worried about the drill itself, he wants to get a hole drilled as quickly and cheaply as possible.

So what can we learn from the clerk who obviously didn't help the man buying the drill with his decision one single bit? The more complexity you incorporate in your pitch, the less you actually convey. Focus on results, and don't overwhelm your clients with the marginalia. When you relate your pitch to what possible feelings of satisfaction, happiness, and comfort they will experience as a result of the complicated statistics you omit they do not get lost in the wilderness of distraction from too much information.

Your challenge is to humanize the experience of being sold to, and that means your pitch has to resonate with the client's real goals. They are not interested in how great the cameras, photography, backdrops or products are; they want to know that their customers will be happy. That may be a result of the aforementioned traits, of our company, but if you don't focus on the happiness of the clients you're going to see a lot of glazed over gold fish eyes. And you don't want that.

 

The Complete Sales Approach

We here at the Business Development Report have made a point to preach preparedness and practice as a means to converting more sales and making more money. We still believe those to be the key ingredients in the recipe for success at sales. In addition to those important factors, there is one often overlooked factor that can be the difference between making a few sales and putting up Michael Jordan numbers in terms of sales.

The approach we are talking about is to always use every single tool available to you in the sales process. From an initial email to a thank you note in appreciation of the client's time and interest, the sales process is a lengthy one, but one where forgetting to apply one step or another can mean huge differences in results.

Why are most sales jobs seasonal? Why are some sales people changing jobs every 6 months? One answer is that it is easy to lose focus and thus need to be retrained selling something different in order to convert sales and make the money. Don't fall in this trap!

The best advice from the Business Development Report when you feel as though your approach might be lacking in the results department is to stop and look at what you did when you were making big sales and compare that to your present situation. The differences can be because it is simply a time when clients were more receptive; however it can be because we forge steps in the process. It's easy to become lazy when sales are easy so when the going gets tough you need to refocus and double your efforts by being as thorough as possible to get the same results.

As unfair as it seems, the fact that things get harder and seasonally it will require twice the effort to get half of the results makes getting better results during the more conducive periods easier. Think of it as weight training for your sales skills. No pain, no gain.

Remember to appreciate the difficulty you are having during periods of down sales at getting a client's attention and converting a sale and carry that around with you when times are good and you can walk into anyone's office and get 10-15 meetings a day. You may be tempted to blitz through those clients with abandon at the hope that someone will give you an easy sale without you having to do the follow-up or go through the whole process. Don't get greedy! Treat each and every client during those periods in the same way that you would if you couldn't get one meeting in a week.

Avoid sales fatigue like the plague! Just because you're making more calls with fewer results doesn't mean you should ease up or skip steps in making your proposals to clients. Be aware of the fact that you might be forgetting steps and remind yourself to take each client seriously and methodically. By doing this you have a better chance of being successful at all times; not just when it's easy to get sales.

 

 

Speed Up When Everyone Slows Down

Hello again from your friends at the Business Development Report! This week we are going to give you more examples of how you can be more successful by avoiding conventional wisdom and convert more sales and make money.

Typically the signs of a slowdown around us, whether it's in traffic or financial markets or sales seasons is a signal that we should slow down too, right? WRONG! That kind of thinking may keep you from running into the back of that minivan on I-95 during the start of rush hour, but in the world of sales it is the absolute wrong idea. When everyone says it's time to slow down, we say it's time to hit the gas, and hit it hard.

Right now red lights are everywhere. Clients are booked with other vendors, they're more evasive than ever, they just won't return your phone calls and they certainly won't give you the time of day when you walk in off the street for a meeting. So what should you do? Conventional thinking says it's time to cozy up on the couch and get re-acquainted with Maury Povich and Oprah Winfrey. But we're here to tell you it's time to double your efforts, but at the same time, be smart about it. In the same way that the squeaky wheel gets oiled, the sales person who stays in the face of a customer gets the sale, even in the "down" times. The opportunities may not be nearly as easy to come by during these times as they are normally for a lot of external reasons, but the efforts you put to be in the face of the customer will be rewarding when they are once again looking for vendors.

Even if it feels as though you are being ignored, you must remember that when you have a large need for a service like a photography vendor, you hope to only have to make a decision once. And once that decision is made you don't want to worry about choosing someone else because to most people there are not many distinguishing characteristics between photography companies, only idiosyncratic differences in price and service, but to the untrained eye, they're all the same.

In order to make yourself stand out among the pantheon of companies and sales people vying for this business, you must be either the first person who contacts the client, the person who contacts them at the perfect time, the person who comes up with a solution to a recent problem, or the most persistent person who wears down their resistance.

The process never ends because the market may grow and contract as new players enter and exit, but for the most part the players stay the same; the only thing that changes are the needs and opportunities available to you. If you think about those clients in the longer term, you see that eventually they might be your clients, so any efforts you make to go above and beyond the competition without being too pushy or overbearing will pay handsome dividends.

Consider all of the businesses you can't get right now as future clients, make sure that you go the extra mile for them now when everyone else has gone home to watch soap operas. Continue to contact them and keep in their face because they are not going anywhere. Your challenge is to show them that you are not going anywhere either.

Crafting the Perfect Sales Pitch

Welcome back to another installment of the Business Development Report!

This week we are going to look at how to get the most out of selling for next season starting today. Preparation during the slow times is crucial if you want to convert maximum sales and make bigger money when the season picks up.

Perhaps the most crucial weapon in your arsenal when it comes to converting sales and making money is a practiced and rehearsed sales pitch.

If you haven't done so already, the best way to prepare your pitch is to write it down. Next, read it aloud, think about what you are saying, and then think about what you want to say. You should approach your pitch the same way a good public speaker or essay writer would; make sure your pitch is concise, to the point, and has an introduction a body and a conclusion.

The introduction should strongly communicate who you are and pique the client's interest, but avoids making you sound like too "salesy." The body should consist of a few questions that engage the client in conversation and qualify him or her for what it is you have to offer. Finally, the conclusion needs to do one of two things, ask for an appointment or close the sale.

An example of a pitch that has been successful for the Director of Business Development in bringing Clients to the table and closing deals over the phone goes something like this:

"Good morning. This is YOUR NAME. I'm the TITLE for COMPANY. We specialize in (delivering ABC photography to our customers). I'm calling you, PROSPECT NAME, because your school/studio/organization seems to fit the profile of those that benefit from what we do (have three capabilities available, in case they ask). That said, without knowing more about your business than I was able to glean from my research, I can't know for sure if what we do makes sense for you. If I haven't caught you at a bad time, I'd like to ask you (two or three) questions to determine if it does. May I? "

This pitch does 3 things that are extremely important in order to get an appointment; the first is to cut out the pleasantries of "How Are You" etc. The truth is that you most likely don't care how they are, they know that and it makes no sense to pretend you do. It gets down to business right away.

The second is that it portrays you not as a shifty telemarketer going down a list of names, and that you happened to falling upon theirs at random. Rather in this case you relate the fact that you are specifically contacting them for xyz reasons and as a result this disarms them from taking offense from the unsolicited call.

And third, creating a little uncertainty by suggesting that the product or service might not be right for them keeps you from sounding presumptuous. By suggesting this, you are already pre-empting a strong objection that they might not be interested at all, and forces them to find another reason. Most of all, the subtleness of your confidence will encourage them to want to listen further.

Finally, and most importantly, the pitch asks for an opportunity to meet or discuss the opportunity further. When you do this, you open the door for your success because you don't get 100% of the meetings or sales that you don't ask for.

 

 

 

Be a Rule-Breaker at Sales

Sometimes in order to beat the competition and convert more sales you have to do the opposite of what most conventional sales teaching suggests. You have to be a rule breaker. This week's winning idea is going against the grain and trying new approaches to conventional sales techniques. Hopefully these tips will be a welcome addition to your arsenal of approaches to converting sales and making money.

Tip #1: Don't Belittle the Client's Intelligence

One of the most common sales techniques around is suggesting that you may know more than the client about your particular product or service than they do. There is nothing wrong with knowing more than the client about the product you sell and it is expected by your employer, but how you approach this can be the difference between getting your point through and making the client clam up because they feel stupid.

The trick to getting your point across without getting this reaction is to avoid negative statements, instead use suggestive language. For example instead of saying, "Offering printed portraits for sale will be more efficient than sending home proofs," instead say "You may have explored this and it might not be helpful, but I've noticed that schools where printed packages are sold on site typically have higher participation among parents and less complaints." This sort of qualifying disclaimer takes away the burden of them making bad decisions in the past and you convincing that the decision to listen to you is better

By understating the fact that the client has made the wrong decision for years, you won't provoke the "I feel stupid" response from them and you are more likely to get your point across.

Tip #2: Don't Forget to Listen!

One of the easiest mistakes we can make as sales professionals is to steam roll a prospective client by talking the entire time and presenting to them without remembering to ask them questions. Some clients make it more difficult than others by expecting you to "present" to them as if you are standing on stage at the convention center with a microphone attached to your head.

Remember, this is not a finance convention, you're not Donald Trump, these people are 3 feet away from you and they shouldn't sit in silent awe while you wow them with your pitch. Give the conversation air, remember to ask them about their experiences, their concerns, what do they like. When you do this, you will have much more to talk about than if you blow them out with your pitch and they fall asleep with their eyes open through half of it.

Tip #3 Make Friends

At the Business Development Report, taking clients away from the competition has made us a lot of enemies and it is possible one day that the Business Development Director might end up in a dumpster behind the Kroger supermarket in Richmond, Texas-Especially with the exceptionally high amount of business we've taken from competitors lately!

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to make friends while you're on the job. Take the time to listen and relate to the client not only on a professional, but also on a personal level. You have a better chance for forgiveness, should you need it, if the client has a personal attachment or concern for you than if you are a face in the crowd who shows up to get their business, never to be seen again. The personal touch is always a good idea.