Should Consultants Learn How to Sell?

To answer that question, let me present two different scenarios that might sound all too familiar to some of you.

First Scenario

You have decided to become a Consultant…you are an expert in your field…you feel you have a lot to offer companies so you hang up your shingle and wait for people to beat a path to your door. The problem is that no one knows where your door is….who you are…or …what you do. One of my favorite slogans is “a person who doesn’t market is like a man winking in the dark; he knows what he is doing, but nobody else does”.

So you start attending events, develop a Letter of Introduction and a mailer. You either buy a list, use the phone book or maybe a chamber list and you make a large mail-out to companies who you believe to be good prospective clients. Once again, you wait for your phone to ring off the hook or for people to knock on your door and very little happens. Your typical return on a mass mailing is 1-3%. What now?

You call the leads that have come in and you finally get an appointment, thinking that if you can just get in front of someone and tell them how good you are at what you do – that they will immediately hire you ….but they don’t. You have had a couple of appointments and everyone seems to be saying no. You start doubting yourself and wondering if you should go back to the corporate world and suffer through it until you can retire. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

I can’t tell you how many times I have talked with potential consultants, experienced consultants going through a dry spell and even business owners and hear the above scenario played over and over again.

Second Scenario

As a new consultant or experienced consultant going through a dry-spell, you decided to take the time to study a little about sales and attend a sales training seminar. You discover that everyone is a “natural born” sales person (even you) and that you have been selling and persuading people all of your life.

You discover that “anytime you persuade someone to do something they were not thinking about doing before they met you…you sold them”. You just used other words to describe it instead of the word selling -- words like persuading, influencing, consulting, counseling or teaching.

As part of the sales training you discover that by combining a Letter of Introduction with a follow-up telephone prospecting call you increase your propensity to obtain business. You learned how to develop an effective telephone message (script) that tags-on to the Letter of Introduction you developed so there is a coordinated, common message being delivered to your potential customers.

You also learned that part of prospecting is a “numbers” game and ...that some of the seeds you plant today will take root immediately in your prospective customer’s minds and some won’t take root until some time in the future. However, you also learned that if you don’t plant them today…you won’t have a future.

As part of the training, you discovered how to develop a continuous, sustained “Trickle Mail” prospecting system so that you plant seeds every single day. You learned that a smaller mailing, followed by a phone call works much more effectively than a mass mail-out with no follow-up. Your prospecting efforts begin to kick-in and you finally get the opportunity to sit with a prospective client.

During the seminar, you learned how to develop and deliver an effective presentation, which includes a Six - Step Sales Presentation Model and persuasion skills. You also learned how to develop rapport easily and effortlessly. You discovered how to uncover your client’s needs, problems and desires through effective Qualifying skills and probing questions. You also discovered how to take the benefits of your talents, abilities and recommendations, match them with your potential client’s needs, problems and desires and present it in such a way that they now understand “why” they need to hire you to help them.

Within a couple of minutes of first meeting with your client, you know how you can help them. However, you've learned that you should not give them your recommendations until you have had time to develop a comprehensive proposal and practiced how you will present your ideas and recommendations to them.

You learned that you should schedule the next appointment before you leave the first appointment, because -- the chances are much greater that your customer will keep an appointment already scheduled …than make an appointment that has not yet been scheduled.

You return on the second appointment, give a professional presentation on the benefits of following your recommendations and attempt to close the sale. Of course, your customer will probably give you an objection. In the past, you may have viewed the objection as a “no,” thanked them for their time and left. But because you learned several techniques for Overcoming Objections, you easily and professionally overcome the objection, ease your client’s concerns and seamlessly Close the sale.

Summary

Learning Selling skills enables you to do more effectively, what you have been doing all your life…persuade people to accept your point of view, ideas, opinions, belief, product or service. It gives you a strategy, a system and a roadmap that you can adapt to your product or service to help your client make the best decision for their business…hire you!

Learning Sales techniques does not make you more manipulative anymore than learning martial arts makes you more dangerous -- unless you choose to use them in the wrong way. Sales training does give you a set of essential tools that enables you to present you and your business in a persuasive, positive, professional manner.

With each new skill-set and technique you learn, develop and use… you increase your propensity to sell your potential customer. If you learn how to: (1) prospect more effectively, (2) develop rapport more easily, (3) discover your customer’s communication style and personality type, (4) properly qualify your customer, (5) present your recommendations and ideas in terms of benefits to your customer, (6) overcome objections, and finally (7) close the sale, you increase the odds that your potential customer will do business with you and not with your competitor. Each new skill ratchets up the chances of your success.

Doesn’t it make sense to put the ball in your court as often as you can?

Should a new consultant or even a seasoned veteran learn how to sell? Absolutely!

Visit my website and check out the Training Schedule to find out when my next public sales training seminar will be and you will learn all this and more.

The Ten Most Common Reasons for Failure in Selling

1. Talking Too Much Too Soon – Not Developing Rapport:

Beware of the Salesman Disease - Diarrhea of the Mouth. Verbal Vomit!

Many times, sales personnel often talk themselves into and then back out-of a sale. They give the customer an objection that he wasn’t even thinking about until the salesperson mentioned it, by by giving him too much information in the beginning.

Selling is like Fishing (Tackle box metaphor):

A good analogy would be fishing. Giving your customer too much information would be
the same thing as dumping your tackle box into the water hoping the fish would pick the best lure to bite on.

A better way would be to select the right lure (benefit) in the first place then work (present) that lure in front of the fish until he (the customer) bites.

Most sales people never take the time to learn about different communication styles and personality types, so they always approach every customer exactly the same way instead of taking the time to find out which benefit (lure) would work best for this particular customer.

2. Not Managing Your Emotional State of Mind on a Day- to- Day Basis:

You must get and stay enthusiastic and focused. Don’t let the customer become an interruption of your job instead of the center focus of your job. Keep the job new and interesting. Don’t let yourself get stale. Develop and maintain a positive mental attitude.

3. Lack of Effective Qualifying, Probing and Listening Skills:

The lack of effective Qualifying and probing skills is one of the biggest weaknesses, if not the biggest weakness, in a sales presentation. Time after time when working with companies, qualifying has been one of the most prevailing problems I've encountered.

Most of us listen to respond, rather than listen to really listen. Think about a typical conversation between four or five people. While one person is talking, all of the people in the group are just waiting for a chance to jump and and tell their story.

Salespeople are no different. Rather than really listening to their customer to find out exactly what they want and need, many sales people are formulating their presentation in their head and not really listening. They don't use Dynamic Listening skills, so they miss important details and / or buying motives that could later be used to close the sale or move it to the next level.

4. Lack of a Daily, Continuous, Prospecting and Follow-Up. Prospecting Is the Lifeblood of the Sales Process.

This is another prevailing problem that most salespeople and counter, myself included. As salespeople, we have to discover exactly how many contacts it takes to achieve our sales goals goals and then do our very best to make those contacts everyday.

When I asked sales personnel what they are really paid to do? I get answers like: sell… solicit… and close sales.

In reality, you are really paid to prospect. You can have the best presentation in the world, the best product in the world; the best price in the world and you can be the best closer in your company...but, if you have no one to tell your story to…in the business all of sales…you are unemployed.

However, if you can give a fair presentation, an average product and be a mediocre closer and you can still make money if you talk to enough people. You can beat a better salesperson just by talking to more people than he has to or is willing to.

Remember, you are paid to prospect. Unless you continuously do a solid job of prospecting, nothing else can take place. You must become a great prospector.

One final point: don’t spend too much time with customers who have no intention of doing business with your company and are just stringing you along. Many times I talk with salespeople will call the same prospects over and over again, knowing full well they're not going to do business with you, because it's easier to call someone you know than to call someone you don't know.

5. Not Reaching the Decision-Maker:

Don’t just talk to the first person who answers the phone or the first person you meet in
the company. Wait and give your presentation to the person that matters. Always ask
for the decision-maker before giving your presentation.

Interesting Statistic: A good point to remember is that 85% of the buying
decisions that take place in the home are either directly or indirectly affected by the
wife.

6. Not Using a Strategic Sales Presentation - (V-Format)

What I mean by this is winging it instead of using a strategic five or six step presentation and knowing exactly where you through every step of the sales process.

You should know the steps of your sales presentation as well as you know, the rooms in your house. Hopefully, there is a distinct difference between the bathroom and your living room. Each step of the sales process has a purpose, just like each room in your house has a purpose.

For example: let's assume you're using the following basic Six Step Sales Presentation:

Step 1-Greeting

Step 2 - Qualifying

Step 3 -Presentation / Demo

Step 4 - Initial Close

Step 5 -Overcome Objection

Step 6 - Final Close

When a customer gives you an objection, you have to determine whether it is a real objection or whether you didn't do a good job qualifying your customer in the first place. If it's a real objection (put off, delay, condition for sale) then you move on to Step 6 -(Final Close) of your presentation. If on the other hand, you missed something in qualifying, then you have to take a step back from your presentation to Step 2 (Qualifying) and go back to using probing questions to find out what you missed.

To do this effectively, you must understand exactly what to do during each step of the sales presentation. Otherwise, you will blindly go to the next step, try to overcome the objection, when it's not really an objection and blow your sale.

7. Selling Features and Attributes versus Benefits:

Another common problem is giving a customer a laundry list of features and attributes instead of changing them to benefits, and selling the benefit of each feature an attribute.

This usually occurs due to excessive enthusiasm released too early in the sale, ignorance of your customer’s true once and needs due to faulty qualifying, answering your customers questions too quickly before thinking about what you want to say, not knowing and practicing the benefits of your product or service or being new to the sales business.

8. Not Being Able to Identify Objections and Not Having Prepared Techniques or Answers to Overcome Them.

There is a difference between an objection and a condition.

An objection: is usually a put-off, delay, excuse or condition (set up by the customer) of the sale that can be overcome

A condition: is a situation that actually exists and can’t be overcome, such as: no money, no credit, bad credit rating or absolutely no use for your product or service.

Ensure you have prepared answers, in advance, to objections that frequently come up, so you are not blind-sided when your next customer raises the same objection.

As a professional salesperson, you should also study methods of overcoming objections. There are many books on the market that cover how to overcome objections. Many of the methods taught can be adapted to just about any sales situation, product or service.

9. Not Asking for the Sale or Not Having Enough Ways to Close the Sale:

One basic rule of closing is: if you don’t ask, they probably won’t volunteer to buy. You can use questions to lead the customer to the close.

You will be surprised how many people will say yes if you just ask. If you don’t ask, you will have wasted all the time you spent with the customer. The worst thing that will happen is they will say no. You can’t lose something you don’t have, so don’t be afraid to ask for your
customer’s business.

Some numbers to keep in mind when thinking about closing in a retail situation are: 20% of the people who enter a retail establishment close themselves; 20% are assisted in some way by a sales associate; and 60% of the people walk out the door and were never asked if they wanted to buy. The numbers are not much better in other types of sales.

10. Lack of Congruent Planning & Time Management:

Improving your Time Management will bring you positive results more quickly than improving any other single aspect of your job. It will actually free up your time and unburden you of Time-Wasters.

A major goal of time management is to become in total control of your activities, instead of your activities controlling you. It is not just doing more with less time, but rather doing the most effective tasks you can with the time you have.

We have all heard the slogan: Plan Your Work and then – Work your Plan. It's as pertinent now as it was when it first came out. Yet, many of us in sales wake up with no plan to start our day.

A good rule of thumb: is to take the last 15 - 30 minutes of the day prior to plan the next day. You should wake up knowing who you going to call, when you going to call them, what appointments you have (and how long each one should take), your itinerary for the day and your goals for the day.