Do Your Salespeople Ask For The Business Every time?
April 23, 2008
Over the last few months we have been looking at the mistakes salespeople make in their sales process. Many of these occur because they in fact don’t have any process at all unless “flying by the seat of your pants” qualifies as a process.
Today we will begin to look at the worst mistake of all which by study occurs in 62% of sales presentations – not asking for the business!!
You may be sitting there thinking that it would be a logical conclusion to any sales presentation for the salesperson to ask for the business however as the statistics prove most salespeople don’t. There are many reasons for this including the fear of rejection or worrying about being too pushy.
For the majority of salespeople selling is an uncomfortable experience because they don’t have a process or plan to follow. I have a poster which states –
“The really great thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise and is not preceded by periods of worry and depression”
While this is rather humorous the stark reality for many people in sales is they are afraid and rightly so, that with every sentence or gesture they will destroy their chances of achieving the sale.
The reason for this is many of them have never had any formal training in selling. The focus of the majority of training I find in companies is around product. Many sales managers believe if their teams understand the products features advantages and benefits then they should be able to sell, unfortunately all this knowledge training does is turn the salesperson into what I term “tellers” and not “sellers”. Tellers spend all their time talking about themselves, their company and their product rather than finding out the buyers needs.
The down side of this sales technique is we end up selling the product and not the benefit. When we buy a drill bit it is not the bit we want it is the hole. We buy to satisfy a need. Many salespeople focus on how the product or service works rather than how they will fulfill the explicit needs of the buyer.
An explicit need is where the customer makes a statement about a specific want or need. An example would be – “we need a faster system” or “what we are looking for is a more reliable machine”. In larger sales it is vitally important that you uncover the explicit need.
If we do not uncover the real explicit need of the buyer then we won’t receive any clear buying signals from them and without these most salespeople become reluctant to ask for the business.
Another issue with product focused training is the salesperson becomes an expert (defined as a drip expelled under pressure) on their particular product and present a
non-stop sales pitch which leaves their prospect with no room to make an intelligent decision or even a comment let along show any buying signals.
This is sometimes referred to as a “show up and throw up” presentation.
Next time I will discuss buying signals and what to look out for.
Quote of the Week –
No sales – No money
Know sales – Know money
Quote by Brett Burgess – No need = No sale
Have a successful week!
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