Effective Selling

Effective Selling – Bernie Tracey was the presentation at the most recent Enterprise Network for Women event. Bernie started by stating that selling is not about price. 85% of buying decision is emotional, only 15% is logical so you need to take this into account in your approach. More... 

She said it is important to understand the obstacles to closing a sale and how to get around these:

Fear of rejection
Fear of failure – need to find out what are the fears of the buyer and address them in the meeting rather than them leaving you with “Leave it with me” – this means you haven’t convinced them.
Fear of Success – You may need to leave your comfort zone.
She stressed the importance of first impressions.  79% of the first impression is non-verbal so appearance and positioning is important.  For example, don’t sit before them, don’t take out notebook or manual straight away.  Try to broadly mirror their approach.

A key tip was to focus on selling the benefits not the features.  80% of the focus should be on the benefits.  Bernie provided a diagram and asked attendees to list the benefits offered by their product/service.  

• You should pick out the three strongest benefits and link them together to describe your offering.
• If you give your price, stay silent.  Don’t make any excuses or justification.
• If they say your price is too high, don’t back down straight away.  Stay firm on price for as long as you can.  Make sure you’re still viable if you match existing supplier.  Emphasise the benefits.  You’re in business to make a profit!  If negotiating, ask them about likely volume of orders, etc. 

One point that Bernie emphasized was the need to ensure there is a clear follow-up to every meeting.  From her own experience, she learned that there are a lot of time wasters and it’s better to find out sooner rather than later what objections or problems there are. 

Bernie provided some tips on how best to use sales meetings

• Try to spend a lot of time in meetings listening to them so that you understand what they’re looking for.
• Sell to their fear, try to get their fears out in the open while you’re in the room.
• Ask a lot of questions, ideally open questions: What, where, when, how….. 
• Avoid closed questions such as “Is that OK”?
• Finish by asking what they need to do next.  Need to meet decision makers? 
• Don’t leave the room without an action!
• Don’t just send a quotation – gets lost.  Tie it in with a meeting.
• Call back after couple of days – do they need more information?  Leave voicemails.

Here are some closing tips from Bernie;

• Overall, aim to build relationships – this is what closes sales. 
• Persistence is key!  Never give up.  Be passionate about what you’re selling.
• Think every day:  What did I do today to bring revenue into the business.
•  Set your targets high, raise your expectations of yourself.

You can sell over the phone but it’s harder to get them to focus.

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