Maximizing Your Potential!

Agreements create a flow, disagreements create stops.

Think of the last time you wanted to go out to dinner.

You called up a friend and said,”Hey, let’s go out to dinner!”

They said, “Where to?”

You said, “How about the cute little Italian place in downtown. I’m dying for their Chicken Picata!”

They say, “That sounds great. I’ll pick you up at 6:30.” It’s flowing along nicely, as you can see.

Now let’s take a look at the opposite.

“Hey Max, let’s go out to dinner tonight.”

Max, “OK, where to?”

You, “How about that little Italian place downtown?”

Max, “I’d don’t know. I did not like the meal we ate there last time. The noodles were soggy.”

You, “OK. Where would you like to eat?”

Max, “How about the Thai place just down the street?”

You, “No. I had lunch with a client there yesterday. Besides, I’m not in to spicy food tonight.”

Max, “How about Viva?”

You, “That’s where we went last week. Can’t we go somewhere else?”

Max, “Geez, you don’t have to get so upset about it.”

As you can see, this is not flowing and could deteriorate into an argument if it doesn’t get resolved soon.

You can’t sell something to someone who is disagreeing.

It is easy to start a disagreement with a client or prospect by making them wrong or defending yourself in the face of their arguments.

On the other hand the prospect usually thinks they are right since they are the ones who ultimately will be paying for the service. Plus, they’ve heard the old saw, ‘The Prospect or Customer is ALWAYS right!’

A salesperson has MANY opportunities to disagree with the prospect/customer, making him wrong for how he feels. A person who is made wrong will try to be right no matter the circumstance. This leads to disagreements, which STOP the sale.

A prospect who says ‘Yes’ 20 times will have a much harder time saying no when you go for the close.

Obtain agreement for your statements or actions as often as possible throughout the sales process.

No NOT go past a disagreement, get back in to agreement, and only then go on!

The ultimate buying factor is AFFINITY. You use communication in order to increase your reality of what is needed or wanted, to be able to better serve your client.

To the degree that YOU and what you offer is real to the prospect, he will develop affinity for you and for your product or service. The KEY factor is to increase reality so that you can also increase affinity. The cheapest and most effective way to do this is to show interest.

These three factors, affinity, reality and communication form a triangle. If you increase any one corner of the triangle you will increase the other two. For instance, if you see someone across the room and connect with them (affinity) there is an increase in reality, you can see that the person is a guy or girl, the color of their hair and eyes, etc. which makes them more real to you. You will probably have a higher than normal desire to communicate with them and establish even higher reality and more affinity.

Conversely, if you decrease one corner of this triangle, the other two will lower.

For example, you have an agreement with someone that you are going to meet for coffee at 4 PM. 4 PM comes and goes and you do not hear from this person, even though you have your cell phone with you. After 5 minutes your affinity level for this person drops. You are anxious but are not to excited about speaking with them.

As time slips further away you get angry and try to call them on the phone, deciding that you are ‘going to give them a piece of your mind!’ Your desire to communicate with them has slipped further and your reality for them has gone even lower. When they finally do show up 20 minutes later you get very angry and decide to storm out of the coffee shop.

Affinity is an emotional barometer. A very high level of affinity is visible as enthusiasm, slightly lower would be cheerfulness. As we go down further we hit conservatism and still lower takes us in to boredom.

Bare in mind that this is our emotional state, our level of affinity for those around us. As we drop lower we hit antagonism and then anger. As you can see in the example above, when the person was late by about 5 minutes, you slipped down into antagonism and as you dropped down further you hit anger. If you had continued to wait, you would have hit fear next, wondering if the person had been in a car accident or if some other tragedy had befallen them. As you drop further down scale you would become grief stricken and then become apathetic about ever having coffee with that friend again.

The fastest way to repair any breach in communication is with communication whether it is in the form of a call, a letter, and email or just plain flowers. The bigger the upset the more effective communication must take place.

First, let’s define what conviction is:

A firm belief, certainty. It implies that the belief is unshakable and undoubting.

Top salespeople mostly work on their intention to help others, their convictions about themselves as salespeople, their product and what they represent for the customer, rather than sales techniques. It is a proven fact that the customer buys YOU first! It is your conviction that impresses them most.

On the other hand, it can be observed that, as a buyer, one NEVER bases one’s final decision on logical arguments, one always decides on one’s personal feelings. They will use logic afterwards to justify their emotional decisions to their friends, but, ultimately their decision was based on emotion.

A kew principle for you to remember is:

Logic makes people think, Emotions make people ACT!

It has been proven over the years that there are 5 things which need to be sold in sequence in order to get the sale:

1. You
2. You and your company’s image or reputation
3. Your product or service
4. Price
5. Timing

The first three generate interest, the last two generate a decision.

For years I had been training my clients on this principle but had failed to acknowledge that this was true for me. One day I did an analysis of my sales and for every 10 people I was seeing I was closing 3-4 of those people. Then I went over my sales process and discovered that I was not doing anything to sell myself, I assumed they already knew me.

I skipped right to number 3 and started telling them about my sales program and how it could benefit them. Then I would cover price and timing but never really addressed the first two above.

I decided, just for the heck of it, to change my presentation. I practiced it a little bit and then started using it the next week when I went out on my first appointment with a potential client. The results were instantaneous and  remarkable. My close rate shot up to 85%. I could not believe it.

Since then, I have been ruthless with my clients, ensuring that they are doing the 5 steps, in sequence, and drilling them on it until they are very comfortable with the process.

You can achieve the same results with a little practice!

I want  to clarify a few points with regard to selling. It is very important to understand what you are doing and what your prospective client is looking for. With that in mind, please review the following:

What does selling mean?

• Selling is … ‘The act of assisting, inducing or being responsible for a person buying a product, service, property or idea.’

What do customers or clients expect from a sales person?

1. Trust
2. Dedication
3. Help

(The above was taken from Training and Development magazine, Dec. 1992)

I don’t know about you, but I have interacted with a lot of salespeople in the past 15 years and all of them, every last one, wanted to help people and derived a special sense of accomplishment from having done so. Don’t get me wrong, they all wanted to make money from the sale or close, but the thing that made them feel best was the sense that they had helped another accomplish their goal or objective.

Most of them have been very dedicated to making this happen.

I want to clarify what dedication was, for the record.

The Oxford English dictionary states that dedication means, ‘the quality of being dedicated or committed to a task or purpose.’

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes a sales person may get frustrated with a clients lack of ability to make a decision or they may waiver in completing the task at hand but most will push things through to a done when they are working with a client they like and respect.

But the trick is to establish trust. That is what the prospect wants most. Top salespeople sell confidence. Trust is the first buying factor! A client or customer will give you his or her money to the degree he trusts YOU!

Success does NOT depend on sales techniques but on the very unique attitude you have which reflects your desire to help, serve and protect that customer.

There are five qualities which can be detected in top salespeople:

1. Dedication/Intention to help others
2. Honesty
3. Persistence
4. Loyalty
5. Enthusiasm

(The above was taken from the New York Sales Club materials)

So, I think we can all agree that #1 above is a great quality that all top sales people have.

#2 is imperative as a person who is not honest with himself or his clients will eventually find a way to sabotage himself so he is not hurting others.

#3 seldom gets much play as many of the not so great sales people I have run in to have a real fear of pushing their clients. But the top pro’s have no such back-off and continue to gently nudge the client toward a purchase as they feel it is the best thing for their client.

Ultimately this is what the client is paying you for, to help them get past their resistance which they know is destructive to their  goals but is nonetheless real to them.

#4 (Loyalty) is another good one to define:  ‘a strong feeling of support or allegiance.’ A client is very happy when we demonstrate strong support for them and their goals or objectives. It engenders support from them, in kind.

And, of course, #5 enthusiasm. Any purchase can lead to a snag or road block, the client needs you to weather these occasional storms nicely and keep them ‘up’ about their ability to achieve their goal.

Top salespeople all share a common purpose: to help others be happy and succeed!