Weekly Sales Tips with Alen Mayer

To be successful in closing, you must have the will to win. Selling is a win-win situation or it’s a lose-lose situation. There is no “fence-sitting” involved here. It’s all or nothing, and adopting a winner’s attitude will take you far along the road to success.

Closing should not be a separate event from the rest of your presentation – it should be integrated into the proposal and it should flow naturally and easily. But, just like the rest of the process, closing should be planned. There are many closing techniques and you need to master them and keep them stored away for future use.

The secret of successful closing is not in the technique that you will use, but to know when to close.

The Trial Close asks for an opinion and not a decision. Listen to learn more.

If you base your offer on your price only, there is a good chance that someone will have a lower price than you, or you can end up in the bidding war that distracts from solutions. To avoid that, base your proposal on achieving more goals for your prospects, not just to save money because every other salesperson will say exactly the same.

The customer wants to see the value, not in your product; he wants to get the value from your solution to their business problem. They must perceive the unique value from you. If they cannot differentiate you from the competition, there is no reason to buy from you.

Probably you can’t differentiate much with your product, I am sure you have some unique features, but your competition has them too. Customers today can easily substitute your product with the one from your competition and still be satisfied.

So how can you differentiate? Listen to learn more.

If your offer is based only on price, there is a good chance that someone else will have a lower price than you; and you are prone to becoming involved in a bidding war that distracts from solutions. To avoid that, base your proposal on achieving more goals for your prospects, instead of just saving them money. By doing this you will set yourself apart from the rest of the salespeople who base their offers on price alone.

In the presentation, you lead your prospect step by step through the successive stages of conviction to the point of desire. Right there is where the order is yours for the taking. But to get it you’ve got to take it.

There’s no secret about being able to tell when your prospect feels kindly towards your proposition. Watch the prospect closely. And the minute they begin to sway your way you can tell it just as surely as you can feel heat and cold upon your body. And that minute is the right time to try to take the order.

Stop selling and start closing.

Many sales reps struggle with objections from their clients. One of the most common is that dreaded phrase: “I don’t have the money, and right now I just can’t afford it.” At this point, many sales reps give up and tell the client to call when they do have the money, which is usually never.

However, there are a few time-proven methods that sales reps can use to overcome this objection. Here are five of them.

If you’ve been in sales any length of time, you are familiar with objections. They stand in the way of your goal; closing a sale. The path to success lies in how to handle objections effectively. Being able to turn a negative viewpoint into a positive profit is a transaction salesperson and consumers will mutually benefit from. The techniques outlined below can help you identify, address, and nullify objections that keep you from making sales.

Task one: mental preparation and personal perception matter, so make them a priority.

Objections to price are the most frequent of all objections. Your ability to meet these successfully is a valuable asset, and being efficient in sales is impossible without it. It is so important that every sales manager should take special efforts to see that each member of his sales force is able to meet successfully price objections.

Price objections can be divided into three classes. Listen to this podcast to learn more.

Closing is so often regarded as the most difficult part of the selling process. But this should never be the case! Getting the order from a prospect whose interest and desire have been secured and whose objections have been effectively eliminated should simply be the next logical step in the process.

There is a law of human nature referred to as the “continuity of action”. The continuity of action is more powerful in leading to new acts than any other process.

This means that if you want your prospect to do a certain thing, the best way is to start him doing something. Get him involved in some sort of action, and then it’s easy for him to switch to another action; such as signing an order.

In one of my previous sales tips (“The difference between excuse and objection”) I was talking about how we need to make a clear distinction between a genuine objection versus excuses and postponements. Today I will take this conversation one step further.

When it comes to selling, what, exactly, is an objection? If we can truly understand what we’re dealing with when a prospect makes an objection, then it will be easier to handle and use to your advantage in the appropriate situation.

Not all objections should be received as a negative blow to your sales presentation.

In fact, with the exception of two very specific objections, most others can be dealt with effectively and are actually a positive sign that your client is showing some interest.

There is a factor in selling which few men seem to have recognized; yet it is a block over which we stumble time and time again, when by

knowing that it was there we could just as easily walk around it.

This stumbling block is this: The average person’s instinctive antagonism to being sold.

Here’s the way to overcome that instinctive antagonism to being sold the quick way:

Forget forever that there is such a thing as forcing your business on the other: put yourself in their place and start right – working with the potential buyer to find out how their business will be benefited by your proposition.

It is not true that new products are manufactured to supply the demand.

There is no demand. Both the demand and the goods have to be manufactured. The public has always held fast to its old-fashioned discomforts until the salesperson persuaded it to let go.

The truth is that we, salespeople, have done more for progress and civilization than anyone imagines. We have done more than all the colleges to develop the peasantry of Europe into enterprising American citizens.

We have transformed the “Man with the Hoe” into the person with the computer.

We have given to general public the radiator for the fireplace, the automobile for the push-cart, the computer and voice recognition for the quill pen.

We have put more comforts into everyone’s homes than the king used to have in his palace.

The main thing about selling is to make people want to buy. A selling atmosphere must be created, and if you fail to do that – you will not sell. Simple as that. The professional salesperson makes the customers realize they want what is being offered.

Let this sink in deeply. The order-taker is prospecting for people who want to buy.

However, the professional salesperson tries to make every person he or she calls on wants to buy.

The order-taker accepts the advantage of the situation he or she finds. But the order maker, a professional salesperson creates specialized situations to suit his purpose.

One of the things that gives hope and courage to men and women who study the structure of the mind, is the fact that the brain tissues may be altered with much greater ease and to a far greater extent than other bodily tissues. Every thought wears a path in the tissues of the brain. Constant thinking builds up the brain at a marvelous rate.

In order to indicate to the salesperson the great scope of psychology in selling, here is a list of some of the important topics in mind-study.

Why is it that one person will so easily change our whole mental attitude and make us do voluntarily the very thing that we had no idea of doing an hour before, and thought we never could do, when another might have talked to us until doomsday about the same thing, and never changed our mind regarding it?

Why is it that one person will convince us that we ought to buy a product (or service) which we were sure a few minutes before that we not only did not need or desire, but under no circumstances would buy? Because she is a master of the gentle art of persuasion. Learn more by listening to this podcast.

People fear they will take cold, and they take cold. They fear they will be sick, and they are sick. Sometimes they are afraid they are not well thought of, and that perhaps is as great a fear as any. People are afraid they are not going to own as much as someone else. The fear of failure is upon them, and the fear of failure produces failure. The person who makes money the most easily is the one who is not anxious to the point of insanity.

Your mission as a sales person should be to find companies that have immediate wants and needs. This means that something happened or is happening to them – a move, a merger, new investors, etc. You have to look for any event that might create the opportunity for you, or better said you are looking for event that can trigger the sales for you. 

If you try to make a sale without necessary information about your customers, you are just shooting blanks in the air, hoping to hit something. With full information about your prospects situation you will be able to sell easier, and that is the main purpose of this podcast – to help you to find your next customer in a much easier way for you, and yet maintain a professional, knowledgeable approach.

"All needs are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." - Alen Mayer

To see a fresh approach about how to handle objections during a sales presentation, smart sales professionals can take lessons from smart politicians. You share a lot of goals with them, but they have one big drawback that most marketers never face; the politician has nothing real to give the person at the time he is seeking something quite real from them, like money, votes and support.  

 If your prospect does not see the value in your product or service, and if the only difference between you and the competitors is in pricing, you didn’t do a good job as a sales person. The main description of your position inside the company is to create the value, not just to show your price list. Teaching and educating customers is no longer enough, giving them information about your products or services is no longer necessary. They can get them by themselves, without ever talking to you or your company, and know more about your product and positioning on the market then you. If they know so much about you, how can you try to sell them the same product without knowing their business situation or their needs?