Your Best Sales Advice
February 8, 2010 10:39 PM Subscribe
I have owned a small B2B business for the past three years. It is basically a one-man operation though I have a few part-time employees. I am pretty good at everything, except for one thing: sales. I suck at sales. The way I am currently doing my sales is I send sales letters to people I know are interested in our services and then follow up with them via email or the phone. I'm not bad at writing sales letters, but when it comes to closing the deal, I always have a hard time. With the recent economic downturn, our profits have dropped and I need to drastically improve my sales.
If you have any experience selling to people, what have you learned? Anything applicable in the slightest would be very helpful!
Best answer: I've sold over $90 million worth of industrial equipment, chemicals and business services in the last 30 years, and I love the "Always Be Closing" crowd, as much as I love any other particular school of Power Closers.
But you know what?
Selling is simply finding where your product/services fit, why they fit, and at what maximum price they make sense. When your proposition makes sense to the person who must agree to pay, in terms of benefit/risk/price, they'll generally say OK (need for Divine advice/approval entirely excepted, as recounted by bigmusic. You're on your own, when God himself is in the approval chain, as far as I can help you.). When all that is down on paper, if you can still make an acceptable profit, you say "OK."
If you can't make a profit, you take it all back to your Biz Dev/Engineering/Product Dev folks, as "Future Market Potential."
I'm really opposed to the advice from hal_c_on that you delegate sales responsibilites, entirely. In any period where your sales are suffering, you, as the CEO of your business, have to stay in touch with your customers and prospects, to best understand your market. That doesn't mean that you can't bring on new and better sales resources, but it does mean that you have to remain engaged with your customers, as you do. And frankly, from what you write, you're just shy.
Customers, even in this Internet age, will deliver their best and worst news, most easily, face to face. It sounds like you, even as CEO, are afraid of "face time." But, in troubled business relationships, nothing means more to customers, than the personal attention of the CEO of any important vendor. If you, as the top of the chain of your company, can't or won't come see their issues/problems/pain, they maybe/are justified in thinking you don't deserve their business.
Never let an account slip, without a personal face to face meeting, or at least, a personal video conference, with the CEO of your customer, if you can get it, in these difficult economic times. If you are losing business, it is worth your while, still, to pinpoint exactly why, be it price, service level, quality, etc. There is always a reason a customer makes a change in vendors, and you must understand what those reasons are, customer by customer, to stem the tide of business loss in difficult markets. It takes, generally, 10x the time and money to get new business, as it does to retain current business, so you can't let current business fall away, without explanation, and response from you.
If your sales are falling, you, as CEO, have to adjust your business model accordingly. If you can't get more accounts to offset lost volume, or increase your prices to remaining accounts for better margins, you have to take measures to lower your own overhead, however painful. Folly is to simply keep on with what you've been doing, and curse your own flaws as a sales executive, while your own company becomes insolvent.
posted by paulsc at 2:25 AM on February 9, 2010 [7 favorites]
But you know what?
Selling is simply finding where your product/services fit, why they fit, and at what maximum price they make sense. When your proposition makes sense to the person who must agree to pay, in terms of benefit/risk/price, they'll generally say OK (need for Divine advice/approval entirely excepted, as recounted by bigmusic. You're on your own, when God himself is in the approval chain, as far as I can help you.). When all that is down on paper, if you can still make an acceptable profit, you say "OK."
If you can't make a profit, you take it all back to your Biz Dev/Engineering/Product Dev folks, as "Future Market Potential."
I'm really opposed to the advice from hal_c_on that you delegate sales responsibilites, entirely. In any period where your sales are suffering, you, as the CEO of your business, have to stay in touch with your customers and prospects, to best understand your market. That doesn't mean that you can't bring on new and better sales resources, but it does mean that you have to remain engaged with your customers, as you do. And frankly, from what you write, you're just shy.
Customers, even in this Internet age, will deliver their best and worst news, most easily, face to face. It sounds like you, even as CEO, are afraid of "face time." But, in troubled business relationships, nothing means more to customers, than the personal attention of the CEO of any important vendor. If you, as the top of the chain of your company, can't or won't come see their issues/problems/pain, they maybe/are justified in thinking you don't deserve their business.
Never let an account slip, without a personal face to face meeting, or at least, a personal video conference, with the CEO of your customer, if you can get it, in these difficult economic times. If you are losing business, it is worth your while, still, to pinpoint exactly why, be it price, service level, quality, etc. There is always a reason a customer makes a change in vendors, and you must understand what those reasons are, customer by customer, to stem the tide of business loss in difficult markets. It takes, generally, 10x the time and money to get new business, as it does to retain current business, so you can't let current business fall away, without explanation, and response from you.
If your sales are falling, you, as CEO, have to adjust your business model accordingly. If you can't get more accounts to offset lost volume, or increase your prices to remaining accounts for better margins, you have to take measures to lower your own overhead, however painful. Folly is to simply keep on with what you've been doing, and curse your own flaws as a sales executive, while your own company becomes insolvent.
posted by paulsc at 2:25 AM on February 9, 2010 [7 favorites]
Best answer: I used to know a guy (my first boss in IT, basically) who said something like "I could sell ice to eskimoes, provided I thought they needed the ice." I think being motivated is key to selling -- if you have any doubts about what you are offering, they will surface in your negotiations with prospects.
Another thing to look at (I know it's been mentioned here before) is Cialdini's book, and of course there are a huge number of books about how to sell, how to market your business, etc. Personally I find the psychology of it fascinating.
As someone who now buys more than sells, the things that make a difference to me are:
posted by BrokenEnglish at 2:30 AM on February 9, 2010 [2 favorites]
Another thing to look at (I know it's been mentioned here before) is Cialdini's book, and of course there are a huge number of books about how to sell, how to market your business, etc. Personally I find the psychology of it fascinating.
As someone who now buys more than sells, the things that make a difference to me are:
- Someone who has something I need.
- Someone who is polite but persistent. If I say I'm not interested, I expect them to stop pestering me, but I don't mind a follow-up call a while later.
- Someone who delivers as soon as possible after I place the order. Fulfillment is also part of your sales process.
- Someone who talks to me like a person rather than a prospect to be taken through a sales script. Robo-sales people are the bane of my life.
- Someone who goes the extra mile(s) to help solve my problems. For example, we recently bought UKP30K's worth of netbooks from the only company prepared to work hard enough to put Windows XP Pro on them: the others only offered XP Home. That company is now a preferred supplier because of their hard work.
posted by BrokenEnglish at 2:30 AM on February 9, 2010 [2 favorites]
Read the book SPIN Selling - it'll help a lot. As mentioned above, sales really just boils down to finding people that have problems that your product or service can solve. It sounds like you are doing that part ok, but just can't close the deal? That simply means that the prospects are not convinced that the pain of changing how they do things today by buying from you is worth the time or money involved. Now, that could be because the customer is right - your product really doesn't solve their problem to the degree necessary to motivate them to make the change. If that is the case you don't have a sales problem...
Assuming your product or service is everything you believe it is, then it sounds to me like the issue is that you aren't communicating the value of your service. There are no magic questions in sales, but one thing you want to do is to get the customer to verbalize the implications of doing nothing. In this economy, the status quo is your usually your biggest competitor. Doing nothing always sounds like the cheapest solution, but we all know that in reality doing nothing can often cost you a lot more in the not so long run. You need to ask questions to get to that issue - how much will it cost to do nothing. Hopefully your service costs less than doing nothing, or reduces costs / increases revenue enough to make moving forward with you an easy decision.
Good luck!
posted by COD at 5:58 AM on February 9, 2010
Assuming your product or service is everything you believe it is, then it sounds to me like the issue is that you aren't communicating the value of your service. There are no magic questions in sales, but one thing you want to do is to get the customer to verbalize the implications of doing nothing. In this economy, the status quo is your usually your biggest competitor. Doing nothing always sounds like the cheapest solution, but we all know that in reality doing nothing can often cost you a lot more in the not so long run. You need to ask questions to get to that issue - how much will it cost to do nothing. Hopefully your service costs less than doing nothing, or reduces costs / increases revenue enough to make moving forward with you an easy decision.
Good luck!
posted by COD at 5:58 AM on February 9, 2010
Response by poster: Thanks for the advice so far, guys! I will put it to good use. I loved bigmusic's always be closing dialogue.
A little more info on the company: We generally sell to start-up, small businesses, and non-profits. Our service is more expensive than many of our competitors, but below the market mean. Our services is better than all our competitors and I always point out the reasons to the perspective customers. They do seem impressed, but generally decide on getting the cheap--both in quality and price--service of a low-quality competitor.
I understand trying to save money during these hard economic times, but it seems that people are either under-valuing the cost of the service and/or are deciding that it is not worth the cost to purchase from us.
I think the final reason people do not make a purchase is because they are lazy. To make a purchase they need to sign and fax/email us our contract and also manually pay their invoice on our website. I will try to apply the always be closing advice and get their credit card number right off the phone, but the contract is a different story.
posted by 1awesomeguy at 10:34 AM on February 9, 2010
A little more info on the company: We generally sell to start-up, small businesses, and non-profits. Our service is more expensive than many of our competitors, but below the market mean. Our services is better than all our competitors and I always point out the reasons to the perspective customers. They do seem impressed, but generally decide on getting the cheap--both in quality and price--service of a low-quality competitor.
I understand trying to save money during these hard economic times, but it seems that people are either under-valuing the cost of the service and/or are deciding that it is not worth the cost to purchase from us.
I think the final reason people do not make a purchase is because they are lazy. To make a purchase they need to sign and fax/email us our contract and also manually pay their invoice on our website. I will try to apply the always be closing advice and get their credit card number right off the phone, but the contract is a different story.
posted by 1awesomeguy at 10:34 AM on February 9, 2010
Always Be Closing... You have to go 3:15 to the ABC part.
Seriously though:
- Yes, always ask for the business.
- Give them only 2-3 choices though based on their needs. Listen to what they need and then give them a low, middle and high choice with different service options. Many times they will go for the middle one, but plan for all of them to make you a profit.
- Small Businesses aren't run by lazy people. They just need to make sure they are spending their money wisely to grow their business.
Good luck! Based on your question and your response I suspect that are actually a great sales guy, but that your expectation of presentations vs sales is not right. You think you should close more sales than you do, but actually you need to simply make more appeals for money.
Send me an email through Metafilter if you would like more specific help.
posted by SantosLHalper at 9:16 PM on February 9, 2010 [1 favorite]
Seriously though:
- Yes, always ask for the business.
- Give them only 2-3 choices though based on their needs. Listen to what they need and then give them a low, middle and high choice with different service options. Many times they will go for the middle one, but plan for all of them to make you a profit.
- Small Businesses aren't run by lazy people. They just need to make sure they are spending their money wisely to grow their business.
Good luck! Based on your question and your response I suspect that are actually a great sales guy, but that your expectation of presentations vs sales is not right. You think you should close more sales than you do, but actually you need to simply make more appeals for money.
Send me an email through Metafilter if you would like more specific help.
posted by SantosLHalper at 9:16 PM on February 9, 2010 [1 favorite]
"...I suspect that you are actually a great sales guy..."
posted by SantosLHalper at 9:29 PM on February 9, 2010
posted by SantosLHalper at 9:29 PM on February 9, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
So your pitch might go something like this:
How is your business in Y doing?
- Oh it's doing A, B, C
Really? Have you thought about how X can help A?
-That's interesting!
Well we can set you up today with X. What is your CC#?
-Not really interested right now in X.
Where don't you think X meets your needs?
-Well B and C.
X is head and shoulders above Y at B. Would you like to try out X?
-Well no, because of C.
Of course we understand you have concerns about C, but let use ease your mind with an introductory offer for X. It will only take a few minutes to get you started. What vendor account number should we use?
-Well to tell you the truth. I really need to ask God for guidance on this one and pray about it.
I totally, understand. Let me pray with about it right now.
....
I've had that last part happen to me actually. I didn't offer to pray with them, but I did follow up. Always follow up, always ask questions that get them in the process of closing. Good Luck!
posted by bigmusic at 12:55 AM on February 9, 2010 [2 favorites]