Basic Sales Skills Help You Sell More in Any Market
It’s time for a quick mental checkup. This article will take 3 minutes to read, but it will be well worth your time.
Where is the market going? Up, down, staying the same? Who knows? I certainly don’t.
But that’s not the question we should be asking in any event. Sales skills should not be market-dependent. After all, If you need a great market to be a great salesperson, what does a bad market make you?
Instead, it’s time to make sure that the most basic of sales skills are always at the ready. There are fundamentals that are timeless across every market condition.
What are they?
Fully Engaged Connection
It all begins with attitude. The fact is that customers buy most readily when the emotion is strong and positive. It is critical to understand that emotion is adopted and adaptable. So it is up to you to set the emotional tone.
I’m not talking sappy or syrupy; I’m just talking about being your best positive self. This is a decision that gets made before we talk to the customer for the first time. The opening 30 seconds is critical to everything that happens next period.
In fact, If you show me the opening 30 seconds of a presentation, I can tell you with about 95% certainty how the remainder of that conversation is about to go.
Time for a checkup. How strong is your positive emotion at the beginning of the sales conversation?
Discovering the Motivation
I have said for years that the single most important question in all of sales is the motivation question. There is nothing more important for you to ascertain than why the customer is there in the first place.
How smooth is your delivery of this critical question? If there is one technique that has to be gotten right, it’s this. Record the question and listen to it again. Is it smooth?? Is it natural? Is it delivered with a desire to serve rather than sell?
Appreciation of Objections
That’s right, appreciate the objection. Top performers understand that the very presence of an objection is an indication that a customer is seriously leaning towards a purchase decision. In fact, show me a buyer without an objection and I’ll show you a non-buyer.
How enthusiastic are you when it comes to helping the customer to solve their problem? This is where top performers shine.
Establishing a Decision-Making Rhythm
I suppose I could have just said “closing,” but I like the idea of closing as a progression rather than a single moment in time. It is so much easier to make one big decision if you’ve already made scores of small decisions all along the way.
You are not simply trying to hear from your customer as to whether or not they like this or appreciate that. Far more important is that they have agreed with themselves that there is value present.
If you want to make it easy for a customer to buy, stop relying on that one huge closing question at the end of the process. Establish a decision-making rhythm, a series of agreement questions that get the customer in the yes mindset.
Check-Up Time
Now it’s time for some brutal honesty. Look at those four things. What deserves your attention? Where can you focus in order to return to the most basic aspects of sales success?
Get this right, and you can change someone’s world!
