Why recruit a woman into your team? What selling skills can she really bring?

These types of questions have been hotly debated for many years, not just in sales, but in the whole field of business. And of course, many reasoned and well-thought out justifications for the presence of women in business have been presented and argued.

Reasons such as ‘women are better listeners’, ‘women are needed to interpret the female consumers’ desires’, and ‘women can use their empathy to build client relationships’, to name just a few.

But there is a big problem with this situation…

By even entering into a discussion about the economic and business benefits women can bring, we are implicitly agreeing that, were these economic benefits proved insufficient, it would be acceptable to rationalise excluding women from the workplace. The fundamental truth that women and men should have equal treatment in the workplace should really be all we need to convince us in this day and age.

What we need is to forget the idea of ‘Saleswoman’ and ‘Salesman’, which assume that each will bring a specific skill set based on their supposed biologically inherent strengths and weaknesses.

The realm of sales, in particular, has traditionally masculine connotations – much as the methods and mindsets have changed since the days of the 1950′s slick-haired car salesman, it remains a field which uses rhetoric playing on masculine stereotypes, such as ‘hunting’ business, ‘seducing’ clients, ‘beating’ the competition and a adopting a ‘ruthless’ manner.

One recent sales manual even compares winning a client’s business to convincing a woman to date you, confidently explaining that all women want promises of security and protection. Any successful business woman reading this kind of ‘advice’ is not likely to identify with such thinking, and is placed firmly outside the expected audience: the heterosexual, red-blooded, un-empathetic male. Indeed, this stereotype is unlikely to resonate with many male readers either, or really anyone who has had any contact with the modern world.

When women are addressed in sales literature, it is often suggested that the problems they experience are self-inflicted, and that with a little more effort they can be on a par with their male counterparts. The fact that women are working in an environment often structurally hostile to them is swept under the carpet. It is the responsibility of, and to the benefit of, everyone to ensure gender biases are mercilessly uncovered and rooted out.

Reference to biological stereotypes is a barrier to a healthy work environment and a successful team performance. The recognition of the individual talents and potential of team members beyond their gender opens up a wealth of possibilities for new approaches to selling in a rapidly changing marketplace. Men and women, alike, cannot perform optimally when they feel they have to fit into an expectation of their skills which they don’t identify with, and a traditionally masculine Sales environment does exactly this.

Written by: Steve Eungblut, Managing Director of Sterling Chase

But, as a sales person, what might not be so clear is exactly how this applies to you and your bottom line.

The online world is often seen as the remit of marketers and PR strategists, who are already intelligently using social media, social networks and many other online forums with great success. But, in sales too, these tools have become invaluable for finding, negotiating, winning and keeping business.

If you hadn’t considered the many benefits that the Internet can have on your sales performance (aside from the use of email and Google!), let us give you some food for thought…

1. Finding new business – The sheer quantity of information available on the internet is staggering. These days you can find out almost anything you want to know at the click of a button. You should use the Internet to seek out people who might be interested in doing business with you and raise your profile with clients.

Joining a Twitter conversation and becoming part of an interest group on LinkedIn are just two ways in which you can make contact with individuals and businesses. Remember that, outside of work, people use social networking in their own time. By raising your profile on sites like Facebook, you can have a trickle through effect on their professional lives.

Similarly, some people prefer using web messengers and live chat functions to communicate because they are less formal and easy to use, so keep these channels open. Increasing your web presence through writing a blog is another simple way of making your business seem current and interesting.

2. The sales pitch – Make use of the many hundreds of forums that are out there to find out what people think of products (or similar products). Whether they are positive or negative, you can use this information to counter objections or concerns before they are even raised by addressing them in your sales pitch.

Internet forums are unique resources that can allow you to see what is really going on in the customer’s head. They are a source of honest feedback that you just can’t get from direct calls or meetings. Knowing and predicting what your potential customer wants and cares about – and aligning your product’s features directly to these concerns and desires – is what makes a good sales pitch great.

3. Negotiating your win – When negotiating with a prospect, there is a good chance that they will have done their research on you to work out how to play the negotiation in their favour. You need to counter this informational leverage by doing some research of your own.

Use LinkedIn to connect with your contacts who are in the same industry to ask for advice, to pull some strings, or to praise your work ethic the next time they see the decision maker. You should also make sure that your online presence tells a story about you that you want to convey – do you want to be seen as tough and unforgiving or conciliatory and friendly? Your reputation can precede you ahead of meetings, and you want to use this to your advantage.

4. Building client relationships – Once you have won their business, don’t simply forget about them! Winning a new client should be viewed as the beginning of a working partnership which has the potential to yield more business in the future so long as you keep the client satisfied.

Communicating with, and involving, your client on a day-to-day basis will let them know that they are still important to you, and the Internet is the easiest place to do this. It doesn’t have to be anything big. Simply mentioning your client in a Twitter post can mean publicity for them and a positive reference for you, for example. Keep an eye on what your customer’s business is doing through social media feeds and by taking a look at their website every now and then. This will help you to constantly be on the look out for new ventures that you can involve yourself in.

Written by: Steve Eungblut, Managing Director of Sterling Chase

It is no longer enough to rely on old, tried-and-tested sales techniques while your competitors are out there forging relationships and building trust with clients using new, innovative methods. By moving with the flow of customer preferences, they are taking responsibility for winning sales and retaining business.

One of the most noticeable trends in consumer demand in recent years has been the rise in ethical considerations when choosing a product or service. Awareness of issues such as climate change, fair trade and sustainability has led to more probing questions about a business’s environmental and social responsibilities – and impressive responses can directly lead to better sales and an enhanced corporate reputation.

Of course, business ethics is not a new concept – many companies have adhered to a code of ethics for many years. Common examples include the adoption of corporate codes of conduct, labour laws, equality practices and policies that incentivise employees to maintain respectful client relationships.

But these days, people are looking for businesses to actively stride towards golden ethical standards. Examples of the dangers of unethical selling are everywhere – just look at how the irresponsible selling of sub-prime mortgages contributed towards the current global financial crisis, or how controversies over Nike’s use of sweatshop labour caused global damage to the brand and sales.

Here are our 4 top tips to help you increase your sales while boosting your brand’s ethical image:

1. Respect the customer – When selling, make the most of your customer-facing role to become the personable and likeable face of the brand you represent. Going that extra mile will demonstrate commitment, while actively listening to their individual concerns will help you tailor your product or service to their needs.

2. Act with integrity – Ethics in marketing your product is paramount for the short and long term success of your business. Remember, nobody wants to hear promises that you can’t keep and – if you do promise more than you can deliver – the customer will find out sooner or later. This will do your reputation no favours. Be realistic and honest with your clients, and trust in your abilities as a sales person to put a positive spin on anything.

3. Promote your ethical efforts – When delivering your sales pitch, use your knowledge of the product’s ethical features or your company’s ethical activities to your advantage. Is the product energy efficient? Is your company involved in community projects? All this information can be used to steer the negotiations away from just price because it appeals to both the client’s business and moral senses.

4. Be a team player – Supporting your colleagues and creating a motivated work environment can help build trust and communication. For your clients, this means a flawless service (even when staff are on leave) that keeps them informed with the most up-to-date information. Sharing sales techniques that have and haven’t worked with your colleagues, including the best ways to include ethical selling points, will lead to more efficient strategies and business success.

Written by: Steve Eungblut, Managing Director of Sterling Chase

But what next?

Sales presentations can fill the best of us with dread and pinning down exactly what makes a successful one is a frustrating and often fruitless task.

There is usually a lot riding on the outcome and this pressure is combined with the crisis in confidence that many people suffer when faced with public speaking or an audience of successful business people.

But it doesn’t have to be like this – presenting can be your new best friend if you let it. The spoken word is a powerful medium through which to convey your message and, luckily for us, we practice it every day.

The adage ‘Knowledge is Power‘ is never more relevant than when you’re standing in front of a crowd of potential customers who are impatient to hear exactly how you plan to improve their lives. They want to hear what you have to tell them because, to them, you represent an opportunity. Armed with the right knowledge, you can ensure that you pull off your presentations with ease, confidence and success.

1. Know your audience

The key to delivering relevant and captivating content is knowing everything you can about your prospective clients. What problems are they looking to solve with your product or service? What do they expect from the presentation? Who else are they considering giving the business to? Will decision makers be present?

Find out exactly what is expected from your sales presentation in terms of content and focus. Also, learn what their specific business needs are while ensuring that you are equipped with enough background knowledge of their industry to show a real understanding of their world.

If possible and appropriate, make contact with members of the audience prior to the presentation. This will help you build rapport and casts you in a positive light before the presentation has even begun. Find out as much as you can from these people. By familiarising yourself with the audience through human contact, the presentation should become much less daunting. Try to also gauge the audience’s level of prior knowledge of your product or service to avoid patronising and confusing them.

2. Know the context

Don’t forget the practical side of things! Find out in advance how long your slot is, the size of the audience, the room layout and how long you have to set everything up. This will help you to show up fully prepared with all the logistical things dealt with, enabling you to focus fully on your content and allowing you to mentally prepare yourself with no distractions.

Know the background to the meeting. Is it the initial or final stage of the sales process? Who has set the presentation up and why did the potential clients agree to attend? Is your audience’s existing relationship with (or perception of) your company positive or negative?

3. Know what you’re offering

All your preparations should have led you to a point where you can pinpoint what you want your audience to remember by the end of your sales presentation – this should be a small number of key, memorable messages.

It goes without saying that you should know as much as possible about your proposition, but it is crucial that you take the extra step that prepares you to match your offering directly to your audience’s needs and desires. Don’t bombard them with statistics, evidence or the features of your product. Rather, you should include enough information to make your claims credible while having additional information at hand in case you need to deal with queries at the end of the presentation.

4. Know your style

No one knows how you work better than you do, so build on this self-knowledge to prepare appropriately. Do you perform best when you keep the stakes firmly in sight, or do you like to keep the pressure off to maintain a level head and a calm composure? How do you deal with nerves? Do you prefer working from a script or freestyling with a few prompts?

Creating the best possible mindset that allows you to clearly convey your key messages is the goal here – and this is all within your control. Know your weaknesses, but don’t dwell on them. Practice with colleagues, get feedback and predict questions. As long as you come across as professional, confident and direct, anything goes!

Written by: Steve Eungblut, Managing Director of Sterling Chase

Negotiations often take place at the buyer’s workplace over the course of several meetings, eating into valuable time that could otherwise be spent closing more sales.

Worse, most buyers keep their options open by negotiating with multiple sellers, while many schedule negotiations to coincide with the selling company’s end of quarter or end of year – when they know that sellers will be under increased pressure to meet their targets.

Buyers also tend to be recruited for their ability to withhold their emotions and keep their cool when under pressure.

Unless the buying organisation has a desperate need for the selling organisation’s solution, the buyer is therefore likely to hold a significant advantage over the seller when it comes to negotiating the final agreement.

But negotiation need not be such a challenging task. After all, so long as the selling company offers explicit value to the buyer, the negotiation process should involve two parties working together to reach a mutually beneficial outcome (i.e. a “win win”). Since both the buyer and the seller should stand to benefit from the deal, why should the ball be in the buyer’s court?

To even the odds and achieve a win win outcome, preparation and a willingness to give something away to get something in return is crucial. A failure to do so is likely to result in one of two scenarios: a) the negotiation (and potentially the entire relationship) will break down as the buyer will feel that you have wasted their time; or b) you will be compelled to provide a discount that seriously squeezes your margins and jeopardises your ability to hit your targets.

Be Prepared

Buyers usually have a good idea of how much they are willing to pay for your solution before entering the meeting room. But most are going to make every effort to negotiate a deal that is priced below this figure.

This means that you need to come to the negotiating table prepared, with a detailed understanding of:

• The tangible value your offer represents to the buyer and the extent to which it is unique.
• How urgent realising that value is to the buyer and when the deadline is for that realisation.
• What your company and the buyer must achieve from the contract over and above the price (such as terms and service levels).
• How you will respond to the buyer’s opening position, posturing and potential strategies.

If the buyer suddenly wants a discount on a price or wants to change a condition that you thought had already been agreed earlier in the sales process, you should be prepared to question why the buyer has changed his or her position. If it’s a new demand or objection you must seek to understand the underlying motives before responding.

By probing for clarification in an assertive and calm manner, you will not only buy yourself time to consider how to respond, but you will also gain the buyer’s respect and gain more control of the proceedings. Pretending to be surprised when a demand is raised or grimacing can also show the buyer that conceding is going to be improbable.

You can counter price objections and put pressure on the buyer by asking if they would like to reduce the volume of the deal or remove service features in return for a lower price. You can also remind the buyer of the value of the deal from their own perspective, in terms of savings or meeting their objectives. Remind the buyer of any concessions you have already made and be prepared to call a timeout to consider your company’s position, even if you have to make a few calls to get second opinions.

Whatever you do, make sure you don’t respond to a request for a discount with a response such as “How much are we talking?” or “What price sounds good to you?” This will put the buyer in the driving seat, providing a clear signal that you are not in control of the negotiating process and that you are susceptible to discounting the price.

Getting and Giving Concessions

No matter how good your negotiation skills are and no matter how well you prepare, some buyers will still insist on trying to squeeze you on the terms of the contract.

In such cases you may need to consider giving the buyer a concession to move the deal forward. But this should only be considered within a predetermined limit and on the condition that you get a valuable concession in return from the buyer.

A valuable concession from the buyer may include signing the contract then and there. You might also request that you get a commitment to access additional opportunities across the buyer’s organisation or wider network in return for a price discount (but be careful to make sure this is a formal commitment – jam tomorrow should not be considered to be a sweetener for today). Alternatively, you might request that you receive a longer term commitment from the buyer in return for preferential services.

Requesting something in return for giving the buyer a concession should place you in a strong position to achieve a “win win” outcome where each party walks away with mutual benefits.

Although trading concessions can be a powerful accessory in your negotiation tool box, it should only be proposed as a last resort and only if you still expect to walk away with a valuable outcome. If this fails, the negotiation will most likely reach a deadlock, in which case you should be prepared to walk away from the meeting without signing the deal.

Politely and professionally calling the meeting to an end and agreeing to reconvene at another time sends out a message that you are not desperate. It also gives you and the buyer an opportunity to reflect on the negotiation, confer with peers, and put any unsettled issues into perspective.

Remember, it is important to stand strong and not give away too much otherwise the deal will not be seen as valuable and the buyer will see you as an easy target for a one-sided deal in the future. This will make it significantly more difficult for you to secure ‘good’ contracts (for both parties) from the client in the future.

Written by: Steve Eungblut, Managing Director of Sterling Chase

The key to achieving great sales results lies with an organisation’s sales people. This includes and begins with having a great sales leader who is capable of leading his or her sales force towards greater performance.

But what makes a great sales leader?

While all great sales leaders are individuals with their own techniques and strategies, in this article we take a look at the traits and characteristics that are common in most great sales leaders.

1. A Strong Mindset

In today’s tough business environment, great sales leaders need to have a tough and resilient mindset to be successful. Acquiring new and retaining existing customers has never been more difficult in these harsh economic times. This means that sales leaders need to be courageous and willing to take risks if their sales force is going to stand out from the crowd and drive performance.

2. Passionate

Great sales leaders are passionate about their sales team’s performance and have a positive attitude to their work. Their passion and positivity is contagious across the sales force and instils a desire in their sales people to chase and close down deals that provide a quantifiable step-change in the team’s performance.

3. Credible Vision

A leader inspires their people and stakeholders with a positive vision of where they are taking the company or division. The vision should describe a mix of aspirational performance levels and descriptions of what the experience will be like for employees, customers and competitors. The plan to get the company there should have a strong analysis of the marketplace and the company, should draw conclusions on opportunities, threats, strengths and weaknesses, and should lay out a set of clear and specific actions to reach the vision.

4. Agent of Change

Change is inevitable in any business environment. And with change comes new opportunities such as innovative new ideas, projects and clients. Unlike followers who tend to resist change, great sales leaders embrace change to take advantage of such new opportunities. Often, they have leadership models in place – such as Kotter’s 8-step change model – that help them to successfully plan and implement change within their sales force.

5. Listener

In an earlier post we talked about how important it is for sales people to listen to (rather than talk at) their customers in order to understand their world and draw out their specific needs and desires. The same is true for sales leaders. Effective sales leaders have a great understanding of their prospects’ needs because they take time to listen and take appropriate action.

6. Proactive

The best sales leaders are proactive and hard working individuals that are committed to getting the best out of their sales people. To build a successful sales team requires many hours of hard work and an action-oriented mindset to make your aspirations a reality. By setting a standard for commitment and effective action throughout the sales force, great sales leaders instil a proactive culture and attract the brightest and best sales people to their team.

7. Networking

Great sales leaders are great networkers. They build a diverse network of partners across multiple industries that have different skill sets to their own. By teaming up with firms that have experience and expertise in fields where they do not, these leaders are able to depend on these external partners without having to spend valuable parts of their budget on training or hiring new skills.

8. A Shift in Beliefs

Being a great sales leader involves challenging employees’ and one’s own beliefs that tend to otherwise limit behavioural scope and the team’s ability to realise shift in performance. By actively exposing and challenging their own beliefs and the beliefs of their people, great sales leaders are more capable of adapting to different situations and choosing the right responses to the challenges they face.

9. Compassionate

To be a great sales leader you should be people-oriented and have the ability to bring together a wide range of personalities and egos within a team. Like any team – whether it be in a business or sporting environment – a great leader will effectively resolve disputes and conflicts to ensure that there is a harmony within the team that, in turn, will prevent any distractions from the real objectives that are in place.

10. Delegation

Finally, great sales leaders delegate responsibility to members of the team rather than dictate. By sharing responsibilities, great leaders encourage their people to grow as both individuals and sales professionals.

Written by: Steve Eungblut, Managing Director of Sterling Chase

But several factors that are well within our control or influence can affect our sales performance. By paying attention to these areas and taking the appropriate actions, sales people can significantly improve their overall performance and, in turn, enhance their ability to hit sales targets.

Selling Activities & Skills

Each and every activity undertaken during the sales process has an impact on your overall sales performance. From the early stages of prospecting through to the later stages of negotiation, each activity will ultimately affect the number (and value) of sales that you successfully close.

This means that you can greatly improve your sales performance by paying attention to the individual selling skills and organisational skills that are required at each stage of the sales process. By scrutinising your sales activities more closely and focusing on the individual selling skills that you need to particularly focus on, you should be able to significantly improve your performance and ability to hit targets.

Psychological Factors

While it is somewhat obvious that your sales performance is affected by your approach to sales activities and individual selling skills, it is perhaps less obvious that a range of psychological factors also impact your ability to sell.

Your attitude towards colleagues and clients will most likely have a big impact on your performance. A lack of respect for your colleagues or clients or a negative underlying attitude towards them is likely to hinder your performance, for example.

Meanwhile, your professionalism and the behaviours you display will also play a significant role on your ability to sell. A great positive attitude, a self-motivated determination, and a strong set of professional behaviours and disciplines will help you to make buyers invest
their time, trust and money in you while feeling right about making that decision.

To achieve a real shift in your sales performance it is therefore critical that you pay attention to making improvements in your selling skills, organisational skills, your attitude towards others, you drive to get the right outcome, and your professional behaviour.

Written by: Steve Eungblut, Managing Director of Sterling Chase

But with the evolution of smart phone technology, there is now a plethora of mobile applications that can make the sales process much easier and less time consuming.

Here we look at 8 sales apps that will help to boost your sales productivity and effectiveness with just a few swipes of a touch pad.

Salesforce Mobile

Dubbed “the world’s #1 sales app”, Salesforce Mobile provides you with instant access to Salesforce products such as Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. Giving you the ability to access and update your CRM data from your mobile, this is the perfect app for spending less time in the office and more time out in the field doing what you do best – selling.

Salesforce Mobile Lite is free to download and works with any Salesforce product. Salesforce Mobile (full version) is also free to download but you need to be an ‘Unlimited’ customer, otherwise there is a fee involved. Salesforce packages range from between $5 per user per month (Contact Manager package) to $250 per user per month (‘Unlimited’ package). Given the large fees for the high-end packages, this app is not for the feint hearted. But you can sign up for a free trial to ‘test the water’ and make sure this is right for you.

Price: £3 to £178 per month

Dossier

This is a great application that will help any sales professional to get more organised and prepared for sales appointments. Dossier allows you to add notes, documents (including Office, iWork, PDF and Text/RTF documents), voice memos and images to contacts in your phone book and track events from your calender.

This means that you can have all the necessary client-specific information and documents to hand when you meet or contact your clients – saving a lot of time in the process. By linking notes and documents to your contacts and tracking events with you calender, this sales app enables you to build your own personal CRM system with ease, at a relatively low cost.

Price: £2.49

ScanBizCards

Gone are the days of rummaging in your pockets for that client’s business card that you misplaced. The ScanBizCards app allows you to scan business cards with your mobile on the spot and automatically adds the processed information to your contacts.

While many other apps on the market provide similar features, ScanBizCards is somewhat unique as it supports double sided business cards, allows you to add notes and send Linkedin invites to contacts, and you can automatically send intro emails with your own contact details to the contacts that you add. Although it does not always accurately detect all of the business card’s details, you can have the information sent for manual transcription for a fee of £0.12 per card to ensure 100% accuracy.

Price: £2.49

Handshake Sales Rep Order

This application is ideal for quickly taking sales orders when you’re at a trade show or on the road selling. All you need to do is add products to the app’s database, along with images and descriptions. You can then navigate with ease to your products (via SKU, name or category) when taking orders outside of the office.

Handshake Sales Rep Order is a real time saver, taking away the need to write orders by hand or pull out a hard copy of your prduct catalogue when selling outside of the office. This simple little app is also free, so you can download and discard it as you please!

Price: Free

SalesVu Point of Sale

SalesVu Point of Sale is a free, cloud-based app that can make many of your sales and other business activities a lot easier. As the name suggests, it is a point of sale app that allows you to carry out a number of sales-oriented functions, such as track cash and credit card payments, send email receipts to customers, post coupons on Facebook walls, and track your business performance through reports and graphs.

It also allows its US-based users to process credit card transactions for a flat rate fee of 2.7%. Unfortunately, however, this feature is yet to be available in other countries. Aside from this inconvenience for non-US users, this app has almost everything you need to stay organised and conduct your business activities when you’re out of the office.

Price: Free

Writeboard Lite: Collaborative Drawing

This app is great because it allows you to collaborate with colleagues from your own mobile device. Allowing two devices to draw simultaneously on the same interactive whiteboard,
Writeboard Lite: Collaborative Drawing is a much easier and more fun way of visualising and brainstorming ideas than more conventional methods. This app is particularly great to use on an iPad due to the larger screen size and, hence, bigger area in which you can formulate your ideas.

Another great alternative whiteboard app is ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard. Like Writeboard Lite, ShowMe is free but gives you the added functionality of being able to record voice-overs to make tutorials that can then be posted online.

Price: Free

Profit Story

Another simple little app that can help you with your sales activities and save you a lot of time is Profit Story. This app lets you input a few variables to calculate unit sell price, cost, gross profit margin, markup and break even. You can also use the app to make comparisons between existing prices and prospective prices.

Of course, you could do all the sums yourself or make a spreadsheet to perform the same function. But what’s the point when you can simply download this app for next to nothing, plug in a few numbers and have the relevant figures within seconds.

Price: £1.49

Written by: Steve Eungblut, Managing Director of Sterling Chase

While these observations can be useful for helping us in many aspects of everyday life, they are particularly relevant for successful sales people. This is because ‘active listening’ is a critical selling skill that quite simply separates the good sales people from the rest.

The importance of listening…

Listening is a great skill to have because it provides buyers with an opportunity to open up about their problems and needs. This gives the seller something to solve and, hence, sell to.

Specifically, active listening encourages the prospect to provide you with useful information about the challenges facing themselves and their company. In turn, it gives you an opportunity to gain a better understanding of their company’s’ needs and desires.

Through active listening and gaining a greater understanding of the client’s issues, you will thus be in a far better position to align your solutions with their strategic needs and desires. Moreover, the client won’t even feel like you’re selling to them. Rather, they’ll feel as though they have struck a working partnership with you that will lead to mutual benefits for both parties.

Listening is in short supply

Having worked with thousands of sales people as both a sales director and a sales coach, it is apparent that most sales people talk far too much during conversations with buyers. They tend to live on adrenaline and administer the “drug of desire” (for the win) or “fight for survival” (to avoid failure) at the point of sale. This usually results in the sales person ‘telling’ rather than actively listening to their customers’ issues and, hence, selling rather than consulting.

Active listening requires an inner calm and professional poise. However, for most adrenaline-driven sales people, awareness, calm and listening are in short supply. The more a sales person talks at the client, the less of an opportunity they will have to uncover the client’s crucial needs and desires that will drive the sale. In addition, the buyer will feel that you’re only interested in making the sale, rather than understanding their issues and letting them vent. This is a serious turn-off for buyers because, not only do they love talking about themselves, but they are only likely to buy if they feel that you understand their pain.

But what can you do to become a better listener and improve your customer relationships?

Getting the customer to open up

A great way of developing your listening skills is to practice following a sequence or process. This can be done by ‘funneling’ from open questions, through to probing (semi-open) questions to closed questions at every stage of the discussion.

By following this process you will encourage the customer to get talking and open up about the issues facing their business. It will allow you to be silent while the customer provides you with crucial information (including their pain points and buying signals) that can later be used to make the sale. Furthermore, it will encourage the buyer to perceive you as a trusted adviser rather than somebody who only cares about making a quick sale.

Consultative role plays

Another great way of developing your listening skills is to engage in consultative role plays with colleagues. By practising how to ask open and probing questions and actively listen, role plays can provide a great medium for giving one another individual feedback. This should help you to gain a greater understanding of you’re own listening strengths and weaknesses.

If you’re a sales manager and you want to encourage your people to engage in active listening, the promotion of coaching role plays within the team is a crucial element in preparing sales people for real life situations with buyers.

Written by: Steve Eungblut, Managing Director of Sterling Chase

Quite simply, at any level of selling, the one thing that can scupper your sales pitch faster than anything else is a lack of self confidence. If you don’t believe in your own product or service, how on earth do you expect your customer to?

Ummm, err…

Let’s take an example… Two sales people are face to face with a customer. They’re both selling exactly the same solution at exactly the same price, so neither the price nor the product is a factor in the customer’s decision-making process. Both sales reps are dressed the same, are the same age and sex, and neither has any distinguishing features. So, again, visual impressions don’t influence the customer’s decision-making.

But one has self confidence – they believe in the solution being proposed. They are enthusiastic and they want the customer to love the product as much as they do. They smile, there’s a real passion in their delivery and they don’t panic when the customer raises an objection. Bingo – the sale’s secured.

The other delivers a pitch that goes exactly to script but is hesitant and punctuates some sentences with ‘kind of’, ‘err’ and words such as ‘probably’. For whatever reason, they’re unsure of themselves at that very moment and unsure of their ability to get their message across. The solution is great, but a mumbled delivery and soulless pitch that lacks any real commitment means that it’s a ‘no’ from the customer – even if they do have a desire to purchase the product.

‘It sells itself’

No product truly ‘sells itself’ – this is a selling myth. To convince a potential customer that any product or service you offer is worth paying for, you need to have confidence when selling that drives the right message across to the customer.

Every product needs a value-added solution – and that value added solution is the peace of mind that you offer that convinces the customer that you know their business priorities and how to implement a solution that tangibly enables the customer to achieve at least one of these priorities.

But remember…no matter how much the product is needed by the customer, self confidence doesn’t mean being pushy. It means being passionate without intimidation; enticement without having to railroad the customer into submission. It means believing in yourself, your product and your ability to relay that confidence to your customer without scaring them off.

In any sales situation, you are the ‘questioner’, the ‘understander’ and the ‘convincer’. Strike that balance of self confidence when selling with a trustworthy, professional and open approach and your sales figures will invariably be transformed.

Written by: Steve Eungblut, Managing Director of Sterling Chase