Not Every Interested Client is a Buying Client – 5 Tips

True or false: Every now and then, you in your role as salesperson will meet someone who simply won’t buy what you are selling.   Well, obviously, that’s true, right? I mean, no one has a 100% sales record.   Because even though you have taken all the top-notch sales training courses and the best sales presentation training, your potential customers haven’t.  So all your sales tips and techniques won’t work on someone who simply doesn’t want to buy.
 
But maybe that’s the wrong question.  If we rephrase the question, then maybe the approach you can use changes.  And if the approach changes, possibly the result changes.  Possibly you get to 100% sales record.  Let’s try that different question.
 
True or false: Every now and then, you in your role as salesperson will meet someone who simply won’t buy what you are selling RIGHT NOW.  Oh, that’s a little different, isn’t it?  Maybe if you shift your perspective from “selling now” to “selling ever,” your sales approach will change. 

1. Focus on establishing a relationship.  Move from what you learned in the sales presentation training to what you’ve learned from establishing personal relationships.  Focus more on establishing lines of communications and less on pushing your products or services.
2. Let the client know that they can come back to you as decision date gets closer. Tell them that your role is to help them make the best decision possible.  Whatever information they need to best make that decision, you are available to provide it.
3. Use language of inclusion (“When we have our monthly meetings..” as opposed to “We offer you monthly meetings…”) when explaining the benefits to the client.
4. Always look for openings to have them make a commitment to “lock in” a feature or a price.  Establishing a relationship is nice.  But having the client make a tangible commitment is better.  And it can lead to greater opportunities to come back to the customer to move them further along the road to the ultimate purchase.
5. Look for ways to keep the sales presentation brief.  Since it should be obvious that this particular session won’t result in a sale, use the time efficiently to establish a relationship. Remember, not everything you have learned in your sales training courses is useful right now.  But if you are going to spend a lot of time turning a potential sale in to an actual sale, spend that time as you travel along the path, not all at the beginning of the journey

One specific sales tip and technique is to use proper stress management to keep you calm and focused during the sales process. Other techniques include ways to close a sale, methods of meeting and overcoming objections, and patterns of negotiating price. But here – for this situation – maybe put aside your sales negotiation training and focus on establishing a relationship that will lead to a sale.

RICK CARTER is the author of this article. As a trial attorney for over 15 years, he’s had to do a lot of selling: selling the firm to clients, selling clients’ positions to opposing counsel, selling a legal issue in courtrooms and government agencies around the world. And that means handling a lot of stress effectively and quickly. And as a martial arts student for over 25 years, he’s faced a different kind of stress in sparring, fighting, and perfecting. The result of this experience is STRESS JUDO: Black Belt Stress Management. For more informationand 2 FREE reports on this exclusive system (and how you can have a wallful of belts showing your expertise), click stress management.

5 Tips To Guide Buying Clients To Buy Your Product

The first stage of the sales process is to make sure you are speaking to a buying client.  There are methods to convert a non-buying client into a buying client.  There are also ways to speak to a non-buying client to increase the odds that he or she will become a buying client in the future.  This article focuses on moving a client who wants to buy something to buying your product.  More to the point, it focuses on moving the client to the position where your product is the only alternative available.  By doing this, you can set your stress management techniques to the side, and focus on turning the selling process into the buying process.  You may not be able to use all the fancy techniques you have learned in that expensive sales presentation training you have taken.   But the point is to make a sale, not prove that this or that tip from sales negotiation training is the most successful.

 1.         Begin by letting client know that your goal is to determine their goals.  Buying customers are most probably defensive because their perception is that you are trying to sell them something they don’t necessarily want to buy.  So put your client at ease – and get him or her to lower their defense shields – by telling them up from that you are going to help them define their needs and goals.  You can explain that this will help them decide what product or service will help them the best.  While this is going on, you should be tieing whatever the client is saying to everything you have learned in all the sales training courses you have taken.  But you are not selling yet.

2.         Begin by letting client know that your goal is to mutually decide that your product or service is their best decision.   At the same time, be real clear to the client that part of the process is to decide if your product or serviced is the best fit for the client.  Be honest with them that you have a stake in this beyond mere profit.  There is your reputation.  There is word of mouth.  There is the relationship you are establishing with this client.  So if you sell the client a product that is not want the client wants, you are shooting yourself in the foot.

3.         Listen to what problems the customer has, and brainstorm solutions.  Spend some time having the client list his or her problems.  These may be the problems the product or service will solve.  They may be problems personal to the client – like buying the product that guarantees his or her promotion.  You are establishing a relationship with the client. You are helping the client bring down those defensive shields lower and lower.  And you are learning the tipping points for the client to buy what you are selling.

4.         Make sure that your ideas all are provided by your product.   As you are brainstorming solutions to the problems the client is listing, make sure your product or service can provide those solutions.  Don’t make this obvious.  Don’t say “Well, our product does XYZ.”   Instead, say “So you need to do XYZ to solve that problem?”  Write it down. Better yet, have the client write it down.  The degree of subtlety with which you can do this is what distinguishes the Salesperson Of The Month from Salesperson Of The Year.   Here is wher eyou may use anything you have learned in all the sales presentation training you have had.

5.         Customers buy benefits, not features.  People are selfish.  People have pressures to perform for themselves or their company.  They do this by buying solutions.  So, unless your client has the time and the inclination to figure out how Feature A of your product or service helps him or her to solve Problem B, it is your job to point this out. Explicitly. Hard. Repeatedly.  Let’s say a company is deciding on hiring a new law firm.  Law firm A pitches their multiple offices, many lawyers, diverse areas of expertise, and commitment to technology.  The customer hears “Law firm A has a huge cash outlay that they want ME to pay for.”  Law firm B pitches multiple internal resources to draw from as customer problems arise, levels of experience to use the most appropriate billing level for the task, ability to use areas of expertise as needed, and technology to minimize costs and maximize ease of communication with the client.  The customer hears “Law firm B is set up for me.”  At this stage, you may use your sales negotiation training to overcome specific objections.

 Once you have determined that a client is ready to buy something, your next step is to move the client to your product.  Notice so far you have not asked the client to do anything.  Even though the point of your sales training courses is to sell the product, the real point is to give the client no alternative.  Getting the client to make the purchase is an entire step and process in itself. This stage is to get the client in a mindset that there is no alternative to your product.  This is where you want to be.  When there is no alternative to your product, then your client’s only choice is buy your product or continue the pain of having an unsolved problem.

For more information and for 2 FREE reports on attacking stress (not just “handling” it), click on stress management.  Rick Carter, trial attorney and martial artist, wrote this article and created STRESS JUDO, to give you the tools to destroy stress and a wallful of belts to prove it!

5 TIPS TO PREVENT STRESS FROM KILLING EVERYTHING YOU LEARNED IN YOUR SALES NEGOTIATION TRAINING

Every salesperson will tell you that the hardest and most stressful part of the process is the closing.  Sealing the deal.  Getting the client to commit.  But in reality, everyone sells and closes deals every day.  Even convincing your friends to go to your choice for lunch is a sales process.  So how can you make the formal sales process easy and stress-free?  Here are 5 tips to get the best return on all that sales negotiation training.