Transcription
In order to be good at selling, you have to be slapped. Here's what I mean. [Applause]
The Sales Influence Podcast, where we talk about finding the why and how people buy. I'm your host, Victor Antonio. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for lending me those ears, and if you're watching this on video, I appreciate your eyeballs. So here, let's get into it. How do you become a sales hmm Master? Right? How do you become so good that you're consistent? Because that's the mark of being a great salesperson. Let's go through the seven rules, seven steps you need to implement to be successful in selling.
Number one: Master the product. In other words, you have to know the product you're selling, and you have to have a high product IQ. You have to be genius, Einstein level with this thing. Now, how do you get there? Question I always get, Victor, well, how do I become good at the product? Well, step number one: First of all, read all you can. Watch all you can in terms of video. Read what you can, watch what you can, listen to what you can. If there's audios, really try to understand the product that you're selling.
Number two: Try talk to the developers, the product managers who put this product or built this product. Because talking to them gives you kind of the nuances of what they did, how they did it, why they did it. So you'll be able to answer these questions. I used to have debates with my product managers where they would ask me tough questions, kind of prepare me for what the customer was going to ask. So I would say something like this: Dear product manager, here's what I want you to do: Give me all the tough questions you think a client's going to ask me, and then monitor, basically analyze what I say. And this exchange was very valuable. So again, read everything you can, watch everything you can, listen, but really talk to the developers, the product managers who put this product together.
And third, I would say use it, demo it. In other words, use the product. Don't just look at it and demo it. Really use it. I mean, really get into nuts and bolts. Try to get yourself in trouble with the product. Because when you're doing a demo, when you're explaining the product and doing a demo, you need to know how this thing works. That's number one.
Number two: Profile your clients. You got to know who you're selling to. We always hear about, you know, you know, personas, right? Client personas, people who should we should be selling to. But where do you find this? Let's say you're just starting out, like where do you find this? Here's what you do: You find who owns the database in your company and say, who are we typically selling to? And find out what those personas are. With the analytics we have today, we should be able to classify the types of buyers that are more likely to buy versus those who are not likely to buy. Being able to have these different profiles, these different personas allows us to one, qualify them quickly: Are they going to buy or not buy? On a serious, not serious, but number two, we can sell to them more effectively because we know what that Persona has bought in the past and why they've bought because we have the data.
Number three: Process matters. Yes, think of a sales process almost like a recipe, right? I always like to look at it like if you're baking a cake, right? There's a recipe. You can deviate here and there, but basically, the recipe is the recipe. You can add your little touches, but by following the process you built, in this case, bake the best cake. A sales process is no different. Now I'm not saying that it's very rigid, has to be very linear, but typically you know what the steps are. Again, like baking a cake, you know what the steps are. My question to you is: Do you have a recipe, a process that you follow when you're dealing with clients? Again, don't be so rigid that it's inflexible, but nonetheless have a structure to how you sell. Studies have shown that people, salespeople who have a process typically sell on average 37 percent more than those salespeople who do not have a process. Have a process. Learn how to bake a sales cake, right?
Number four: Perfect the pitch. Let me pause on this one. Perfect the pitch means just not doing a demo. Perfective pitch means really knowing your product, how to present, right? The sequence of presentation, what you're going to say, when you're going to say it, then how you're going to say it. Here's the true test: I should be able to wake you out of a dead sleep, like smack out of a dead sleep and say, pitch me the product, and you should be able to pitch it. When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it. Here's why this is important: To really know your pitch and memorize it. Because when you perfect your pitch, and again you got a great process, you're perfecting your pitch, you know what you're going to say, when you're going to say it, how you're going to say it, right? Because you know it so well, what happens is you use less brain power, less processing power. In other words, because it's so habitual, you know what to say, how to say it, when to say it. This extra processing power that you're not using it allows you to be very aware of how your customer, potential customer or buyer will respond or is responding to what you're saying. Let me say it slowly again, because this is really important: When you know your product, the pitch, the presentation, and you know it so well that's almost like a habit, what now happens is that you have extra processing power during your presentation to deliver the message, first the pitch, but also to monitor the customer's response or responses to everything you say, everything you do, and everything you show. This allows you to adjust, be very agile, flexible in adapting to what the customer wants to hear. So if you don't know your pitch, you're always thinking about your pitch, what to say, and because you're thinking about what to say, because you don't know your pitch, you're not catching those subtle customer cues. Perfect the pitch.
Number five: Advance the sale. Listen, when we're going in there to talk to a client, we may just get only one shot at them. So we need to make sure that our cut, our job is to make sure as we're pushing through the presentation, as we're pushing through this presentation that we keep that forward momentum going. And when we get to the end of the presentation, we have to stick the landing. You ever see one of those uh gymnasts on the on the beam, right? And then you just launch off the beam, and they bam, they stick the landing. That's what you have to do. You have to know where you want to land at the end of a presentation. Many, any of us have the beginning down, we're good at a great opening, right? Middle part, good demo, good presentation, but when it comes to advancing the sale, not continuing the sale, they falter. Now what I mean by continuing versus advancing: If a customer says to you, well, let's think about it and get back to you, that's continuing the sale, creating a longer sales cycle. But if you go to the next step, well, let's go ahead and set up the next meeting with higher-ups, other influencers, you know, you're advancing the sale. So remember, you always want to get to the end of your pitch, your presentation, and you want to advance the sale to the next step. Be prepared to stick the landing. Ask, ask for that next step.
Next: Position your value, not your price. Oh, this is all mindset right here. It isn't so much your price that people are buying; it's the value you're offering them to help them build their business. Well, think about this for a second: Too often we're concerned about pricing, but if you can show a client the true value of how you can help them, for example, increase their revenue, how your product or service can help them reduce costs, or how your product or service can help them expand their market share, you're building value. Everything you show a customer, everything you present in your presentation should be aimed at increasing revenue, reducing costs, or expanding market share. That's building value. When you build enough value into your presentation, if I can go back to the cake, if you can bake enough value into that cake, then you're going to sell it. It's not about price. Less than 10 percent of the people will make a buying decision based on price. I'm talking about non-commodity items, like systems, platforms. People look at price, but that's not the main consideration. They're worried about, you know, what are my people going to use it? Is it really going to help us increase revenue, reduce cost, cost, so forth and so on. So again, position your value, not your price.
And lastly, this is more of a how do you manage yourself? I'm gonna call this self-regulation. Rule number seven of what the best of the best do: They manage their time, and they're very disciplined. That's the key word: discipline. When you know every day what you need to do, what you need to execute on, what needs to get done, then all of a sudden, over time you start building this momentum. Those that fail typically they start something, maybe they do it one day, two days, and then they stop for a while. Discipline is the key, and I need you to manage your time more effectively. Look at your day and ask yourself: What do I need to do? What are the high leverage activities? What are those activities that if I know I do, I'm going to hit my number this year? That's what you need to focus on: high leverage activity. But again, it's all about self-regulation, time management. Focus on what needs to get done, and then execute right there and then, and you will be a top sales performer. In other words, you will be a sales Master.
And that is it for the Sales Influence Podcast. Leave me some feedback on iTunes, Stitcher, YouTube, Spotify, Pandora. We're all over the place. Any feedback you can leave me, I would greatly appreciate that. Now, after that, check out the Sales Velocity Academy. Check out our new courses. Again, over 700 videos, lots of courses on every aspect of selling to help you sell more effectively. On that note, this is Victor Antonio, always reminding you: Selling is hard when you know how. Take care.