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January 22, 2008 | Written By Mason Hipp
If you’re a small business owner, you probably know that it’s hard to specialize in just one thing. A little bit of this, a little bit of that—it’s inevitable.
One thing that nearly every small business owner has to do at some point is sales (and most of us do it at many, many points). Since it’s so common, and so important, I think it’s a good thing to learn well.
Tricks, gimmicks, and manipulation aren’t very effective over the long run—so this article is just wholesome advice that will help you sell lots of your great product or service (if you want to sell a crappy product, this probably won’t help).
The road to becoming a sales master begins with two types of knowledge. First, you’ve got to know your customer—who they are, what they like to do, what their problems are, and why they might benefit from your product or service. You also need to know everything about the product or service you’re selling.
When you fully understand both your customer and your product, you’ll be ready to put together them together in a match that’s perfect for everyone.
In order to become a sales master you’ll need to be able to introduce yourself to people you’ve never met, call people without hesitation, and reply to emails in record time. All of these require confidence in yourself, confidence in your product, and confidence in your knowledge.
Confidence will give you the ability to approach new deals easily, and the strength to walk away from bad ones without a scratch.
In many sales you’ll find that you have to overcome an obstacle before your prospect will buy. Usually, these objections can be addressed with more information about the product. No matter what their hesitation, you’ll benefit by identifying with their situation.
The faster you can identify and understand your potential customer’s feelings, the faster you’ll be able to see who is and isn’t right for your product.
Being excited is contagious. If you know you’ve got a great product, and you know that you’re talking with someone who will benefit from it—then don’t be afraid to be enthusiastic. A sales person who is lacking in enthusiasm is usually seen as having a boring or normal product.
The right amount of enthusiasm at the right time will draw people to your product like a magnet.
Great sales masters will tell you that making a sale usually comes soon after building a new relationship. Each relationship you have can lead to a sale in itself, and can also lead to many other people who will be potential buyers. If you want to sell a lot, then you’ll want to build a lot of great relationships.
So go out there and meet new people, make new friends, and follow the path to becoming a sales master. Keep an eye out for the three big traps along the way: being dishonest, being cocky, and being pushy. It is just as easy to sell in a way that’s good for everyone, so there is no need to resort to any of those.
What has your sales experience been like, do you have a lot of it? Are you friends with any really great sales people, or have you only met insufferable sales people who you just can’t stand?
Great and interesting post. Agree with you fully on confidence building. We even made our own courses on confidence building too.
Mason,
I’ve enjoyed reading your posts over the last couple of months and I have saved many of them. I also like to print out and store some of the posts I find most interesting but when I print out your posts I get all the extra stuff. Any chance you could install a print plugin that would just be the text so I don’t print all the stuff in your left sidebar.
Thanks,
Damon
Damon,
Thanks for reading! I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the articles.
Making a print stylesheet is on my list of things to do, and thanks to your comment you can consider it moved up significantly : ) Hopefully I’ll have it completed for you soon.
Thanks again for the feedback,
- Mason
One of my clients sells research aids for law firms. In large law firms a managing partner acts like a CEO of the company. He has an executive committee that helps manage the firm and makes decisions. Next in line are the senior partners of each specialty—intellectual property, litigation, bankruptcy, etc. Then you come to the lawyers, then the paralegals, librarians, information systems and so on.
Since my client was selling research products, they were dealing with the librarians because that’s who manages research tools. If you’ve got a revolutionary product, you can probably get an appointment with a librarian and you will probably impress that librarian. Some librarians in firms have great influence with partners, but many do not.
So the challenge with this client was to build a program that would skip the librarian and go straight to the management committee. We designed a core story educational seminar on the “Five Most Dangerous Trends Facing Law Firms.� We called the managing directors of the top 50 law firms to offer the free education. Here’s the script: “I’m sure you’re aware of our company. We’ve been helping law firms be more successful in their research efforts for over fifty years now. We recently commissioned a study on what’s going on in the legal market and we’ve learned there are some pretty serious challenges facing lawyers in the new millennium. Since our survival depends on your success, we wanted to make sure that you saw this information and had every opportunity to be ahead of the problems. We put this information into a very succinct executive committee orientation and we’re now showing this to all the top law firms. In fact, we’re in touch with [name several other top law firms] and are in the process of arranging to show this in one of their management meetings. We’d love to arrange to make sure you also see this important information.�
There are several factors that made this approach very successful. First, note how we used fear as a motivator. It’s far easier to get in to see top executives if there are “dangerous trends� facing them than if you offer some currently unrealized benefit. Also, the term “social proof� was heavily at play here. That means: “When others are doing it, it’s okay for me to do it, too.� Let me give you a great example of how “social proof� shapes society. For those of you too young to remember there was a time when it was a “shame� in society to live with someone without being married to them. And surely, you would never have a child out of wedlock. Today, other than very religious families, everyone I know lived with their significant other before they married them. Hollywood stars were the first to break this taboo, paving the way for the rest of society to follow suit.
Or to put that in context to business: “When best buyers buy, other best buyers buy faster.� In the script above, note the language: “We’re now showing this to all the top law firms. In fact, we’re in touch with [name several other top law firms] and arranging to show this in one of their management meetings. We’d love to arrange to make sure you also see this important information.� Note that we didn’t say: “We have shown this to so-and-so.� We said: “we’re in touch with� and “arranging to show this to...� This was the truth.
I have a rule about selling: Never lie. Make sure you’re telling the truth. By wording this a little more carefully, we were telling the truth, but the impression we gave was that it was already happening. By mentioning names of other top firms, we got interest from their competitors pretty darn fast. We also made sure that it was the truth. We were in touch with all the large firms. In fact, we called all of them on the same day. If someone checked, another firm might say: “Well, yes, we’ve heard from them, but we haven’t set anything yet�—or whatever—but the point is that we were, in fact, “in touch� with all the large firms all at once.
Wow sue,
I think you take the record for “longest comment ever” here at SmallFuel.
Your story is pretty interesting, though I think you probably touched on more than just sales. Finding the person you should sell to is quite important, as is finding the right message to give them.
I’d be careful about spinning the truth though, there is a fine line between that and outright lying.
Thanks for the comment,
- Mason
Nice and interesting post about your course of sales master keep continuing
I love that you included empathy here. In my opinion, this is one of the most important ingredients of the sales process. I used to train an 8 week course on sales so I know there is a lot more to it than just empathy. But the bottom line is that if you don’t truly care about your customer - they feel it.
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