Pha Sovannara: October 2009

Step 1: Know your target market
What many sales and business people fail to do is to clearly identify who their target market is. They feel that “everybody is a prospect”. Even though your product may very well be usable by “everybody” or every company, not everybody has the ability to make the buying decision. So, in order to create a successful selling environment, you must know the demographics of your decision maker(s).
Is the final decision made at the C-Level? VP? HR? Facilities Manager? Husband? Wife? Is there only one decision maker, or are there multiple? If multiple, what specific benefits will each one look for from your product or service?
Just remember that for every buying decision there are four buying roles that will be played:
1. The Fiscal Buyer - person that writes the check
2. The Practical Buyer - the person that looks for all of the technicalities as to how well your product or service solves their specific challenge
3. The Consumer Buyer - the person, or persons, that will use your product or service.
4. The Coach - the person that coaches you through the sales process of the others. These can be all one person, they can be a committee of people or anything in between, but every role will be played in every sale. Let’s break each role down and also discuss why it is important to get each one’s buy-in in order to make the sale.
Coach
Whether you’re selling B2B or B2C and you have more than one individual involved in the buying process, you will need a Coach. Think about the last time you made a personal major purchase, such as a car. If you’re the negotiating person for the husband and wife team, you’ve forewarned your mate not to get excited when they see the car they want, to play it cool and to let you do the negotiating.
If the salesperson is alert and sales savvy, they’ll identify who the negotiating person is right away. Knowing that they need inside information to get the deal closed right then and there, they would smartly set-up an opportunity to get the non-negotiating person to open up to them as to what it will take to get the deal done. Once they have that information, they are properly positioned to make the sale. I have purchased more cars because this information was divulged than I want to admit.
The same applies to a business setting. Let’s say, for instance, that you are selling IT software. You have found a contact at a mid-management level. For the purpose of our discussion, that person is the Practical Buyer. So, you find out what the practical and technical needs are for solving the challenge they are currently facing. Now, you need to understand how the Fiscal and Consumer Buyers see the challenge and what it will take to win them over to a sale.
Your Practical Buyer now becomes your Coach, too. Once you see that the Practical Buyer agrees that you have the solution to his/her challenge, you can ask what information they see would be valuable to the other buyers.
· How would your solution help the Consumer Buyers’ jobs be easier?
· What would it take for them to easily adopt your software?
· How has the lack of a solution so far had a fiscal impact on the company?
· What other solutions has the Fiscal Buyer looked at and why haven’t any of them been implemented?
Not only the “What”, but the “How” they buy is important, too. What buying process does the Fiscal Buyer use? How have they defined what the “right” solution looks like? Again, in these areas is where your Coach becomes an invaluable part of your selling process.
One last note about the Coach. Your Coach could easily be someone at an entry level of an organization, such as a receptionist. I have made many sales based on building a relationship with receptionists and getting them to share with me information about the company, people in the company and the best way to interact with them.
Your Coach can also be a person outside of the organization you want to do business with, but has relationships, or at least a strong familiarity, with the organization. This could be a salesperson that has sold a similar product to the company, a consultant, or someone that has worked for the company in the past, to name a few.
Consumer Buyer
These are the people that will use your product or service. You have probably worked at a company where you saw a lot of buzz going on with management and then, the next thing you know, some new process, tool, software, etc. is being introduced. You look at it. You touch it. You talk to your co-workers about it. And, you all decide that it isn’t right for you because it is going to make your job harder for you. It’s not as easy to work with. The format of the page is different. You have an additional process to go through to do the same job. So, the project fails.
That’s what I mean by getting the Consumer Buy-in or adoption. I have found that one of the best ways to get Consumer Buy-in is by offering a free trial, if possible. Once the trial is complete, then create a form to have the Consumer Buyers give you input and rate your product/service. An additional benefit to using a free trial is that, if the majority of the Consumer Buyer population favors your product/service, then you have ammunition to use with the other Buyers as to why they should go with you as their vendor-of-choice.
Practical Buyer
This is the person that makes sure your product/service meets the company’s specifications. Is it the right size? Does it work with their other hardware, software, voltages, etc. Is it user-friendly? Will it cause the company to have to make any changes, such as physically altering their facility, having additional staff training, etc.
This person, many times more than not, is looking for a way to knock you out of the competition. They are looking for a reason to tell you no. This is only logical, because once they have eliminated all of the people they can because of what many times would be considered a minor issue, the sooner they can focus on the vendors they know meet the minimums and they can build from there.
By the way, for obvious reasons, this is a great person to have on your side and recommending you to the rest of the Buyers. It is also another reason to go into your selling situation well-prepared, either by your own research, a Coach, or both. Knowing what your Practical Buyer’s minimum needs are will go a long way to setting yourself up for sales success.
Fiscal Buyer
I left this Buyer for last because he/she/they will be the one(s) that make the decision to write the check. As you have noticed, all of the Buyers up to this point had a focused agenda, their needs. Not that the Fiscal Buyer doesn’t. But, especially if you’re selling at the President and C-level, this person has a much broader brush stroke to be concerned about.
Whereas the others have more of the here-and-now in view, the C-level person has the future in view. This person will be concerned, not just about the immediate cost and effects, but on-going costs and effects. They will be concerned about how your product/service will affect future plans for the company. One of the best situations you can encounter is when the perspectives of what the solution looks like is an empty canvass. This is where you truly become a partner with the company in building the vision of what the solution looks like.
If you have the opportunity to meet with the Fiscal Buyer early on in the buying process, it is to your advantage to help that person script the vision of the solution. In this way, if you can truly be of help in solving the challenge they want you to solve, you have set the standard by which any other vendors being considered will be judged by. This puts you at a distinct advantage.
So, be a consultant, advisor, even a partner, with the Fiscal Buyer and look long-term as to how your product/service will solve the challenge(s) they are facing now and into the future.
One last thought before we move on to help your thought-process be simple. Keep in mind that all prospects and Buyers listen to the same radio station, WIIFM. What’s In It For Me. They don’t care if you want to buy a new car, a house, or a boat. They want to know what you are going to do for them, both personally and for their position in the company. So, be outward focused during the selling process. As Zig Ziglar said many years ago, “If I help enough people get what they want, then, in return, I’ll get what I want.”

Step 2: Prospecting/Target Marketing and Setting Appointments
This is the life-blood of your business. There are many avenues to prospecting, web and in-print advertising, direct mail, telemarketing, expositions, and cold-calling by sales reps. What many business owners don’t realize is that as you progress through each of those just listed, the cost-per-contact becomes greater.
In most cases, salespeople are needed to consummate the sale. But, doesn’t it make sense to increase the likelihood of closing sales by “softening” the prospective clients up by building name recognition and credibility by utilizing the other prospecting/marketing methods as well? Enough said about building a well-balanced marketing plan for now. Let’s get into some simple rules for what most people think about when they think of prospecting.
As stated before, know who it is you need to meet with. I have worked with hundreds of sales people and many of them come from the mindset that all they need to do is set enough appointments with enough people and they will get sales. And, that’s true. As the saying goes, “A blind hog will route up an ear of corn every once in a while.”
It is an exhausting and discouraging way of doing business. No wonder so many salespeople don’t meet their quotas and don’t last long in sales. By targeting the prospecting efforts on people that have a high likelihood of wanting and being able to buy, you will have good time management and a great conversion rate.
Preparation. Know the person and the company you’re contacting. Do you know what is happening with the company you’re about to contact? Are they being bought by another company or are they buying another company? Are their profits going up, or are they going down? Are there any significant things happening that are on their website or in the news or Internet? What about the person you’re wanting to contact? Are they new to the company? Have they recently received a promotion? Is there any information about them in Facebook or other community websites?
Have a script. Too many people think they know their product so well that they will just “wing it”. They never say the same thing twice, so they never know what works, and doesn’t work, when they are prospecting and setting appointments. I’m not saying to be a robot. Be conversational, but have a base of wording that you share each and every time so that you have consistency. Also, keep track anytime you make a change to your basic verbiage.
If, on Monday morning, you started using a new word, or words, in your script, document it. If you see that you are getting better results, then continue to use the new verbiage. If the results are worse than before you starting using the new verbiage, obviously you’ll want to go back to using the verbiage you were before.
Again, don’t change things up so often that you can’t tell what works well. Give a new twist about two weeks before changing again, unless you see your results falling off fast. If that’s the case, go back to “home” immediately!
Have a goal. Prospecting is usually the least glamorous and least favorite activity for salespeople. It’s like running on the treadmill. If you don’t set a goal for the amount of time you WILL stay on it, then you’ll quit as soon as the first gasp of air comes or you start to hurt. Depending on the business and the length of the sales cycle, I recommend adding at least 5 to 30 NEW prospects each day.
So, what this means is that you’re not going home, you’re not leaving your desk, you’re not having dinner…until you have those NEW prospects. The same applies to setting appointments. Have a goal for each day or week for the number of NEW appointments you will set. By doing this, you’ll not fall into the up-and-down cycle of business and income that so many sales and business people do.
Use a good CRM. With as much effort that it takes to prospect, you want to make sure that you capture the results of your work. Not just the appointments you’ve set, but those that aren’t prospects for now, and those that will never be prospects. Duplication of your, or your sales peoples’ efforts, is costly. Take time to analyze the information in your CRM on a weekly basis. I like to do ratios of contacts: appointments, appointments: sales, dollars: sales, and dollars: contacts. This way you can track yourself or your salespeople on how effective you or they are being. You should see an ever increasing trend of effectiveness.
At the first sign of stagnation or reversal, you need to find out what is happening so you can immediately correct it. By the way, tracking the dollars: contacts are a great motivating tool. With that information, you exactly how much it means to you in revenue every time a person is contacted. So, if you know you make $1000 every time you talk to a person, whether they buy or not, that keeps you and your sales team motivated to prospect!

Step 3: The presentation

When I first learned sales long ago, I was taught to control the situation. And, why not?! I knew the prospect needed my product, I knew more about my product that he/she did, and they just needed to sit and hear my story so I could tell them everything I knew and then ask them to sign on the dotted line.
Of course, then would come the deluge of stalls and objections, but I was taught how to skillfully and slyly overcome each and every one of those, too! You might have sat through one of those kinds of presentations. You were interested and saw some things you wanted to know more about, so you asked a question. But, the salesperson was trained to forge forward, so he/she said something like, ‘I’m on page 7 and you’re on page 10. Let me catch up.’ And, then they pressed through their robotic presentation. How did that make you feel? Probably disengaged.
Today’s prospects are much better educated when making a buying decision than ever before. Add to that the trend that Burger King started many years ago of the customer having it ‘Their way’ and the selling environment has become customer-driven. So, I have developed a way to make selling much less work. Let the customer tell me what they want and see if I can be a solution to their challenge. Not, let me see if can squeeze what I have into a box that looks like it will fit their challenge.
So, during the presentation, the salesperson should only talk 20% of the time and the prospect should talk the other 80%. Also, most sales trainers teach the methodologies of sales and leave out the part that really gets you the sale, the emotional investment. Here’s an axiom for you to sell by: People buy on emotion and support it with logic. Unfortunately, salespeople are taught to sell on logic and then get the prospect emotionally involved. In my experience personally and in training hundreds of salespeople, the latter doesn’t work.

Step 4: Closing
I have seen many great presenters get to the point of closing only to see their wheels fall off. I remember one young man in particular that was wonderful at presenting, but he just wasn’t bringing in the sales. So, I decided to go with him on appointments one day.
As we went to each one, they became progressively worse at the same point in each presentation, the close. He would be going along smooth and gracious and then, right on key, his brow would start to sweat, stains would grow under his arms, and his voice would start to crack and stutter. After the last appointment I asked him about my concern. He told me that he just couldn’t ask people for money. His career in sales was over.
And, so it is with so many salespeople. I have found that I can minimize or eliminate that challenge for most people. You see, most people separate the close from the rest of the presentation when, in fact, it is just a part, and a natural conclusion, to it.
When you use the steps I have discussed prior, it all flows flawlessly. Here’s why: You have taken the time to understand your prospect’s wants and needs, you understand why it is important to solve the concern they have, you know that they have researched other resources and haven’t found a solution. Enter you on a white horse!
You have just shown your prospect that you have a solution that fits their wants and needs, you have a way of relieving the burden that was hanging over their head, you have made them feel the emotions of a bad situation and helped them feel that compared to a great situation, and you will probably make them look like a star for doing business with you. You ARE the solution! You have every right to ask for their business. In fact, if you didn’t, you would be doing them a disservice. It’s as simple as ending your presentation and saying, “Do you see how _________ will solve the problem of __________? Are you ready to move forward?” or “What would you like to do next?”
You may be asking, “What about stalls and objections?” With this method you should have very few, if any, to deal with. Here’s how to effectively deal with stalls and objections. Don’t try to do fancy footwork or give some sly answer. Your prospect is too educated. Answer it succinctly and to the point. Then, ask, “Why do you ask?” or “Why do you say that?” Probe for specifics for the question or objection and then isolate it. Let me give you an example:
Prospect/Buyer: “Your price is too high.” You: “Based on what we’ve discussed this can save you over time, I’m curious, why do you say that?”
Prospect/Buyer: "One of your competitors has given me a lower price."
You: "Let’s explore what their price includes to make sure we’re talking about the same thing. But, first, let me ask, other than the price given to you by the competitor, is there anything else that would stand in our way of doing business?"
By proceeding with answering a question or objection without knowing if there are other items that stand in the way of doing business is sales hari-kari. If you’ve been around sales for any length of time, you made the mistake of answering a question or objection only to have one after another follow.
Especially when you’re dealing with pricing, you must know if there is anything else that needs to be addressed. If you decide to discount your price and there were other things yet to deal with, it could become a win for the prospect/Buyer, but a losing situation for you.

Step 5: Follow-up
For longevity in business, you’re going to need great and consistent follow-up. There are three areas where follow-up can have a huge impact on your business; prospecting, post-presentation, and no-sale.
You spend a large amount of time deciding on your target market, researching prospects within that market, and marketing to those prospects. What a waste of time to do all that work and then not follow-up! What happens many times is that a company acquires a list of “qualified” prospects of hundreds, or even thousands, of names, addresses, phone numbers, etc. and then they send direct-mail pieces and/or emails to all of them at once. I believe that this is with the hope that the stars will all align just right and a flood of responses will come in.
Think of the last time you picked up your mail at home. You look through the stack of mail for envelopes that aren’t addressed to “resident” or “occupant” and then decide of what is left over what you will open. Now, keep in mind that there were probably 5-10 flyers, postcards and the like that you didn’t even look at. The same is true of your business prospects. The better way is to decide on a targeted area, maybe a zip-code, an area code, some well-defined geography that is small enough to allow you to follow-up on the information you sent within ONE WEEK.
Differentiate your Business
The pieces you send should differentiate you from the pack. If it’s a direct-mail piece, be sure it is an odd size so that it doesn’t shuffle in with the rest of the stack and get lost. An odd sized piece of mail is more likely to get handled and looked at.
If it is an email, be sure the email has something of interest in the subject line for the market you are going after. Knowing your market intimately will tell you what that is. I.E., if you’re selling toys for children, a subject line might be “Safe, government compliant toys”. Experience tells me that if you send something out to a prospect, you feel better about making the call. I have tested the theory out. I had told my group of salespeople that I had sent out a direct-mail piece to their respective territories. I showed them the piece and handed it out to each of them. Unbeknownst to them, I had only sent it out to half of their territories. But, the result was the same. Each salesperson felt more confident in making a cold-call because they thought they had been previously introduced!
So, take advantage of the confidence and energy that can be driven by marketing.
Be Strategic in your Follow-ups
You’ve now invested a huge amount of time and money to get your name out there, so, follow-up, follow-up, follow-up!
No matter how well you qualify your prospects and appointments, no matter how well you understand your prospect’s needs and wants, no matter how strong of a closer you are, there will be some sales you won’t close. In today’s business environment, even what used to be considered a “simple”, “one-call-close” sale has turned into multiple meetings before the sale is consummated. So, here, again, follow-up is imperative.
The key in this situation is being strategic. Know what you want to accomplish at each meeting to progressively move the sale forward. Then, as you conclude each meeting, assign yourself and your prospect action steps to move to the next phase. Make absolutely sure you set a date and time for the next meeting before leaving the current one. Now here’s where the follow-up comes in; as you complete your assigned tasks, call your prospect to confirm that they, too, are getting their tasks done. You must make sure that you use the information from the last meeting as to their motivation for being interested in doing business with you in front of them.
All too often business and salespeople follow-up, but don’t give or remind the prospect of their motivation for taking precious time to do work on top of their day-to-day load. When that happens, the deal falls apart and the prospect doesn’t do their research, or get the information, or do whatever you needed them to. The day-to-day “time-goblins” have struck again! They have probably even forgotten why they were talking to you.
Not only do you need follow-up for that, but also for the sales you close. Follow-up can be to thank a prospect or new client for the meeting or for their business. It can be to gather, or share, additional information after a meeting. It can be just to keep your name to the forefront of a prospect’s mind by sharing information with them about something going on in their industry or something special you have to offer to them. A word of caution: Don’t use the age-old phrase, “I was just calling to follow-up.” It lacks meaning and it tells your prospect that you didn’t call with a real purpose. They’ll feel that you are wasting their time and won’t connect you with being a partner with them in business.
Also, during your first meeting or first sale you may not have addressed all of the needs they have for products and services you provide. So, as part of follow-up, have a strategic plan on going back to your clients to discuss additional opportunities that may be present for you to help them.
A follow-up call may go something like this:
“Hi, ________! I had told you that I would keep in contact with you about the _______ that you purchased from me to make sure all is going well. So, please give me some feedback.”
“That’s great! I love it when my clients have a great experience with my product/service. You know, during our meeting, you said something about a need to solve a problem with ________. I think I may have just the right solution for you and I’d like to come by and meet with you see if I can be of service to you again. When could I come by and discuss that with you further? Who else would need to be at the meeting about ________? Can they meet with us, too? I look forward to seeing you then!
It takes ten times the amount of work and resources to get a new client as it does to keep a current client. So, from a time management and an income perspective, it makes sense to keep in close contact. Let me give you a personal example.
I acquired a new client about six months ago. She told me during the presentation that they were going to double their staff at that office soon, as they were closing a facility and bringing them to this one. I did my usual follow-up after the sale. After about a month, I found that there was a problem she was hesitant to tell me about until I pressed her for feedback and I was able to address it immediately. I like to be a problem-seeker so that I can be a problem-solver.
Anyway, I continued to follow-up every other month, especially during the holidays and developed a close, professional relationship. I asked her a couple of times about the move and if they had the timing set for it and she told me that it kept changing. I asked her if she might need my services again when the moved happened and she said she would give that some thought. Not long ago, I received a phone call from my client. Without an additional meeting she placed an order with me.
I made $5,000 for about 10 minutes worth of work! Great follow-up pays off!
I hope that you find this information valuable and useful and that it puts you on your way to sales success!

Pha Sovannara

28 October, 2009

NGOs Forum In Phnom Penh Hotel

27 October, 2009

Happy memory at NGOs Forum (27-Oct-09) in Phnom Penh Hotel

22 October, 2009

Climate Change Exhibition at InterContinental Hotel Phnom Penh

15 October, 2009

What do you do before wedding day?

08 October, 2009

Welcome to Cambodia

02 October, 2009

Steven's Birthday 03 September 2009

01 October, 2009

5 Steps for successful selling

My Gallery

My Achieved

My Memory

Cambodia View

My People Link

Informaiton

Cambodia Job

Archive

Today Date