The wonder of Mum’s is that they are invariably right. The problem teenagers have with Mums is that this is the case. But after a while, I did manage to “get out there” and did find a girlfriend. So this little story has a happy ending.

Wind forward 10-15 years or so. I am in my first sales job (having moved across from a technical support position) and my Boss comes into the office. He gives me a little smile as I am reading through my letters of the day (that’s what we did before email) and shuffling some papers. My boss walks over to me and looks under my desk. He says nothing and then wanders over to the cupboard, opens it and peers inside. He then goes to the other desk in the office and looks under that. Turning to me he asks “I can’t see them Trevor, where are you hiding them?” with a confused expression I ask  ”Hiding what?” He gives me a very serious look “The customer’s Trevor, I can’t see them anywhere…”  I start to formulate a response when it dawns on me the point he is making. I’d become a little too ‘office friendly’ in much the same way I was ‘bedroom friendly’ during my teenage years. By boss was making exactly the same point as my Mum had been. You have to be ‘out there’ in order to find, make and build new relationships.

So if you are reading this in your office on a Monday morning and your “to-do” list is keeping you there for most of the day (or week) ask yourself “Where are those new customers?”

I often ask “What are the questions you fear being asked by the customer? ” to the group – so we can then work on an appropriate response for their product and market. Over the 12 years I have been running these sessions, here are the top 3 price questions and a generic response on how best to handle them.

1. Why is your offer more expensive?

The first thing to address here is “Are we comparing like with like?” Is there offer equivalent in every way to yours?  The competition may be lacking in some aspect that results in a lower price such as longer delivery times, no guarantees, reduced specifications etc. Before getting into a price discussion make sure you are comparing apples with apples. Don’t be afraid to ask for a copy of the competitive quote or offer from the prospective customer to aid the comparison.

2. Can you bring the price down?

The quick response here is “Sure, I have some flexibility here. In return for something from you”. That ‘something’ could be exclusivity, volume commitment, a referral, a case study payment in advance or a testimonial for your website. The key point here is never to give something away – unless you can justify it by getting something else back. If the prospect is not flexible in any of these areas then why should you be flexible on price?

3. Your competition is cheaper – can you match their price?

If the prospect contacts you to ask the above the best response is to reply “Why are you contacting me if you have already found an equivalent product at a lower price?” If it were me I’d have already bought the thing, rather than phoning up a higher priced competitor and asking for a discount. Unless of course, they offered something that I wasn’t getting from the cheaper competitor. So ask some questions and dig around a little to find out where you are outscoring the competition. This will then help explain and justify the price difference.

Please note that in all of the above situations you never say “No, that’s the price” or “Take it or leave it” These statements leave little room for further discussion and don’t leave the door open. You should always be open to price flexibility but you need to show the customer that they need to do something  in order to get a better deal.

Sell Well.

You are new business looking for customers, or an established business looking for more customers. Either way you need more sales. Chances are you were alerted to this problem from looking at your cash-flow, order book or bank statement.

But to get more businesses you either have to invest some money, time or ideally both. Money you don’t have much off and spending it to get more business accelerates the financial problems if it doesn’t result in more sales. So as you see it in order to solve the problem you need to spend some money, and are very reluctant to do this without some level of guarantee of success. Chances are you look to marketing companies that will do the work to promote you – but at a cut rate price, or promise jam-tomorrow as if the marketing company is any good they will generate more business for you.

You have time though. But you are unlikely to have the skills to develop new business. That’s illustrated by the problem you have at the moment. Your existing customers are not buying as much, going elsewhere or are also feeling the pinch. So you look to find some agents or representatives that will work on a ‘commission only’ basis. Or you turn to the ‘phone book and “smile and dial” hoping to land a new account. Or you go networking and have a regular lunch / breakfast and try to find people who know the kind of customer you are after.

All the above tactics involve either passing on the risk of your business model to others, or take a long time to actually achieve results. Possibly time you don’t have.

How to avoid the above scenario? In response I want to quote a mantra that my first boss would always recite to me.

“When you get busy, don’t stop doing the things that got you busy”

I thought I understood what he meant at the time, but over the years these powerful words continue to resonate with me. Simply put: many people and organisations scale down their activity in generating business once they get busy doing the business. It’s only natural as ‘doing the business’ is often more fun and interesting than the hard, slow slog of getting the business. But that is a risky strategy, especially in a difficult economic climate.

So look back at what got you busy. What have you stopped doing as a result of being busy that got you busy in the first place? And if you’ve never been busy it’s time to develop those sales and networking skills.

Time to re-think the business plan?

Social networks can make or break a reputation pretty quickly. No longer do we need to wait until a story gets into the press to see how the world works and what the public think… we can simply open up Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and see what inspires, or annoys people.

And the whole world is looking over our shoulder at what we like & dislike and making their purchase decisions accordingly.

Good

Here Lego are likely to have a customer for life and enhance their reputation across Twitter. This is more than ‘good’ customer service, I’d rate this as ‘great’ customer service.

Bad

There are so many examples of bad customer service. It seems we are more likely to share and signpost these experiences than good ones. This article was signposted in one of the Tweets I saw: A third of consumers  have left a supplier after bad service.

Ugly

Bad turns to ugly if the problems are not addressed. Here, poor service from Salesforce.com leads a customer to taking legal action.

Increasingly, I don’t think I would work with a new supplier / service until I have checked out what people are saying on social networks.

What is the world saying about you on there? 

Looking at all the clients I have worked with over 2012 – is there a pattern? Well yes, I think there is.

Those that have grown and done well really value their customers and work as hard at their business relationships as they do on their personal relationships. And I am serious about using the term “work” here – they really do put the effort in to ensuring that they understand their customer’s needs, problems and requirements and then set about building an appropriate solution.  That’s not always a quick and easy thing to do. It takes time, effort and great questioning & listening skills. In business, as well as your personal life, building great relationships is a long term activity.

This approach is rarely shown in social media spaces. Still there are “brands” who are “transmitting” most of the time and they haven’t realised that no one is listening or cares. Few are actually using these social spaces as a complimentary communication channel (alongside the phone, email and – oh yes – actually meeting people) to develop strong relationships.

If you’ve played and dabbled with social media – and it hasn’t worked out for you – chances are your business didn’t do too well last year. At least, that’s what I’ve observed with several of my clients. I think it might be down to the attitude and approach to real life situations just as much as on-line social situations? If social media isn’t working for you, chances are commnication inside and outside the business isn’t great either?

Time to look in the mirror. 

So, what do you do if they call you back a few months later with some questions and need a bit of help over the ‘phone? Or they email you asking if you could run your eyes over a document that they need to send out later that week to one of their clients? Is your first thought “How much do I invoice them for this?” or “They are a good client and who knows, this might lead to more work?”

The downside of doing something for free is the client may see little value in what you have provided. You are also teaching them that it is OK to ask you for help, without payment, just because you have been paid for something in the past.

The upside of helping out is that it can build good will, a stronger relationship and introduce you to opportunities that otherwise may have passed you by.

It’s a tough decision, I know.

So how about this as a suggestion: First time around do the work (as long as it is not too much) as a gesture of good will. But let the client know that. An email along the lines of “You caught me at a good moment, so I had a spare hour that I could put aside to work on this for you. Happy to help again in the future, but next time I might have to have the meter running.

What do you think?

Last week I attended a lunch time networking meeting – always a great place to meet new folks, mingle and get on their sales radar. At the end of the meeting I headed out of the hotel to the car park. I was thinking of the phone calls I needed to make whilst en route to a client meeting and practising the conversations in my head.

As I headed down the drive from the hotel to the car park I noticed a large black and grey coach with tinted windows parked across much of the car park entrance. The coach looked more abandoned than parked and a small gaggle of people were chatting and milling around at the front of the coach. The coach and crowd combined were in direct line with where I needed to get to, to get my car. And I was a busy self-employed sales executive, in a hurry.

Still focusing on those phone calls, I started making my way through the folks with an ‘excuse me’ and ‘can I get through to my car please?’ but progress to my car slowed. Then there was one (very large) chap with his back to me, trainers, tracksuit and a hoodie, shuffling around. My first ‘excuse me’ had no effect and so I patted him on the back (well he was quite tall, and I’m not, so it was really just above his waste) with another exasperated ‘can I get to my car please? ‘.

At this point the man in the hoodie and tracksuit turned around and glared at me.  I looked into his eyes and my brain had that ‘I know that face’ recognition moment, but I couldn’t quite place the name. He said nothing but half raised a clenched fist and it was at this point I realised who was in front of me: former heavy weight world champion Mike Tyson! I mumbled  another (but in a slightly more feeble voice) ‘can I get to my car please?’ and pointed to where I was trying to get to. Looking back, I like to think that Mike threw me a half-smile as he seemed to move back and make way for me without moving his feet at all. I quickly walked past, got to my car and let myself in.

As I started the car engine I had another look over at the coach and scene before me. Only now did I read “Team Tyson” on the side of the coach and on the track suits worn by his attending staff. The coach had to stop where it had as it was way too big to fit anywhere else and was the closest spot to the hotel for Mike (as I now like to call him) and his entourage to check in.

Perhaps this story helps to remind us that – occasionally – we need to stop focusing on the detail, lift our heads up and have a good look around at what else is going on. Understanding the relationship between content (detail) and context (environment) is an important one in the sales process as it helps us to make better decisions. Sometimes these decisions may be life-threatening!

So, Mike if you’re reading this, let’s call that first encounter a draw, eh? If you fancy a rematch let me know, pick any hotel car park… and I’ll see if I can fit you into my busy schedule.

Back in the day, before the internet, salespeople were asked into the customer’s office because frequently there was a lot of value in having a meeting. How else was the customer going to find out what was new, what were the trends in the industry and where the market was going? OK, they could go to trade shows, seminars, or read the trade press – but there was nothing like an old fashioned sales meeting to work through the issues and come up with some solutions as to how to go forward.

In today’s world, the salesman enters at a far later stage in the sales process. As a result of the internet the customer can now research their situation, analyse the issues and more than likely have decided on probable solutions. The sales folks are then invited in – with the customer already knowledgeable about their product – to pitch and present. The result is often the salesman listening to the requirements and coming back with a quote for what’s needed. In the absence of any compelling differentiator it will come down to the emotions of the beauty parade and the price.

To break this ‘new world’ of buying and selling, salespeople need to bring some additional value and insight into the requirements of the customer. The customer may have only spend an hour or two on the internet researching the market, not the days and days the salesperson has in understanding the product or the years and years of real-world on the road experience of the problems that can be solved. So who is better at diagnosing the situation best? The customer or salesperson?

Additional value can be demonstrated during the questions that the salesman asks the prospect. The better the questions are at uncovering additional issues and needs the better. You need to show insight by asking questions and uncovering issues that the prospect has not thought about. You need to move the goalposts of their perceived solution or situation. You need to disorientate them a little so they go back to the beginning and re-think their requirements, ideally in partnership with you. The more you reveal their assumptions and misunderstandings, the more you can show that the customer is wrong, the more value you bring to the meeting. Just like back in the day.

The customer is rarely 100% wrong. But in order to disrupt their buying process you need to understand that 100% of the time the customer is wrong in some area of their thinking. Find that, help them, bring value and insight and you are more than half-way there. I believe that customers make up their mind as to whether they are happy to do business with you during the questioning phase of that first meeting.

Asking the right questions has never been more important than it is today in proving that “The Customer Is Always Wrong”

Happy Selling

As a golden rule we professional sales types know that it is inappropriate and unprofessional to knock the competition.

An approach that I adopt when asked “What do you think about competitor X” or “How would you compare your product to product Y” is to reply: “Well, I have never bought from them or used them, so it’s hard for me to say. I’d also much rather compare my offering to your current requirements than to the competition”. Which nicely gets the conversation back on the right track.

So, why oh why do politicians not behave this way? Increasingly it appears to me, that election campaigns involve a fair amount of ‘knocking the competition’; either the policies, the personality of the other candidate or both. All too often (actually when an election is on, or not) a politician will answer a reporters question not by talking up their policy or record, but by talking down the approach of the competition and slagging them off.

It would be a much better world if the politicians followed the line of the sales professional and promoted their strengths, rather than the other fellow’s weaknesses.

It seems to me that there is an increase in the kind of ‘Golden Bullet’ advice available on line with respect to sales and selling. This type of ‘help’ has always been around and although often focused on the marketing end of the process, is increasingly aimed at the sales end of the process.

You know the sort of thing: ’10 quick ways to close every prospect’, ‘Double your sales in half the time’ or ‘Sales Secrets from the Sales Masters’ type of advice. Yet if you actually read this type of article, there is nothing new or you knew the content already. I have several shelves in my office full of books on sales and selling, and I’ve actually read them all. Don’t get me wrong, they are full of great ideas, advice and strategies. But there are no quick wins or easy answers and it pains me when I see these ‘quick wins’ promoted and passed around.

At the other end of the spectrum is the wonderful book by Larry Winget “It’s Called Work For A Reason”. I love Larry’s style and content and all his other books are worth a look as well. Larry has it spot on and his  philosophy is summarised in the title. The main difference to those who succeed at sales, and those who don’t is the amount of shear hard work, effort and sweat they put in. They turn up and they put the work in.

Sorry, there are no quick wins. Just a steady, professional, methodical working of the plan by putting the time and effort in. Oh yes, and one little bit of additional advice (from my old boss) “When you get busy, don’t stop doing the things that got you busy”.

Sell Well.