What is the Major Skill Set?
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Churchill?
JFK?
Thatcher?
Luther King?
Hitler?
• Diana?
• Lenin?
• Marx?
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Mother Theresa?
Mandela?
Ghandi?
Geldoff?
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Bill Gates?
Newton?
Simon Cowell?
Dyson?
The Lifeblood
• Show me anyone that has done anything big
in the world and I will show you a sales person
• Sales is the lifeblood of all organisations
• But a good sales professional is not the
archetypal cheeky chappy…not at all.
• Providing the sales person can Present, is
knowledgeable and is motivated (Given the
prospect conditions later) sales is a Process.
Why Businesses Fail
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97% of businesses fail within 7 years.
80% of businesses fail within the first 5 years.
50% of businesses fail within the first Year!
This relates mostly to small businesses, owner
drivers if you like.
• Interestingly, this does not apply to
Franchises……why?
• Franchises mainly sell systems and processes.
Most Businesses which are successful
usually have a system or Process
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Weight Watchers, is it a diet or a process?
Atkins diet, is it a diet or a process?
Training for a marathon?
Rehearsing for a play?
Learning to play the guitar?
Top football teams?
Sales Process
A sales process enables
an organisation to
replicate and duplicate
sales at will.
Customer Motivation
Potential customers can be motivated along
your leads conveyor belt using three major
elements:
1. Preconditioning
2. Practical solutions
3. Moved by a proposition
Preconditioned
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Advertising
Blogs and other PR articles
Reputation
Colleagues
Competitors
Previous Experience
• What Preconditioning activity do you have going
on?
Practical Solutions
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Underperforming Team
Recruitment need
Crash Repair
Pain-Killer
– These can all be distressed purchases but
necessary
– What products or services do we have that are
practical solutions to problems?
Moved by A Proposition
• Making a desired product more accessible
• Bringing forward a purchase
• Remarkable financial proposition, making a
purchase possible.
• What product or Service propositions do you
have?
Moved by a proposition
Examples
• 5 Years 0% finance
• Buy one get one free
• Take this and lose weight
• Half price
• 50% extra free
• 3 for the price of 2
Exercise
Take each of your products and place it
under the appropriate motivational
factor.
Remember…
Customer Motivation - 3 Elements
Pre conditioning
Practical solution
Moved by a proposition
Inefficient Opportunity Management
• Without a structured process that manages
leads into the sales pipeline, everything simply
falls into a pile.
• Things become hard to manage.
– What can be managed?
– Time, Money, Resources
• Its hard to understand which leads are
productive or worthwhile.
• Sales start to suffer and focus is lost
Exercise
1. Define how many Leads you have in your business
today…
2. List where each lead came from
3. Put in order of priority your top lead generation
scheme.
4. Put in order of profitability your generation
schemes
5. How much does each Lead cost you?
6. Or to put it another way, how much do you spend
per lead?
Let’s have a break
The Sales Pipeline
• A sales pipeline is constructed by stacking
several layers of a process together.
• New opportunities (suspects) are put in the
top and worked through the funnel until they
either place an order, or become a disqualified
lead.
The Sales Pipeline
• At any point of the sales pipeline prospects
drop out.
• From the large number of initially interested
persons only a fraction actually place an order.
• The trick is to know and work the numbers…
• Suspects
SPANCO
– A "targeted" potential customer that is defined and
refined.
– Defined as those most likely to need or want the product
or service within the next 2-3 sales cycles
– Further defined as possessing attributes necessary for a
revenue stream
– Fitting within your envelope of product/service offering
capabilities.
– A data set that would be most likely to make a favourable
decision.
– The filters used to qualify these suspects could be
quantitative such as financials, or qualitative such as those
most clearly in pain.
SPANCO
• Suspects need to be hit by Marketing. Prospects
need to be hit by Salesmen.
• Prospects are Marketing-qualified Suspects. That is
how they are differentiated.
• You should only sell to Prospects. You should market
to Suspects.
Exercise
List your suspects
Let’s have a
break
SPANCO
• Prospects
– After assessing the interest of the suspect and
finding that yes, they are interested in your
products or services, they don’t automatically
become a prospect.
– The next step is known as qualification.
– You start a discussion with the suspect to establish
if they “qualify” as a prospect
In the world of sales, there are
prospects, and there are suspects
• Sales people are naturally optimistic and this can result in a
lot of resources being focused upon a new and exciting
opportunity which leads to nothing. And worse, if the client is
not ready to buy right now, the sales person may “blow” the
relationship, and when the client is ready you miss the deal.
• Prospects are live potential clients who have a need for your
products or services within a reasonable period of time, are
willing and able to pay for them and have the authority to
make the buy decision.
• Selling to a suspect is a common mistake and simply devours
time which could be spent with prospects. Clearly, if treated
correctly a suspect can turn in to a prospect at any time.
In the world of sales, there are
prospects, and there are suspects
Separate the suspects from the prospects by systematically
qualifying them.
Before you can sell anything, three conditions have to exist:
1. Customers must be in need of your products or services
2. They must have the means and the desire to purchase
3. And they must have the authority or ability to make the
decision to buy.
These are the three essentials that you’re looking for when you
qualify someone; this is how you separate the prospects
from the suspects.
Is it worth spending time?
• Before your first meeting with the prospect, it’s
important to find out whether it’s worth spending
any time to meet with them.
• Checking on your meeting time
– “We are scheduled to meet tomorrow for 45 minutes, do
you still have that time to meet with me?”
• Getting permission to ask questions
– “I need to ask you some questions to see if we’re a good
fit, is it OK to do that?”
• Authorising the suspect to say no
– “Most people are hesitant to say no, but if you feel this
doesn’t work, would you feel comfortable telling me?”
Qualification
In order to qualify someone’s need for your product or service, you need to uncover
the prospect’s “pain,” or their emotionally compelling reason to change or act.
• People don’t buy the features and benefits of your product or service, they buy
solutions to their problems.
• If they feel no emotional reason to change, you won’t make a sale.
• There are many layers to pain
• Surface pain example
– Communication within the team is really poor
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Business Pain
– But by digging further you may find out that they were late getting a proposal out to a
big new customer and they had lost business.
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Personal pain.
– There’s even a deeper level — perhaps the lost business meant that they didn’t hit their
bonus levels. When they share their personal reasons for change (after all, you are
selling change)
– If someone can express an emotional need for your service they have already convinced
themselves.
Qualifying financial ability
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To qualify someone for financial ability to pay, get all money issues out on the
table early.
– You could waste hours of your valuable time.
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Begin qualifying a prospect’s financial status by inquiring about a budget.
– Consider asking them to discuss investments they have made in the past for similar
projects.
– Many prospects won’t give you a budget, so try offering them solutions using price
brackets.
– “Recently, we completed two projects similar to the one you are asking about and they
ranged between £10,000 and £15,000…”
– In addition, you may need to qualify for payment terms in some situations (for example,
you may tell them you require a retainer or 50% of payment up front).
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Always make sure you find out who else might share in the decision process, and
be sure to learn specifically how and when they make decisions.
The timing of their purchase is important, too. You may need to know if they can’t
commit to a deal before the next quarter or financial year.
Exercise
List your Prospects
Let’s Have a
Break
SPANCO
• Analysis
– During your discussions you will have found out
plenty of things about your prospective customer
and this information will help you
– Explore how best to meet the needs of the
prospect
– Define a bespoke proposition for the customer
– Create a proposal from which you can confidently
present to the prospect
Exercise
List your Prospects
under Analysis
SPANCO
• Negotiation
– This is the bargaining stage of the sales process,
and no, it doesn’t mean "no sale" here. It just
means it is time for a refinement of your proposal.
– Perhaps you didn’t qualify well enough and got
something wrong.
– The general rule of thumb here is that if you don’t
hit the nail on the head, you missed something in
qualification.
Exercise
How many proposals
do you have out
there?
SPANCO
• Close
– Every sales persons happiest stage, if it works
anyway. You make the sale or don’t.
– If you don’t, then go back to analysis and see if
you missed anything and try to refine your
approach.
– Many failed sales happen because the salesperson
simply did not ask for the business.
Exercise
How many and what
value of orders do
you have?
SPANCO
• Order
– Just because you have a signed order form or have
heard “no” doesn’t mean the sale is over.
– If you were successful, you need to follow up and
make sure that buyers remorse does not creep in,
and you want to get a referal.
– If you weren’t, then you want to assess what went
wrong and try to fix it. You may even start over
again once you determine why you didn’t get the
deal.
The Sales Pipeline
• Knowing that it can take anything from a few days to months
to walk prospects through the sales pipeline
• We should always know what part of the pipeline the
customer is at.
• We should also know how many potential customers we have
at each stage.
• Multiple prospects at all the layers of the pipeline will
improve our productivity
• So the bottom line is pretty straightforward. Make sure that
we have action at all levels in the sales funnel and you'll never
be desperate for a deal to close again.
Summary
• Dividing the sale into different stages can
really help you refine your approach and up
your chances for success.
• Whichever way you cut it, the more effort
which is put into converting the highest ratio
at each step, the more you will sell.
Thank you for your
Time today