Sales
The Top Five Personality Traits Of A Successful Sales Person
The top five personality traits of a sales person:
Driven by results rather than work – In sales, sometimes the work is hard and sometimes it’s easy. In the end, all we care about is whether the deal was made or not.
Enthusiastic – Enthusiasm is contagious. In some cases, you can get a person to do what you want simply because you transmitted your enthusiasm to them.
Outgoing – Outgoing people don’t tend to be shy. Shyness will prevent you from opening up presentations, asking questions and overcoming objections.
A Good Listener – Perhaps the most important of all traits; being good listener will arm you will everything you need to close. Failing to listen to others could shatter any chance of victory even when all other skills are mastered.
Diplomatic – Sometimes, it’s not what you say; it’s how you say it. The ability to get your point across without offending others is a priceless talent.
If you exhibit any one of these personality traits by nature, the work you need to put in will be less than the person who does not. If you exhibit none of them, don’t worry. It’s nothing some training and practice can’t fix.
The bottom line is anyone can become an expert salesperson. It’s just a matter of how much you need to learn. But rest assured, with a desire to learn and the right material, you can become a master of selling very easily.
The first hing you need to know when selling is that it's never about you.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a person whiff a deal because they spent the entire time talking about what they think is important. If the person in front of you saw things the same way as you, you wouldn’t be fighting for a deal. To get them to see things your way, you must first figure out what the other person sees as important or valuable. When selling a product or service, it’s never about “what” you’re selling. It’s about the others person’s perception of what you’re selling.
When selling an opinion, it’s never about how your opinion can benefit you; it’s about how it will benefit the other person. In cases, where your opinion will not benefit someone directly, you will focus on what the person stands to lose.
I worked in the fitness industry for years. I’ve sold many things in my life but I alwaus felt that fitness was truly something that everyone needs so I chose to sell the benefits of health and believe me, I know every benefit there is. But in reality, when making someone a member, I never spoke about the things that I thought were beneficial, I always focused on what the other person considered to be beneficial. The only way to figure that out is to ask the right questions.
Questions In The Sales Process
Asking questions actually serves a few purposes.
First, it enables you to find out what the other person’s perception of value is.
Second, it will disclose any objections that may come up so that you can prepare to overcome them.
Third, it opens the door for conversation which creates rapport.
But most importantly, it identifies the emotional reason why this person would buy into what you are presenting. Remember, people buy based emotion and use logic to justify their actions.
Every time I interview a candidate for a sales position, the first question that I always ask is “In terms of selling, do you consider yourself ok, good or great?” In reality, when it comes to experienced salespeople there is only good or great because the one’s that are ok usually wind up never making any money so they smarten up and move on to something else.
Back to my story, every time I interview a candidate I ask them to rate themselves in terms of how well they sell and while a few are modest and say their good, most consider themselves “experts”. I then pick up my stapler or my cell phone or whatever else is within my reach and I ask these so called experts to sell it to me. Within 30 seconds, I can tell if I am dealing with a true expert or someone who thinks they’re an expert. In most cases, I’m dealing with the latter.
What typically happens is the person picks up the stapler and starts talking about its features and durability and why I should buy it. They think they’re painting a perfect picture. The only problem is they’re painting a picture that exists in their mind; not mine. I then tell them I need to think things over and am not ready to make a purchase today.
They either have no idea what to say next and say nothing or they ask what my objection is and they cannot overcome it because they are not prepared. Aside from that, they have built no rapport and therefore are in no position to start questioning me so they are jeopardizing the sale altogether by doing so.
They should have started out by asking a few simple questions like:
Is this for home or work use?
What is the most important thing you look for in a stapler?
Are you interested in purchasing just one stapler or multiple staplers?
What is your budget?
How important is having a stapler to your business?
If they had done this, they would have:
1.) Identified my emotional reason for buying which will always outweigh my “logical reason” for not buying.
2.) Learned what I considered to be valuable so they could have built the presentation around that, thereby peaking my interest.
3.) Learned of any objections that I may have so that they could prepare to overcome them.
4.) Developed a rapport so that when it came time to overcome my objections they could do so more easily.
The questions that you will ask will vary depending on what product/service/opinion you are trying to sell but they are an essential part of the process nonetheless.
Sales Presentation Basics
First you must know your target's "hot buttons". You obtain these during the needs/wants analysis which is when you ask them a series of questions to determine their wants, needs, desires and objections.
You then press them during your presentation to spike the person’s interest level. For example, if you are selling a car to someone who has already let you know that saving on gas is what they are most interested, stay away from sports vehicles and large SUV’s.
Instead, spend time small to mid-sized vehicles that have good gas mileage and keep pointing it out during the presentation. Don’t even mention the time it takes for the car to go from zero to sixty (something you may think is cool) as that will make the person automatically associate the speed with gas being guzzled.
The point is this, the presentation should be built around the other person’s perception of value. But aside from that, there are a few more things you should know about a presentation.
1.) Keep the flow of conversation moving – Awkward silent moments make presentation seem, well awkward. Awkward is the opposite of interesting, exciting and just about everything else you want the presentation to be. Aside from that, when you are not speaking about the benefits of what you’re selling, it appears that here aren’t many benefits to talk about. If you’re mind goes blank for am moment you can you can make small talk about things (if you’ve determined that the other person will open up). In fact, if they do open up, the rapport that has been built will be even stronger than it was before.
2.) Assume the person is buying – During the presentation, make small statements which suggest the person has already bought. For example, don’t say things like “If you purchase this car”. Instead, something like “when you purchase this car”. That gets the person into the mind frame that they’ve already bought. Do that enough times during the presentation and by the time it comes to make the purchase, the person will have created such a vision of themselves owing the product, it will be very hard to do otherwise.
3.) Ask “yes” questions – Asking a series of questions that warrant the answer yes will make it difficult for the person to say no at the end. Something like, “What’s great about this gym is that all of equipment is new; don’t you agree?” Getting a person into the habit of saying yes and agreeing with you will lower the chances of them saying no or disagreeing with you.
The Power Of Questions
Questions are a critical component in the persuasion process. And there are a multitude of reasons why. First off, questions enable you to gain someone's attention. Have you ever noticed that when someone may be talking to you and going on and on and you find yourself in a position where you're extremely bored that you can suddenly stop and begin paying attention the minute someone asks you a question?
The reason why is because questions put your target on the defensive because they have to think of how they will answer your question and that serves two great purposes.
The first - which is the one that I just mentioned – is that they gain attention but secondly, is every time your target has to stop and think of how to answer your question, it gives you the opportunity to stop and think about what you're going to do next. In some cases, that time that you are allotted will enable you to make a decision that can be critical to you gaining the result that you want.
Questions also give your target the ability to speak, which is one of the key aspects of the way people are wired. People simply love to hear themselves talk. In fact, most of the time they are waiting for you to finish speaking so that they can begin. Every time you ask a question you open the door for them to speak about themselves and this will create a mood that makes them feel good about themselves. This opens the door to your ability to create rapport.
Questions are also of great way to keep a person engaged. I have found that one of the best ways to overcome situations where there's an awkward silence is to begin asking the other person questions. Those questions could be about anything but I continue to ask questions every time I feel as though an awkward silent moment may occur and it will instantly break up the monotony.
Questions also help alleviate distractions. One of the critical rules in the influence process is keeping your target engaged and distractions will work very much against that process taking place. Therefore, it's your responsibility to divert your target’s attention from whateveris distracting them back to you so that they're engaged. And you can easily do that with a question that is phrased tactfully enough.
One of the first things that you learn in sales is to ask questions at the beginning of your presentation because they enable you to get all of the objections out in the open so that you can overcome them initially, or prepare yourself to have to overcome them at a later time during the presentation.
Asking questions also will keep you in the driver seat because every time you ask a question and gain a response, you are in control.
You are evoking action in your target when you get them to answer your questions.
Always make sure you know exactly which questions you plan on asking and why.
How To Increase Your Sales
I have been in sales for as far back as I can remember. Of our little circle of friends, I was the only one who chose to sell to make a living. Everyone else who had a 9-5 job with a steady paycheck thought Iwas absolutely crazy to choose a career where your paycheck isn’t guaranteed every week.
I saw things a little differently. I thought it was absurd that people got paid the same amount of money regardless of how hard working, educated or talented they were.
I liked the idea that I could control my paycheck. If I needed some extra cash, I knew exactly how many more sales I would have to close.
Along with that, I knew exactly what I had to do to get that number of sales. I knew my “ratios”.
Any expert salesperson should be able to know their ratios right off the top of their head. If they can’t, they are surely an amateur salesperson.
I you are just starting out in sales, you should learn your ratios ASAP or else you are heading for failure.
In sales, the amount of money that you make depends on one thing; and that how many deals you close.
How many deals you close however, depends on a number of different things like the types of questions you ask, how well you listen to the answer, how you overcome objections and how persistent you are in asking for the sale.
But aside from all of that, you must know your ratios like the back of your hand and constantly strive to improve them.
The 3 types of ratios that I’m referring to include:
The Appointment Ratio – Of the people you speak to, how many of them make an appointment.
The Show Ratio – Of those who make the appointment, how many actually showed.
The Close Ratio – Of those who showed, how many made a purchase.
To truly enhance yourself as a salesperson, it is critical that you document this information, base your goals around these numbers and make improvement where necessary.
To get on the right rack you must first set some targets. For example, depending on what you are selling and how frequently people buy what you’re selling, set a target amount of people to speak to per day.
Then, set a target for the amount of people you want to make an appointment with and finally, a target amount of sales.
As you start your day, document exactly what happens. That will give you a rough idea of what your ratios look like.
For example, let’s say you are selling life insurance policies. Much of your work involves cold calling lists of people that have at one point or another said they might be interested in purchasing a policy.
From what you can see, the expert sales people in the office sell roughly 4-5 policy’s a day and the weaker one’s may sell 1-2.
If you are new to the game and haven’t really identified your strengths and weaknesses, set a conservative goal of 3 sales (right in between the weak and the strong).
If you have a good sales manager working with you, he or she should be able to tell you what the company averages are in terms of ratios. Then you can see exactly how the strong people are making more money. Are their ratios higher than everyone else’s or or they working harder and talking to more people?
If your sales manager isn’t sure of what the averages are, you can use the following ratios as a reference:
The Appointment Ratio – 30% (If you speak to 10 people, 3 will make an appointment)
The Show Ratio - 50% (If you make an appointment with 10 people, 5 will show)
The Close Ratio 50% - (If you present to 10 people 5 will buy).
Based on these ratios, to get 3 sales per day, you would need to contact 40 people per day. Of those 40, 12 would make a appointment, 6 would show and 3 would buy.
As you put this process in place, you will see what your true ratios are, but it’s a starting point at the very least.
As time goes on, you will also begin to figure out how many calls you need to make each day to reach 40 people. Perhaps for every 5 calls you make, you speak to one person. This would mean you need to make 200 calls per day. It sounds like a lot but for an 8 hour day, it’s only 25 calls per hour.
Now remember, once you improve your appointment ratio, you will need to speak to less people to make the same amount of money. Or you could speak to the same amount of people and make more money.
In either case, you will be in a better position to be successful in sales, once you start learning your ratios and managing your business based on them.
Basics Of Overcoming Objections
In a perfect world, people would do everything we wanted them to do, when we wanted them to and no one would ever have objections. But then again, if that was the case, we wouldn’t be sales people; we would be order takers. That’s what separates person who takes orders from an experts sales professional who effectively persuades others to benefit from his/her service or product.
The first step in overcoming an objection is isolating it. Drill down to the specific objection and ask the person flat out if that is the only thing holding them back. Once you have isolated the objection, you must be empathic and understanding to the person but you must also remind them of why they are talking to you in the first place. If you asked the right questions in the beggining of your presentation and listened to the answers, you will easily be able to show that person why they need what you have to offer.
I make it a general rule to point out 3 benefits that the person is going to get by owning what I have to sell, tying it into their emotion and by watching their reaction; I can see if it’s working. If it’s not, I turn to what they have to lose by not owning it. Once I see the slightest sign of agreement (like a head nod for example), I reiterate the benefit and loss one more time and suggest that they buy. At this point, I do not ask. Once I see that the person understands and agrees with what I am saying, I suggest they make the purchase. I most cases, they do.
If the person poses another objection like the famous "I really need to think about it" (which isn’t an objection by the way). "I need to think about it" is a smoke-screen that camouflages the real underlying objection. This is where your rapport building comes into play. How many times have you convinced someone close to you (whom you have close relationship with) to do something because you either said something specific or said something a few more times than you would have to someone your not so close with because you may have "crossed the line?".
You see, in many cases, that invisible line needs to be crossed in order for the sale to be made. But you can only dare to cross the line if and only if the rapport you have built is strong enough to make the line seem as though it wasn’t crossed. Remember, for every level of rapport you build, the imaginary line that you cross gets further and further away; meaning more rapport means more room to overcome objections.
It’s a known statistic that 90 percent of all sales are made after the 4th attempt. So if that means overcoming an objection four times, so be it. Remember, four is the magical number and the reason why only 20 percent of sales people are top sales people is because roughly 80 percent do not ask for the sales more than twice. So set yourself apart from the sub par and align yourself with the elite.