Sales Skills Mastery - An Immediate Increase In Your Results

Hello and welcome to the first of nine elements within the Exceed9 selling skills programme.

In this video we are going to look at the importance of being prepared in advance of your sales meetings and the many elements to consider within it.

But first, let me just ask you a question...What's the culture of preparation really like in your sales environment?

All too often, we observe preparation is the first thing that goes out of the window when mediocre sale people are under pressure of time! It's funny isn't it? We all know the critical importance of being prepared, in terms of achieving some fantastic outcomes and real sales results from sales visits.

And yet for some reason, many average sales people seem to skimp on this - claiming they just don't have enough time to do it and sometimes even just winging it!....Madness in my opinion!

In my early sales career, I do remember being invited to a meeting with one of my key customers I had dealt with for some time. Upon my arrival, we had a brief conversation and then my customer announced that ‘they are all in the next room.’ When I enquired as to what he meant, he had set up a whole conference with around 40 odd of his main suppliers and they were all waiting and expecting a full presentation on my services. Now, this is a mistake in preparation that I only ever made the once! It made me feel about that big and took a great deal of work to recover from that position. If only I had found out a little more beforehand and prepared accordingly - the outcome would have been very different!

So, come on guys and gals, don't just play lip-service to this crucial part of your selling activity. Day-to-day, it will really make a massive difference to your success in sales IF you make the time to prepare properly.. It doesn’t have to take long.

We have created a 9 step process that helps you prepare properly in less time and allows you to demonstrate to your customers/prospects a high level of understanding of their situation you are there to solve.

So, when you’re ready click to access this section

Hello and welcome to the second of nine elements within the Exceed9 Selling Skills Programme..

In this video we are going to look at how to make a big impact on the people that you come into contact with in your daily sales activities. It is an old adage that you only get one chance to make an impression, but I also think this is true for every contact that you make - with your existing customers and prospects alike.

If you really want to set yourself apart from others out there, then not only are you prepared well, but your discipline and behaviours around making and continuing to make an impression on your clients and prospects, is absolutely vital.

Making an impression is not just what you say and how you say it either. It’s also the way that you position your meetings; how you project yourself and how all of us need to remember that our business contacts demand a professional approach - however long we've been dealing with them.

Be yourself of course and enjoy the usual banter of your firm and long standing business relationships where appropriate. But do remember why you are having these discussions in the first place (business!!)

If you take this view it means that you won’t disappoint or miss any opportunities, by being too casual or not ready!

I once had the privilege to meet the Queen on an official Royal Visit. When I was asked the question….’So, what is it that you do?!’ I was so very thankful that I had remembered my 30 second introduction about me and my company. It got the key points over concisely and in a short amount of time and it really helped me out!

So when you’re ready, click to access this section

Hello and welcome to the third of nine elements within the Exceed9 Selling Skills Programme.

In this video we are going to look at the importance of the use of effective questioning in your sales meetings. And the art form to which we all aspire - in building an instant increase in our sales results….There is a direct link by the way!

Now, everyone and his brother it seems knows about questions and how that questioning technique is an important part of the sales process. The reality however with mediocre salespeople can be that they dismiss all this as ‘pussy footing mumbo jumbo.’ And instead focus on the product or service they’re trying to sell (or flog!).

Their insistence is to tell customers all there is to know about their offering, without having first found out what it is that their customer/prospect actually wants/needs for their particular situation.

We call this the ‘throwing muck at the wall sales approach’ (in other words, some of it will stick!) It is a very ineffective way of selling! But equally very prevalent still to this day.

Clearly, our approach needs to change and harness these skills if we are to dramatically increase our sales.

After all, we know that the highest performing salespeople readily recognise the value of this important skill set and actively use their questions to sell more.

I was a very effective salesperson for the first 17 years of my selling career, however if I'd known some of the ideas and approaches contained within the Exceed9 Selling Skills and its questioning methodology, earlier on, then I’d have been a far better salesperson – as I am now!

Once again, questioning technique is a skill set undervalued by many. Yet, if you change the way in which you approach your technique, even just slightly in your day-to-day activities using Exceed9, it will have an instant effect on increasing your sales… I guarantee it!

So when you’re ready, click to access the section

Hello and welcome to the fourth of nine elements contained within the Exceed9 Selling Skills programme.

In this video, we are going to look at the importance of gaining understanding and practising active listening.

As ever in sales, it is important that we listen to what our customers/prospects are saying. Also, to interpret what they imply by some of their answers.

As important as it is to improve our questioning technique in the previous section, it's also extremely valuable to practice active listening skills with our customers - in order to drive and convert more sales.

With better understanding and active listening, we can build a unique and superior knowledge of specific issues; needs; worries, concerns and challenges that exist and ones that our customers face - We can then sell solutions to those issues.

I once made the mistake of presenting a sales training proposal to a senior board level decision maker - Where I'd misunderstood (through a lack of active listening on my part some weeks earlier at the first meeting) exactly how many people would need that development training. …

I thought my contact had told me that they had three sales managers and 10 salespeople – and I had therefore prepared proposals for them on that basis. It wasn't until I returned to present my ideas (with all the directors present), that it became very evident I'd got this all wrong!

It transpired they actually had three sales managers each of them with 10 salespeople. In other words, they wanted a programme for 33 people….not 13!

I vowed then to use all of the techniques I have now developed within Exceed9 Selling Skills Programme, to ensure that this sort of thing never happens again!...

I didn't win the business incidentally!

So when you’re ready, click to access the section, so you don't have to go through the same mistakes I had to!

Hello and welcome to the fifth of nine elements contained within the Exceed9 Selling Skills Programme.

In this video, we are going to look at the undoubted value of summarising and use of sweeping up during sales calls. This may be considered to be a detail point within the overall sales process, however it is the natural link between our selling activities, that then lead on to presenting relevant solutions to our customers.

Once we get into the habit of regularly using summaries and sweep up questions in meetings (such as…. Is there anything else I've not covered that I should have done?), It's amazing how professional it sounds.

Not only that, but it very often leads to a direct increase in sales - because of issues the customer may have not shared with you (up until this point) of your sales meeting.

I was once pitching for some telephone sales training to two board directors of a potential client. It was a very competitive situation as a number of companies had been put forward by Business Link (Government Funding Agency), to compete for the work.... They had to be seen as impartial.

When it came to summarising in this meeting, I restated the key issues we’d discussed as they related to the tele sales training work, but also just asked the question… ‘was there anything else?’ What happened next was remarkable, as their automatic reply was ‘yes, well all this is fine, but do you do sales strategy consultancy?’ Of course we do! I replied.

We then proceeded to talk about the fact that there was no sales strategy or business plan in place for their entire company. And actually this was one of THE main reasons for the lack of performance by their sales teams - as they hadn’t had direction on where they should be devoting their efforts.

Suffice to say, that we won the business for this reason alone and also delivered the tele sales training at a later date - once we had facilitated the future plans for the company with the Board Directors.

So when you’re ready, click to access this section.

Hello and welcome to the sixth of nine elements contained within the Exceed9 Selling Skills programme.

In this video, we are going to look at how we can recommend or present our products and services in a most professional way.

Not only do we look at the communication of features/benefits of your products or services. We also develop that to a most advanced level, by linking them together in a compelling way, to the needs that you have uncovered earlier on during your sales meetings.

There are many elements to how we can make recommendations to our customers - not just in the words that we use, but also in the way that we present our offering, using all available technology and supporting materials - to give our customers the best insight into what we can do for them.

In my early sales career, an area manager once insisted that I used the acronym MEIGRAZMAFAZZ in my sales activities!

Essentially, each letter was the start of a word for a particular feature of the service my company was offering. And it was a great way of remembering what each of them was, of course.

The unfortunate issue however, was that the acronym completely ignored (firstly) what the benefits of each of those features were to my customers.

And (secondly), how on earth did these relate/fit in with individual client needs that I was selling to?

So, with the Exceed9 Selling Skills approach, we look at this and many other areas and help you develop a very polished and professional approach when recommending and presenting your services and products – An approach that is most likely to convert into sales.

So when you’re ready, click to access this section.

Hello and welcome to the seventh of nine elements within the Exceed9 Selling Skills Programme.

In this video, we are going to look at some of the reasons why we encounter customer objections.

And..as importantly, how we can pre-empt them and deal with them when they arise during our sales meetings.

Inevitably, when selling, customers and prospects often just want to clarify what is that we are proposing. So, if we can minimise the number of instances where this occurs, then that’s always a good thing.

Equally, it's good to get any issues out in the open, sooner rather than later - so we can deal with them early and make sure we don't lose sales, by not tackling them soon enough.

As an example, you may know that BMD Global are able to deliver a range of practical programmes. These include strategic consultancy at board level, classroom training programmes and one-to-one field coaching.

So, we deliver some really good sales training for salespeople and their managers, however we can get pigeonholed as great sales trainers!

That's all good, except once in a while an existing customer might mention the fact that they've gone elsewhere for their Management Development training…Exactly what we can do too!

The trouble is, if we don't remind people about what we do on a regular basis, then there's a chance that they will assume that we don't do that sort of thing.

We call it the lazy buyer syndrome!

Ultimately, it's down to us to ensure that customers know as much as they possibly can about what we can offer - so that they can make a more informed choice.

So, with the Exceed9 Selling Skills approach, we look at this area and give you some practical hints and tips on why objections happen and how to deal with them in a most professional way, regardless of how long you’ve been in selling.

So when you’re ready, click to access this section

Hello and welcome to the eighth of nine elements within the Exceed9 Selling Skills Programme.

In this video, we are going to look at perfecting our closing techniques.

This is an area that in my opinion is a bit of a misnomer! A lot of mediocre sales managers and indeed average sales people believe that the answer to their sales conversion problems, lies in their ability to be better at closing prospects down…and making them buy!

Whenever I hear Sales Directors asking us to help their teams close more business, I instantly think about why this is. More often than not in my experience, their sales people are not asking enough questions and are using a 'telling style' sales approach and trying to force their product or service onto their poor unsuspecting prospects!

Having said that, I think that it is a professional courtesy to ask for the business, when that is appropriate during sales meetings. And thank them incidentally afterwards!

As an example, I once worked in a very large sales organisation, where the Sales Director insisted that unless suppliers selling to him asked for his commitment at some point during the conversation, then he would make a point of not ordering from them on principle!

So, in this video, we look at some of the techniques around being better at closing. They do have their place and are worth knowing to help you in real-world selling situations.

But I would just leave you with this one thought. If you're struggling to close business, what's your questioning technique like?

That is, how much do you actually know about the customer's real needs? Have another think, you might be looking for the answer in the wrong place!

So when you’re ready, click to access this section

Hello and welcome to the ninth and final element contained within the Exceed9 Selling Skills Programme.

In this video, we are going to look at the discipline of regularly reviewing your sales performance and how it can improve your results over time.

Using the Exceed9 Selling Skills headings, is a really good basis to start your review process. Rather than judging yourself to have done well or otherwise in sales calls, judge yourself by the nine components of Exceed9 (the acronym of BMDGLOBAL).

I am certain that you will be able to identify some specific actions on some of the areas of your sales activities that you can improve upon. Even if you are like me and been selling for years!

It's also healthy to ask your customers for feedback…WHY did they decide to buy from you? This can be quite enlightening sometimes! Not only does it help you understand what they think your unique selling points are, but it also allows you to build those into future sales activities with this knowledge in mind.

Interestingly, we once won a contract on the basis that our consultant didn't look like the kind of guy who would easily get tired! Our prospect wanted someone who could command an audience! Strange, but actually true!

The reality was that the team of salespeople we had been commissioned to help, were notoriously hard work to deal with according to their own sales director(!) So, he was looking for someone who had presence and stamina and this was really important in his final decision-making process!

So in this video we are going to look at a number of aspects of objective self-analysis, that will really help you excel in sales and ensure a glittering future ahead of you!

So, when you’re ready, click to access this section

Well done for all that you have achieved - please watch the video for more information!

Go back to Lecture three having first decides where you are at now on the score out of ten objective that you set yourself then!

A few words of congratulation from Yours Truly!

Make sure you download the PDF entitled Exceed9 Selling Skills Evaluation and follow the instructions.

The PDF is in the 'additional resources' area, in this lecture.

Good Selling!

As an add on to Lecture 12 - Link Summary and Sweep, here's a short 'street video' and a one page guide on how to do it! Please check out the additional resources are on this lecture and download it from there.

All the best

Kind regards

Tony

Another 'feet on the street' video - what to remember when you are out with your sales manager on a coaching day!