BizActions Sales Tips

In a previous blog, we talked about how the words, "Your price is too high," send fear into the heart of every person involved with sales.

So lets talk about what you do in the sales meeting to make the coming up of these words less likely.  

People purchase things to avoid pain or to achieve a goal.  A sales person has to know the key motivating factors for someone to buy from them.  The only way to discover them is to ask questions.  The questions need to be thought out in advance and even written down, so you don't forget them.  

In a sales scenario, the buyer wants to keep their cards close to the vest.  They naturally don't want to give too much information to the seller.  Its up to the seller to communicate that there is good reason for the buyer in providing information, which will result in a more valuable transaction for both parties.

When selling professional services, often times you are meeting with a key decision maker.  Before you begin asking questions, you should first put the prospect is in the right frame of mind, so they are comfortable in sharing information with you.  You can accomplish this by providing an agenda either prior to the meeting or at the beginning of the meeting.  A key part of the agenda would be, "We will have a discussion about your firm, so we will be able to make recommendations that will be appropriate for your situation."  When you position the questioning as providing a gain, it is unlikely that anyone will refuse.  If someone does refuse to have a discussion with you and just wants a price, you have a decision to make.  In my experience, when you just give a price and don't have an understanding of needs, the sale usually doesn't happen.  So, you have to decide how hungry for a sale you are. Many non producing sales people try to throw a bunch of fish hooks into the pond with the hope that more hooks will attract fish.  They fail to understand that you have to have the appropriate bait.  

Here's a key fact to remember: Some of the best years you will ever have in sales, will be when you decide who not to do business with.  (We will speak further on qualification in a future blog article.)

There are different types of questions that you can ask.  When you are starting a meeting and building a relationship, you want to ask broad based questions that will get they buyer to talk. People like to talk about themselves and their situation.  If you ask the right questions, they will provide you with insights as to if they need or don't need your service.  It's not a bad thing to learn that someone is not a good fit for your service.  It's best to find this out before rather than after the sale.

A good place to start is what motivated you to take the meeting and what would you like to accomplish?  Ask what they are presently doing in the area that you are trying to sell?  What do they like with their present provider?  What would they like to change?  What impact would these changes make on their company?  Use the analogy of peeling the onion.  You are getting rid of the skin to get to the core.  Effective questioning is based on asking questions that don't elicit a "yes" or "no" answer.  You want people to talk.  When they talk they give you more information, which will fuel more questions.  Your goal is to uncover the underlying financial reasons so that your solution (product or service) will make sense to them and justify your price.  Along the way, you will also be establishing a relationship with the individual.

If they still say you are too expensive, you have more work to do.