I have been receiving an increasing volume of requests to provide greater insight into The Psychology of Buyers, so this is the first in a series of articles intended to provide improved understanding.

If you are going to help your prospects and clients succeed, you will need to gather lots of information from them. To obtain that information, you will need to ask questions.  The intent of your questioning will determine your effectiveness.  Despite a contrarian view from many of our egos, The Psychology of Buyers tells us that the majority of prospects do not trust salespeople, so prospective clients are continuously making decisions about what questions may be safe to answer.  So ask yourself honestly-is the intent of your questions to facilitate mutual discovery in a way that feels good for your prospect, or to help you feel good or get what you want via manipulation or cleverness?  Whose agenda are you really on?

The Biology of TRUST – Why Leading Questions Don’t Work

When a question is asked of a buyer, the question makes its first stop at the brain stem, to a tiny place on the stem called the amygdala.  The amygdala, or Old Brain, is the GateKeeper of Trust.  It determines flight, fright, and survival.  So when the question is asked, our Old Brain determines the trustworthy-ness of the questions and whether it’s safe or unsafe to proceed.  If, and only if, the amygdala determines safety will the question get routed to the New Brain, or neocortex.  The neocortex is the rational portion of the brain where we think, analyze and make determinations of whether or not something may be true.  So if clients don’t sense that your question is truly in their best interest, the “trust alarm” will be triggered, preventing you from facilitating mutually beneficial discovery and having "adult conversations”.  You will never get to second base.

Don’t Act Trustworthy, BE Trustworthy

The Old Brain operates primarily on pattern recognition.  Since most people have been programmed through past experiences to mistrust salespeople, this GateKeeper has become extremely savvy.  If you behave like a salesperson by asking “leading questions” or trying to cleverly “create value”, then the amygdala will determine that you are not trustworthy.  You will be guilty without a trial.  Asking for trust or acting interested will not get it done.  You must actually BE trustworthy.  Aside from the fact that faking intent is shallow and unethical, it is also quite transparent.

Detach Yourself from Outcomes

Here’s the deal.  The harder you try to “sell” someone, the less likely it is going to happen, and the more likely it is that the Old Brain will shut you out.  If the GateKeeper shuts you out, information flow is stymied, and your likelihood to arrive at a solution perceived to be valuable diminishes greatly. If you are sincerely interested and honestly want to help people succeed, they will be more likely to share their beliefs about what success looks like for them.  Your ability to find the right solution and win their trust increases.  Believe it or not, it is in your own most selfish interest to focus on the interest of the prospect before focusing upon your own.

Goals and expectations are important, but selling success relies on a discipline to remain detached from our goals and external pressures (like the prodding of your sales manager) before you engage with prospects and clients.  Check your ego at the door and actively listen to your clients with sincere interest and infinite, childlike curiosity.   The great results will speak for themselves…

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2010.   All Rights Reserved.

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Just about every day, I meet business owners, leaders and managers who refuse to accept mediocrity in their Operations, Product Quality, Distribution or Customer Service.  Interestingly, those same leaders ARE willing and consistently accept mediocrity in their Sales Force, resulting in millions of dollars of lost revenue and profit.  Sound familiar?  While this assertion may seem incredible, it is unfortunately the rule and not the exception.  The good news is that this phenomenon can be reversed.    

If you would like to eliminate under-achievement from your Sales Force and transform it from Good to Great, all it takes is a DECISION and a COMMITMENT.  The rest is formulaic.

So what is it about some salespeople, teams and companies that cause them to win while others fizzle?  Here are the ten biggest differences between Sales Winners (over achievers) and Sales Losers (under achievers). 

1.  Choice - Over achievers consistently choose to do the things they don’t like to do.  Weak players postpone or avoid them entirely.

2.  Strategy - Winners develop specific strategies for both long-term and near-term success and for the accounts they seek to obtain or grow.  Weaker salespeople spend little or no time strategizing.  A solid strategy is required for effective execution.  In the absence of a strategy, execution is a hope, not a reality.

3.  UnConditional Commitment - Over achieving salespeople use Selling Time to Sell.  Period.  They have a Success Recipe and let nothing stand in the way of executing the required activities necessary to succeed.  A winner who commits to making 25 calls in a given day will make them and not allow distractions and excuses like “I had to do more research”, “my computer locked up”, “my boss needed that report” or “the dog ate my homework” to prevent them from executing their committed activities.  

4.  Mental Toughness - When over-achievers lose a battle or experience a curve ball during a sales interview or cycle, they simply get back on their horse and strategize as to how their next call will achieve the desired result.  When under-achievers lose a battle they often retreat, sulk, complain, give up, call someone who will be more accepting or kind, surf the internet, play solitaire or do nothing.

5.  Expectations - Over achievers expect to win.  Under achievers expect to just play.  Expectations are even more important than goals.  While goals provide long-term motivation, expectations set the bar for each and every interaction and meeting, as well as for the behaviors we might expect from ourselves, associates, prospects and Customers.

6.  Reaction to Adversity – Adversity exists and no one is exempted.  The only difference is in the reaction.  Winners always see a challenge or opportunity where weak players see obstacles.  Over achievers embrace challenges and even get excited about them. Under achievers become overwhelmed with challenges.  They attempt to avoid obstacles, including “tough” conversations.  

7.  Emotional Control -  When winners fail to get the desired result, they will not self-pity, lose control, find a comfort zone or become upset.  They will simply stay in the moment and make their next move.  When weaker players fail to get desired results they panic, become emotionally involved, become defensive and lose their objectivity.

8.  Process - Over achievers “own” a process that they know is effective that keeps them effective, focused and efficient.  They know how to maintain control of all selling interviews.  They will execute it independent of the size or scope of the opportunity.  Under achievers typically allow prospects to control the conversations and process and their results show it.

9.  Self-Improvement – Winners consistently over achieve because they are relentless in their pursuit of improvement and refining their skills via reading, webinars, training, coaching and practice.  Under achievers don’t necessarily see value in improving or practicing.  Winners don’t just accumulate knowledge, they put it into action.  Many weak players think they are “good enough”.  Winners create a recurrent Development Plan and commit to continuous improvement.

10.  Passion - Over achievers are passionate about their job and profession.  They love what they do.  Under achievers typically can’t wait to finish their day and go home.

If you would like to rate your Salespeople, be objective and use the following ratings.

1 -  Poor  
2 -  Needs Significant Improvement   
3 -  Room for Improvement   
4 -  Needs Some Fine Tuning  
5 -  Congratulations, No Need for Improvement

It would be a good idea to ask each of your people to rate themselves as well, so you can compare results and develop a plan accordingly.

Compare your results according to this scale:

A Players:                   40-50
B Players:                   30-39
C Players:                   20-29
Emergency:                Under 20                

Any surprises?

Any lessons learned?

Now that you know what you have, will you be making any changes?

Please share what you’ve learned

Continued Success! 

Z3 Performance Development, Inc.

Austin, Texas  78750

www.zthree.com

To start off 2010, I’d like to share a UnCommon Sense secret you can implement today that will guarantee more sales.  This secret requires no new skills or training.  Anyone can do it. 

If your sales team is like most, you have several members who miss out on a lot of revenue (and profit) simply by GIVING UP TOO SOON.  Most salespeople bail out way too early.  They’ll take the sales that come to them, but they don’t do the small amount of work it takes to go and get all the rest.

The following statistics are hard to believe, but paint an amazing picture:

48% of Salespeople NEVER follow up with a prospect

25% of Salespeople make a Second contact, then quit.

12% of Salespeople make only Three contacts, then quit.

Only 10% of Salespeople Make More than Three Contacts.

At this point, you may be saying “So what?”   Here’s what:

2% of Sales are made on the First Contact

3% of Sales are made on the Second Contact

5% of Sales are made on the Third Contact

10% of Sales are made on the Fourth Contact

80% of Sales are made after the Fifth Contact.

These stats indicate that the different between making one call and four calls per prospect can increase your sales by 400%, but only 10% of salespeople do it.  The results of persistence past the fifth call can be even more dramatic. 

In the face of these statistics, you may be wondering why ALL salespeople aren’t more persistent.   Two of the main reasons are Fear of Rejection and Need for Approval. 

There is also a simple question of accountability and discipline.

There is one big difference between good salespeople and great salespeople.   The great ones do the things that the good ones know they should do, but don’t.  

With a new decade upon us, you have a wonderful opportunity to begin a process of consistency in exceeding sales goals.  It starts with you.   Declare that you will no longer accept mediocrity in your sales organization.  Raise Your Expectations, then Raise Theirs.

Statistics demonstrate that there is lots of low hanging fruit that is not being harvested.  Remember, no response or a negative response is NOT a “no”.  Demand persistence.   Refuse to bail out.  Great sales results with follow.

Joe

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2010.   All Rights Reserved.

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If you’ve worked through the heavy lifting involved in the eight steps I described in Volumes One and Two, Congratulations.  You are well on your way to consistent over-achievement and significant revenue growth.   The Final Four are quite easy and straight-forward.    Three of these steps can be easily determined via an objective assessment.  The final step involves simple a simple commitment.

9.  Skills – All selling skills are a blessing.  The more, the merrier.  But certain skill sets are essential for overachieving.  Your Sales Team must be able to hunt for new opportunities, identify the most qualified and be able to close them.  Seek and develop Hunters, Qualifiers and Closers.  Consider everything else a bonus.

10.  Urgency - An over-achieving salesperson must have a killer instinct.  They must have the sense to understand when their prospects are trying to deflect or wiggle away and the skills to deal with these put-offs.  The Law of Diminishing Pain is profound and abundant.  If a prospect doesn’t agree to do business with you while you’re speaking with him, while you have the ability to influence him, while you have his attention and while his issue is biggest and brightest, the chances that he will decide to do business with you when he returns from vacation or his “two crazy weeks of busy-ness” are highly unlikely.  He’ll have 89 pressing issues to deal with upon his return and the problem you are now talking about will seem less pressing.  If you allow for put-offs, understand the consequences of your bailing out.  If you are LUCKY, you’ll extend your sales cycle by weeks or months.  More likely, the order will simply not happen.

11.  Weaknesses - Unfortunately, there are dozens weaknesses that will neutralize all of the factors listed above.   The five most debilitating weaknesses are Need for Approval, Non-Supportive Buy Cycle, Emotional Involvement, The Money Weakness, and Self-Limiting Psychological Records (aka:  Head Trash).  Fortunately, these can all be measured and systematically eliminated once identified.

12.  Coaching and Training - Your coaching must support any training initiative and help salespeople overcome their weaknesses, develop skills and master the selling process.  Make it clear that your salespeople understand that their recurrent coaching/de-briefing appointment is the single most important meeting on their calendar.  Each over-achieving salesperson must be prepared for their weekly de-brief. Attendance must be non-negotiable.

There are your 12 steps.  If you follow this simple formula, the results will exceed your wildest expectations.  Start now and watch what happens in 2010!

Joe

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2009.   All Rights Reserved.

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Last month, I discussed the first four ingredients necessary to transform your Sales Culture into one that consistent over-achieves.  Here are the next four…

5.  Director of Culture Transformation (DCT):  The DCT should likely be your company’s top executive.  If you are the CEO, but would prefer to delegate this job to your Sales VP, you must still make it crystal clear to everyone that this individual has your 100% undying support. The job of the DCT is to clearly communicate the new paradigm—that mediocrity will no longer be tolerated and that a new culture of over-achievement IS expected, not only from the sales team, but by all of the people that you’d like to be more sales aware.  For example–perhaps you want branch managers at a bank to go out and find local business customers, order takers to become proactive by making outgoing calls, or professionals to bring new clients into your firm.  In any of these cases, the biggest mistake is that management usually fails to communicate this expectation to the very people they would like to change.

6.  Processes:   A process is NOT a model, an approach, a philosophy or a strategy.  A process is a series of steps that leads to a RESULT.   It is your job to define that simple and effective series of steps.  Every salesperson in your company should adopt this singular game plan and follow the same, exact Sales Process.  If you do not currently have a sales process, you might consider starting with UnCommon Sense©.  These processes are adaptable to virtually any type of product, service or industry with very minor modifications.   You will also want to adopt a Sales Management Process and a Sales Recruiting Process.  These three processes are absolutely vital is you are seeking to build consistent growth into your sales effort. 

7. Motivation:  This is the combination of Goals and Incentives. The Bottom Line–does the salesperson have enough powerful Desire and an UnConditional Commitment to do Whatever it Takes - every day - to reach the goals?  When they don’t, it’s your job to motivate them by knowing what each salesperson’s goals are.  This is not about income requirements or gross sales.  It is about Personal Vision, aka:  paid-off mortgages, boats and cars, beach homes, golf trips, world travel, balloon trips, home theaters, fantasy camps, etc.

8. True Champion:  Most companies today require salespeople to work remotely without a supervisor.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of salespeople simply do not have the discipline and mental toughness to carry this load.  I refer to this special breed of self-starters who do have the right stuff as True Champions.  These are individuals who can not only work independently but can also work without supervision.   If either attribute is missing, you’ll need to wind them up every day, twice daily or sometimes more.  Even for people who are not working remotely, most small business owners simply do not have the resources to re-start their people.  If you have self-starters, you are a fortunate manager.  If you don’t, I’d suggest you find some. Sales Teams with these champions are much more likely to consistently over-achieve.

I’ll wrap up the list of the Essential Dozen next month.  In the meantime, if you haven’t yet seen the UnCommon Sense© Sales Upgrade Checklist, it is a simple and effective way to launch your ascension to a more predictable, visible and scalable sales organization.  If you would like to request a copy of the list, you can your request it at GrowMySales@zthree.com.

Continued Success!!!

Joe

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2009.   All Rights Reserved.

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