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Do you spend time during Sales calls over-coming objections? 

If your answer is “yes”, you are losing out on sales. Lots of them. You are also diminishing trust and burning up profit.

If your answer is “yes,” why are you choosing to give the prospect something to object to in the first place?

A buyer can never object to anything unless you provide them with an opportunity to object to something. If you are guilty of doing this, you are certainly in the majority. Most salespeople (and principals who sell) spend most of their time telling (when they should be learning) and offer up a continuous barrage of great opportunities to object. They actually choose to lose.

At this point you may be thinking, “how is the buyer going to know how great we are if I don’t tell him/her?” The answer is simple and it resides in timing. Most salespeople tell way too soon during a sales interview (by the way - it should be an interview, not a presentation…)

If you manage prospect interactions properly, and if you provide them with the opportunity to tell you what they want, they will. If you manage interviews properly and remain patient and disciplined, prospects will tell you exactly what they want. Unfortunately, most salespeople never give a prospect this opportunity. Instead, they begin to blather way too early in the conversation, teeing up tons of opportunities for objections. The result is lost effectiveness, lost margins, lost sales, and lost profit.

Talking when you should be listening is just one example of a rampant dysfunctional condition known as Premature Satisfaction™ (aka: The Destroyer of Profit). Launching proposals too early in the cycle is another epidemic example.

Stop creating opportunities for prospect objections. The elimination of Premature Satisfaction™ is simply a choice. Once you choose, the cure simply requires patience, the habit of discipline and a little practice. 

Joe 

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2015.   All Rights Reserved.

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The single biggest asset that a Salesperson has is time.

Great salespeople manage time effectively, poor ones don’t. Unfortunately, the vast majority of salespeople fall into the “poor” category. In their zeal to close deals, many salespeople (and principals that sell) waste tons of time, up to and often including more than enough time to burn through the entire profit margin of a sale.

This article includes some things your salespeople can stop doing in order to generate more sales.

As you review the following list, please ask yourself if your salespeople exhibit any of these profit-destroying behaviors. As you work through the list, try to estimate how much healthier your bottom line would look if they would eliminate these time wasters:

They spend time Talking/Convincing instead of Listening/Understanding: Buyers do not really care what a salesperson wants to talk about. They care only about where they are and where they want to be. This is, was and will always be the case. For some reason, most salespeople never seem to get this simple fact. As a consequence, they burn through dozens of hours each week trying to present, propose, demo and convince. And they do so prematurely. These activities are all huge time wasters and profit-killers.

They avoid selling:   Let me share a little known secret. The majority of salespeople really don’t like to sell! They may enjoy holding title of “Sales Executive." They usually enjoy being paid on a salesperson’s pay scale. They may enjoy giving presentations or demos. They sometimes enjoy customer service or resolving existing customer issues. Many enjoy researching websites, Google and LinkedIn profiles. Many are OK with sending emails and texts. But only a very small percentage of “salespeople” enjoy doing the Real Sales Work. Real Sales Work involves hunting, prospecting, qualifying, and closing. It involves navigating their way to Decision Makers and asking them tough questions. It involves consistent execution of an effective sales process. Real selling involves discipline, persistence, and commitment to do real sales work. These are the activities that should dominate your salespeople’s time. If your salespeople are not doing the Real Sales Work, they may be costing you much more than they are earning.  

They invite interruptions: For many reasons, including the fact that they simply don’t like to sell, many salespeople allow a rampant set of pervasive, time-intensive tasks to distract them from doing Real Sales Work. The table below outlines five of the biggest time-wasting distractions:

 Distraction / Task         Daily Time Burned       New Time to Sell

A huge percentage of salespeople proactively bring these five interruptions into their world.   The best salespeople do not. By eliminating these very popular, pervasive distractions, a salesperson can free up over 766 hours of time per year, or more than nineteen weeks of new selling time.  

How many more sales could you generate if you were granted nineteen more weeks to sell each year?

Happy Selling!

Joe

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2014.   All Rights Reserved.

joe zente,z3,zthree,tab,tab austin,the alternative board,grow your sales,sales performance,double your profit

In a few moments, I will share a secret that will allow you to grow your sales and double your profit in less than one year. I am consistently amazed at the incredibly small percentage of people that know this secret. The secret is simple to execute, requires no financial investment and will save you tons of time. 

For most people, the easiest (and most comfortable) parts of selling are:

• Giving Presentations

• Creating Proposals

• Offering Product Demos

• Talking about your Company Benefits and Advantages

• Attempting to Demonstrate Value

• Providing References

• Lunches, Happy-hours and Golfing with Prospects

• Research, email and other electronic communication

• Visiting with Peers

Some salespeople also love to hang out at networking, aka: not working, events.

Although these comfortable activities are preferred and enjoyable for most people, they are also the least important, differentiated and effective part of selling. In the minds of Buyers, these activities are also the most boring. They are commodities.

In order to talk, present, and demonstrate, one requires knowledge - knowledge of your company, product, industry, competition and more. Companies invest billions every year training their salespeople to become experts on their products, benefits, and industry.  Training takes time. Talking takes time. Demos take time. Creating proposals takes time. 

Time = Money. Expensive money. Goodbye Profit.

I’m not disparaging training. In fact, I’m a huge fan of training, the right kind of training.  I’m simply sharing some obvious observations regarding proportionality. Product training, client training, demos and presentations are highly over-rated; they create ineffective behavior and cost companies dearly.

If you could create the same volume of sales in half the time, what would happen to your margins? Also, how much additional (high margin) revenue could you create with the additional time you saved?

Over the course of my career, I’ve managed, trained and coached many thousands of salespeople and business owners, and I meet many new ones each week. When we meet and discuss their selling approach, I quickly learn that some use a selling process, but most don’t. I also quickly learn that just about every one spends 2 to 5 times as much time and money on generating a sale than is necessary. By focusing on the activities they know and like, versus the effective activities that create trust, credibility, differentiation and results, they dramatically diminish their sales growth and profit.

I promised to share the profit secret, so here goes…

When it comes to selling: Stop Being the Expert and Shut-Up.  

If you want to grow your sales and keep more profit, focus on this Effective Selling List:

• Stop being the expert. Start making the prospect the expert.

• Stop talking. Start listening.

• Stop convincing. Start learning.

• Stop visiting with peers. Start visiting with decision makers.

• Stop presenting. Start understanding.

Great salespeople and owners understand that these are key activities that lead to effective selling and superior performance.

Please notice that nothing on this list requires product knowledge or experience. Every one of these activities requires less time, less training, and fewer resources than the previous, comfortable list of ineffective activities.

Challenge each person on your team to place their fears and ego aside and to replace expertise and convincing with child-like curiosity, integrity and sincerity. Start today!

Less time, more sales, increased profit.

Happy Hunting,

Joe 

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2014.   All Rights Reserved.

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Media research has shown the average American is bombarded with more than 16,000 bids for their attention each and every day. It also shows that within 3 seconds, we either tune in or tune out.

In most cases, we tune out.

Much has been written about methods to cut through the clutter using clever marketing, social media, and electronic techniques. However, few people know how to keep someone’s attention once they actually get someone to tune in.

The answer lies in Big Talk.

As businesspeople, most of us believe that our product or service is great. Furthermore, many of us believe that prospects are actually interested to learn more from us about it.  Unfortunately, this could not be further from the truth.

A recent survey of C-Level executive buyers indicated that only 14% of conversations with salespeople resulted in any useful learning or created any significant impact. In the remaining 86% of conversations, the company representative was perceived to be creating no value or differentiation. To make things worse, the closer you get to the decision maker, the tougher it is for most salespeople to differentiate.

In today’s environment of sound bites and short attention spans, small talk simply doesn’t work. Additionally, differentiation will not be achieved by virtue of comparisons, presentations, benefit statements, product knowledge, testimonials, manipulations and demos. It will certainly not be achieved by virtue of scripts, leading questions and clever closing techniques. By using these antiquated approaches, you will actually commoditize yourself, likely doing more harm than good.

In order to differentiate yourself and your company from your competitors and be perceived as valuable in the eyes of potential buyers, you must become proficient at the science of Big Talk. Big Talk results from a comprehensive understanding of the psychology of decision making, an understanding of effective communication principles, empathic listening, emotional intelligence, sincere interest, and integrity. 

Implement a Culture of Big Talk in your organization. Make sure that your salespeople master it. Doing so will bring millions to your bottom line. 

 Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2014.   All Rights Reserved.

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Many years ago, I was recruited to lead a company that had flat sales despite a relatively large and experienced sales team.  The firm’s CEO was a brilliant scientist and a very analytical guy.  He was beaming as he handed me a huge binder stuffed with copies of over two hundred unfulfilled proposals the company had delivered during the previous several months.   These proposals were complex.  The cost to create each one was large.  In addition to sales and administrative costs associated with preparing the nicely packaged quotes, each one also involved significant design & engineering time.  The CEO excitedly proclaimed that these proposals were “just dying to be closed”.  

We took a few weeks to follow up on every proposal.  You can probably guess what we discovered.  Not one of these “hot sales prospects” had any intention of buying.   In fact, nearly half of the recipients couldn’t even recall receiving a proposal.  Every “prospect” had other priorities that had nothing to do with purchasing our company’s product.  Many of these folks had absolutely no decision authority whatsoever.  Some prospects requested a proposal simply to placate and/or blow off the aggressive “expert” salesperson.

We were soon able to turn things around and fuel sales growth through effective sales management.  We focused the attention of the sales team on some real business opportunities, talked with some real decision makers, and focused their sales conversations upon asking questions, listening and understanding versus talking and giving unqualified presentations.  However, I’ll never forget the lunacy this company demonstrated by wasting all of those precious resources chasing ghosts.

Over the last 15 years, I have had the opportunity to help hundreds of company owners upgrade their sales.  Through this process, I have learned that the vast majority of companies squander tons of profit by virtue of a rampant and popular dysfunction we refer to as Premature Satisfaction™.

Is your company wasting money with unqualified sales prospects?  If so, how much?  Most companies dramatically underestimate these costs.

Many Business Owners and Sales Managers place a highly disproportionate emphasis on the importance of sending lots of proposals.  The (incorrect) assumption here is:

More Proposals    =   More Sales    =    More Profit

Nothing can be further from the truth.  In fact, the equation should read:

Better Qualification   =   Fewer Proposals   =   More Profit

For the majority of salespeople, the size of their “hot prospect pipeline” and the volume of profit they return to the bottom line are inversely proportional.  Many don’t have a clue about time management or the value of an hour of their own (or your company’s) time.

A high level of sales activity is crucial, but please don’t confuse activity with productivity.  Generating and launching unqualified proposals is a costly example of one aspect of Premature Satisfaction™ (aka: The Destroyer of Profit).  There is a simple cure for this organizational disorder.  It only requires some simple tools, some simple rules, and a little discipline.

For starters, every opportunity should always be thoroughly qualified before company resources are invested in creating proposals.  A Qualifier Checklist is a great way to begin this process.

Secondly, all sales activities should be singularly focused upon either moving the sales process forward or closing the file.  Anything in between is pure wheel-spinning — useless activity disguised as “work”.

A “yes” is fine and so is a “no”.  It is the “maybes” that tear into both your revenue and profit lines.

Some other popular wheel-spinning activities include:

• Excessive internet research (and other busywork) to avoid making phone calls

• Sending literature, letters, and emails to avoid making prospecting calls.  

• Allowing the buyer to control the sales process.

• Accepting prospect meetings without a clear, mutually acceptable agenda.

• Talking, presenting and giving demos when you should be listening & understanding.

If you are looking to build more predictability, consistency, visibility, scalability and profitability into your sales effort, take a hard look at the quality of your Sales Pipeline and begin eliminating Premature Satisfaction™ today.

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2014.   All Rights Reserved.

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