Archive for Articles by Eric Mulford
ASK Method
Posted by: | CommentsASK sales training involves – Attitude, Skill and Knowledge. Traditionally most training programs begin with knowledge. Sometimes they might get around to skills training, but rarely do they ever go far enough to deal with the attitudes that prevents people from becoming successful.
There are many factors that go into each of the three dynamics. Training programs must include many of those factors, but without addressing the attitude barriers enduring success will not be achieved. Attitude training must include a level of self-awareness that makes emotional mastery possible.
Self-awareness must be addressed before the skills are developed. If not, certain “career limiting behaviors” will go unchecked and success will be evasive. Knowing who you are and what you need to function in the world is important to your success. You may have a need to dominate, inspire, be patient or analytical. These things, as good as they sound, could be getting in your way of success. Knowing yourself is important to understanding how you relate to others. The quiet analytical sales rep, who knows himself, can succeed where the “glad-handed” talker fails simply because of self-knowledge.
“Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city.” -Proverbs 16:32
Being patient and under control is better than being mighty. When you are under control you are free to think. The thinkers are always the masters! Emotional mastery is the ability to be under control when everything around you is out of control. Lack of self-control is the sales persons most damaging weakness. The prospective buyer will say something that doesn’t sit well with the sales person and he will strike back. This never sits well with the prospect.
A person with well-developed self-control does not engage in conversations of hatred, envy, jealously, revenge, fear, egotism or suspicion. They simply don’t make time for it in their schedule, nor do they have room for it in their mind. They control their calendar. They take their thoughts captive. This man understands that like attracts like. He too knows that unless he commands control of the doors that allow the entrance of such thinking ( the calendar and the mind) he will be drawn there.
Understanding yourself and mastering your emotional responses are the first steps in creating a good attitude. It is also a key to the kind of mastery that allows you to build a large pipeline of prospects. Sales training must include such help or it will fail. I watched the girl scouts in our church selling cookies. To be successful in sales requires more than the girl scouts. You can’t give a sales rep a below average product at an above average price with a bright smile and for a good cause and expect the same results.
Success in sales requires the right attitude in addition to skills and knowledge. Self-awareness and emotional mastery are the keys to developing a proper attitude. Skills training is easy to obtain. Product knowledge is readily available. But where can a sales rep go to become a sales professional? A professional has the skills and the knowledge, but depends mostly on his attitude to be successful. Some have estimated that your success in any endeavor depends more than 80% on your attitude. There is a reason why the A is first in ASK.
Value Added vs. Buyer Satisfication
Posted by: | CommentsFrom a consumer stand point the term “value added” means nothing. It does not give great value to the product itself. The baseline value of the product will have to stand on its own.
This definition of what adds value is really a consumer driven thing. Doing what is best for the consumer is really either what you do (as defined above) or it isn’t.
All things being equal, baseline value of the product, consumers will purchase from a sales rep who really cares about their needs and not just throwing in some “extra” things to make the sale.
I have tried for years to get sales reps to understand that the value they “add” comes from them. It isn’t something that the company provides to help them make up for their lack of understanding of the consumer and his/her needs.
Claiming that you have a value added service sounds to your potential buyer like saying “buy this car from me because it has air in the tires.”
Giving Value first demands that you see things from your potential buyer’s perspective. Understand that the potential buyer is always seeking to satisfy his/her own wants and needs – never yours. You are not in the consideration! It is never about you – it is always about them.
There are four levels of buyer satisfaction:
1. You must meet the potential buyers expectations. Ask yourself how you can do this with your product or service? Understand that it is the product or service that meets a potential buyers needs not some added value.
Nothing that you add to the product or service is going to help you meet expectations. The potential buyers expectations are on the product – not on your added value. I’m not saying that the extra things aren’t important – they are the subject of the next point. What I am saying is that the product itself comes with certain expectations and those expectations must be met by the product or the potential buyer will look somewhere else. Can you list twenty possible expectations a potential buyer might have before you have your first conversation? Can you show how your product is capable of meeting those expectations without the use of superlatives? Make a list of twenty things that will meet the buyers expectations. Then tomorrow add twenty more to the list…
2. Once the potential buyer understands your ability to meet his expectations you must prove your ability to exceeding the expectations. Here is where you provide the additional value. You must be constantly asking how you might be able to exceed the potential buyers expectations – by adding what… to the initial purchase product. Think of twenty ways in which you can exceed your potential buyers expectations. Now think about those things from your new customers perspective and see if you’re on target. If not, go back and think of twenty more. Then tomorrow add twenty more to the list…
3. Next you must delight the buyer beyond the initial point of purchase. Sometimes referred to as”satisfaction after the sale”. You must understands the difference between satisfaction and delight. Constantly be asking yourself, “how can I delight my customer?” He then develops ways to accomplish delight in his customers. Can you think of twenty ways to delight your customers? Will you think of twenty more tomorrow? How do you plan to implement those things today? What’s your plan for tomorrow?
4. Finally you must understand the power of amazement. You know that amazing the potential buyer at every step in the sales process is essential to being the best. Stop right now and think of twenty ways you can amaze your potential buyer from the first contact all the way through the buyer referring you to his friends. Then tomorrow think of twenty more. Schedule how you plan to implement those things.
Value demands that you understand your potential buyer! The buyer determines value by one standard – satisfaction. Value is your product and that product is you. Without you…your product is simply a commodity. Sales professionals take the commodity, add themselves to the mix and create great value, customer satisfying value, for the potential buyers.
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6 Steps to a Presentation That…
Posted by: | CommentsJust completed this article. It is available on EzineArticles. 6 Steps to a Presentation That Rocks: http://EzineArticles.com/4565518
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