Table Of Contents
LEARNER GUIDE
Implement Contact Centre specific sales techniques to generate sales through a Contact Centre
Unit Standard 10323
Level 4 Credits 4
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS i
UNIT STANDARD 10323 1
SECTION 1: CLIENT TYPES AND NEEDS 3
Introduction 3
What Is Selling? 3
The 7 Stages of the Sales Cycle 4
The Role Of The Sales Consultant 5
Inbound Sales 5
Sample job description 5
Handling the sales call 6
Sales process 10
The product offer (also called 'sales proposition') 10
Outbound Sales 13
How to Make Outbound Calls 13
Making Cold Calls 13
The seven steps of the sale 15
'Script' for initial sales 21
Formative Assessment SO1 25
SECTION 2: CROSS-SELL PRODUCTS 26
Definition 26
Keys to Effective Cross-Selling and Up-Selling 27
Common Techniques 27
How Should I Implement Cross-Selling? 27
Best Practices 28
Cross-sell, and upsell 29
Tips to improve cross-selling and up-selling 32
Sales Techniques 33
consultative selling, 'needs-creation' selling, and 'SPIN Selling®' 33
'SPIN Selling 34
Open plan selling, strategic selling 34
Formative assessment SO2 39
SECTION 3: CLOSE SALES 40
Steps 40
Types of Closes 41
The Assumptive Close 41
The Time-Limit Close 41
The Custom Close 41
The Pact Close 42
The Peer Pressure Close 42
The If-All-Else-Fails Close 42
Mistakes to avoid 42
Overcoming Your Fear of Selling 43
Meet your sales targets 44
Formative assessment SO3 44
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENTS WORKBOOK 45
Formative Assessment SO1 45
Formative assessment SO2 52
Formative assessment SO3 54
UNIT STANDARD 10323
Unit Standard Title
Implement Contact Centre specific sales techniques to generate sales through a Contact Centre
NQF Level
4
Credits
12
Purpose Of The Unit Standard
This unit standard forms part of the qualification, National Certificate in Contact Centre Operations NQF Level 4. Learners working towards this unit standard will be learning towards the full qualification, or will be working within a Contact Centre environment, where the acquisition of competence against this standard will add value to learner`s job. This unit standard is intended to enhance the provision of intermediate level service within the Contact Centre industry
Learning Assumed To Be In Place And Recognition Of Prior Learning
Learners accessing this unit standard or qualification will have demonstrated competency against unit standards in Contact Centres at NQF Level 2 or equivalent.
Learners are expected to have demonstrated competency in language, numeracy, literacy and communication at NQF Level 4 or equivalent
Unit Standard Range
Sales include but are not limited to Rand value, Units, sales.
This standard applies to Contact Centres that are in-bound and/or out-bound within a commercial or emergency context and will include appropriate subject matter in the area in which the learner chooses to operate
Specific Outcomes and Assessment Criteria:
Specific outcome 1: Identify client types and needs
Assessment criteria
✓ Sales opportunities are identified
✓ Client needs are accurately identified within an industry specific context
Specific outcome 2: Cross-sell products in a Contact Centre.
Assessment criteria
✓ Multi sales are generated as per industry specific requirements
✓ All product related information is accurately provided
✓ Company specific procedures and industry regulations are adhered to
Specific outcome 3: Close sales in order to meet targets.
Assessment criteria
✓ The client`s needs are met
✓ The sale is confirmed and authorised according to company specific procedures and legislative requirements
✓ The number of sales closed complies with company specific targets. Sales includes but is not limited to Rand value, units, sales
Unit Standard Essential Embedded Knowledge
✓ An in-depth understanding of industry specific products and/or services offered.
✓ An in-depth understanding of Contact Centre sales procedures, guidelines and policies.
✓ A basic understanding of basic sales techniques in a Contact Centre.
✓ A broad overall understanding of negotiation skills and techniques.
✓ A general understanding of handling objections by customers
Critical Cross-Field Outcomes
✓ Work with others as part of a team in order to finalise and close sales
✓ Collect, analyse and critically evaluate client information in order to accurately identify client needs
✓ Communicate effectively when responding to client needs
✓ In order to contribute to the full personal development of each learner and the social and economic development of society at large, it must be the intention underlying any programme of learning to make an individual aware of the importance of: being culturally and aesthetically sensitive across a range of social contexts when implementing specific sales techniques
SECTION 1: CLIENT TYPES AND NEEDS
Specific outcome 1
Identify client types and needs
Assessment criteria
✓ Sales opportunities are identified
✓ Client needs are accurately identified within an industry specific context
Essential embedded knowledge
N/A
Introduction
We live in a customer-orientated society and this trend is visible throughout the world.
Customer-orientation means that the emphasis falls on
✓ the individual customer,
✓ the society to which he or she belongs and
✓ the government which has the authority over both.
What Is Selling?
Sales are the activities involved in selling products or services in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity.
Selling is satisfying the customers’ needs and wants (requirements) with a product and service for which the customer is happy to pay.
Selling simply implies the selling of products and services to consumers. Selling implies that products and services are sold to a designated segment which has a need and use for the product or service being sold
The primary functions of professional sales are to
✓ generate and close new leads,
✓ inform and educate prospective leads
✓ satisfy the “needs and wants” of consumers
✓ turn prospective customers into actual ones
The responsibilities of the sales person include:
✓ successful questioning of a customer to understand his/her goal,
✓ creating a viable and acceptable solution by effectively communicating the information
✓ which will encourage a buyer to achieve his “needs and wants” by purchasing the product or service on offer
What Is Marketing?
In its simplest form, marketing can be defined as planned methods used by an individual or organisation, to ensure that its products and services are advertised to the prospective consumer, using the most effective means possible to achieve this
It is clear, however, that marketing extends beyond the advertising of products and services. Marketing also entails a much broader field than just selling what is available in the organisation
The 7 Stages of the Sales Cycle
No matter what you're selling, every sale follows roughly the same pattern. It's rare that a sale does not include each of these steps, in one form or another.
In order to succeed in sales you need to master each one of these stages. You need to be competent in all of these critical areas. If you do not master these skills, you may just survive as a salesperson but you will never prosper as one.
1. Prospecting for leads
During this phase you identify potential customers.
In order to prospect effectively, you need to know and understand your products inside out. You cannot sell a product or service if you yourself do not understand and know your product or service. You also need to have a clear and defined target market to which you want to sell your product or service
2. Setting up an appointment
You may cold call properly identified prospective customers, or you can also send emails, SMS’s, or even mail out sales letters. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are also important marketing tools
3. Qualify the prospect
The qualification stage usually takes place at the initial contact, which also includes qualifying a prospect during a cold call or similar. You need to confirm at this stage that your prospect is both able and potentially willing to buy your product.
4. Prepare your presentation
The presentation is the core of every sales cycle, for which you should be well prepared. Spend quality time preparing for this! Remember, you're not just selling your product... you are also selling yourself! You represent your company, so first impressions are of utmost importance. Take care with your appearance.
5. Presenting
The way in which you present can make or break the sale. You need to be confident in yourself and your product. However, confidence does not mean arrogance. It is important to understand and respect the customers’ individuality. If you are too overbearing on a mild mannered person you will not make that sale! You may meet an outgoing gregarious person who loves to chat about the rugby or his family before listening to your presentation. Conversely, you may encounter a no-nonsense kind of person who will want a quick, succinct presentation. As you become more experienced, you will instinctively know the best way to present to different people
6. Address the Prospect's Concerns
It would be preferable to be able to make your presentation without the customer perhaps interrupting with concerns, questions, clarification or objections. If his concerns will be addressed in the course of your presentation, ask the customer if it’s ok if you complete the presentation, after which time you will answer all and any questions
Take care to listen effectively to what the customer says. When a customer asks questions you must understand that the way you respond will influence whether you get the sale or not. It is essential that you understand WHY a customer asks a specific question. Questions are not always objections, and a skilled sales person must learn to use questioning to his advantage. When a customer has no questions, but has also not bought your product, your must know your presentation was a failure! Questioning you means the customer is interested, but needs more information or assurance before making the final decision to buy
7. Close the Sale
Once you've made your presentation and answered your prospect's questions and objections, you need to ask for the sale. This is the second-most neglected stage of the sales cycle... which is especially sad given that it's probably the most critical. A suggested way is to ask the customer if all his questions/objections have been dealt with, and if so, to ask for the sale.
8. Ask for Referrals
This is hands down the most commonly neglected step. Too many salespeople are so relieved to get a sale that they grab their things and race out the door. You must always understand that you need to build a trusting and open relationship with your customers. When a customer knows you, trusts your word and your products, he will gladly provide you with referrals for you to approach. The sure way to get referrals is to get your customer to like and trust you, as well as your company and products. The only way to do this is to be honest, open and always upfront in your dealings with him. An underhand, dishonest or slimy approach will put most people off and you will not make sales, much less get referrals
The Role Of The Sales Consultant
The role of the sales person or sales consultant has changed drastically from the traditional role where sales people were seen as insincere, pushy individuals who put pressure on buyers to purchase their products. These days a sales person is a professional, who is interested in building a partnership between the company and the customer. Today’s sales consultant is a professional and competent business person, who delivers not only a product but also real added value, such as after sales service, and quality interaction in the future with you and your company.
Top sellers have changed from peddlers to being ‘relationship managers,’ The focus of sales has changed from just selling a product, to selling benefit, or better business result.
To add value to the product or service, a sales consultant must:
✓ Identify the needs and wants of customers
✓ Develop added services to wrap around products which will enhance customer satisfaction
✓ Measure customer satisfaction to prove that the customer’s life or business was improved when he bought your product or service
Inbound Sales
Sample job description
An Inbound Call Centre handles only the inbound calls from the customers. The representatives of an inbound call centre answers these calls. Their responsibility is, but not limited to, responding to incoming calls from the customers, taking their orders, answering questions and enquiries, troubleshooting problems, providing information and handling any complaints regarding the organisation’s products or services.
Duties and Responsibilities
Answering phones from customers professionally, and responding effectively and promptly to customer enquiries and complaints.
✓ Researching required information using accessible resources.
✓ Handling and resolving customer complaints, ranging from product sales to customer service problems.
✓ Providing customers with service and product information.
✓ Processing forms, orders, and other applications requested by customers.
✓ Identifying, escalating priority issues, and reporting concerns to high-level management.
✓ Routing inbound calls to the appropriate resources.
✓ Following up complicated and unresolved customer queries where required.
✓ Completing call logs and call reports, and updating them on the database.
✓ Obtaining and evaluating all relevant data to handle complaints and enquiries.
✓ Recording accurately all details, enquiries, complaints, and note which actions were taken
✓ Managing your administrative duties, your paperwork, and communicating and coordinating effectively with internal departments within your organisation
Skills and Specifications
✓ Have expertise and knowledge of related computer applications you will need to perform your job.
✓ Great communication skills, as well as ability to work with many others, working in close proximity to you.
✓ Good keyboard skills, and impressive telephone etiquette.
✓ Able to react effectively and calmly in emergencies
✓ Able to maintain and respect customer confidentiality.
✓ Have the appropriate related product knowledge.
✓ Have the appropriate level of education and qualifications
✓ Possibly a degree or high school diploma from an accredited institution
✓ Experience in call centre activities
Inbound call sales are defined as customers contacting call centres for customer service, or catalogue (paper and online) sales and service. The goal during an inbound call is firstly for you to be friendly and enthusiastic when taking the call. This makes the customer feel welcome and appreciated. Once you have a happy customer, you can progress to satisfying his reason for calling you in the first place, by selling him a new or add on product. By deploying specific techniques, inbound call sales representatives can increase their conversion rate.
Not all calls reaching you need the “hard sell” approach, because the customer has contacted you of his own free will. This indicates that he is already interested, and therefore, about 80% of your sales work is already done by the time a call comes in!
If you guide and educate those customers calling you, always treating them with respect and understanding, and if you believe in your offerings strongly enough, your products and services will sell themselves.
Handling the sales call
Know Your Product
First, understand exactly what you’re selling. Be aware of all your products and services, and how they interlink one with another, or of the benefits of ‘package’ deals or similar. You can then effectively cross-sell other, similar products, or encourage your customers to upgrade without making it seem like you’re cross-selling.
Don't Interrogate
You will need to ask the customer a series of questions to gain information.
This process must not be seen to be an interrogation, which can annoy the customer. Engage the customer by taking a conversational approach. Introduce yourself clearly, and ask for his or her name. This promotes a relaxed and informal atmosphere. Place a statement in front of a question to gain a more favourable reaction. For example, by stating your name before asking for the customer's name, you become a real person to the caller and not just a faceless voice.
Use statement/question pairs to control the conversation without interrogating the caller.
Callers know you need information in order to identify them, and protect their security and sensitive information. Still, responding to a long list of boring questions can be uncomfortable, annoying and time consuming. Annoyed people do not respond positively to you, and make your job harder. When you get to the part where you’re supposed to be presenting a promotion or up-selling, the customer has become so annoyed that he loses interest and declines the sale.
In order to get your questions answered and create a comfortable and productive dialogue, you must be a good conversationalist.
Great conversationalists know how to blend telling, and asking, in order to stay interested and interesting.
Here’s the strategy for managing a pleasant, interactive conversation, whilst you service and sell to the client. We call it “the statement/question pairs conversation technique”:
✓ When you need to ask a question, place a statement in front of it. For example, “I just need to fill out your account and billing information. May I please have the address you would like to use for this purpose” Or, “My name is Grant Rutherford. May I please have your name?”
✓ When you need to explain a product, service or promotion, describe it and then ask a question afterwards to gauge if the customer has heard you and has developed an opinion. For example, “This week’s product promotion takes 20% off of our most popular magic markers. They have a wide tip, come in standard black, as well as yellow or blue, and a box of 10 is only R15,00. Are these items you will use in your business?”
✓ When you need to create action, explain your reasons for needing to act now, and then ask your closing question. For example, “When parents express a concern about interest rates on the loans, I usually recommend that we go straight ahead and complete the application right away, as the interest rate or other information may change. Could we take about 5 minutes and get this completed please?
Lead the Conversation
Just because you are answering a call does not mean that the customer should lead the conversation. Develop a process to guide a caller through a conversation. A sample process would include:
✓ Greeting him or her, introducing yourself and getting their name
✓ Method of engagement – relate to your customers style
✓ Develop a need within your customer for your product
✓ Present a clear and pleasing solution
✓ Close the sale by reinforcing the buying decision
By putting a practice such as this in place, it is much easier to guide individuals through to your solution.
Customize Your Call Scripts
About cross-selling: Customise your scripts to promote the combined sale of complementary products and services, where it’s appropriate. Anticipate your customers’ potential needs. You’ll boost each average sale, and you will definitely increase your clients’ satisfaction as well.
Politeness
You have just received a new and promising lead for business. Keep in mind that the customer is calling you, so you need to show appreciation for the opportunity he has given you to gain his business. A good way to accomplish this is to say "please" and "thank you" and even “I understand” frequently during the conversation. By doing this you put your customer at ease and greatly improve your chances of success Not doing so can give the appearance of you being condescending and uninterested, and you will not make the sale!
✓ Say “please” every time you ask for a piece of information.
✓ Say “thank you” every time you get what you asked for.
✓ Say “I understand” when a customer makes an observation you agree with. For example, a customer may be wary when you ask for personal information .If you tell him that you understand his concern, given that identity theft is such a problem these days, but assure him that all information given is strictly confidential, he will feel more comfortable in providing you with that information.
Never fail to do this. This process is missing from telephone sales and service conversations. When you follow these steps, you will be perceived as significantly superior to everyone.
Assume Permission
You don't need to seek the caller's permission to make a sales presentation. If the customer is calling about a customer service issue or you're looking to sell an additional product, then make the best use of the opportunity to sell your products and services.
Express the right emotions at the right time
The moment we answer the phone we begin influencing a caller. We influence callers to think well of us and our company, or we influence them to think negatively. Scripting, that is having a prepared script or message in front of you, helps agents to know the right words to say at the right time, answering the customer as well as meeting company standards. Understanding how to use appropriate emotions at the right time helps agents to deliver the messages in a way that has the right impact.
Telephone dialogue must be delivered in a convincing way, or the listeners won’t feel engaged or cared for. Employing proper emotions are the key to succeeding with this. There are 4 emotions that are appropriate in an inbound sales/service business conversation. If a caller is not projecting 1 of these 4 emotions at all times, then s/he is projecting the opposite emotion, which almost always results in failure.
Here are the 4 emotions and a way to understand and use them practically.
Enthusiasm
Essential to a successful call is your enthusiasm when describing your company and its offers, as well as when you react to your caller’s situation and goals. Enthusiastic delivery requires the use of lots of highs and lows in the voice, variation of speed and tempo, and the emphasis on “punch” or key words.
The opposite of being enthusiastic is sounding uninterested or bored. It happens when you keep your voice monotone, or, even worse, the ‘sing-songy’ delivery when someone is obviously just reading a prepared pitch. There is no middle ground here. Boring and uninteresting calls will result in NO sales and NO customer satisfaction.
Learners can practice the two opposite emotions with this statement, “Based on the situation you describe, I’d like to recommend you take advantage of all 3 of our offers. This will allow you to meet with an expert in your home, already have approval on the first part of the investment and see pictures of the location on the Internet.” You will see very quickly the impact that enthusiasm makes.
Curiosity
The salesperson must sound “interested”, instead of “intrusive”. This requires the use of the higher range of the voice, varied pitch and a lilt at the end to indicate the question mark.
The opposite of curiosity is doubt or disdain, which comes across as sarcastic or nosy and is not going to help you move a relationship to the next level.
Learners can practice the two opposite emotions with this question, “What process do you go through when making a new investment?”
Encouragement
When you need to gain more information or cooperation, you must be able to make the contact feel comfortable and safe enough to feel happy to divulge or cooperate with you. We encourage this by “dragging out” our words and using the lower more soothing range of our voice.
The opposite of encouraging is, of course, discouraging.
Learners can practice the two opposite emotions with this statement, “I see.”
Calming procedures
This is a critical skill you need to develop, learning how to disarm and diffuse a potentially difficult situation. Using the lower range of the voice and a slower pace, soothing words can be very powerful. Have empathy, that is, understanding and solidarity with the customer’s situation or complaint. Tell him/her that you understand why they are upset, but that you are going to do your best to sort the problem out.
The opposite of calm is anger. Too often, words that are meant to provide information carry an angry undertone and hurt your chances for a swift and satisfactory resolution.
Learners can practice the 2 opposite emotions with this question. “How can we solve this problem for you?”
Don’t just listen, pay attention
Listening is the great equaliser for salespeople. Callers talk in order to communicate with you. When people talk to you, it is because they want you to know how they feel, what they believe or what they want. This information is critical; using to your advantage you can re-position your offer to satisfy this person. The more they talk, and the more you listen to what they are saying, the better chance you have of making a sale. People want to be understood, validated and appreciated. Getting people to talk, and actually hearing what they say, makes the job of a salesperson easier.
If you monitor 10 calls or even 1000 calls, it soon becomes obvious that many salespeople and service people do not bother to listen. While the caller is talking, many representatives are busy thinking about how they can interrupt, what they are going to say next, or what task they wish they could move on to. Still other agents believe they can listen and be thinking about their next question at the same time. This is not acceptable, and will cost you your credibility and of course, sales
Listening is only useful if you pay attention to what is being said. You need to be able to use the information the caller has provided, and decide how to respond.
Here are the ‘rules’ for listening to customers.
✓ Anytime a caller speaks, you must be ready to jot down or record s/he says. By doing this, you force yourself to pay attention to what is being said.
✓ When the caller has finished talking or explaining his dilemma or problem, you must respond with some sort of empathy statement. This tells your caller that you were listening, that you heard and that you understand. “I see what you mean” and “How interesting” are 2 examples.
✓ If you do not understand what someone means, try asking him leading or open questions “Can you please tell me more about that?” or “Can you please help me to understand why that is important?” This helps to make the customer feel more important and appreciated.
✓ Once you understand the information the caller has provided, decide what to say next to help the caller understand why you are recommending whatever it is you are commending.
✓ If you need to change to a different product because of what you just learned, do so. Your chances of making a sale are very high when it is based on what a caller just told you.
Be Real
✓ Regard any non-sales query as a potential sales lead. If you can quickly and professionally answer questions about your products, services, policies, inventory and tracking, you will increase your chances of concluding a successful sale.
✓ Guide customer conversations naturally. Build rapport, identify their needs and suggest relevant products or services.
✓ If a customer is just not ready to close a sale, don’t brusquely wash your hands of them and move on. Be nice and courteous to them, thank them for their time! They could be a future customer.
Keep Track
✓ Establish relevant and workable lead qualification. That way, more leads coming your way will be converted into sales!
✓ Never forget to follow up. Don’t neglect leads simply because your team can’t keep track of them or, worse, fails to identify opportunities.
Use Fallback Offers
Should the customer reject your initial proposal, have a second offer in mind. A ‘fallback’ offer is usually less expensive than the first offer. By presenting a fallback offer, customers will think "I am getting a better deal." You will have a better chance at closing the sale.
Close the Deal
By ensuring your product or service provides the solution to your customers’ needs and wants, you will be well on your way to closing the deal. Using your closing techniques, confirm the final price, the terms and conditions as necessary, and ask if you may now process the payment. A good way to ask for payment:
"Will that be Visa or MasterCard?"
Sales process
When you use a defined selling process, you can set the tone and atmosphere which is more likely to create customer satisfaction, and open the door for sales and upselling
Greeting
We know how this one works and what to say.
Engagement
This is how we respond to what the customer told us when we asked, “How may I help you?” at the beginning of the call. We also make it clear that we are interested in providing good service and that we are listening. It can be as simple as, “I’ll be happy to take care of that for you. May I please ask you to provide me with your account number or telephone number so that I can access your file?”
‘Need’ Development
This is where we ask all questions in order to understand the problem that caused the enquiry or complaint. It is also when we aim to take the order and gather billing information. Questions here should include how the product will be used, if the customer has the needed supplies or peripherals and how we can best support the customer so the product is used to its fullest capacity for a long time.
Present Solutions
This is when we offer recommendations for additional products or services, and happens after ‘need development’. Begin with “Based on what you told me about your situation, I’d like to recommend you try… Would you like to add that on to your order? ”
Close
Wrap up the call by repeating back what has been accomplished. Review the order, the delivery date, the total price, and any other issues that were resolved, etc.
Reinforcement
“Thank you for calling” is not a very powerful end to a call with an important customer or prospect. Try using something more compelling, such as “Thank you so much for being our customer. Please let us know when we can help you again.” Or, say something that relates to the conversation, such as “I know you are going to be thrilled with your new copier and our delivery service. Please call us again if we can be of service.”
The product offer (also called 'sales proposition')
✓ FABs (features advantages benefits)
✓ USPs (unique selling propositions/points)
✓ UPB’s (unique perceived benefits)
The product offer, or sales proposition, is how the product or service is described and promoted to the customer. The product offer is generally presented in varying levels of detail and depth, depending on the situation.
As an opening or initial proposition, the words used by the sales person to attract attention and interest has to be concise and quick - remember that you need to get his full attention in less than five seconds.
A special product offer can also used by the company, in its various advertising and promotional material aimed at the target market.
Traditionally the company's marketing department would formulate the product offer. These days, the sales person greatly improves his selling effectiveness if he is able to refine and adapt the product offer (not the specification) for targeted sectors and individual prospects.
Developing and tailoring a product offer, or proposition, is a vital part of the selling process, and the approach to this has changed over the years.
FABs (features - advantages - benefits)
The technique of linking features, advantages, and benefits (FABs) was developed in the 1960s and it remains an important basic concept for successful selling and sales training. FABs were traditionally identified by the company, and via the training department, handed to the sales people, who rarely thought much about developing or adapting them further.
Here is the principle of using Features, Advantages, and Benefits:
Customers don't buy first features, they don't even buy the advantages - what they buy primarily are the product's features, followed by the advantages of the product or service, which in selling parlance is called the benefit.
For example: A TV has the feature of internet connectivity and a remote control QWERTY keyboard; the advantage is that the customer can now access and interchange internet and TV services using a single system; and the benefit is that the customer saves money, space, and a lot of time through not having to change from one piece of equipment to another.
In the example given above, it is the saving in money, space and hassle that the customer buys. A sales person, who formulates a sales proposition or product offer around those benefits, will sell far more Internet TV's than a sales person who simply sells 'TV's with internet connectivity and remote QWERTY keypads'. In fact lots of customers won't even have a clue as to what a 'TV with internet connectivity and remote QWERTY keypad' is, particularly when it's packaged, branded and promoted as the latest 'WebTV XL520 with the new Netmaster GT500 Supa-consul'.
The aim is to formulate a product offer, which comprises enough information as to what the product does and how, along with the most important or unique benefits, and is aimed at a given target market or prospect type.
USPs (unique selling points/propositions)
The strongest benefit for a given target sector is often represented by the term USP, meaning “Unique Selling Point”, or proposition. Many companies do not have real uniqueness in their USPs. Real or perceived uniqueness is very important, because it usually makes a prospective customer buy from one sales person or supplier, as opposed to another. If there were 100 different types of WebTVs on the market, the ones that would sell the best would be those which had the strongest unique selling points.
Price is not a USP. It is true some people only buy the cheapest item, but most do not; most will pay a little or a lot extra to get a quality product they trust. As with the example of the WebTV, an advantage that produces a money-saving benefit is different to straight-forward price discounting. A lower or cheaper price is not a benefit in this context, and any product that is marketed purely with a low-price USP will always be vulnerable to competition which offers proper user-related benefits, even at a higher price.
It can however become difficult to always succeed in selling a product, using a fixed USP or series of USPs. By their nature, USPs fail to take account of a prospect's particular circumstances and detailed needs. You will need to be aware of this when selling your product. The needs of a 20 year old university student and those of a businesswoman in her 40’s are vastly different.
Each type of prospect has different reasons for buying. Market sectors or prospect types with smaller houses and fewer rooms are more likely to respond to the space-saving USP benefit of the WebTV. Other prospects with bigger houses and more space are more likely to regard the time-saving benefit as the key USP instead. A sector which comprises people who are not technically competent may well respond best to a USP offering free installation, training and a free technical support hotline. You will need to be aware of these differences when using USP selling techniques.
UPBs (unique perceived benefits)
This now leads us to the UPB, meaning “Unique Perceived Benefit” - a modern selling concept evolved from FABs and USPs.
The UPB acronym and concept was originated by The Marketing Guild, and it is proper to mention this when using the term in training.
A UPB is essentially a customer-orientated product offer.
USPs and FABs are largely formulated from the seller's perspective; they stem from product features. UPB is when, instead of looking at the product from the seller's viewpoint, we look at the need, from the customer's viewpoint. We can then build up a UPB-based product offer that fits the prospect's situation, and stand a much better chance of concluding a successful sale.
It is therefore important that you understand the target market segment, or the targeted prospect type, extremely well. This means we should first decide which sectors or segments to target, and accentuates why planning and preparation in the selling process is far more significant and influential than it ever used to be.
Each targeted segment or prospect type has its own particular needs and constraints, and these combine to create the prospect's or target sector's very specific buying motive. If we know and understand this, we can identify and formulate a unique perceived benefit to meet a known or researched sector's specific buying motive, and can then create a product offer ideally suited to his needs.
A likely attractive target sector for the WebTV could be families with limited space and little technical confidence. With children at school using computers, their parents (the decision-makers) could be motivated to buy by wanting to improve their children's computer and internet skills at home. They would consider this if there was no requirement for extra space, did not put pressure on their limited technical know-how, and were offered free installation and ongoing support. If the package enabled the parents to upgrade their TV as well for not much more, then we're certainly likely to get their attention and interest, and are just a short step away from creating some real desire. The UPB for this particular prospect type might look something like:
"You can now give your children important educational access to the Internet at home, even if you know nothing about computers, and thought you did not even have enough space for one."
The product offer above is described so that the prospect type in question identifies with it, and can immediately match it to his situation. The WebTVs relevant benefits - ie, you save space and you don't need to spend time understanding the technicalities - have been used to help motivate him or her to consider buying it. The important reference to educational benefits for the children is an example of developing the UPB further. Many times, you using more words reduces impact and attention; only by using the UPB in various forms can we see what works best.
It's now clear to see and understand the difference between offering a basic technical feature (a TV with internet connectivity and remote QWERTY keypad), and a unique perceived benefit (your children will be better educated). The feature itself, the WebTV, does little to attract the buyer; effective use of the UPB is what will sell the WebTV.
There's another important reason to use tailored perceived benefits, rather than focus on FABs and unique selling points. It's very easy for prospects to compare and put a price on what a product is (FABs and even USPs), but it's very difficult to put a monetary value to a real UPB. .
Developing strong meaningful unique perceived benefits is not easy - it requires good insight and understanding of the prospect or sector to be approached, and a lot of thought, trial and error to arrive at something that works well.
Remember that it is important to adapt the product offer (UPB, sales proposition or however you define it) according to its use in the selling process.
For example:
✓ When cold-calling, the proposition is generally broad, concise, and more strategic in nature, and amounts to no more than a long sentence.
✓ In sales brochures and enquiry follow-up letters, the product offer or proposition is more detailed, perhaps running to a few sentences or bullet points.
✓ In formal proposals and detailed presentations the proposition can often extend to several paragraphs or even pages.
Outbound Sales
How to Make Outbound Calls
[pic]Deciding how to make outbound calls when working in a sales role can tremendously improve the probability of success. Here are six steps to help any sales person with improving in this area, regardless of skill level and experience.
1. Focus on your core value
The very first step in improving outbound sales is to clearly identify the core value that you have to offer the prospects you will be calling. This is the business value that transfers from you to your clients when they purchase your products or services.
Having a clear awareness around the value that you have to offer can also improve your mental state while cold calling. This is because we can easily develop a needy frame of mind when calling, because of pressure to close deals. When we focus on the value that we deliver, we can transition from neediness to confidence.
2. Identify the ideal prospect
It is very important to clearly identify what your ideal prospect looks like. We cannot and should not try to sell to everybody, as there is always a segment of the market that is better suited to our product or service than others. By identifying what this segment looks like in terms of geography, size, and industry, and so on, you can focus only on the prospects that should be interested in your products or services, and not waste time and become demotivated by making countless unproductive calls to unsuitable prospects.
3. Identify differentiation
Regardless of what you sell, you will always face competition. Even if there is no direct competition in the market or in the actual deal that you are working on, you still compete against the prospect’s option to not want to buy at all. Deciding on what makes you different from the competition is a key step when looking into how to make outbound calls.
4. Develop a call script
During outbound sales, one could just “wing it” on every call and say what comes to our mind at the time. This is a waste of time and effort, and will demotivate you. It is best to develop some sort of cold call script or plan. This could be a detailed script that we read word for word, or it could be something that is more of an outline with key points. Either way, having a document in front of you that has your thoughts organised can greatly improve your success rate.
5. Prepare for objections
You are guaranteed to run up against objections on almost every cold call. These are statements that the prospect will make to try to end the call. The better we are prepared to deal with these, the more success that we will have.
6. Reflect back to improve moving forward
One of the most important steps towards improving outbound calling actually takes place after the call, as it involves reflecting on and evaluating what took place during the call. You can look back at questions that should have been asked, think about the objections raised during the call, and identify what you could have been done better. Going through this routine after each call will greatly improve your success on future calls.
Making Cold Calls
There are a tremendous number of techniques and tactics that can be used when making cold calls and performing outbound sales activities.
Prepare for Objections
We are likely to run up against objections on every outbound sales call that we make. Being prepared for these, by knowing what the likely objections might be and having the appropriate response handy, which results in pacifying the customer and allowing you to continue with the call.
Qualify the Prospect
Our time is very valuable, and with that in mind, we need to find a way to spend more time with prospects that are likely to buy something, than with those prospects who are not likely to buy. The best way to accomplish this during outbound sales is to ask questions that qualify the prospect, in order to measure how much potential they have for purchasing.
Focus on the Ideal Prospect
There are many different prospects that we can try to sell to. If we break the total list of prospects down, there are those that are more appropriate in terms of need and ability to buy. These could be called our ideal prospects, and are likely to best appreciate the business value that we have to offer, and in turn be more likely to purchase from us.
Have Some Sort of Script
You never really know where a cold call is going to go, so it can help to plan and script out what you are going to say during the call. This does not need to be some lengthy script that needs to be read word for word. A customer can usually tell when you are reading from a script and this may cause him to lose interest. A quick note, with points of the most important information you need to convey will be sufficient and will improve the quality and impact of your call.
Tips to Improve Phone Sales Calls
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There are very clear and practical things that we can do to immediately improve sales phone calls. Some are outlined below:
1. Improve Your Mind
Making sales calls over the phone can be a very mentally challenging and taxing activity. We need therefore to take some time and effort to improve our mindset before making that call. Improving your mind means performing mental steps and exercises, to help improve your mental state and frame of mind. This can only have a positive impact on results.
One thing that we can do to improve our mindset is to go through a mental exercise periodically, where we affirm all of the great things that we have to offer. It is easy to feel pressurised into selling, but should remember that we could develop a needy mental frame or mental state, which will be evident when we make panicked and unplanned calls to prospective customers.
If we periodically stop, take a deep breath and think about it, the products we sell offer business value or convenience to our clients. If our products did not, our company and we would have a very real problem. If we stop to think about this value, and think about the great qualities of our company, and believe in our personal strengths as a sales professional, we can greatly improve our mindset.
2. Improve Your Voice
One we have worked on improving our mind, we can move on to focus on improving our voice. During phone sales calls, the only real thing that we have to communicate with are the words we say and the way we say them. It is important to be aware that the way we say our words is of utmost importance during the call. Supporting this is the saying that “It is not what you say, but the way you say it that matters”. Therefore, improving your voice and tonality can have a huge impact on your effectiveness when selling over the phone.
There are some very definite things that we can do to improve our voice. The good news is that half the work is done when we spend time improving our mindset. When we feel better and more confident, our voices and tonality will reflect that when talking on the phone.
Another simple thing that we can do to improve our voice is to SMILE when we make that call. It may sound silly; after all, the person cannot see you, but the reality is that you can actually hear a difference when someone is smiling as they talk over the phone, and this can have a positive impact on sales results.
The seven steps of the sale
The original commonly used Seven Steps terminology is listed below using bold lettering. In recent years, more sophisticated interpretation and application of the Seven-Step selling process requires the model to be expanded and interpreted with more subtlety and flexibility, as shown here:
1. preparation/planning/research/approach (using facilitative methods)
2. introduction/opening/approach/establish initial credibility
3. questioning/identify needs/ask how and what, etc/establish rapport and trust
4. presentation/explanation/demonstration
5. overcoming objections/negotiating/fine-tuning
6. close/closing/agreement/commitment/confirmation
7. follow-up/after-sales/fulfil/deliver/admin
1. Planning and preparation (the seven steps of the sale - 1)
Generally, the larger the prospect or organisation, the more research you should do before any sales call. You will most likely be expected to present your company's products or services, and need to be well prepared.
✓ Ensure you know your own product/service extremely well - especially features, advantages and benefits that will be relevant to the prospect you will be meeting
✓ Ascertain as far as you can the main or unique perceived organisational benefit that your product or service would give to your prospect
✓ Discover what current supply arrangements exist or are likely to exist for the product/service in question, and assess what the present supplier's reaction would be if their business is threatened.
✓ Know what your competitors are able and likely to offer, and which ones are being considered, if any
✓ Identify as many of the prospects decision-makers and influencers as you can, and assess as far as you can what their needs, motives and relationships within their company are
✓ Try to get a feel for what the organisational politics are
✓ What are the prospect's decision-making processes and financial parameters (e.g., departmental budgets, year-end date and so forth)
✓ What are your prospect's strategic issues, aims, priorities and problems, or if you can't discover these, what are they generally for the market sector in which the prospect operates?
✓ Prepare your opening statements and practice your sales presentation
✓ Prepare your presentation in the format in which you are to give it (e.g., MS PowerPoint slides for laptop, or a projected presentation) plus all materials, samples, hand-outs, brochures, etc., and always have spares - allow for more than the planned numbers as extra people often appear at the last minute .
✓ Prepare a checklist of questions or headings that will ensure you gather all the information you need from the meeting
✓ Think carefully about what you want to get from the meeting and plan accordingly
✓ Understand and make the most of cold-calling. Despite the tendency for some organisations to position cold calling as a lowly, de-skilled canvassing or enquiry-generation activity, cold calling increasingly enables sales people to become more strategic and significant in the sales function
2. Introduction/opening (the seven steps of the sale - 2)
✓ Smile - be professional, and take confidence from the fact that you are well-prepared. Thank the persons present for being there and for affording you the opportunity to present to them.
✓ Introduce yourself - first and last name, what your job is and the company you represent, and what the your company does (ensure this is orientated to appeal to the prospect's strategic issues)
✓ Set the scene - explain the purpose of your visit, and put your prospects interests first by saying, for example, "I'd like to learn about your situation and priorities in this area, and then if appropriate, to explain how we (your own company) approach these issues”. If it is clear there is common ground, agree how to move to the next stage of the presentation.
✓ Ask how much time your prospect has available to spare for you, and agree on a time to finish the presentation
✓ Ask if it's okay to take notes (it's polite to ask - also, all business information is potentially sensitive, and asking shows you realise this)
✓ Ask if it's okay to start by asking a few questions, or whether your prospect would prefer a quick overview of your own company first. This will depend on how well known and credible your own company is. If your company is small and unknown, you should plan to give a quick credibility-building overview in your introduction.
3. Questioning (the seven steps of the sale - 3)
✓ Effective questioning is a vital aspect of selling, and the points below must form part of your questioning technique.
✓ Empathy and listening are crucial in questioning and understanding body language is useful too
✓ A major purpose of questioning in the traditional selling process, is to identify the strongest need or benefit perceived by the prospect relating to the product/service being offered by the seller
✓ As the questioner, you need also to understand very clearly what you are seeking from the relationship - questioning should aim to identify a mutual fit - relationships work when there is a good fit from both sides
✓ Buyers commonly have one main need or benefit, and a number of supporting needs/benefits
✓ Needs and benefits may be obvious to seller and buyer, or not obvious to either, in which case questioning expertise is critical in selling, as it is an all other relationships where motives and change are involved
✓ Questioning must also discover how best to develop the relationship and the sale with the organisation - how the organisation decides: timings, authority levels, the people and procedures involved, competitor pressures, etc.
✓ Good empathic questioning also builds relationships, trust and rapport - nobody wants to buy anything from a sales person who's only interested in their own product or company - we all want to buy from somebody who gives the time and skill to interpreting and properly meeting our own personal needs
✓ In order to be professional in your approach, you should prepare a list of questions or headings before the discussion
✓ Aside from complex variations, there are two main sorts of questions: open questions and closed questions
✓ Broadly speaking. open questions gather information and build rapport; closed questions filter, qualify and seek commitment
✓ Open questions invite the other person to give long answers; closed questions invite the other person to say yes or no, or to select from (usually two) options, for example red or blue, or mornings or afternoons, etc
✓ Use open questions to gather information - typically for example, questions beginning with Who? What? Why? Where? When? and How?
✓ When training or learning the skills of using open questions, it helps to refer to the Rudyard Kipling rhyme: "I keep six honest serving men, They taught me all I knew; Their names are What and Why and When, And How and Where and Who.." This is from Just So Stories, 1902, The Elephant's Child )
✓ Use "Can you tell me about how..." if you are questioning a senior-level contact - generally the more senior the contact, the bigger the open questions you can ask, and the more the other person will be comfortable, and be willing to give you the information you need.
✓ What...? and 'how...?' are the best words to use in open questions because they provoke thinking and responses about facts and feelings in a non-threatening way
✓ Use 'why?' to find out reasons and motives beneath the initial answers given, but be very careful and sparing in using 'why' because the word 'why?' can be perceived as threatening to many people - it causes the other person to feel they have to defend or justify themselves, and as such will not bring out the true situation and feelings, especially in early discussions with people when trust and rapport is at a low level
✓ Listen carefully and empathically, maintain good eye-contact, understand, and show that you understand - especially understand what is meant and felt, not just what is said, particularly when you probe motives and personal aspects
✓ Interpret and reflect back to confirm you have understood what is being explained, and if relevant the feelings not expressed
✓ Use closed questions to qualify and confirm your interpretation - a closed question is one that can be answered with a yes or no, e.g., "Do you mean that when this type of equipment goes down then all production ceases?", or "Are you saying that if a new contract is not put in place by end-March then the existing one automatically renews for another year?"
✓ When you've asked a question, you must then be quiet - do not interrupt - allow the other person time and freedom to answer
✓ The other person (your 'prospect' in selling language) should be doing 80-99% of the talking during this stage of the sales discussion; if you are talking for a third or half of the time you are not asking the right sort of questions
✓ Do not be too hasty and start explaining how you can solve the problem until you have asked all your questions and gathered all the information you need (in any event you should never be seen to 'jump' onto any issue)
✓ At all times, try to find out the strategic issues affected or implicated by the product/service in question - these are where the ultimate decision-making and buying motives lie
✓ If, during the questioning you think of a new important question to ask, note it down to ensure you don’t forget it.
✓ When you have all the information you need, acknowledge the fact and offer your thanks, then take a few moments to think about, discuss and summarise the key issues/requirements/priorities from your prospect's organisational (and personal if applicable) perspective
✓ Questioning is traditionally treated by conventional sales people and conventional sales training as a process to gather information to assist the sales person's process, and this is how it is typically positioned in the old-style 'Seven Steps of the Sale. However, modern sales methodology treats questioning in a radically different way - as an essential part of a facilitative process whose purpose is to help the buyer decide
✓ Questioning is a fundamentally important part of selling - techniques being increasingly developed and refined far beyond early selling techniques - transferable to and from other disciplines (notably coaching, counselling, therapy, etc)
4. Presentation (the seven steps of the sale - 4)
✓ The sales presentation should focus on a central proposal, which should be the unique perceived benefit that the prospect gains from the product/service
✓ During the questioning phase, the sales person will have refined the understanding (and ideally gained agreement) as to what this is - the presentation must now focus on 'matching' the benefits of the product with the needs of the prospect, so that the prospect is entirely satisfied that the proposition
✓ The sales person needs an excellent understanding of the many different organisational benefits that accrue to customers, and why, from the product/service - these perceived benefits will vary according to the type of customer organisation (size, structure, market sector, strategy, general economic health, culture, etc)
✓ The sales presentation must demonstrate that the product/service meets the prospect's needs, priorities, constraints and motives, or the prospect will not even consider buying or moving to the next stage. This is why establishing the prospect's situation and priorities during the questioning phase is so vital
✓ The above point is especially important to consider when the sales person has to present on more than one occasion to different people or groups, who will each have different personal and organisational needs, and will therefore respond to different benefits (even though the central proposition and main perceived benefit remains constant)
✓ All sales presentations, whether impromptu (off the cuff) or the result of significant preparation, must be well structured, clear and concise, professionally delivered, and have lots of integrity - the quality and integrity of the presentation is always regarded as a direct indication as to the quality and integrity of the product/service
✓ It follows then that the sales person must avoid simply talking about technical features from the seller's point of view, without linking the features clearly to organisational context and benefit for the prospect - also avoid using any jargon which the prospect may not understand
✓ Sales presentations must always meet the expectations of the listener in terms of the level of information and relevance to the prospect's own situation, which is another reason for proper preparation - a vague or poorly prepared sales presentation sticks out like a sore thumb, and it will be disowned immediately
✓ When presenting to influencers, which is necessary on occasions, it is important to recognise that the sales person is effectively asking the influencers to personally endorse the proposition and the credibility of the selling organisation and the sales person, so the influencers' needs in these areas are actually part of the organisational needs of the prospect company
✓ The presentation must include relevant evidence of success, references from similar sectors and applications, facts and figures - all backing up the central proposition
✓ Business decision-makers buy when they become satisfied that the decision will either make them money, save them money or time, or both. They also need to be certain that the new product/service will be sustainable and reliable, therefore the presentation must be convincing in these areas
✓ Private consumer buyers ultimately buy for similar reasons, but for more personal ones as well, e.g., image, security, ego, etc., which may need to feature in these types of presentations if they form part of the main perceived benefit
✓ While the presentation must always focus on the main perceived benefit, it is important to show that all the other incidental requirements and constraints are met - but do not over-emphasise or attempt to 'pile high' loads of incidental benefits as this simply detracts from the central proposition
✓ Presentations should use the language and style of the audience - e.g., technical people need technical evidence; sales and marketing people like to see flair and competitive advantage accruing for their own sales organisation; managing directors and finance directors want clear, concise benefits to costs, profits and operating efficiency; and generally the more senior the contact, the less time you will have to make your point - no-nonsense, no frills, but plenty of relevant hard facts and evidence.
✓ If the sales person is required to present to a large group and in great depth, then it's extremely advisable to enlist the help of one or two suitably experienced colleagues, from the appropriate functions, e.g., technical, customer service, distribution, etc., in which case the sales person must ensure that these people are properly briefed and prepared, and the prospect notified of their attendance.
✓ Keep control of the presentation, but do so in a relaxed way; if you don't know the answer to a question don't waffle - say you don't know and promise to get back with an answer later, and make sure you do.
✓ Never belittle the competition - it undermines your credibility and integrity - don't even imply anything derogatory about the competition
✓ If appropriate, issue notes, minutes or a copy of your presentation
✓ Use props and samples and demonstrations if relevant and helpful, and make sure it all works properly
✓ During the presentation seek feedback, confirmation and agreement as to the relevance of what you are saying, but don't be put off if people stay quiet
✓ Invite questions at the end, and if your are comfortable, at the outset invite questions at any time - it depends on how confident you feel in controlling things
✓ Whether presenting one-on-one or to a stern group, relax and be friendly - let your personality and natural enthusiasm shine through - people buy from people who love and have faith in their products and companies
5. Overcoming objections/negotiating (the seven steps of the sale - 5)
✓ Decades ago it was assumed that at this stage, lots of objections could appear, because the selling process was more prescriptive, one-way, and less empathic. Successful modern selling now demands more initial understanding from the sales person, even to get as far as presenting, so the need to overcome objections is not such a prevalent feature of the selling process
✓ Nevertheless objections do arise, and they can often be handled constructively, which is the key
✓ If objections arise, the sales person should qualify each one by reflecting back to the person who raised it, to establish the precise nature of the objection - "why do you say that?”, or better still, "what makes you say that?
✓ It may be necessary to probe deeper to get to the real issue, by asking why to a series of answers - some objections result from misunderstandings, and some are used to veil other misgivings which the sales person needs to expose
✓ Lots of objections are simply a request for more information, so avoid responding by trying to re-sell the benefit - simply ask and probe instead; the best standard response is something like "I understand why that could be an issue, can I ask you to tell me more about why it is and what's important for you here?.."
✓ Try to avoid altogether the use of the word 'but' - it's inherently confrontational
✓ An old-style technique was to reflect back the objection as a re-phrased question, but in a form that the sales person is confident of being able to answer positively, for example: the prospect says he thinks it's too expensive; the sales person reflects back: "I think what you're really saying is that you have no problem with giving us the contract, but you might prefer the payments staged over three years rather than two? - well I think we could probably do something about that..."
✓ Another old-style technique used to be to isolate the objection (confirm that other than that sticking point everything else was fine), then to overcome the objection by drawing up a list of pro's and con's, or analysing to death all the hidden costs of not going for the deal, or re-selling the benefits even harder, and then to close powerfully. These days such a contrived approach to objection handling is likely to insult the prospect and blow the sales person's credibility
✓ The 'feel-felt-found' technique was another popular tactic in overcoming objections. This is a response built around the three 'feel felt found' elements: "I understand how you feel/why you feel that...//Other customers have felt just the same/that...//But (or 'And') when... they have found that..." The method uses empathy in stage one, neutrality and group reference (shifting the issue away from personal confrontation) in stage two, and then counters the objection and reinforces the benefits using majority evidence in stage three, in the hope of persuading the buyer that he/she is isolated and missing out if deciding not to buy
✓ It is important to flush out all of the objections, and in so doing, the sales person is effectively isolating them as the only reasons why the prospect should not proceed, but then the more modern approach is to work with the prospect in first understanding what lies beneath each objection, and then working with the prospect to shape the proposition so that it fits more acceptably with what is required..
✓ Avoid head-to-head arguments at all costs - even if you win them you'll destroy the relationship and you'll go no further. Instead, the sales person should enable a constructive discussion so that he and the prospect are both working at the problem together, provided the basic proposition is sound most objections are usually overcome by both the seller and the buyer adjusting their positions slightly. For larger prospects and contracts, this process can go on for weeks, which is why this is often more in the negotiating arena than objection handling
✓ You've handled all the objections when you've covered everything that you've noted down - it's therefore important to keep notes and show that you're doing it
✓ By this stage you may have seen some signs that the prospect is clearly visualising or imagining the sale proceeding, or even talking in terms of your working together as supplier and customer. This is sometimes called buying warmth. Certain questions and comments from prospects are described as buying signals, because they indicate that the prospect may be visualising buying, or having the product/service. In the old days, sales people were taught to respond to early buying signals with a 'trial close', but this is widely perceived as clumsy and insulting nowadays. Instead, respond to early buying signals (ie those received before you've completed the presentation to the prospect's satisfaction, and answered all possible queries) by asking why the question is important, and then by answering as helpfully as possible
6. Close/closing/agreement (the seven steps of the sale - 6)
✓ In modern selling, even using the traditional Seven Steps process, every sales person's aim should be to prepare and conduct the selling process so well that there are few if any objections, and no need for a close
✓ The best close these days is something like "Are you happy that we've covered everything and would you like to go ahead?", or simply "Would you like to go ahead?"
✓ In many cases, if the sales person conducts the sale properly, the prospect will close the deal himself, and this should be the another aim for the sales person - it's civilised, respectful, and actually implies and requires a high level of sales professionalism
✓ The manner in which a sale is concluded depends on the style of the decision-maker - watch out for the signs: no-nonsense high-achievers are likely to decide very quickly and may be a little irritated if you leave matters hanging after they've indicated they're happy. Cautious technical people will want every detail covered and may need time to think, so don't push them, but do stay in touch and make sure they have all the information they need Very friendly types may actually say yes before they're ready, in which case you need to ensure that everything is suitably covered so nothing can rebound later
For the record, here are some closes from the bad old days - the traditional golden rule was always to shut up after asking a closing question, even if the silence became embarrassingly long - (a who-talks-first-loses kind of thing). Use them at your peril!
✓ The pen close: "Do you want to use your pen or mine?" (while producing the contract and pen)
✓ The alternative close: for example - "Would you like it delivered next Tuesday or next Friday?", or "We can do the T50 model in silver, and we have a T52 in white - which one would you prefer?"
✓ The challenge close: "I know most men wouldn't be able to buy something of this value without consulting their wives - do you need to get your wife's permission on this?." or "Most business people in your position need to refer this kind of decision to their boss, do you need to refer it?"
✓ The ego close: "We generally find that only the people who appreciate and are prepared to pay for the best quality go for this service - I don't know how you feel about it?..."
✓ The negative close: "I'm sorry but due to the holidays we can't deliver in the three weeks after the 15th, so we can only do it next week, is that okay?"
✓ The guilt close: "Over three years it might seem a lot of money, but we find that most responsible people decide they simply have no choice but to go for it when it's less than a rand a day to protect your.../safeguard your..../improve your... (whatever)."
✓ The sympathy close: "I know you have some reservations that we can't overcome right now, but I've got to admit that I'm pretty desperate for this sale - my manager says he'll sack me if I don't get an order this week, and you're my last chance - I'd be ever so grateful if you'd go ahead - and I promise you we'd be able to sort out the extra features once I speak to our production people..." (How could anyone live with themselves using that one?)
✓ The puppy dog close/puppy dog sale: "Let me leave it with you and you see how you get on with it..."
✓ The last ditch close: (sales person packs case and goes to leave, but stops at the door) "Just one last thing - would you tell me where I went wrong - you see I just know this is right for you, and I feel almost guilty that I've not sold it to you properly, as if I've let you down....."
✓ The pro's and con's list: "I can appreciate this is a tough decision - what normally works is to write down a list of all the pro's and con's - two separate columns - and then we can both see clearly if overall it's the right thing to do..."
✓ The elimination close: "I can see I've not explained this properly - can we take a moment to go through all the benefits and see which one is holding us back from proceeding?" (At which the sales person lists all the benefits - the positives, and runs through each one to confirm it's not that one which is causing the problem, crossing a line through each as he goes. When he crosses the last one out he can claim that there really seems to be no reason for not going ahead...)
7. Follow-up/fulfilment/delivery/admin (the seven steps of the sale - 7)
✓ After-sales follow-up depends on the type of product and service, but generally for every sale the sales person must carry out a number of important processes:
✓ All relevant paperwork must be completed and copies provided to the customer - paperwork will cover the processing of the order, the confirmation of the order and its details to the customer, possibly the completion of installation and delivery specification and instructions
✓ Sales reporting by the sales person is also necessary, generally on a pro-forma or computer screen, typically detailing the order value, product type and quantity, and details about the customer such as industrial sector - each sales organisation stipulates the sales person's reporting requirements, and often these are linked to sales commissions and bonuses, etc.
✓ The sales person should also make follow-up contact with the customer - as often as necessary - to confirm that the customer is happy with the way the order is progressing. This helps reduce possible confusion and misunderstood expectations, which are a big cause of customer dissatisfaction, and can lead to order cancellation if left to fester unresolved
✓ Customer follow-up, and problem resolution must always be the responsibility of the sales person, who should consider themselves the 'guardian' of that customer, even if a well-organised customer service exists for general after-sales care
✓ Customers rightly hold sales people responsible for what happens after the sale is made, and good conscientious follow-ups will usually be rewarded with referrals to other customers - this is also helpful for networking
✓ Follow-up is an important indicator of integrity; when a sales person makes a sale he is personally endorsing the product and the company, so ensuring that value and satisfaction are fulfilled is an integral part of the modern sales function
'Script' for initial sales
Before your calls:
Identify your purpose
What do you want to achieve as a result of this call? You may be dying for a sale, or you may simply be happy with generating a new prospect or lead for your team. If you can’t visualise the results you want to achieve, you’ll never reach them.
Question yourself.
Think about your purpose and make a list of questions for yourself. Ask yourself how you’ll achieve the goals you've set, what actions you need to take, and what actions you’d like your prospect to take. Then ask yourself how you’re going to go about taking those actions.
Have a backup plan.
In short, have a goal and a smaller sub goal. Let’s assume your goal is to make a sale today. Perhaps the person you are speaking to can’t afford to make a purchase. Will you settle for obtaining permission to contact them again or to send out an information package?
Once the call begins:
When you start making phone calls you’ll run into a number of situations where the person who picks up the phone is NOT the decision maker. You’ll need to be prepared to deal with a screener (such as secretary to the decision maker) and know what to say in order to make it through to the person you really wish to speak to.
Do unto others.
Treat the screener as politely as you would treat the person you really wish to speak to. He or she has the option of letting you through or not. A misstep on your part may result in a hang-up!
Ask for help
Just because you’ve reached a screener doesn’t mean he or she can’t give you information. Gathering information about business is essential to your ability to tailor a sales call, so take the opportunity to ask the person who answers the phone for help answering a few questions and then ask to be transferred to the appropriate party. Telemarketing can result in tremendous sales increases if done correctly. We’ll talk about other telemarketing tips in the future. In the meantime, take a few moments to stop and think about your goals. Are you really prepared to pick up the phone?
The Introduction: Time and Attitude Testing
First, listen intently from the moment the telephone begins to ring. You want to pay special attention to how the prospect answers the telephone. If you are going through a receptionist, pay close attention to exactly how the prospect answers the line. You can easily tell if someone is preoccupied, by the way they answer the telephone.
Usually, the sales person is so concerned with what they are going to say to the prospect, that they pay little attention to the first sounds and words the prospect makes. Listen for clues that reveal the prospects’ mental state. In your introduction, you want to test the prospect as to the convenience of the call and their response to your company name.
Prospect: Bill’s Automotive. Sales person dials number and its answered “Hello, Bill speaking”. Sales Person: “Ah, Bill Johnson, please.” Our sales person realises that the person is more than likely the owner, Bill Johnson. But the key is to elicit responses from the prospect. So, the sales person asked to confirm, thereby getting an additional response. Prospect: “Speaking” Sales Person: ³Hello Bill, my name is John Harris and i am from ABC Life Insurance« (Pause) «Are you well?” Here you need to pause and listen intently to the prospects’ reaction to hearing your name and the company you work with. You also want to listen to the response to the question, “Are you well?” This is not a rhetorical question, as you really want to know if the prospect is in a good mood.
You should also confirm at this point that it is convenient for Bill to talk with you at this time. He may have another client standing in front of him, or be busy with something else. Ask him directly. “Bill is it convenient to talk with you right now?”
If this prospect has not offered any negative responses thus far, it is likely the call is relatively convenient for the prospect and so far there are no ill feelings about you or your company. Remember, you are giving the person as much opportunity to object if they have an objection. Go to the last page of this document and design YOUR PERSONAL INTRODUCTION. You want to be sure to pause, giving the prospect ample time to respond to your name and the name of your company. Note, that if the prospect wants to engage in a little bit of friendly banter at this point, that is ok, but do not force it.
Introduce Product or Service ± More Attitude testing
You now need to make it very clear why you are calling. Let the prospect know your purpose. You just want a brief statement that explains what you do and sell. You also want to make it clear that you work with other people similar to the prospect; you work with their peers. Sales Person:”Yes, Bill, ABC Life, we work primarily with independent business owners like yourself on tax favourable insurance plans,” If the prospect still has not raised any negative feedback at this point, you can be reasonably certain that this person is at least open to the idea of talking to a life insurance sales person.
This does not mean that they are guaranteed to set up an appointment, but you did not run over the prospect. You allowed him time to offer a negative response or an objection and none came forth
Design your own introduction of product or service statement.
Sales Person: ³Bill I am talking to all of the business owners in your area, are you the sole owner there, Bill? Prospect: “Yeah. Well, just me and the bank” The sales person uses a quick question for the final technical qualifying stage. Design your TECHNICAL QUALIFYING question now. Now, that this prospect has passed the psychological and technical qualifying stages, you can go into your presentation.
Remember the steps to a sale: Uncover a problem, present the solution and ask for action Sales Person: “I’m sure you are aware, Bill, that all too often independent business owners like yourself usually end up paying too much money for their machinery and property insurance. The large corporations save money because they insure millions of dollars, but usually the independent business owner pays way too much, you know what I mean?” Prospect:”Yeah, well it’s no walk-in-the-park anymore that’s for sure.” The sales person presents the prospect with a problem. It is a problem the prospect will easily understand and recognise. It is also a problem that all of his peers share. The problem has to be one that all prospects in the peer demographic can relate to. Design your PROBLEM STATEMENT now. Sales Person:”Well, Bill we have a program that helps the independent owner like yourself save tens of thousands of rands in premiums and offers tax savings as well. You don’t have to have a million rands worth of assets to save 20, 30 or even 40 %”( pause) ´ Prospect: “Oh yeah?” ´
Sales person presents that he has the solution to the problem. Design your SOLUTION. Remember, your objective is to sell the appointment ONLY. Do not get into detail on your solution. You HAVE the solution to the problem, but a personal meeting is necessary for you to present it. Sales Person:”Anyway, the reason I’m calling is that I am getting together with some business owners in your area next week, basically to introduce myself and to show you how I can help you save a little money.” Sales person asks the prospect to take action now because he is seeing other “like” people who share the same problem, next week. Sales Person:”Anyway, I’d like to get together with you Bill, say this Thursday, at 2:30, or would you have a couple of minutes around 4:00?” Always use a simple alternate of choice to close for the time.
Design your CLOSING QUESTION. Prospect:”Well, I don’t really need any more insurance right now. I have plenty. Why don’t you send me some information in the post?” If the prospect offers some objection here, don’t panic. Remember that you are NOT in an adversarial relationship. You already screened out those prospects that would have offered strong resistance in the beginning. You are speaking to someone who is open-minded. Do not hit him over the head. Most importantly, DO NOT TRY TO SELL THE PRODUCT OR SERVICE. Stay focused on getting the appointment only.
Sales Person: “That’s great, Bill. We only work with successful business owners who are ALL well covered. We’ll sit down for a few minutes and I’ll share a few innovative ideas with you. The information that I leave with you will be of great value to you. Are the mornings good for you, we can chat over a cup of coffee Bill, or is it easier to get a short break in the afternoon?” Also, remember to always end that objection response with alternative choice of close. Design your OBJECTION Answer. You may wonder how you can design an answer to an objection that you have not heard yet. Understand that any objection from the prospect at this point is going to be about buying the product or service. So, in almost every case, you can use nearly the same response to get back to focus on the appointment.
Prospect:”The mornings are out, I mean it would have to be after 4:00.” Sales Person: “No problem, Bill. Let’s say we get together this Thursday, at 4:30, will that work for you?” Now simply wrap it up by confirming the date and time. Design and complete your presentation keeping in mind that this is a process not a pitch. You want a presentation that is PLANNED NOT CANNED
Get Rid of the Smile & Dial Mentality
One of the main problems sales people have on the telephone, when setting appointments or selling, are the way they “sound”. When a telemarketer calls you, you can tell within the first three seconds that the caller is a sales person. There is a distinct sound affiliated with a telephone solicitation call that acts like a warning beacon to your potential customers. It is an abnormal tone of voice and pace of speech that is primarily due to a big phoney smile and an unnaturally overenthusiastic attitude. You must get rid of the fake, forced, façade and sound like a normal person; like a businessperson. So first, lose the big smile and tone down your enthusiasm.
PULL, Do Not PUSH
You do not want to push or force your presentation on anyone. Nor do you want to spend your time with people who sincerely do not want to spend their time with you. What you want to do is simply find people who are receptive and in a state of mind to listen to you when you call. If a person were truly unreceptive or too preoccupied to listen to you, then why would you want to spend your time trying to force him or her? Instead of pushing your story on unreceptive people, you are going to put all prospects through a short series of tests that will let you screen out calls that may prove unproductive. You might call these trial closes that you will use within the first few seconds of the call. If the responses to these trail closers are positive, then you move on. However, if the prospect exhibits too many negative traits, then the possibilities of setting the appointment are weak. Therefore, you can choose to terminate such calls before you invest a lot of time.
The Screening Process
You are going to create a telephone presentation that will screen your prospects during the first few seconds of the telephone call so that you spend most of your time only speaking with prospects that provide the highest percentage for setting an appointment. The following is the structure and outline for you to design your presentation. It is not a script. It is a process. Your actual words can and should change depending on with whom you are speaking. You are going to pre-qualify prospects before you invest your time in a full presentation and closing for an appointment. For those prospects that fail to qualify, you will terminate the call and go on to the next call. You can decide which people you will re-call at another time and the ones you will not. For those who pass your screening, you will move to set an appointment. With this process, you will save enormous amounts of time and set more appointments.
Time
Your first trail closes, or tests, for the prospect are to determine if you are calling at an inopportune time. If you call someone at a time when they are legitimately preoccupied with something else, they may not hang up or even tell you, but you will not have their attention. In such a case, it is better to get off the telephone and call this prospect at a better time. Within the first few seconds of the call, you want to determine if the call is convenient for the prospect.
Attitude
Next, you want to determine if the prospect has the right attitude toward you, your company and the product or service that you sell. You want to find out immediately if the prospect may have any pre-existing reasons that may prevent them from setting an appointment with you. If the prospect has some preconceived negative feelings about your product, you want to find out within the first eight seconds, not after eight minutes.
Technical
Finally, you want to technically qualify the prospect as to your target market and specifications. Does the prospect need to own a home, a business or a new car? Must your potential customers have a certain amount of employees or earn a particular amount of money? Before you go any further, you want to be sure this prospect has the capability to do business with you.
Presentation
The prospects who pass those first three brief qualifying stages are the people you want to talk to. Now you will make your presentation as you will uncover the problem, expose the need, present the solution and close for the appointment.
Questions, Pauses and Stutters
To elicit these responses from the prospect, you will of course ask a few questions. You will also use deliberate, strategically placed pauses - or stutters - to give the person a chance to respond.
There is no magic, secret or trickery involved - the process is based on straight-forward logic, and straight open, honest, professional language. It also helps to have done some research before-hand about the company, and to think about what sort of proposition is likely to be of interest, but do not make assumptions of what needs or opportunities will arise.
First you'll normally speak to the person on switchboard. Introduce yourself - full name and company - and ask to be put through to the PA (personal assistant - or secretary) of the director for the function that you believe makes the strategic decision about your offering (if in doubt ask for the PA to the CEO/MD/President/General manager:
“Hello, this is (your full name) from (your company name) - could you put me through to the PA for the (relevant function, e.g. Sales, Finance, IT, Operations, etc) director/VP, thanks - what is the PA's name please?" (Ask this last thing while you are being put through - it will help you to know the PA's name now and in the future should you call back - this person is there to help his/her boss - don't try to by-pass him/her - ask for their help - that's their job - to be a vital link in the communications between their boss and everyone else).
When put through: "Hello, this is (your name) from (your company name) - is that (name)/are you the PA for the ............. director (depending on whether you have the PA's name or not.)
If no, ask when/if he/she is available and if applicable if you can be transferred to them. If yes -
Ask the PA: "I wonder if you could help me please?"
PA will normally say: "Sure/I'll try/it depends/what's it about?"
You say, “I’d like to submit a strategic proposition to (company) concerning (briefly describe your area of interest using professional straight language, but do not go into great detail, and try to use a description that is unlikely to attract the response: 'we've already got that covered thanks') - could you tell me to whom I should initially approach that has a strategic view of this?"
Or:
"I'd like to open dialogue with (company) about (again describe your area of interest using professional straight language, but do not go into great detail, and try to use a description that is unlikely to attract the response: 'we've already got that covered thanks'. Ask the PA, “could you advise how best to do this, to whom I should write or speak, and when's the best time to reach them on the phone afterwards?"
Or:
"I wonder if you can advise me on what's the best way to find out who, when and how for (company) determines strategy and decides solutions and providers in the area of (again, briefly describe your area of interest using professional straight language, but do not go into great detail, and try to use a description that is unlikely to attract the response: 'we've already got that covered thanks')."
And then take it from there - be guided by the PA. Fitting in with their communications and decision-making processes and systems is as important as your proposition and service, and the PA is the best one to help you begin to understand about this.
Formative Assessment SO1
SECTION 2: CROSS-SELL PRODUCTS
Specific outcome 2
Cross-sell products in a Contact Centre
Assessment criteria
✓ Multi sales are generated as per industry specific requirements
✓ All product related information is accurately provided
✓ Company specific procedures and industry regulations are adhered to
Essential embedded knowledge
✓ An in-depth understanding of industry specific products and/or services offered
✓ An in-depth understanding of Contact Centre sales procedures, guidelines and Policies
✓ A basic understanding of basic sales techniques in a Contact Centre
Definition
Cross selling is the strategy of pushing new products to current customers based on their past purchases.
Cross-selling is designed to widen the customer’s reliance on the company and decrease the likelihood of the customer buying from a competitor.
Cross-selling also refers to the practice of promoting complimentary items related to the item being sold, while up-selling is the practice of offering customers an upgraded or premium version of a product.
These techniques are pretty simple concepts to understand and can provide lots of value to your customers, enhancing their shopping experience while increasing your company’s sales volume. If used incorrectly, however, they can damage your credibility and sabotage your marketing efforts.
Many of the most recognisable websites, such as and , have pioneered the use of cross-selling and up-selling.
was an early pioneer of cross-selling complementary products – “if you bought product A, you might also like products B and C.” Another leading website, , a leader in the online travel category, has led the industry in “bundling” travel packages, which has led to substantial revenue and profit gains since they first implemented the concept.
McDonald’s is a perfect offline example. Asking you if you’d like the “Meal Deal” with your Quarter Pounder is a cross-sell; asking if you’d like to “Supersize” the meal is an up-sell.
When thinking about enhancing the shopping experience for your own customers, a website that suggests complimentary or related purchase items is both logical and intuitive. Just think about the shopping that you do online:
✓ If you were buying a pair of shoes would you be open to a suggestion to buy socks at the same time?
✓ While purchasing a new cell phone, would you appreciate being shown recommendations for related accessories like a hands-free kit and extended charge battery?
✓ How often do you buy related products in this manner?
The evidence is clear that cross selling and upselling really works (see the McDonald’s example above). Most small websites, however, employ weak or totally unproductive cross-selling tactics, if they do at all. If used properly, cross-selling represents an enormous, cost-effective opportunity for all online retailers.
Keys to Effective Cross-Selling and Up-Selling
The key to effective cross-selling and up-selling is putting your customers’ needs first by adding value to the customer experience with your related-item suggestions. Cross-selling helps to educate your customers on the depth and variety of what your business has to offer. Be careful however to not use cross-selling carelessly as a forum to simply push more products or services.
Common Techniques
One of the most common up-selling techniques is either discounted or free shipping on a specified purchase amount.
Encouraging customers to purchase additional items with free shipping or discounts on orders over a specific sales threshold – free shipping for a minimum of R100 in purchases, for example – is a pretty easy way to improve your sales volume incrementally.
If a customer’s order totals R90 and shipping is free on orders over R100, they’ll have much more incentive to find an additional item to purchase to take advantage of your free shipping offer.
Be sure, however, that you’re not shooting yourself in the foot with this strategy. A free shipping promotion should help to improve your sales volume, but more importantly, it should add to your bottom line – increasing your total profit per order. So, be sure to calculate these promotional offers very carefully.
How Should I Implement Cross-Selling?
The most ideal solution is to employ suggestions or recommendations for related products is by using a shopping cart platform, if at all possible. Using a shopping cart is, hands down, the easiest way to effectively automate the cross-selling and upselling process. For those site owners who don’t have enough products to justify a shopping cart solution or who simply can’t afford one, cross-selling can be as simple as having links to similar products on your products pages, with some copy such as “Customers who bought X also purchased Y.” While this alternative might sound decidedly low-tech, it’s better than not cross-selling at all.
Types of Product Relation
Online shoppers, like offline shoppers, will buy “impulse” items at the point of purchase when presented. Showcasing related products helps to remind people of other things they were not actively looking for, but still might need or want. How can you relate products effectively to generate additional sales? The most common type of product relation is referred to as natural relation, or ontological relation. It essentially means that products being marketed together naturally go together. For instance, a new camera has a natural relation to batteries or camera bags.
Another type of product relation is known as collective behaviour. This means that some products may not have an obvious natural relation but according to research on sales data, the products are linked together based on what consumers actually purchased together. A simple example of this is bacon and eggs.
All things considered, website owners should first take a logical approach to cross selling. Start by looking at your inventory and come up with natural matches for related items that make sense. Depending on the nature of your business, you may find that nearly all of your products easily relate to each other, making natural matches a more difficult prospect for certain retailers. If you’re unsure, just try to start with a logical approach using your own knowledge about your products, how they interact and how clients use them.
Product Recommendation Labels and Copy
There is always a bit of debate among retailers about how to effectively label your recommendations. For starters, you should label your related item recommendations clearly and distinctly, but you should also try to add some contextual relevance to your labels as well. For example, if you were selling eco-friendly fashion accessories, instead of using traditional label recommendations like “Recommended” or “Suggested Items”, you might instead try something like “These Items Look Great with Your Selection.” Try to make your labels and copy unique and relevant to your business and avoid generic, vague or generalized descriptions.
Here are some general guidelines for using recommendation copy effectively:
✓ Personalise: Use personalised offer copy such as “you” rather than “we” – “You Might Also like These” instead of “We Recommend”.
✓ Get Emotional: Use emotionally connected words in your related offer copy such as “need” and “want” – “Need Batteries?” or “Want a Camera Bag Too?”
✓ Communicate Value: Properly communicate the value you are offering when offering “Special Discounts,” or “Great Deals”.
✓ Create Urgency: Convey urgency such as “Offer Ends Soon” or “Limited Quantities Available.” effectively creates urgency by listing product availability data “Only 2 left in stock – order soon!”
Best Practices
There are a few “best practices” that you should follow when employing these techniques. Some of the items outlined below might be more useful for retailers with larger product catalogues, but all of our recommendations are very useful no matter what your sales volume or size of your product catalogue is.
We’ve outlined our ten most recommended tips for the effective use of cross-selling and up-selling here:
1. Stay Relevant: Attempting to cross-sell unrelated items should be considered one of the cardinal sins of cross-selling. For starters, unrelated product suggestions are simply not helpful for your customers and only serve to distract them. Unrelated suggestions can also damage the credibility of more relevant recommendations. Do not undermine the legitimacy of your recommendations. Keep them on target and as relevant as possible.
2. Exercise Restraint: Resist the temptation to cross-sell a large number of products all at the same time. Too many product suggestions will only serve to confuse and dilute your customers’ attention. Keep your related item suggestions tight and focused. Exercising restraint and limiting the number of items that you recommend will keep the customer’s attention focused and will help to improve your conversion ratio.
3. Build Credibility: One way to cross sell and up-sell successfully is to cite specific recommendations or “top rated” suggestions from customers, professionals, or experts. Displaying review content and recommendations from actual customers, in particular, goes a long way to build credibility and trust for those items.
4. Location is Critical: Where and when you display your related items is critical for success. You can employ cross-selling and up-selling anywhere on your site, but two of the most effective locations are the product pages and the view cart page prior to checkout. You should experiment, however, with other locations to see what works most effectively for your customers relative to your business. The home page and product category pages, for example, are effective locations for a “Most Popular Items” list that might be worth testing.
5. Low Involvement vs. High Involvement: You need to separate your low involvement related-item recommendations from your high involvement recommendations. Low involvement items are your “no brainer” sales items that are typically low margin, easy sellers that don’t require much information for the customer to understand prior to purchase. You should display your low involvement related-item recommendations on the view cart page closer to the point of purchase. Display your high involvement, higher margin alternative product suggestions on the product pages though. Compared to low involvement products, high involvement products typically require deeper examination by a customer who might want to read some customer reviews or get product specifications. Presenting these alternative product suggestions on the product page helps to avoid apprehension or indecision about these products on the view cart page.
6. Detail Your Add-Ons: You also need to make sure that you provide enough detail information on the view cart page for any of your add-on items (price, thumbnail image and brief description). If you don’t provide enough information, the customer might abandon the cart altogether to gather more information elsewhere about the product.
7. Grease the Wheels: Regardless of how you segment your related-items, you need to make it easy to navigate back and forth from to the product page to the view cart after the customer adds a suggested item. Customers that find it difficult or cumbersome to toggle back and forth between the product page and view cart are easy to lose.
8. Automate Your Recommendations: If you have a large number of products, try to use a shopping cart platform that can automate recommendations for you based on past purchase data. Keep in mind, the shopping cart will need purchase data to actually make those recommendations though. If you’re just launching your site or you have very little purchase data, you will need to manually implement related-item suggestions until you have enough purchase data to be useful for automated recommendations.
9. Try Bundling Discounts: Bundling is a common tactic to incentivise shoppers to buy not just a single item, but a whole set of complimentary items that can go together. Offering a price break on bundled items will certainly make this tactic more effective.
10. Customer Service Sells: Providing excellent customer service is one of the best ways to encourage repeat sales. Cross-selling and up-selling will be much easier with repeat customers after providing an initially positive customer experience.
Cross-sell, and upsell
✓ An upsell is to get the customer to spend more money – buy a more expensive model of the same type of product, or add features / warranties that relate to the product in question.
✓ A cross-sell is to get the customer to spend more money by adding more, complementary products from other categories, along with the product being viewed or purchased.
The terms cross-sell and upsell are often used interchangeably because it does become confusing. Say the customer is viewing a 4GB iPod Nano for R169.
✓ 8 GB iPod Nano, R229 -> Upsell, same product family, more expensive
✓ 8 GB iPod Touch, R299 -> Upsell, same product family, more expensive
✓ 16 GP iPod Touch, R399 -> Upsell, same product family, more expensive
✓ Apple In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic , R79 -> Cross-sell
✓ Skull Candy headphones, R69, -> Cross-sell
✓ R25 iTunes card -> Cross-sell
✓ 8 GB Microsoft Zune, R249 -> Upsell, more expensive, same category
✓ 4 GB Creative Zen mp3 player, R159 -> Neither cross-sell or upsell, rather an “alternative product suggestion”
✓ Portable DVD player, R299 -> Cross-sell. Cool gadget, customer “may also like” but not related to mp3 player.
✓ Griffin FM transmitter for car, R79 -> Cross-sell
There is also a third category – “alternative products” which are really a navigation aid rather than something that truly boosts the cart value or items per sale. Consider the following example.
[pic]
The label “Go Deluxe” suggests an upsell. One suggestion is to double up on the chocolate truffles and get 2 for R44.85, a true upsell. The other takes a product from another category (that is of higher Rand value) which would be considered a cross-sell if suggested in addition to, rather than instead of the product being viewed. In this case, the popcorn is an alternative product suggestion rather than a true upsell of the truffles.
You May Also Like?
There’s no stock way to present product recommendations. Common labels for recommendations are:
✓ “Recommended products”
✓ “You may also like”
✓ “Customers who bought X also bought”
✓ “Customers who viewed X also viewed”
✓ “Frequently bought together”
✓ “Stuff you need” (Radio Shack, for accessories)
✓ “Stuff you may want” (Radio Shack, for items in other categories)
✓ “More from this (category, brand, author, artist)”
✓ “Looks hot with”
✓ “Complete the look”
For usability, the best labels clearly communicate why products are being recommended. “This is a more fully featured item than the one you’re looking at,” or “People like you liked this,” “These are top sellers in this category,” “These items will look good with what you’re looking at…” rather than “Recommended” or “You might also like.”
Often retailers use a mix of upsells, cross-sells and alternatives in their merchandising zones. CompUSA separates upsell from cross-sell with “Want to Upgrade?” suggestions and “More Recommendations”:
Aside from label clarity, another benefit of separating your suggestions into separate merchandising zones is more accurate tracking of what types of suggestions are more effective. Are you more successful persuading customers to add to their order or upgrade to a more expensive model?
So while we don’t need to get too hung up on what cross-sell is vs. upsell (there’s room for a bit of crossover in definition), we should add the third category of “alternative products.” Understanding the general differences can help us make better decisions in selecting product associations, labeling merchandising zones and measuring the conversion of different suggestions.
Many early stage businesses that offer more than one product or service can do a much better job of educating customers on the different solutions they deliver. This type of cross selling can be a highly effective tool for a small business.
When you cross-sell, you offer the customer a product or service related to whatever they are already buying. It can be as simple as the waiter asking if you want a salad to go with your main course. Up-selling positions higher priced products in a good/better/best progression. Both methods of encouraging clients to spend a little more can dramatically boost your sales.
But maybe you worry about irritating them with too many sales pitches... Don’t worry!!. Surveys show that most buyers appreciate being told about additional products or services which might better meet their needs, or about new items that were not offered in the past. It’s a way of demonstrating that you are aware of their needs and care about their satisfaction. Here are some ideas to help you improve your cross selling success:
Tips to improve cross-selling and up-selling
✓ Let nature take its course. Many cross-selling opportunities arise naturally. If you are selling tennis racquets, for example, you can also offer a bag, balls, lessons and accessories. To gain the extra sale, you might simply have to mention that the other products or services are available.
✓ Stay relevant. If you overload customers with too many unrelated cross-selling suggestions, you may oversell and blow it. Offering socks with shoes is certainly a good fit. But if your attempts to cross-sell are not closely related to the original purchase, they are far less likely to succeed.
✓ Post expert recommendations. One way to facilitate cross-selling and up-selling success is to state specific recommendations from professionals, experts or other customers. This could be a chef’s recommendation on a menu, a doctor’s recommendation on a mailer, or lists of related items that other customers have purchased on a website. When you buy a book on , for example, the site automatically lists other books purchased by people who bought the same book you just ordered.
✓ Train employees in cross-selling techniques. The approach must be built around serving the customer, not just selling more stuff. For example, you might describe how the additional products or services would complement the original purchase and further solve the customer’s problem.
✓ Timing is important. Cross-selling and up-selling can occur at different times, depending on the products and services you are selling. In some cases, the best time is while a customer is trying something out. If they are looking at a low priced digital camera, for example, but seem disappointed in a lack of features or performance, they may really want a higher priced model. You could suggest a new belt to go with a pair of pants while the customer is trying them on. Other items are more appropriately offered once the initial buying decision has been made, such as an extended warranty.
✓ Leverage the cross-selling potential of your website. Position cross-sell and up-sell items throughout your site in places where they can help educate shoppers on the depth and variety of what your business offers. Try mixing and matching different items to see what works best.
✓ Offer a range of prices. If you suggest three items to complement a product, try to offer a mix of price points. The lowest cost items are most likely to be picked up as impulse buys. Other items that meet the customer’s needs can also sell at higher levels.
✓ Try product or service bundles. Bundling has long been used as a way to entice shoppers to buy not just a single item, but an entire group of items that go together. Offering a price break on package deals will help close the sale.
The key to successful cross-selling and up-selling is to focus your efforts on meeting the customer’s needs, rather than simply pushing more products and services. This is one area of start-up marketing where you may need to do a little experimentation in order to find just the right balance, but you need to make cross selling a key component of your list of sales techniques.
Sales Techniques
consultative selling, 'needs-creation' selling, and 'SPIN Selling®'
Consultative selling involves deeper questioning of the prospect, about organisational and operational issues that can extend beyond the product itself.
This leads to greater understanding of the prospect's wider needs, (particularly those affected by the product), and the questioning process itself also results in a greater trust, rapport, and empathy between sales-person and buyer.
The process has been practised instinctively in good sales people and organisations for many years, particularly since the 1970s, and especially for concept selling or service solutions selling, driven by competitive pressures, as buyers began to learn as much about the sales process and techniques as the sales people themselves.
In the 1970s and 1980s, various proprietary frameworks and models were established, and many of these remain in use today. The 'needs-creation' selling approach is example of consultative selling. It's more involving (of the client) than the essentially one-way prescriptive Seven Steps method, but it is still largely centred on what the supplier wants, rather than helping the buyer.
In 'needs-creation' selling, the sales-person seeks to identify and then 'enlarge' a particular need, problem, challenge or issue that a potential customer faces. Obviously the sales-person must have reasonable confidence that the supplier organisation is able to offer a suitably matched remedy or solution (product and/or service proposition), once the 'need', with all of its attached considerable and negative strategic and financial implications are firmly established in the buyer's mind.
The consultative aspect should exist in the sales-person's ability, experience and expertise, to 'consult' with the buyer in developing a solution, which of course entails the supplier organisation provision of product and/or service.
The process is rather like the process employed by professional consultants in all sorts of 'professional' and 'technical' disciplines (for example, engineering, health and safety, law, finance, IT, etc):
1. Research the prospective customer organisation to confirm suitable prospect profile (subject to the supplier's prospect qualification criteria), and competitor threats, opportunities, contract review dates, past dealings, etc.
2. Establish rapport and seller's professional credentials with the client (typically by referencing case-histories and case-studies for successful solutions provided in similar markets and applications that are similar to those of the prospective client).
3 Ask 'strategic' open questions to identify, explore and develop areas of potential problems, difficulties, aims, challenges and unresolved issues within the prospect organisation. Normally you would identify and agree on a single primary issue (which represents both a major concern for the buyer, and a relevant area of product and/or service opportunity for the seller.) This could be a 'distress' or emergency pressure, priority, or threat, for example an issue which the prospect is involved in 'fire-fighting' to resolve currently, such as legislative compliance; or a strategic development opportunity for market or business development, to which significant potential profit, cost-savings and/or competitive advantage are attached.
4. Interpret, clarify, extend and quantify in financial and strategic terms the knock-on effects of the primary area of opportunity or threat. That is to say, what are all the negative effects and costs of failing to resolve the threat or pressure?, or what are all the positive effects and revenues/profits that will be derived from achieving the identified strategic opportunity? The sales person is effectively doing three things here:
a) Increasing the size and cost/value of the issue heightens the issue's priority and importance, and thus increases the buyer's feeling that action must be taken - it gets the issue higher up the buyer's agenda and closer to the front of his/her project schedule.
b) Increasing the size and complexity of the issue increases the need and opportunity for consultative advice - the buyer increases his/her perception that outside expertise (from the seller) is required.
b) Increasing the costs or values associated with the issue naturally increases the buyer's tolerance and expectations for the cost of the supplier's proposed product/service solution - the higher the cost or value of the challenge, then the higher the cost of the solution.
5. Sell the principle of the seller's solution, matching the benefits of the solution to the various aspects of the prospect need or strategic opportunity. For larger prospects it is commonly necessary to agree to proceed with a survey or assessment prior to producing a fully detailed proposal. A large complex proposal would typically need to be presented by the sales-person, or a team from the seller's organisation, to a board or decision-making team within the prospect organisation.
The final point referring to a buying organisation's decision-making team provides a clue as to the weaknesses of these traditional supplier-orientated selling methods. Decision-making within organisations, particularly large ones, is a highly complex process. Often the organisation, and certainly the buyer, does not understand it, let alone be able to explain it to an outsider.
Buyers rarely explain everything to a sales-person during a consultative meeting, however good the sales-person is. This is not a criticism of buyers - simply an acknowledgement of the extremely complex nature of organisational decision-making. As such, consultative selling and 'needs-creation' selling, howsoever packaged, don't always provide a reliable selling framework for the modern age.
Buyers and customer organisations often need more help, especially in the early stages of the sales process.
They need help with their own processes of evaluation and assessment, decision-making, communications, and implementation, which traditional 'consultative selling' alone is unable to address in a true and meaningful sense.
For this reason, if you seek to become a truly expert and effective sales person modern selling and business, I would urge you to look beyond the traditional methodologies, to the modern philosophy and concepts contained in Collaborative and facilitative selling, especially the ideas developed and defined by Sharon Drew Morgen.
'SPIN Selling
Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling® model is a fine example of a consultative selling process and 'needs-creation selling'. It was developed by Neil Rackham in the 1970s-80s, from his extensive 12-year study into successful selling behaviour in 20 leading sales organisations, in 23 countries, involving analysis of data from 35,000 sales calls. Rackham's book 'Spin Selling' is one of the biggest selling on the subject of sales, and the SPIN® methodology remains a mainstay of his Huthwaite training organisation. Rackham's SPIN® model is in simple terms:
S - Situation
P - Problem
I - Implication
N - Need (or Need-payoff)
In other words:
1. Discuss, understand or explain the situation with the prospect.
2. Next identify the problem that exists or could arise.
3. Explain, discuss or understand the implication of the problem for the prospect's business (ie., what organisational improvement can potentially be achieved).
4. This effectively creates a need or opportunity to rectify the problem (by selling the sales person's product/service) - the 'payoff'.
SPIN® endures as one of the most versatile, memorable and useful sales models.
Open plan selling, strategic selling
Open plan selling is in many ways a completely different approach to the old prescriptive and relatively rigid Seven Steps of the Sale, and the Professional Selling Skills model, that began in the 1960s. Open plan selling is also more advanced than most consultative selling methods being practiced today, largely because of the strategic aspects of the open plan approach.
Open plan selling is especially suited to the business-to-business major accounts selling function - which is now the principle domain of the field-based sales person (because field-based sales people are very expensive people and low-value business can't recover their costs). However, the open plan selling principles - not the full-blooded structure - can and should be readily adapted for all other types of selling, including even telesales (selling by telephone).
In modern business-to-business selling, successful sales people and organisations provide a tailored product or service which delivers a big measurable strategic improvement to the customer's own businesses. This implies that the customer contact should be a strategic buyer - usually at least a director, or in a small company the finance director or CEO. Nobody lower in the organisation has the necessary authority and budget.
The only way to develop tailored strategic offerings is by researching the market and understanding the customer's business, which means the sales person must understand business, and be comfortable talking at director level. When you do business at this strategic level you are at a higher level than your competitors, who are still selling ordinary products and services to middle managers and buyers without true authority. Selling strategically takes time - time to train sales people, and time for selling opportunities to be identified and researched.
The open plan or strategic selling process and summary below assumes a major account scenario, whose size and complexity let's say does not enable a sales proposal to be formulated at the first meeting.
For smaller-scale opportunities the middle stages numbers 4 to 7 are effectively compressed or leap-frogged so that the formulation of the proposal and its presentation happens at the first appointment (stage 3) or soon after it.
Open plan selling process:
1. research and plan - market sector, prospect, and decide initial approach
2. make the appointment
3. attend appointment to build rapport and credibility, gather information about business needs, aims and process, and develop/agree a project/product/service specification
4. agree survey/audit proposal (normally applicable)
5. carry out survey/audit (normally applicable)
6. write product/service proposal
7. present proposal
8. negotiate/refine/adapt/conclude agreement
9. oversee fulfilment/completion
10. feedback/review/maintain ongoing relationship
Open plan selling in summary:
Research and plan - open plan selling - step 1
In open plan selling, research and planning is a very important part of the process. The bigger the prospect organisation or potential sale, the more planning and preparation is required.
Major accounts need extensive researching before any serious approach is made to begin dialogue with an influencer or decision-maker. This is to enable the sales person to decide on the best initial approach or opening proposition. Implicit in this is deciding what is likely to be the strongest perceived organisational benefit that could accrue from the product or service in question, as perceived by the person to be approached (different people have different personal and organisational views and priorities). Generally it is best to concentrate on one strong organisational benefit. A benefit-loaded 'catch-all' approach does not work, because it's impossible to make a strong impact while promoting lots of different points - people respond most to a single relevant point of interest.
Assuming a large account is being targeted, the sales person must acquire as much as reasonably possible of the following information about the prospect organisation:
✓ the organisation's size and shape (turnover, staff types and numbers, sites, management and corporate structure, subsidiaries and parent organisation)
✓ strategy and trading situation (main business aims, issues, priorities, trends of business and sector, a profile of the organisation's customers and competitors, and what the company considers important for its own customers)
✓ current and future demand, volume, scale for the product/service in question
✓ current supply arrangements and contract review dates
✓ decision-making process (who decides, on what basis, when and how)
✓ decision-makers and influencers (names, positions, responsibilities and locations)
✓ the organisation's strategic implications, threats and opportunities that the product/service in question affects or could affect (in terms of the organisation's strategic aims, operating efficiency, product and service quality, staff reaction and attitudes, and particularly how the product/service in question affects or could affect the organisation's own competitive strengths and added value to its own customers)
The final point in bold is the really special part, and obviously requires a good insight into the prospect's business and market. The other information is what all good sales people will be trying to discover, but only the open plan sales person will look for the final point. The final point is absolutely pivotal to the open plan selling process. When the sales person moves the dialogue with the prospect into this area, then the sale takes on a completely different complexion; it completely transcends and surpasses any benefits, USPs or UPBs, which other sales people might be discussing.
These days it's easier to research and plan for a sales call than it used to be, because of the wealth of information available in company brochures, websites and from the organisation's own staff, notably in customer service, press relations, and from the relative openness of most organisations. Trade journals and trade associations are other useful information sources for building up a picture. Depending on the particular product or service, different people in the prospect organisation will potentially be able to provide company-specific information about important matters such as contract review dates, purchasing procedures and authority, even sometimes very useful details of attitudes, politics, the styles of the key people, and their priorities.
With a sensitive approach it's often possible obtain the trust and co-operation of somebody in the prospect organisation, so as to provide this information, particularly if the discussion is positioned as non-threatening, empathic and of some strategic potential for the prospect. The rules of AIDA apply even to this information gathering element alone.
The secretaries and personal assistants of the influencers and decision-makers are generally very helpful in providing information to sales people once an appointment has been made - assuming they are asked politely and given proper reason - because they know that a well-informed visitor is more likely to enable a productive meeting, thereby saving the boss's time. It's often worth approaching these people for information and guidance even prior to making the approach for an appointment. Again the justification needs to be sensitively and professionally positioned.
It's important to strike the right balance between researching prior to the first appointment, and researching during the first appointment. The sales person should take advantage of all information that is obtainable easily and leave the rest to be filled in at the first meeting - as a rule, prospects respect and respond well to a well-prepared approach because it shows professionalism, and allows a relevant and focused discussion. Conversely, a prospect responds poorly to a 'blind' approach because it suggests a lack of care and it usually produces a vague, ill-informed discussion, which wastes time.
A good technique for planning and research is to design a 'pro-forma' or checklist of items to be researched for new prospects. This template will be different for each sales organisation and product and maybe sector, but once designed serves as a really useful tool, both to gather the right data and to provide the discipline for it to actually be done.
Sample research and planning (customer/prospect) profile template
|organisation name | |
|decision-makers, titles, locations, phone and address data | |
|influencers, titles, locations, phone and address data | |
|decision-making process information | |
|budgetary issues, inc financial year-end | |
|current supplier(s) and contracts | |
|volume and scale indicators (staff, sites, users, etc) | |
|special criteria (e.g. supplier accreditations) | |
| trading and strategic pointers | |
|the organisation's strategic implications, threats and opportunities that are affected or potentially affected by the product/service in | |
|question (in terms of the organisation's strategic aims, operating efficiency, product and service quality, staff reaction and attitudes, and | |
|particularly how the product/service in question affects or could affect the organisation's own competitive strengths and added value to its | |
|own customers) | |
|other notes | |
Having researched and gathered information from various sources, the sales person is better informed as to how and whom to approach in the prospect organisation.
Generally the first serious approach should be made to a senior decision-maker, normally the finance director/chief financial officer or the managing director/CEO. This is because only these people have the authority to make important strategic budgetary decisions in the organisation; other managers simply work within prescribed budgets and strategies established by the FD/CEO.
There are other reasons for planning to make the approach at the highest strategic level:
If the sales person begins a sales dialogue with a non-decision-maker, it is very difficult to raise the contact to the necessary higher level afterwards. This is due to the perfectly normal psychology of politics and pecking-order in organisations. Everyone, when presented with a proposition which concerns their own area responsibility, by a person who reports to them, is prone to the initial "not invented here" reaction. The reaction of the recipient is largely dependent not on the nature of the proposal, but upon their relationship with the proposer.
The sales person's proposition should ideally be based on serious strategic implications and benefits, which will not typically match the motives of a lower-ranking influencer.
The sales person must avoid a situation developing where he is reliant upon someone in the prospect's organisation having to 'sell' the proposition to a decision-maker on the sales person's behalf. This is because it rarely succeeds, not least due to the 'not-invented-here' reaction of higher ranking people in the prospect organisation.
Make the appointment - open plan selling - step 2
The most important rule about appointment-making is to sell the appointment and not the product. The sales person must never get drawn into having to sell the product or service, either in writing or on the phone, while trying to arrange an appointment. The sales person cannot sell without first understanding the real issues, and the real issues may not even be apparent at the first meeting, let alone before even making an appointment.
Appointment-making is a skill in its own right. Some selling organisations use canvassers or telemarketing staff to do this for the sales person, but for large prospects it's useful for the sales person to combine the appointment-making with the initial researching activity. When combined in this way it helps to build initial relationships with helpful people in the prospect organisation, and the sales person can collect additional useful information that would otherwise be missed or not passed on by a separate appointment-maker or canvasser.
Introductory letters are a useful and often essential requirement before an appointment can be made. The larger the prospect organisation, then the more essential an introductory letter will be. This is mainly because PA’s and secretaries almost always suggest that any approach to a decision-maker (ie the boss, whose time the secretary is protecting) be put in writing first. It's simply an expected part of the process by which credibility and level of interest is assessed by the prospect.
Remember, the aim is the appointment, not the sale. When telephoning for an appointment, with or without a prior letter, the sales person typically must first speak to a switchboard operator or receptionist, and then be put through to the targeted person's secretary or PA.
Bear in mind that the PA is there as a defence for the boss, and rightly so, or the boss would never get anything done. So for any approach to succeed in getting through to the boss, the PA must effectively endorse its credibility. Whether by writing or telephoning, the reason for wanting to meet must be serious and interesting enough, which is why researching and understanding the organisation's strategic priorities are so crucial. Generic product and service approaches do not work because they are not seen to relate or benefit the prospect's own strategic priorities.
A carefully thought through UPB (unique perceived benefit) forms the basis of the appointment approach. If it strikes the right chord the appointment will be granted. A good introductory letter may win an appointment without the need even to speak to the decision-maker. Imagine what happens: the letter is received by the PA. If it looks interesting and credible and worthy, the PA will show it to the boss. If the boss is interested in what the sales person is offering, and in the event that the PA keeps the boss's diary, the boss often instructs the PA to make an appointment when the phone call from the sales person is received.
Calling early or late in the day, or at lunchtimes, often enables the sales person to circumvent the PA, but generally it's best to work with secretaries and PA's; they are usually extremely capable and knowledgeable people. They can be immensely helpful, so it's best to work with them and certainly not to alienate them.
In modern appointment-making, calling out of normal hours is advisable only in instances where both PA and boss are extremely difficult to reach during normal working hours.
The sales person's attitude towards the PA is very important. Imagine a PA who has taken a dislike to a pushy arrogant sales person - even if the approach is enormously well researched, relevant and appealing, the PA will for certain tell the boss about the sales person's attitude, and it is virtually inconceivable for the boss then to agree to an appointment. The sales person should always assume that the loyalty and mutual trust between boss and PA are strong. Most PA's can exert positive influence too; some will even make appointments for the boss with little reference to the boss, so there are lots of reasons for a sales person to make a favourable impression with a PA
The use of serious-sounding language is important in presenting the reason for wanting the appointment. The PA will generally try to divert the sales person's approach to a less senior member of staff. By orientating the reason to fit into the contact's responsibility, there is less chance of the approach being diverted. So it's important to tailor the approach to fit with the level of, and functional responsibility of the person being approached for the appointment.
For example, a managing director's PA will refer anything purely functional to the functional department concerned, ie., HR issues will be referred to personnel; IT issues will be diverted to IT department; sales and marketing will be referred to those departments. The only issues which will win appointments with MD's, CEO's, or FD's (the main decision-makers) are those which are perceived to significantly affect or benefit the profit and/or strategy of the business.
Therefore if the sales person seeks an appointment with one of these decisions-makers, the approach must be orientated to have a potentially significant affect or benefit upon profit or strategy.
On occasions, the sales person will not be granted an appointment with the targeted main decision-maker, but instead will be referred by them to make an appointment with a lower ranking manager or director. If this happens it's no problem - the sales person then proceeds with the MD's or FD's endorsement to develop the situation with the lower ranking contact. The fact that it's been referred by the MD or FD gives the sales person vital authority and credibility.
Being referred down is fine; but trying to refer upwards for eventual purchase authorisation or budgetary approval is nearly impossible, which is why appointment-making should always aim high, with a strategically orientated proposition.
Avoid lengthy, boring scripts - everyone recognises and reacts negatively against a script. Just be your honest self. You must, however, smile and mean it. If you don't feel like smiling, then don't do any sales calling - do some paperwork instead until you cheer up. If you rarely cheer up then you should get out of selling, because unhappy people can't sell. You must also smile on the phone, because words spoken with a smile or a grimace sound different, and people can tell which is which. Just say "Hello, I'm/this is (first and last name), from (your organisation), can I take a couple of minutes of your time please?", or "are you okay to talk for a minute?"
Let your personality shine through - don't force it, don't try to be someone that you're not, just be you. If you are door-knocking and personal cold-calling - which is only recommended for smaller prospects - be professional, enthusiastic and straight-forward. Resist any temptation to employ gimmicks, jokes and flashy bow-ties - your credibility will be undermined before you even open your mouth.
Some trainers talk about PMA - Positive Mental Attitude - and suggest that this is some kind of magic that anyone can simply turn on and off at will. For all but the most experienced practitioners of self-hypnosis or neuro-linguistic programming, this is nonsense. If you're not feeling good, don't force it or you'll waste the call and feel worse. Just wait until you're in the right mood and everything will be fine.
Sales people were, and still are, taught to use an alternative close when making appointments, e.g., "What's best for you, Tuesday morning or Thursday afternoon?" This can be quite insulting to another person, who'll have heard the technique about a thousand times just in the past week, so it's best avoided these days. Just ask when would suit best; or initially, "What week are you looking at?", and then take it from there.
Don't suggest appointments at 9.00am or 4.30pm, or at lunchtime, but if they're offered don't quibble.
Formative assessment SO2
SECTION 3: CLOSE SALES
Specific outcome 3
Close sales in order to meet targets.
Assessment criteria
✓ The client`s needs are met
✓ The sale is confirmed and authorised according to company specific procedures and legislative requirements
✓ The number of sales closed complies with company specific targets. Sales includes but is not limited to Rand value, units, sales
Essential embedded knowledge
✓ A broad overall understanding of negotiation skills and techniques
✓ A general understanding of handling objections by customers
Whether you're a sales associate at a retail store or a small business owner, getting a customer to buy a product or service you have to offer means financial success for you and satisfaction for your customers. Anyone can sell a product or service, but making the most of a sale and getting customers to come back to you takes some practice and skill. Here are some simple steps to get you on the right track to being a good salesperson.
Steps
1. Greet and engage your customer. Even though you are participating in a business transaction, there's nothing wrong with befriending the person you will be selling to. Making a customer welcome will give them comfort in purchasing what you have to offer.
2. Qualify their needs. Spend as long as necessary qualifying a customer so that you sell them what they need. There's nothing worse than selling a product or service that the customer is later dissatisfied with. The best and most commonly used question in qualifying is, "What will you be using this for?"
3. Recommend the right product or service. It is important to understand how all of the products and services you have to offer work. By understanding this, you'll be able to offer the one that best fits your customer's needs. Be sure to offer as many relevant products or services that you have to enhance customer satisfaction. Offering is important in that it lets the customer know what you have. Even poorly executed offering is better than not offering at all. Through experience, you will be able to offer smoothly, but don't leave out the offering step even if you can't think of a graceful way of doing it!
4. Listen and watch for buying signals from your customer. Buying signals can be both verbal and non-verbal. Questions like, "How many do you have in stock?" or, "What colours does it come in?" are classic examples of verbal buying signals. Non-verbal buying signals (if you are dealing with a customer in person) should also help to indicate when to close a sale. An example of a non-verbal buying signal is the customer holding or using a product as if they already owned it.
5. Close the sale. Once you observe buying signals, stop selling and close the sale. A common mistake that can lose a sale is to continue to sell and offer products/services after the customer has already indicated that they are willing to make the purchase.
a) Close by asking if the customer would like to make the purchase. This is the most simple and straightforward way of closing.
b) Close by alternate choice. Questions like, "Would you like it in blue or grey?" put the customer in a situation where they are not easily able to refuse the sale. If they answer with either of the options you've given them, then you've made the sale.
c) Close the sale by attaching accessory products or services to enhance the product they are interested in. "Let me get you [accessory] to enhance [product]." If they accept the accessory, then you've made the sale on the original product.
6. Follow-up. Good follow-up is essential to getting repeat customers. Offer to help the customer with any questions or concerns they have about the product or service you are selling after you've made the sale.
Types of Closes
One of the hardest lessons for new salespeople is the importance of closing every sale. The close doesn't have to be as difficult as it seems. If you presented the product well and responded to the prospect's objections, the close follows naturally. Here are a few specific options.
The Assumptive Close
The assumptive close is the most generic, and is the one you'd use if you haven't been able to fit the prospect to a more customized close. After you've made your presentation and answered the prospect's questions, you ask a question that assumes your prospect is about to buy the product. Here are a few examples:
✓ Would you prefer red or blue?
✓ Our standard delivery can have this to you by Tuesday, or will you need our rush delivery option?
✓ Will ten units do for a start?
✓ I can get you a 10% discount if you pay for a year in advance, would that work for you?
✓ Will you be having chips or onion rings with your meal?
OK, you probably won't use that last one very often. It shouldn't be too difficult to come up with a handful of similar assumptive questions that fit your product(s) or service(s).
The Time-Limit Close
This is a good one to use if your prospect utters the fatal phrase “I'd like to think it over first.” Pause for a beat, then nod thoughtfully and say something like this:
“I can certainly understand you want to think about this, but I want to let you know now that the model you'd like is a popular one and we're usually under stocked. I'd hate for you to be stuck with a model that's not as good a fit just because this one's not available tomorrow!”
Or you can mention a discount that will expire in two days, or a promotion such as a gift with purchase that's about to end. Of course, this only works if such a limitation exists – don't ever lie to a prospect!
The Custom Close
If you've qualified the customer well, you've probably gathered a lot of information about their preferences (color, size, features, quality level, amount they're ready to spend, etc.). When you're ready to close, look at your notes and say something like this:
“So, you need an LCD TV that's big enough for everyone in the living room to see clearly, that costs not more than R5000, and you'd prefer it in silver. Are there any other features you'd like?”
Wait for the prospect to answer, then assuming they say 'no' smile and say...
“Luckily our XCL 5560 is a perfect fit for you! It has all those features plus it comes with our advanced sound system, and it's yours for just R399. All I need is your signature and I'll have it delivered right to your home by the end of the week.”
Still smiling, hand over the contract and point out the signature line. Since you've already accounted for everything the prospect says they want in a TV, it's unlikely they'll back out now.
Once you've mastered the basic art of closing a sale, it's time to review some intermediate-level strategies. These closes aren't necessarily more difficult than the basic closing strategies, but they tend to be more complex. So it's a good idea to practice basic closes until you can do them without thinking about every word, and then you'll have an advantage in mastering more complex techniques.
The Pact Close
This close is a little different because you deploy it at the beginning of the appointment. Before you launch into your presentation, say something like this:
“Just so we're clear, I'm not here to sell you anything today. My goal is to show you what this product can do for you and why so many of my customers love it. All I ask is that you keep an open mind as I go over the details, and be thinking about whether the product would be a good solution for you. Then after we've talked, you can tell me what you've decided. Does that sound fair?”
It’s called the pact close because you're making a pact with your prospect: you'll give the information about your product, and the prospect will listen with an open mind. Once you've finished the presentation, all you have to do is ask “So is it a good fit for you?” and you've just closed the prospect.
The Peer Pressure Close
Like the time-limit close, this one works well on prospects who want to “think it over,” i.e. get you out of the building so they can forget all about your product.
When the prospect tries to stall you, say something like:
“I understand your concern – you want to make sure you get the best deal on this product. The thing is, in the [x] years I've been selling this product nearly all of my customers have agreed that we truly are the best value. In fact, the ones who did the most shopping around really regretted wasting hours and hours when they could have taken this product and been enjoying its benefits right from the start. It's up to you, of course, but I'd really like to save you some time by placing your order now instead of later.”
Ideally, bring along some written testimonials from existing customers. That way you can give specific examples like “Mrs. Jones who settled on the same model you're considering, after pricing out three other vendors.”
The If-All-Else-Fails Close
When the customer flat out doesn't want to buy your product and your attempts at answering objections haven't made them budge, try saying something like this:
“I'm afraid I haven't done a very good job today in representing my product... because I truly believe it would solve your problem of [give a customer problem here, preferably something the prospect mentioned]. Can you tell me how I let you down today, or what issues I failed to address? I'd appreciate knowing so I don't make the same mistake again.”
This close accomplishes two things: first, it helps you identify the weaknesses in your presentation that are blocking the sale, and second, it gives you a last-ditch chance to uncover and resolve the prospect's hidden objections.
Mistakes to avoid
We all make mistakes when selling our product or service. Here are the most common sales mistakes people make.
Sales Mistake # 1: Allowing a prospect to lead the sales process. The best way to control the sales interaction is to ask questions. This is also the best way to learn whether or not your product or service meets the needs of your prospect. Quality questions that uncover specific issues, problems, or corporate objectives are essential in helping you establish yourself as an expert.
Sales Mistake # 2: Not completing pre-meeting research. After several weeks of voice mail, you finally connected with your prospect and scheduled a meeting. Unfortunately, you entered the meeting without first researching the company. Instead of presenting a solution to an existing problem, you spent the entire meeting learning fundamental information, which to senior executives, is a complete waste of their time. This approach is one of most common sales mistakes. Invest the time learning about your prospect before you call them and before you try to schedule a meeting.
Sales Mistake # 3: Talking too much. Too many sales people talk too much during the sales interaction. They espouse about their product, its features, and their service and so on. This can bore and estrange the prospect, so keep your conversation to the minimum.
Sales Mistake # 4: Giving the prospect information that is irrelevant. Keep the information pertinent and relevant; the prospect is not interested in irrelevant information and will most likely terminate the sales pitch.
Sales Mistake # 5: Not being prepared. When you make a cold call or attend a meeting with a prospect it is critical that you are prepared. This means having all relevant information at your fingertips including; pricing, testimonials, samples, and a list of questions you need to ask. Create a checklist of the vital information you will need and review this list before you make your call. You have exactly one opportunity to make a great first impression and you will not make it if you are not prepared.
Sales Mistake # 6: Neglecting to ask for the sale. If you sell a product or service, you have the obligation to ask the customer for a commitment, particularly if you have invested time assessing their needs and know that your product or service will solve a problem. Many people are concerned with coming across as pushy but as long as you ask for the sale in a non-threatening, confident manner, people will usually respond favorably.
Sales Mistake # 7: Failing to prospect. This is one of the most common mistakes independent business make. When business is good many people stop prospecting, thinking that the flow of business will continue. However, the most successful sales people prospect all the time. They schedule prospecting time in their agenda every week.
Even the most seasoned sales professional makes mistakes from time to time. Avoid these blunders and increase the likelihood of closing the sale.
Overcoming Your Fear of Selling
Fear of selling varies from person to person. Usually there's a specific aspect of sales that triggers unpleasant feelings. The first step to overcoming this fear is pinpointing it. Think about each step of the sales process: prospecting for leads, setting appointments (both cold calling and following up on warm leads), qualifying prospects, making presentations, handling objections, closing the sale, and asking for referrals. Rank these stages in the order in which they bother you, from worst to best. Now review the list below to find out how you can feel less anxious during the stages that affect you the most.
Prospecting / Lead Generation: Fear in this stage usually stems from one of two causes. Either you have trouble finding leads, and thus prospecting makes you anxious because you worry about not being able to find potential customers; or you end up with thousands of leads, in which case you're overwhelmed by the thought of dealing with them all.
In either case, you can address the problem by fixing up your lead generation process. If you can't find enough leads, try talking with a list broker. Good lead lists are expensive but not as expensive as bankruptcy, so this may be your best option. In the second case, you're probably pulling leads that aren't really good matches for your product. Your problem isn't in generation, it's in qualification. Again, a good list broker can help (or if you've already got a list broker, it may be time to find a new one).
Setting Appointments: Even experienced sales people occasionally get sweaty palms before a round of cold calling. Picking up the phone and talking to complete strangers isn't easy because it triggers a fundamental anxiety – fear of rejection. Learning how to cold call can help you overcome this feeling and have a relatively pleasant time calling leads.
Qualifying Prospects: If qualifying makes you nervous, you're probably viewing it as an intrusion – asking strangers fairly personal questions so that you can determine if they're potential customers. In that case, shifting your viewpoint can help. You're not intruding by getting in touch and asking questions. Instead, you're giving prospects an opportunity to find out about a fantastic product. After all, if you didn't believe your product was terrific you wouldn't have started a business making it! When you qualify prospects, think of yourself as an expert – like a doctor or lawyer – who is assessing the prospect's needs and finding a solution for her problem.
Making Presentations: It can be intimidating to stand up in front of an audience, even an audience of one. When your presentation happens in front of a whole crowd of business people, all of whom have their eyes on you and are waiting with anticipation, it can feel like a pretty frightening idea. The easiest way to get a handle on this fear is to do your homework. If you're fully prepared and have a great presentation ready, and you've rehearsed it until it sounds perfect, you'll feel much safer.
Handling Objections: Often it's not the answering objections itself that unnerves sellers. Instead, it's the fear you feel before an appointment. What if the prospect comes up with something I've never thought of? What if he's right? What if my mind goes blank and he thinks I'm an idiot?
There will probably be some appointments where these kinds of scenarios will play out. However, the good news is that the more appointments you keep, the less likely you are to run into trouble. Over time, you'll hear many different objections and you'll work out good responses to each one.
If you do hear an objection that you can't answer, you can always stall for time. Make up a delaying response like, “Mr. Jones, that's an excellent point. I want to address that concern fully, but I don't have all the information I need with me. May I email it to you later today?”
Closing the Sale: The close is the moment of truth, where you find out whether or not your hard work is about to pay off. There are at least as many ways to close a sale as there are salespeople. However, you don't have to get tricky. The important thing is to have a few simple closing phrases in mind, so that you can produce one out at the appropriate moment.
Asking for Referrals: Many new salespeople skip this step entirely. That's unfortunate, since getting referrals from a new customer will save you time cold calling – which is another anxiety-ridden stage of sales! If a prospect is happy enough to buy from you, he's probably happy to tell you about other people who can benefit from having your product.
Meet your sales targets
As a sales person, you will get what is called a sales target. This means that you have to sell a certain number of products or enrol a certain number of clients for the service your company provides.
The target could be set per day, per week or per month and could be stated in
✓ Rand value, e.g. R10,000 per day
✓ units, e.g. 20 customers to agree to a cell phone contract or 5 flat screen TV’s per day, etc.
The information in this guide should assist you to achieve these targets. If you find it difficult, talk to someone who meets his/her targets regularly. If possible, sit in and listen to this person negotiating with the client and then apply what you have learnt – your job depends on it.
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