It is very important that as you progress through the sales process, that you find out more and more of the information that you require regarding the decision-making process. It is very difficult to close a deal if you do not know who is going to sign the cheque at the end. If you do not do this, you are likely to lose the sale.

While sales people sell products, customers buy value. This is a very important thing for any sales person to remember. Unless you can define the value of your solution to a customer, then they are going to struggle to understand why they should buy it. As the saying goes, “Value is not determined by those who set the price. Value is determined by those who choose to pay it.”

If you contact a potential customer who you believe might have a need that you can help with, simply offering a different solution can therefore be quite difficult. The customer’s in-built bias will tend to reject information that does not conform to their view. As a result, you must provide information that they do not know which either changes how they see the problem or provides different ways of solving it. Whatever you do, you must tell them something that they do not already know.

For an estate agent to successfully sell a house, they have to create the image of a home. They have to create a picture of how a family will live in the house, how the bedrooms will work, how the furniture will fit. The problem is, not many estate agents do this. They show people around a house, point to the bedrooms, point to features that probably are not of interest but seldom for they find the time to truly understand what is needed. Unfortunately, this is the same for many sales people. They fail to paint a picture of how a customer will change as a result of buying a product or service. They often fail to even understand the customer’s needs that are driving their interest in the product.

For sales people, formal training is just part of their overall development. Seldom can one training course or experience be demonstrated to have helped to close a specific deal. However, like athletes, without formal training, sales people are unlikely to develop the required competencies to close more and bigger deals. However, training is still one of the first things to get cut from a company’s budget and it can be a struggle to get companies to commit to provide it to their employees.

The sales plan is then derived from the sales strategy. It defines how you are going to go about making sales. The plan will be based on available resources, both personnel and financial. Where historical data is available, this will be used to help to guide the ideas of activity and targets that are set. Where appropriate, sales targets and goals will be defined. Without some SMART goals, it can be easy to start to only focus on some tasks rather than others.

Before you do any selling activity, you should know why you are doing it. No product will be of interest to all companies or customers. You have to decide who you are going to try to sell your product to and why you have selected them. You have to decide how you are going to go about selling your product and why you have selected that method. The strategy and plan determines all of this.

If we want someone to buy from us, we first have to demonstrate that they can trust us. This does not happen overnight. Walking in off the street and expecting to be trusted is not likely to happen. The customer has to know that what you are offering is the right solution for them and that it will do what they need it to do. They only have your word for it to start with so they must trust you before they progress.

It is possible to have many more meetings in a day now but they are not always of such great quality as we miss so much body language online and the opportunity to learn more about our customer as a person through the pre and post meeting chats. We need to actively listen more and work harder at questioning to get all of the information that we need. This week, we’ll look at some other ways that the pandemic has changed sales.

For anyone who has worked in sales for a long time and is used to “hitting the road” to go to visit customers, the last year has been incredibly difficult. Not least because sales people tend to be outgoing, extrovert and enjoy meeting people. The lack of personal interaction takes away some of the great pleasures of the job.

In your first engagement with a customer, both sides might be a little unsure of the situation. The customer needs to get familiar with you, the sales person, and trust that you will look after them. You need to work much harder in that first engagement than the ones that follow. Once you have developed a relationship, based on a level of trust, your customer will open up much more and the whole situation will be easier.

I’ve been updating my training course on sales negotiations this morning and it has got me thinking about the process some more. My general view of negotiations is that if you have reached this stage of the sales process, you have done your job well. While the deal may not be closed, your customer almost certainly wants what you have to sell. Why would they bother to negotiate with you if they did not want your product? Negotiation takes time and money. No one has enough of both of these to waste just to irritate a supplier. So, congratulations, you have a deal!

At the start of any presentation, it is important to attract the attention of your audience, to ensure that they are focussed on you and what you are saying. When presenting remotely, as almost everyone is during the current pandemic, it is even more important to gain and keep everyone’s attention.

There is a great article in Harvard Business Review called “The Surprising Power of Questions” by Alison Brooks and Leslie John. The ability to ask relevant questions is one of the most important for a sales person so the results of this work are worth reviewing in that context.

“Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” Possibly one of the most used phrases from religions and one that is extremely useful in navigating life. However, when it comes to relationships between sales and a customer, there is perhaps a different way of looking at things.

Most sales opportunities come from someone having an idea. “I think that this company might need my product.”

You might think that professional footballers would know how to do a throw-in. It is an elementary part of the game and performed by all footballers across all ages and abilities. However, statistics will tell you that professional teams lose possession of the ball from about half of all throw-ins. Since the team with the most possession tends to win the match, giving the ball away from a set piece is not a great way of going about winning.

Most people who are new to sales often do not realise that there is a process that is generally followed. Their experience of selling has often been seeing a presentation of some new product followed by it arriving on their desk. They never saw the rest of the work that was done, the research done to identify them as a potential customer, the initial meetings with senior management to understand needs, the development of a proposal and the negotiations to close the deal. It is important to be mindful of all the work that is needed to be done to close a deal throughout the process so that you can prepare both yourself and your customer for the close.

There is lots of research about the value of training, such as regular training leads to increased revenue and regular training helps to motivate and retain employees. Surveys of sales managers show how the need for the sales process to change due to changing market conditions. Numerous articles demonstrate the need for dedicated sales staff rather than one person doing it as part of their role. The evidence is out there.