The Most Powerful Words In Customer Relations

“I’m sorry” may be the two most powerful words in customer relations. They’re certainly applicable if you or your company messed up an order or have something else for which to apologize, but they also show empathy for the customer’s feelings regardless of who is to blame. Those two simple words go a long way toward removing the “me against you” attitude that pours gasoline on a smoldering customer’s fire.

If you really want to “wow” the customer, accept responsibility for the solution, even if you don’t deserve it for the problem. Fear that their problem is going to get short-shrift causes more customer stress than any other single factor. It’s no wonder, when we live in a society where way too many “customer hotlines” are answered by call-center operators on the other side of the world whose standard answer to a complaint is to file it. Anticipation that this is going to happen turns slightly unhappy customers into absolutely furious customers, so one of the most effective ways you can defuse an explosive situation is to immediately promise your personal attention to working something out. When the customer finds a real, live human being who says they will personally take care of the problem, they’ll feel a tremendous sense of relief. And, when you actually do solve the problem, they’ll become customers for life.

Speaking of stress, it helps to relieve yours if you remember that not every single difficult customer can be satisfied. Sometimes their frustration stems from circumstances beyond your control, the solution is something you can’t deliver, and they just can’t or won’t accept those facts. Or maybe he or she really is that one-in-a-thousand customer whose goal in life is to get the better of you in every deal. If that’s the case, just tell them “sorry” and let them go.  You’ll probably lose a customer but you’ll gain a little peace and quiet.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides and Handbooks, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, and management strategy.

Practical Methods For Difficult Customers

Here are some ways to improve communication with difficult customers:

• Be receptive. Tell the customer you want to hear what they have to say, then give them a chance to say it.
• Put on their shoes and walk around in them for awhile. If you were faced with their frustration, how would you feel? And, just as importantly, what would you expect to be done to correct it?
• Use descriptive, non-judgmental words. Instead of saying “that’s wrong” try “that’s one way to look at it.”
• Set limits on the problem by excluding things that happened in the past or aren’t relevant to the current situation.
• Break the problem up into smaller pieces and try to reach an agreement on each one.
• Emphasize the things you have in common. “We both want the recipient of your gift to be happy,” for example.

Listening is the most important skill a sales person can possess in every situation, from trying to get an appointment with a new prospect to making a presentation to your biggest client. It’s essential when dealing with a difficult customer, so remember the first rule of listening:  you can’t listen if you’re talking! Let the customer talk. Don’t pounce on the things they are saying by trying to give them an answer before they’re finished saying them. In fact, watch out that you don’t just pretend to listen when you’re actually phrasing your answer while they’re talking. A remarkable number of difficult customers just want someone to listen to their problems, so learn to offer that small service automatically.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides and Handbooks, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, and management strategy.

Dealing With Difficult Customers

We’ve all had them:  the customer who refuses to be satisfied. Sometimes they whine like nine-year-olds; other times they rant and rave about our merchandise, our service, or even our parentage. One way to deal with them involves a baseball bat but, attractive as that solution may be, it’s not really viable. Your goal when dealing with a difficult customer is to solve today’s problem in a way that lays the ground work for tomorrow’s order. Smacking them in the head interferes with that process. The better way is to apply some of the simpler principles of sales psychology and see if you can’t turn that steaming monster into a happy, satisfied repeat customer.

The root of most customer problems is stress, usually stemming from what they perceive as an obstacle you’ve placed in their way. They may feel you’re not giving them what they thought they were supposed to get from you, or that what you are providing doesn’t satisfy their needs. Regardless, the first step in reducing the stress level is to find out what’s really bothering them.

That’s much easier said than done. All too often, our first reaction to a complaint is to get defensive. The customer makes a less-than-pleasant comment about the design of a product we’ve slaved over for hours and it’s like somebody peeked into the bassinet and told us our first child was an ugly baby. How dare they!? We have to keep our primary goal in mind:  to make more sales. It’s very satisfying to create beautiful designs, but the only award that counts is the one that ends up in your bank account and that prize comes from a very opinionated judge, your customer. So, if the customer likes it, it’s good. If they don’t, change it! And do it cheerfully, because if you’re snarling under your breath, you’re telling that customer that you think they’re wrong. No one likes to be treated with condescension.

Sometimes, we immediately jump to the conclusion that they’re trying to get something for nothing or to bad-mouth us into cutting our price. There are people like that out there, but there are a lot fewer of them than we think. If we start from a defensive posture, we’re bound to make the problem worse instead of better. Orlando-based organizational management consultant Dr. Arnie Witchel advocates what he calls “negotiation jujitsu” when faced with a difficult customer. “In jujitsu,” he says, “you go with the force to disarm your opponent, not against it. If a difficult customer is pushing hard on you, do not push back!

Reframe any attacks on you or your company with questions that seek to clarify the situation and concerns. Don’t resort to hostility!”  He points out that you have to separate the person from the problem and focus on their interests and goals, not on the problem itself. If you do that, if you approach the situation with an eye on removing obstacles that block what the customer wants to achieve, you’re more likely to arrive at a collaborative, mutually-satisfactory conclusion.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides and Handbooks, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, and management strategy.

Using Idea Power To Build Repeat Sales

Creative selling isn't just for new accounts. A good creative seller will base the renewal proposal on a fresh idea for the long-term customer as well. Since you know their business intimately now, your ideas for them should be real barn-burners.

Idea power works on renewals the same way it works on new prospects. It more firmly establishes you as a resourceful ally of the customer. It separates you from the competition. It moves you and your proposal farther up the decision-making chain. And there’s that key advantage of idea selling, which is its focus on value rather than price.

A typical contract renewal usually starts with you and/or your sales manager deciding how much more to ask the account to spend. That amount generally is determined by the budgeted revenue increase your company has imposed on your sales manager and has nothing to do with the customers or their needs.
So the two of you look at what the customer spent last year, what prices they paid for what inventory or services, and you put together a proposal for the same thing with an additional item or two plus some unit price increases. Sound familiar?

When you pitch this insightful piece of work to the customer, Mr. Big’s going to consider it with two things in mind:

1. “Since this is the same thing I bought last year, am I satisfied enough with it to buy it again?
2. And if I buy it again, can I get a lower price?”

Then he’ll pull out the proposal which your competition has given him and compare the prices. Since they’ve had a year to study what Mr. Big bought from you, they’ve undoubtedly offered their version of it at a lower price. Even if they haven’t, Mr. Big is going to tell you that they have.

Being the saint that he is, Mr. Big will also inform you that he wasn’t entirely happy with what you sold him last year and has to have a better price this year to justify buying the same thing again. And since you can’t prove either point otherwise, you have to negotiate the renewal on price.

But what if you had followed the Creative Selling System to set up your renewal pitch? You’d be presenting a new idea to Mr. Big rather than the same old thing. And since your idea is based on the intimate understanding of his needs you have gathered during the last year of servicing the account, it should be right on Mr. Big’s target. Can he compare your new proposal with the competition’s? They’ve come in with last year’s model while you’ve presented a completely redesigned, up-to-date, forward-looking alternative. Which looks better?

How about comparing the new proposal with the old contract? If he says he wasn’t satisfied with the old deal, he’s playing right into your hands. Once again, what you are offering isn’t the old deal—it’s something new. He can’t compare prices—it’s apples to kumquats.

Idea power is awesome.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides and Handbooks, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, and management strategy.

Continual Selling Cements Customer Relationships

The best way to make sure the long term customer knows you’re not taking them for granted is to make it a practice to continually sell them. Advertising works best when it’s presented constantly over time. The message and the medium are important, but the repetition of the message—the frequency with which a customer sees the ad—is paramount. Good customer relations are built the same way: continual selling.

As you practice continual selling, watch out for a few pitfalls. In most businesses, long-term orders are encouraged. A contract to deliver the product or service in increments over a period of several months is generally considered more valuable than a series of contracts to deliver the same volume written one month at a time. The security of the long-term contract is often so important that the vendor will grant a discount or other special terms to the customer who signs one. Salespeople recognize the value, too, because they know that it’s much more efficient to sell one contract than twelve.

But there’s a downside risk in long-term contracts, too. The salesperson often believes, either consciously or subconsciously, that they’ve secured all the business they’re going to get from that customer, so they stop selling them until contract renewal time comes around. In some cases (which are all too frequent), the customer won’t even hear from the salesperson again until it’s time to renew. This attitude not only impairs the relationship with that customer, but it blinds the salesperson to many good opportunities in the interim.

I’m sure that your company has a continuous stream of new products, repackaged lines, sales promotions, and maybe even a price change or two. The first place you should prospect to sell these is among your current customers. They’ve already shown their willingness to buy from you, so keep the boiler stoked by continually feeding it new fuel.

Your customer’s needs may have changed or new ones arisen since they signed that long- term contract. The contract itself may have left some money on the table or there may well be a “contingency fund” in the customer’s budget held back just for last-minute opportunities. You’ll never know unless you constantly offer them additions to their contract.

Another advantage of continual selling is that you are trying out new ideas on the customer all the time. That gives you frequent feedback on what the customer likes and doesn’t like, needs and doesn’t need. Whether you sell any add-ons or not, this is very useful information when it comes to renewal time.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides and Handbooks, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, and management strategy.

Social Media Marketing Tips From The Pros

“You have to create a plan. I see many professionals and smaller businesses who haven’t looked at their objectives. Who is their target audience? What key messages are they trying to get out?”
--Stacy Cohen, Co-communications

“A great way to gain followers on Twitter is to Retweet what someone else has to say or to jump into their conversation and add your own perspective. Also ask people to retweet your links by adding the words ‘Pls RT’”
--Stacy Solomon, Internet Marketing Consultant

“If you are spending five hundred to a thousand dollars each month on marketing and take even one or two months of this and invest in setting up your social media, you can see a significant long-term gain for your business.”
--Gerald Stern, WOW Production Services

“One hundred high-quality followers easily equals one thousand so-so followers, because in the social media world you want people to constantly pass on the things you write, as well as send you material to post. Business people must avoid an overt ‘sales’ method—you’ll just turn people off and you’ll lose your following.”
--Chris Cornell, Westchester Social Media

“You should never expect social media to be completely cost-free. Someone must spend time staying on top of all those tweets, messages, Facebook updates and blog posts. Likewise, quick (if not instant) replies are necessary to maintain a reputation for responsiveness.”
--Kristen Ruby, Ruby Media Group

Whether they pay-it-forward or pay-as-they-go, more and more business owners and managers are turning to social media networks for very good reasons. “In the current economic downturn business owners must go above and beyond to promote themselves,” says Rye NY Chamber of Commerce Secretary Sally Wright. The organization received dozens of requests for a repeat of its recent social media seminar. She adds, “Social media is one great way to accomplish that.”

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

How To Turn A Newbie Into A Customer For Life

New customers are the lifeblood of any business, but only if they stick around long enough to become old customers. A one-time buyer is welcome, but the ones who put money in the bank are those who come back again and again.

One breed of new customer that’s tricky to develop is the neophyte, the guy or gal who is new to the world your business inhabits. Maybe they are a first-time home buyer or a young couple setting up a college fund for their newborn. The way you and your staff respond to that newbie can make or break your relationship with them. Treat them like an idiot the first time and you’ll never see them again. Treat them right, and you’ll create a customer for life.

It’s tough, though. A newbie doesn’t know what questions to ask. He doesn’t know what’s do-able and what violates the laws of physics and/or the local building code. She may have seen a TV show where some lucky stiff’s family room went from wreck to magazine-spread-worthy in thirty minutes and expect you to do the same. What’s worse, she’s going to take up way more of your valuable time than this measly little job is worth.

The next time a newbie walks through your door, put yourself in their shoes for a minute. Remember what it was like when you went onto the field for your very first Little League tryout? If you were like most of us, the experience was a little intimidating. Everyone else seemed to know exactly what they were doing, but you weren’t sure. You wanted to make the team, but the single most important goal was to avoid making a fool of yourself.

That’s what the newbie is feeling when he comes into your business for the first time. He or she may not admit it—and may try to bluff their way through—but they are nervous about sounding dumb when they talk to the experts in the field.

Your first job, then, is to make the customer comfortable. Don’t draw attention to his ignorance by telling him it’s all right to be stupid. Instead, listen to his ideas in a non-judgmental way and ask him questions about what he needs at a level he can understand. Try to avoid using terms the customer may not have heard before, or, if you have to, explain them without being condescending.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Highs And Lows Of Negotiation Strategy

I used to be a strong advocate of aiming high—making an outrageous offer so that I’d have plenty of room to come down when the buyer made a counter offer. Besides, I believed, low offers signal weakness.

I eventually learned that if the first offer was too high—outside the realm of what’s reasonable to the buyer—then the buyer just might not make any counter offer at all. Then where was I? If I lowered my offer to try to re-start the negotiation, I was really signaling my desperation and letting the buyer know that concessions could be won.

The first step in the Creative Selling System is gathering information about your prospect. And one of the key pieces of information is an estimate of the prospect’s spending potential. This not only gives you a goal to shoot for and an idea of how to structure your proposal, it gives you a good guideline for where to start your negotiations. As long as you begin with a proposal in the ballpark your prospect is used to playing in, you’re not likely to scare them off.

Take the time to do your homework and use one or more of the estimating methods I covered in The Dynamic Manager’s Guide To Sales Techniques. Even if you didn’t use those figures to structure your proposal in the first place, they will give you a sense of what’s possible for your negotiation.

Judge the reasonableness of your opening offer carefully. My rule now is that my opening offer is one at the high end of what the prospect could accept with no further changes if they were so inclined—and one I could defend without stretching my credibility.

It’s also good to practice a little mental discipline. Right at the beginning of the negotiation, establish in your own mind the lowest acceptable offer you’ll take. That way, you have a sense of how far you can go before you start cutting into profit margins, production capacity or whatever benchmark your company uses. As the negotiations proceed, you know where you are at all times. That sense of security gives you greater confidence during the process.

Establishing the lowest acceptable alternative in advance does something else. It keeps you in a win/win frame of mind because you don’t have to worry about losing! As long as you know the point at which you will walk away (and stick to it) you can’t lose anything.

As you may have noticed, we’ve now set an upper and a lower limit to pricing. This range makes it much easier to build a few small concessions into your proposal, or plan some value items you can add as the negotiations proceed. This helps you avoid making that big concession all at once, leaving you with no place to go if the buyer rejects it.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Use The Time Factor In Negotiation

One of the factors never to be overlooked in any negotiation is time. Time pressure works for and against both parties, often in interesting ways. Anyone who has been involved in union negotiations, for example, knows that the largest concessions always come just before the strike deadline. In fact, sometimes that’s the first time any concessions occur! Knowledge of the deadlines faced by the other party can be a powerful tool.

The pressure to come to an agreement is generally greatest on the party with the nearest deadline. Magazines are much more inclined to negotiate liberal terms for ad space the day before the issue closes than they are the week before. The prospect whose insurance policy is about to lapse is more eager to renew the policy than one with a 90 day grace period remaining. Know your prospect and know their deadlines.

One way to use time to your advantage is by making small concessions one at a time, drawing out the negotiating process if that is to your advantage. On the other hand, you may need to bring the deal to a close, in which case you may want to make a BFO, or best and final offer.

As a seller, though, don’t be surprised if the buyer calls your bluff. They have nothing to lose and plenty to gain by telling you your BFO isn’t good enough. If you back down and make a further concession, all you’ve done is prove to the buyer that you’re a bluffer—and that your word isn’t any good.

The time to make a BFO is when you discover you’re negotiating with yourself. You can tell that’s the situation because the other party isn’t offering any concessions—you’re the only one making any movement. It’s one of the most frustrating situations you can face. You make all the moves, getting nothing more than a “that’s not good enough” response from the prospect. The time to take a chance and make your BFO is when you have nothing to lose.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Adverse To Negotiation? Get Over It!

Some people are leery of negotiating a sale. They feel that the process is somehow dishonest or demeans them, their product, or even their prospect in some way. In fact, I often encounter sales managers who proudly point out that their prices are firm. They insist that every customer pays the same price and that’s the one set by the sales manager. They would rather forego a sale than violate their holy pricing policies. These sales managers need a strong dose of reality—and they often get it in the form of declining market share.

There is nothing holy about a given price, nor is there any moral law that says that every customer is entitled to the same terms. In fact, certain religions make a pretty strong moral case for customizing prices and other terms according to each customer’s individual needs. Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with having a firm pricing policy. But let’s not hide the reasons for it in some kind of moral cloud. Firm pricing is a matter of what management feels is best for the selling company. Ideally (from their standpoint), it controls demand to produce the maximum profit from the available supply. And having firm prices makes the administration of the revenue stream easier, which makes the sales manager’s job easier. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But there is nothing wrong with negotiating every sale, either. Humans have been doing it for thousands of years in one way or another. In fact, the most successful economic system yet invented, the free market economy, is predicated on the freedom of sellers to offer different value for various prices and for buyers to accept or reject them.

Isn’t that what happens when your favorite department store puts an item on sale? Apparently, the store’s customers made the choice to not buy that item at the previous price, and the store made the choice to offer it at a lower price as a result. Isn’t that a form of negotiation?

Western retail negotiation just doesn’t happen face-to-face (usually) like the haggling that occurs in a Middle Eastern souk. It’s the same process, but the department store is haggling through the medium of its displays and signs rather than having hawkers standing in the aisles soliciting offers for the merchandise on the tables.

In business-to-business sales, nearly every sale is openly negotiated. There may be published price lists and standard terms, but very few buyers would keep their jobs if they didn’t at least try to do better. And few sellers would keep the revenue flowing if they didn’t make pricing adjustments to stay competitive.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Visual Sales Aids For Group Presentations

Larger group presentations often call for visual aids, which can both embellish and complicate your presentation. Whether you’re using foam-board flip cards or a laptop with presentation software projected onto a big screen, be sure that you know how to use the presentation medium and have rehearsed with it.

Find out, if you can, just how large the room will be and how many participants you’ll be facing. This will help you determine what kind of visual aids, if any, that you want to use. You may not want 24 X 30-inch flip cards for a group of four—unless they’re going to be seated at the opposite end of a 20-ft. table.

Never count on the prospect to provide any equipment. There’s nothing worse than arriving to connect your laptop to the prospect’s projector only to discover that you need an adapter neither one of you has. Whether you’re going high-tech or low-tech, bring every single item you could possibly need with you. This includes everything from extension cords and grounded-outlet adapters to monitors and projectors. If you need an easel for your flip cards, bring one yourself. I can almost guarantee that if you don’t, the prospect’s won’t work or someone in another department will have borrowed it just before you arrived.

It’s mandatory that you set up your visual aids before the group gathers in the room. I would rather skip the visual aids completely than stumble through a pitch while I’m fumbling with a “General Protection Page Fault” on my laptop. In fact, if it’s not possible to get access to the meeting room and set up before the group gathers, play it safe and don’t bother with the visual aids. It’s better to make a neutral low-tech impression than a bad high-tech one.

If you’re using a laptop, set up your software so that you don’t have to click through several screens to get to your presentation. Create a shortcut to the presentation right on your opening screen. That way, all you have to do is click on it to start the show. Finally, check the view from the back of the room to be sure everyone can read your material.

No matter which format you use for your visual aids, design them as much like your written presentation as you can. Make each slide (or card) simple, clear, and to the point. Any bodies of text will need to be converted to bullet points, of course. This isn’t the place to go into great detail on constructing slide presentations, but get yourself a good tutorial if you plan on preparing your own.

Group presentations are actually great fun to give. You get to practice your craft in a slightly different way from the normal routine. And you have the opportunity to use all of your persuasive skills and stagecraft to their fullest effect. Most group presentations involve prospects with large potential, so there’s usually a lot riding on the effectiveness of your pitch. You’ll make good use of your stage fright management skills.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Control Your Sales Presentations To Groups

Selling is just like playing chess—the rules are the same every time but no two games are just exactly alike. And it’s a good thing, too, since we’d all get bored pretty quickly if the games ever started repeating themselves. One of the variations many salespeople encounter is the need to make a presentation to a group rather than to a single prospect.

It may be Mr. Big and his assistant, a committee of decision-makers and decision-influencers, or even the board of directors. When you make a group presentation, you’re generally working in a different physical setting that can range from chairs pulled around the prospect’s desk to a conference room with a table the size of an aircraft carrier. You might even have to make your pitch in an auditorium complete with podium and sound system.

Regardless of the setting, the basic differences between a group presentation and a one-on-one call deal with the distribution and control of your written materials and handling the very different dynamics of large group meetings. It’s important to remember, though, that all the other good sales techniques remain the same. Your goal is still to gather information about the prospect, for example, and you should still follow the five-page presentation format I introduced in The Dynamic Manager’s Guide To Sales Techniques, including asking questions at the end of each page. Your stage presence and enthusiasm level are even more important when pitching a group, though, as is your ability to gain their attention and hold their interest.

Handling your written materials is actually easier in many ways when you are working with a group. The best tactic to control the pace of the presentation is to hand out one page of the presentation at a time. You never want to distribute the entire proposal at the beginning for the same reason you shouldn’t just hand it to a single prospect: they’ll turn immediately to the price and fixate on it. Instead, hand out each page in its turn. In a small room with a limited number of participants, you can handle this easily yourself—provided you can walk and talk at the same time. With a larger group you may need some assistance, which can be provided by the group members themselves. If you don’t have a helper with you, just ask the people nearest to you to “take one and pass them on” to the people behind them. Your goal is to see that everyone in the group gets a copy—but that none have any page in their hand until you’re ready to talk about it.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Finding The Sales Decision Maker

When someone walks into your store or calls to place an order, you’re sometimes dealing with the decision maker. Often, though, that person is simply carrying out the instructions of the real buyer. The sales manager’s secretary who orders “Top Producer” awards from a trophy store, for example, may decide what kind of plaque to buy, but the decision to make the purchase in the first place was made by the manager.  If you want to sell more, you have to persuade that person—the original decision maker—to buy them.

To sell completely new accounts, of course, you absolutely have to find the person who can say “yes.” When you approach a new potential customer on your own initiative, it’s very easy to get stuck dealing with an underling who may or may not be able to give you an order. You need to at least try to see the prime decision maker when you make your first contact. So how do you know who they are?

One way to find out, of course, is to ask. Before you knock on the door with a presentation, call the company and ask for the name of the president, the marketing director, the human resources manager, or whomever you think is most likely to be the person who controls the budget you want to tap. You can also find names on company websites or from services like Dun & Bradstreet. Their reports not only provide data like address and phone numbers, but also whether you are dealing with a headquarters location. Facts you can use include the number of employees nationwide and locally as well as annual sales, both of which can help you estimate how much potential the account has. You’ll also find the names of various executives, a.k.a. decision makers. One nifty feature allows you to store this company’s name online in a tracking folder and be notified of changes.

To carry your sleuthing a step further, type the executive’s name into Google. Do the same with the company name itself. If they’ve been in the news, you might learn that they’re just announced a new product that your product or service could help their sales force introduce. Or you might find that they’re active with a church, youth activities, or a local non-profit, which gives you a way to open the door by offering to support their favorite cause. Other places to check include your local newspaper’s website, which often contains a search feature that will pull up past stories about your prospect from their archives.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

B2B Sales Call For Doing Your Homework

If you’re in business-to-business sales, you know where you and your product generally rank on the list of priorities of most prospects. It’s usually way down there near the bottom of the list simply because a business operator or manager has so many situations clamoring for their attention every day.

Start with personnel (the biggest headache of all) and all the issues that go with it: hiring, firing, motivating, compensating, absenteeism, benefits, training, and on and on. Then there is the cost of goods if the business is a retail establishment or the cost of materials if it’s a manufacturer. These contribute directly to the profit margins, which are thin and getting thinner in most businesses today. There’s the “infrastructure” of the business—overhead items like rent, utilities, computer systems, debt service, and insurance. There are partners and shareholders to deal with, not to mention the most important of all, the customers. And then there’s that old bugaboo: taxes in all their myriad forms.

With all these matters weighing on the prospect’s mind, is it any wonder that it’s tough to get an appointment—especially one to ask a bunch of questions?

It’s even tougher when you factor in the competition—other salespeople. And I’m not just talking about your direct competitors. I’m referring to the army of salespeople peddling items and services that deal with all the above issues. Vendors, manufacturer’s reps, insurance agents; the list is endless. They all want a few minutes of the prospect’s time every day. If the prospect saw them all, they’d never get anything else done. If you want an appointment, you have to break through the clutter. You should pay the prospect for his time, not expect him to pay you.

These days most prospects expect the seller to have done their homework before they come in the door. They barely have time to do their own jobs, much less educate every salesperson who wants to sell them something. So, do the research first, then come up with a product or service that will meet the needs you think the prospect might have. Now, instead of calling the prospect and asking for some of their valuable time to educate you, you can offer to give them something of value—an idea to help their business in some way. Approached that way, the prospect is much more likely to give you a few minutes to make your pitch.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

The Sad Truth About Consultive Selling

Consultive selling, about which shelves full of books have been written and decades’ worth of seminars presented, is based on the principle that you need to understand the prospect’s needs before you can make a sale. Nothing wrong with that. But some practitioners of the approach believe the first step is to set up a meeting to ask the prospective customer a series of questions, the ever-popular “needs analysis” call. By answering those questions, the theory goes, the customer will tell you what they need or want to buy. Then you can come back with a proposal on the next call. There’s certainly nothing wrong with the intentions of that approach, but in my experience it seldom works out quite so neatly.

For one thing, few prospects will give you the time to answer your questions unless they’re already interested in your product, which sounds good until you realize that making presentations only to those people means you’ve eliminated a large group of prospects who won’t give you the first appointment. I’ll grant that pre-qualifying prospects this way may be a good time management method, but I can’t help but believe that the “not interested” prospects could be a very valuable source of new business.

And that number grows every day because the “needs analysis” approach is hugely over-worked as more and more prospects refuse to invest their time in it. Business operators are bombarded with offers to study their financial needs, manufacturing systems, advertising plans, and insurance programs. “It’s a valuable study without any obligation to buy” is an offer they’ve heard so many times that they’ve become immune to the pitch.

What can be even more discouraging is that, in many industries, the same prospect has undergone the consultive needs analysis multiple times with the same company because the vendor has such high turnover in its sales force. And they’ve gotten nothing in return except another proposal to buy which looks suspiciously like the last proposal they got from that company’s previous salesperson. In other words, fewer and fewer prospects are falling for the “needs analysis” gambit.

But what about those who do let you in the door to answer your questions? While generalizations can be dangerous, I don’t believe that they’re going to give you the best, most accurate information on which to base your proposal. They wouldn’t be seeing you unless they already had some pre-conceived notion of what they would like to buy from you. This, in turn, will tend to color the answers they give to your needs analysis questions. Not that the prospect would lie to you, it’s just that when someone already knows the answer, they tend to interpret the question to fit it. And their interpretation of your question may not be the same as yours, with some possible confusion over the answer as a result.

And that’s assuming they’re fully cooperative to start with. What are the things you want to learn when you conduct the needs analysis? Most of the questionnaires I’ve seen can be boiled down to two questions: 1) How can the prospect best use my product and 2) How much money can they spend on it? The variations on the first question will get some fairly accurate answers, but the second will often generate purposefully wrong answers because most people are pretty sensitive about giving out financial information to perfect strangers.

And that’s what you are, after all—a stranger. Since this is the first call on the prospect, by definition you don’t know them and, even more importantly, they don’t know you. All the prospect knows is that you’re there to get something from him (information and time) and he’ll get something in return (a proposal) sometime in the future. You should look on every sales call as a transaction in which items of value change hands. Even if a sale doesn’t occur, information changes hands—and that’s an item of value. In a solid transaction, items of equal perceived value are exchanged in a two-way process. On the consultive sell first call, though, the prospect gets nothing of value in return for his or her time and cooperation.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Making A Sale On The First Call

One of the great myths about selling is that you need to make a series of calls on a prospect to determine their needs before you can make a proposal to them. If you’re selling anything less complicated than enterprise computing systems, this is time-wasting nonsense based on a misunderstanding of consultive selling. Why wait? You’ll speed up the prospect’s decision-making process and save yourself hours and hours of selling time (which you can use to make more sales) if you present a specific proposal on your very first call.

This suggestion invariably sends traditional consultive sellers into convulsions and they say things like, “How can you make a proposal without ascertaining the need?” “Won’t the prospect think you’re arrogant to come in with a proposal the very first time you meet them?” “What if your proposal is wrong?”

This response comes from a lack of understanding of my method. You’ll notice that I want you to make a proposal on the first call—but that doesn’t necessarily mean that that call will be the first time you’ve visited the prospect. Nor does it mean that you haven’t done a needs analysis. In fact, the time and effort you put into needs analysis (before the first call) will dwarf that of a typical consultive seller who goes into the first call with questionnaire in hand. And your needs analysis will be more accurate, which will mean a more accurately targeted proposal.

Selling on the first call isn’t as simple as it sounds, of course. It’s not a matter of taking the same product to as many prospects as possible in hopes that you’ll stumble across someone that needs to buy something today. Nor does it mean that you ignore the prospect’s individual needs and try to sell them a one-size-fits-all product. To make a sale on the first call, you need to research the prospect in advance, ask probing questions during your presentation, and be ready to change your design or other elements of your proposal—on the spot. It takes preparation and a set of ears finely tuned to what the customer is saying.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Make More Sales With On-The-Spot Thinking

Watch out for the impulse to “go back to the drawing board” when the prospect throws you a curve.

Inside, you’re dealing with your own desire to get out of a stressful situation when the prospect says that he or she has a need you haven’t anticipated or wants a different design element in the product you’re offering. You’ll want to retreat and regroup and come back another time with a different proposal, but resist the temptation. You are a professional, you know your product inside and out, so be ready to make changes!

Only after the prospect agrees that your product or service will meet his or her needs are you ready to bring up the subject of price and ask for the order. If you never get agreement on your product’s ability to satisfy the prospect’s needs, the price won’t make any difference, so don’t rush into it. Ask your questions, really listen to the answers, then ask the prospect to buy.

Creative sellers with open minds have an endless market for the things they sell. Some of us, though, actually have lots of ideas but are hesitant to use them because we’re afraid they won’t be good enough. The problem with that kind of thinking is that it puts the onus of judgment on the wrong person. The salesperson shouldn’t judge the merits of an idea—leave that to the prospect. If the customer thinks it’s good—it’s good! Put your idea in front of him or her using the best presentation skills you have, and let the prospect make the final judgment.

You’ll be surprised how often they decide they like your bright idea.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

How A Creative Sale Is Made

There are two kinds of salespeople, order processors and idea sellers. The first one serves a certain function in any business, but it’s the second one that will make the business boom.

Who are idea sellers? Salespeople who size up a prospect’s business and take them a proposal for a product or service to meet their needs. They plant the idea for the solution to a need in the prospect’s mind even though the prospect may never have acknowledged that need to start with. By doing so, the idea seller creates demand for his or her products.

Here’s an example:  Let’s say the prospect is an insurance agency and you, the idea seller, have a small business making gift baskets—those elaborate assortments of gourmet foods, trinkets, and colorful goodies that solve a lot of gift-giving problems. As a real idea seller, you will take a look at the insurance agency and think up ways they could use gift baskets to sell more insurance. They could buy a basket every week to award the agency’s top producer, for example, or send a basket to every new client as a way to say thanks. Maybe they could reward clients who go three years without a claim or send a gift basket to prospective customers as a door opener. In other words, there are lots and lots of ways the insurance agency could use gift baskets.

But if no one suggests it, the insurance agency probably would never think of it themselves. That’s where the idea seller steps in. You pitch one of these ways the agency could use the product and gives them a specific proposal (how many—of what—at what cost) on which to act. That’s idea selling in a nutshell. It’s very creative.

Gift basket makers are generally very creative people, so they should be very good at this. The key is to put some of the same wonderful creativity that goes into designing baskets into ways that your prospective customers can use them. I’m sure you noticed that the “ideas”  mentioned for the insurance agency aren’t different types of gift baskets—they’re different applications for the gift basket product. It’s conceivable, in fact, that the same gift basket design could be used in all four—or more—ways mentioned above. The creative part of the sales process is in finding new uses for the product.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Winning A Sales Argument Can Lose The Sale

Traditionally, sellers walk into the prospect with a presentation listing the many reasons their product should be bought. They present their case to the prospect, giving arguments and evidence much like a lawyer in a courtroom. They then listen to the opposing case (the objections from the prospect) and rebut them as best they can. The whole process becomes about winning a courtroom debate with the prospect. Sound familiar?

Now, in my limited experience in a courtroom, there are basically three parties involved in a typical case: the judge, who hands down a decision based on the merits of the arguments which are presented by the other two people, the plaintiff and the defendant. What’s different about selling is that the “judge,” or prospect, also happens to be the “opposing attorney!” He’s responsible not only for making a decision, but for arguing against it. Not that he can’t be objective, but the odds aren’t with you. That’s one reason closing ratios are typically so low for many salespeople.

But losing the case—or getting a “no” from the prospect—isn’t the toughest part. It’s the fact that once this “judge” hands down the decision, it’s pretty final. There’s not really any appeal in traditional sales and it’s pretty hard to come up with a new case and get back into the courtroom with it. You usually give all your best reasons to buy during the first presentation. To get a second chance to pitch your product, you have to first overcome the prospect’s attitude that he’s “heard it all before.” You have to offer something new to get back in the door.

When you sell ideas (solutions to the prospect's needs), though, you’ve always got a reason for the prospect to see you again—because you can always come up with a new idea. Remember that an idea isn’t a product—it’s a use, a solution to a discovered need. So, as long as you can come up with different ideas, you’ll be able to get back in to see the prospect with them. You’re not coming back to make the same old pitch; you’re offering something new.

Of course, part of your presentation includes the reasons your product will satisfy the prospect’s needs. You do need to make your arguments. But if you structure your presentation the way I suggest, the prospect will focus on the desirability of your idea instead of on the reasons for buying your product or service. Your “arguments” will go unanswered. And you’ll have the opportunity to present them again as you come back over and over again with new ideas. Same arguments every time, just new ideas to get you in the door.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Retail Sales Negotiation

Helpful negotiation tactics for retail salespeople:

● Stay cool. If a customer asks for a lower price, remember that it’s just a business transaction, not a judgmental comment on your artwork, your gallery, or you.

● Know your limits, but don’t go there right away. If the customer can talk you into two small concessions rather than one big one, they’re more likely to be satisfied with the deal.

● Ask for something in return. A customer may be willing to use cash rather than a credit card, put their name on your mailing list, or give you something else of value in return for a lower price.

● Use negotiation to close the sale. “If I give you this price, will you buy it now?” is a great way to separate buyers from lookers.

In today’s economy, you can expect more and more retail customers to test the firmness of your prices. If you keep your wits about you and exclude emotions from the process, though, you can use that trend to build your sales.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.