Multiple Perspectives and Selling

One of my favorite scenes is this:

Imagine a sales rep that arrives to a sales interview. He is motivated, smiling, his teeth are shining white and everything in him is in place. The shoes, the breath, the nails, the hair, the shirt and the tie. He oozes confidence. His prospect receives him and points a chair inviting him to have a seat. He sits and extends his business card and, after some pleasantries, starts his presentation.

Motivated, impeccable, perfectly rehearsed, he flows through it. He starts with a brief introduction, talks about the company he represents, then moves to talk about the features, then the advantages and closes with the benefits of his product. He talks non-stop until the moment arrives and asks the client if he has any questions and then, ask for the business. He knows that when he tries to close the sale it is 'objections' time, the moment for which almost every sales rep has prepared for.
'This is the most important part, to learn how to overcome the objection,' says one manager. 'The more objections the client makes the closer to the YES you are', says another manager.  'Objections are not solved, are dissolved', says a third one. The seller has prepared thoroughly how to handle them, how to answer them. It's like if he's waiting for this moment. Now, here he is and after waiting for some seconds, with a big smile, asks: 'So, what do we do Mr. Client?', and the client replies: "Please leave your information with me, I will review it and I'll call you if I have any question or if I need anything. Thank you for coming." Of course the seller insists: 'When do you think you are going to review the info?', 'When can I call you back?' or 'Please let me know if you have any doubt.' And the client says: 'Yes, sure! Let me review it and I will call you back. Thanks again for coming.' And while he's talking he's is walking to the door inviting our sales rep to leave, kindly.

Then comes the analysis with another sales rep or with the sales manager:
-"He was interested. He told me that he was going to review the info and then call me back."
-"When I was talking to him, he was nodding all the time, that means that he was paying close attention to what I was saying and that he liked my presentation and my product, he will call."
 And some more. Given that he's well trained he will call back to the client in one or two weeks, strict follow up, and no sale will be closed.

Now, this is not an exercise about what went wrong in this sales interview or what sales techniques he is not using and could have used to get better results. No. Why? Because I know that you can, while reading, guess what happened and what exactly he could have done different to get different results. Of course, if you want to go that way, we can do that but in other opportunity. You can write a comment in the 'comments' section and we can go from there. I want to approach this scenario from a different perspective.

Perception, perspective and understanding.

Let me go directly to a question:
-from which perspective did the seller make his presentation?
Let me tell you: from his own.  A lot of sales reps never consider that, while doing their presentation or while conducting a sales interview, there will be at least 2 perceptions. One, his and two, his prospect's.  Yes! His prospect perceives too. Two different perspectives, two different ways to perceive the world.
Sales reps assume automatically and unconsciously that theirs is the only one that matters and counts and most of them, never stop to ask themselves these questions:

-'How is the prospect perceiving me?'
-'How's he perceiving/experiencing the presentation?'
-'Is he going to understand my words?''
-'How can I craft the one that will match his understanding?'

No, they just go on and on and on. They do the perfect presentation according to... themselves. Others do their presentation based on what they have told them to do and not with what it's happening in front of them.
His presentation, in anyway, included any type of participation of the client but, what's more important, didn't include how the prospect perceives. The seller presents from his view, his understanding of the world.

Now, how do you think his presentation could have ended if the sales representative considered for one minute the prospect's perspective? Lets explore further, what would have happened if the sales rep were able to, not only to perceive the client's perspective but craft his sales presentation according to it? 
You think it could have been a different one? With different results? Not only experts, but clients and data confirm that when a sales rep crafts his presentation according to the prospect's communication style, the probabilities of closing the sale go from 13% to 75%.

This is one of the main reasons why sales training is useless.  It doesn't train them to 'read' the prospect so they can craft their presentation accordingly. No need to remember that not only every sales rep is different but that each one of his clients have different internal strategies to buy.
Not everybody perceives the same nor buys the same.
Using the client's perspective helps the seller, experience confirms, not only to have a positive presentation, but to increase his closing ratio.
If you think that this is something that you want to learn more about, please write to: ramon.ruizg@gmail.com

"Can you tell me why they don't sell?" Part II

Now, the other side of the coin.

Some time ago, I had several conversations with a sales manager from the financial industry in Canada.  My purpose in this post is, while in my previous post I wrote about a sales manager that was willing to find out why her sales team wasn't able to meet their goals and do whatever was required to solve the situation, to describe the opposite situation: a sales manager that wasn't and didn't.

When we first met, his question was, in essence the same: "Why they don't sell?" but articulated in a different way:

"-I still can't believe why they don't sell! Look, I have four sales reps. From these four, only two sell something, the other two don't sell anything. In fact, both have been without production the last 6 months. I don't know how they are paying their bills, how they live. Maybe they have a different activity, I don't know."

The last sentence was the one, that again, revealed what's happening with him and his 'team'.

When a sales rep is promoted to sales manager, is because he is an excellent producer but, sometimes, the company doesn't verify if he has the right and very basic communication skills. They don't know if a sales manager is able to articulate a question, to find out what's happening with the ones that are not selling, to do something with his blindness and the sales reps'. You know, an excellent producer doesn't mean an excellent sales manager. On the other side this sales manager lacks power. What do I mean? He doesn't have the ability to produce action in himself or in others. But lets go to the main dialog.

I'm the coach (C) and he is the sales manager (SM).

SM -"Really, I don't know how they pay their bills. Really. Two of them haven't closed anything in the last 6 months. Could you believe that?"
C - "Do you know why they haven't?"
SM - "No, not really." (I notice that my question surprises him a little.)
C -"Why haven't you asked them?"
SM - "I don't feel OK. The last months have been rough for me. My mood isn't the appropriate one and besides, the company doesn't like us to fire anyone."
C -"I'm not asking you to fire anyone, not even suggesting it. Just asking why you haven't asked them yet."
SM - "Well, I don't know, now that you ask, I don't have an answer for that. Well, maybe because I haven't felt well in the last months and for fear that, if I talk to them, they're going to quit. The company doesn't like that."
C - "What do you think could happen if you ask them?"
SM -"Well, the company doesn't like losing people. It's a very painful and long process to hire one financial advisor so if I talk to them, it could be interpreted that I'm going to fire them."
C - "What do you know about coaching?"
SM -"The company sent us to Palm Beach, California for a coaching training but, we didn't take it seriously, I must confess."
C - "And what do you remember from that training?
SM -" That I need to talk to them. Honestly, I don't know what exactly I'm going to find."
C - "Really? What do you think you're going to find?"
SM - "Why don't you coach them? I see that you like doing it. Do you want to coach them? Maybe we can do something. Let me talk to them and see if they're open to receive coaching from you. How much per session?"
C - "Before we consider that possibility let me explain you something. Experts and experience confirm that one of the most important things that a sales manager can do to mobilize his sales organization is to 'talk' to them. Why? Just to persuade them to do the things that are required to be done. What I have found is that if a sales manager doesn't talk to them, their little voice is. What voice? You know it don't you? Well, if you don't talk to them, this voice is going to and you are seeing now the results. Now, about me coaching them, is better if we design for you this 1st conversation with them instead of me having it. You are their sales manager.
SM - "I know but sometimes it helps if it's somebody from outside..."

...and finally, we agreed that if I was going to coach them, or at least to have an initial conversation, he was going to be present and then I was going to coach him to coach them. But, he was going to call me when he had the OK with his sales reps.

Nothing happened. I called him to follow up and he say that they didn't want to pay and that one of them, the girl, finally quit. He promised to call me in the future.

He didn't.

He's no more a sales manager.

If you think that you or your company experiences this type of situation and want to solve it, write to: ramon.ruizg@gmail.com

"Can you tell me why they don't sell?" Part I

This is one of the best questions a sales manager can ask me. Why?

Because, it reveals all the dysfunction that exists in a sales organization. Also, if a sales manager is asking this question it means that she is not a leader. An essential feature of leadership is communication SO if a sales manager doesn't know why most of the sales people on her team is not selling, it means that she is not talking to them, something else is, but not her.

In this opportunity, I'm going to share the dialog that I had with a sales manager after she asked me if I knew why her sales reps weren't selling.

She's the sales manager (SM), works in beauty industry and I'm the coach (C).


Our conversation:

SM -"Can you tell me why they don't sell?"
C -"How many sales reps you have?"
SM -"10"
C -"How many of them have problems?"
SM -"7"
C - "Have you asked them?"
SM- "Yes, well... no. What I have asked them is that if they need anything. Normally reply that no, that they have everything or they start complaining and that's when I stop the conversation."
C -"Any other place where you try to talk to them besides the aisles?"
SM - "Well in the meetings but normally what I try to do is to 'motivate' them. I talk to them, play movies,  I give them prizes. That's what they tell me to do... our bosses. The problem is that I'm running out of themes. I don't know what else to say in the meetings and nothing happens. No change."
C -"Have you asked them, directly, why they don't sell, in an appropriate environment to have a conversation?"
SM - "Two or three times but again, they start complaining, blaming everything, from the product to me."
C - "OK, What can you do to know why they're not selling?"
SM - "Ask them... but, how? Yes, I can ask them but how?"
C -"OK, let me ask you this, in order to find out the info that you need  what type of conversation do you require to have?"
SM - "Well... (she pauses and imagine the conversation), first, it has to be in private. No interruptions, no noises, no other people. In my office. With enough time. If I don't give myself time, I'll feel pressured and will start pushing the meeting."
C - "Exactly, and what do you want to get out of those conversations?"
SM - "Information remember? Why they don't sell. The causes."
C - "OK so, do you mind telling me what are you going to say?"
SM - "Ask them, directly, why they are not selling."
C - "That's OK. Nothing more? With whom are you going to have these conversations?"
SM - "Well no, for now. I want to see how the conversation goes after I ask them. With all of them!"
C -"With whom are you going to start?"
C - She gives me a name. "And that's it?"
SM - "Well no. I think that's better to start with three and see what happens."
C -"OK, you are going to ask that question AND my suggestion is to ask and keep asking. There's no defense against questions."  I gave her two or three more questions to keep asking and to find out the causes of this situation.

After this conversation she talked to 3 sales reps, privately, in her office.
In our next session she told me what  happened.

Some highlights:
-she talked with 3 of them for more than 30 minutes each individually
-all of them thought that they were going to be fired
-she brought with her the numbers of each the sales rep
-she asked and asked and asked
-in one case, the mood shift from tension to a desire to meet again
-she avoided to get hooked with the complaints, excuses and negativity
-and yes, in two of them she find out the causes of their bad performance
-1 quit
-1 wanted to keep having private talks with her
-1 will think about what they talked, promised to do what was talked and not sure about this format... 'too personal, too close'

This is what she told me what happened:

SM  "-Main causes? Mostly fear and lack of training, sales techniques. I can say that they don't have any order. Very chaotic, messy. That blinds them. No follow up. Also, I perceived that all of them have forgotten what brought them here in the first place. They're like lost. No sense of direction. Of course they have goals but they have forgotten them."
C -"Then, what do you plan to do?"
SM -"What do you suggest?"
C -"Before suggesting, please tell me your thoughts while you were talking to them."
SM -"Well, I will talk to the rest. I learned a lot with these meetings. I met with these three reps and all the people at the office thought that they were going to get fired. One quit, no problem with that but... one of them told me that if he was going to be punished or fired. So, I want to talk to everybody and find more answers."
C -"And with these two?"
SM- "I will meet with them again. With one, I already have an appointment to meet next week, like a follow up. With the other, we need to talk again.  Maybe on a regular basis... click! (I saw her face, suddenly she saw the Light!") Like you and me! I'll coach them! You'll help me don't you?"
C -"Yes I will help you to coach them. Nothing more?"
SM -"I'll talk to all of them and from what l find l will see and will tell you. It looks that I'm finding my answers."
C - "Later you will find that it's like a battle. If you don't talk to them, something else will. And this 'something else' is one of the causes of their situation."


Results
These conversations helped her to find out what was happening in her sales force. Why they were not selling.  Why they weren't arriving to their sales goals. Lack of selling skills, of following up the sales process.What she found took her sometime to solve it. Two more sellers quit and even though she found resistance, most of the sales reps that were required to have coaching sessions with her, had them. The mood in the organization shifted from one of resignation and negativity to one of ambition and most important, after doing this for more than 4 months, results started to get better. At the end of that year she meet her sales goals. So, coaching pays!

How to kill a sales process with your body language.

As a coach, I have witnessed hundreds of sales meetings in order to provide feedback to my clients.
They are not able to see or listen themselves. 
The purpose is seeing and listening their selling performance and later, as part of the coaching process, provide feedback. Sometimes I bring a recorder with me and after the sales meeting, we listen to the tape together.
At some of these meetings, I have witnessed how some of my clients have ruined their sales meetings with their 'automatic' body language.  As a coach, I can listen to what they say AND simultaneously, see how they use their non verbal communication in the interview.

They can use it in three levels:

1. Random - This is the category in which almost all of the sales reps fall. Their body is completely disconnected from the sales interview purpose and this is the main reason why people don't accept easily sales reps.
2. Connected - Mind, body and emotions, are connected with the main purpose.
3. Aligned - Sales reps build a strategy around how they are going to use their body and other non verbals as tools to mobilize his client through the sales process towards a positive closing. This is a very rare art but powerful and very effective.

I'm surprise that most of the B2B sales reps are not trained on how to use these 'outside of the sales presentation' mechanisms to align themselves with the client and close the deal.

I will share with you 3 examples on what NOT to do with your non verbal expressions during a sales meeting. Two the sales reps of  these three examples, work for global companies that have said their sales rep are trained in everything: from how to use the fork to how to do networking. From these experiences, it seems that the very essentials, on how to use their non verbal communications, is missing in their curriculum. 


Here they are:
1.    A life insurance sales woman:

• While doing her presentation, she was rubbing her hands. This movement was distracting the prospect, who was trying to listen to her and at the same time was looking her hands. At some point, the prospect finally surrendered in trying to understand what she was saying, he was too distracted. He disengaged from the conversation, relaxing himself in the chair and crossing his arms. Astonishingly, my client, didn't noticed that the prospect wasn't listening anymore, that he was gone and she continued talking. The meeting ended when the prospect said: "Let me study your information and I will call you if I make a decision. I have to show this to my wife."  No follow up was enough to bring him back to her pipeline.

 2.   An IT sales rep.

• He works for a small company that sold more than 5 million CAD the last year in IT solutions. He prepared his presentation thoroughly using the most advanced consultative selling techniques. When we arrived we were leaded to the prospect's office. He showed us were to seat and gave my client the signal to start which made a good opening. The sales rep had a very well designed sequence, good questions, nice answers from the prospect and as we were moving to an agreement to explore further, my client started to feel positive, so positive that he started to move forward to the prospect's desk. The client started to feel OK with the interview, my client felt it and started to move towards the desk. Feeling that he had good rapport, he started to take out some printed materials and moved things on top of his prospect desk . Wrong move. The problem was that he didn't ask the client for permission to do it and that he was careless in the way that moved the things over the prospect's desk. As soon as he started to do this, the prospect was surprised, and with a look of shock in his face, said everything. With these movements my client lost the rapport that he had and the client ended the meeting. My client felt disappointed and frustrated and when I asked to him what he thought what happened he replied: 'I don't know.'

3. A Manufacturing Products Sales Rep

• My client was starting a sales process with this company that she wanted for long time to have in her pipeline and this was the 1st interview. My client was carrying a briefcase. She started this meeting with the final user of her product. Since the very beginning she hold her hand bag in front of her. She never put it aside. Given my position at the table, watching the interview, I noticed how the prospect saw the hand bag several times. My client, left the hand bag open and struggled to make her presentation because she never got rid of it. In fact, she never took her left hand out of it. The prospect perceived that the hand bag was between he and the seller. How did I notice this? Because he looked at it several times. The meeting ended with a very cold: 'I'll call you." The prospect perceived a barrier, he felt that something was between him and the sales rep.

Comments
You can do a great sales presentation but your nonverbal communication might have other plans.  These were just three examples of how good opportunities were lost just because the sales rep wasn't completely in charge of his/her body language. It is not just a matter of having some knowledge about what happens with your non-verbal communication, what matters is if you can use your knowledge about non-verbal communication to help you close the deal.

What exactly do you do when you get your best selling results? 1st principle of self-coaching: 'Know yourself'.

One of the most interesting 'homeworks' that my clients have done is to answer this question (and its variances):

• 'What do I do when I get my best selling results?'

I (and them) am amazed on the impact that the answer(s) to this question produce in their performance and results.

You see, sometimes happens that they start to forget who they were when they executed almost perfectly and/or how they closed this and/or that account. And when they forget, they start to panic and thinking that they need another training, that something is wrong with them or that they are not sales reps anymore. Far from that, when they answer this question, they are surprised with the amount of information that is revealed: the moods that they have, the techniques that they used, the courage that they showed up, the strategies that they designed. The best part is that now that this information has been revealed, they have more resources for a 'come back'. You see, sometimes the problem is one of memory.


It is better when they answer the question while in the 'coaching' session, with a coach.
Why? Because I ask questions that can bring more from the experience. Almost the complete experience and from there, we apply to present situations to better the future.

Ramon Ruiz

Coaching as a Key element of Leadership and Building Trust in Sales Organizations

Coaching is KEY to build leadership and trust in a sales team.
'Coaching is doing the enough number of interventions to get results through others.' -Ferdinand Fournies

It is an excellent tool to change the mood of the coachee.

If you want to influence and/or persuade your sales team, you better be coaching them or at least, some of them.

Coaching, as a tool of leadership, provides POWER to the sales representative AND to the sales manager. You could be a very powerful sales manager.

Example of my experience

A sales manager of a life insurance organization asked me to coach him. He wanted to meet his sales goals and he wanted to understand how 'this coaching thing' could help him and
his team.

In our first conversation, I asked him to choose several people from his team as he was going to coach them. He told me that he didn't know how to coach. I replied that that was precisely the reason why I was there: to mentor him on how to coach his sales reps. 
(This is an interesting aspect: I coached lots of sales managers in Mexico and now that some of them are certifying themselves as coaches, they are finding that they already knew how to do it!)

The first stage of the process lasted 6 months.

First Challenges

During the first three months, he faced some minor challenges coaching his sales reps: they didn't arrive on time, sometimes they canceled the session or they just didn't show up at the time of the session, during the session, they were resistant or they agreed almost with everything but they didn't do anything.

He was disappointed (now I understand why sales managers don't want to coach their sales reps) and he wanted to quit the process. I laughed and told him that it was part of the process and that it was very important for him to keep the process alive. 

At the same time, he was building his coaching techniques repertoire (we covered from Grinder, to Fournies, to Leonard, to Flores, to O´Hanlon) and his 'how to influence' them repertoire. One of the main purposes on his coaching process was to analyze and solve: his sales reps' problems, his problems with the coaching process, his communication skills, his selling communication repertoire and everything related to his sales goals.

On the third month of our process, he started to notice that most of his sales rep in the coaching process, weren't canceling the sessions, they were arriving on time and that they were asking for help, real help to solve real problems/situations with their sales process execution. 

Things started to flow and the resistance was almost gone. They were starting to trust him. This brought a very interesting issue for him: they were working with him, in his sales team before this coaching process started so he started to ask himself: 'what was the exact nature of my relationship with them?' Because the difference is huge. The quality of the relationship now is greater that the one we had before. And the rest of the team? The quality of the relationship with the rest of the team is so poor...' A shocking moment.

I affirm that with this coaching process he made a shift in the quality of the relationship that he had with them. Before, they where related but at a level that wasn't directly related with the committed results selling life insurance. The only thing that is required to transform a group into a team is a shift in the quality of the relationship. But I'm sure that you already know that.

Impact in the Sales Organization

Now, between the 4th-6th month of the coaching process, he started to notice something more. The coachees, his sales representatives, were getting better results. He was already delighted with the trust that he was building so with the results, he became a fan of coaching. They started to sell, to have their pipeline full, their income started to get better, they started to have a relevant activity and to get noticed by the rest of the group.
His team has 20 sales representatives. He was coaching only 5. The other 15 were asking what was happening in the coaching sessions, they wanted to have coaching and they were asking for it.

One day, in one of our sessions, he told me that he was noticing something more. That the mood of his entire sales organization was shifting, was more positive, more ambitious. In the general Monday morning meetings, the team was not only more relaxed but, they were more cooperative instead of more defiant and willing to do more to get better results, to sell more. They were complaining less. We must remember that he was only coaching 5 of the 20 sales reps that were in his team. Could be possible that these five were influencing the other 15?

What happened

I was coaching him on how to coach them. We had four sessions per month. At the very beginning he was having the usual problems that every sales manager has when he hasn't installed the practice of coaching in his sales organization. He was having resistance and they weren't doing what they agreed on doing. He was frustrated BUT suddenly this changed. Now, the change could just have stayed withing these 5 sales reps but it was quite different: his entire organization started to change, particularly the mood, just by coaching these 5 sales reps. Why?

It's easy. During the sales coaching process, these sales reps were experiencing changes in their performance and results as an effect of going to their sessions with their manager. These sessions were the first opportunity in their careers to analize their sales situation, performance, moods, expectations, professional and personal goals. 

The sales manager told me once that at the beginning, most of them arrived to their session unmotivated, but, after the coaching conversation, they left it with a completely different mood: ambition. And from there, they were talking to the other members of the team. It was like, as one of them described, as if 'I arrived feeling like a candle with the light off and after the conversation with R., I felt like a candle, but with the light on'. They were acting as 'change agents'. 'Moods are contagious', says Jim Selman. They got out of the coaching sessions in a different mood and then, other sales reps asked them what was happening, what exactly they were talking about and they shared the content to others.  After some weeks, the sales reps that weren't receiving coaching, started to ask to the ones that were in the process about what to do in this or that situation. The coach was coaching some sales reps that were doing some unofficial coaching to the rest of the team. 

Please, we weren't creating, for the sake of results, a coaching team. But, the leader, the sales manager was able to make a difference in the moods AND results of his team coaching only 5 people. He was delighted. The group dynamics changed and his team started getting great results.

After the Coaching Process

We did this for one year. During the first six months he coached, with a lot of discipline, a few of the members of his team. With this, he was able, through others, to change the group dynamics,  performance, results and the particular and general moods. 
He learned how to intervene in both: if a person was having problems in his production or in the team. He was aware where his power as a leader resided: in making enough number and timed interventions... he suddenly discovered that he was able to change positively his entire organization, instead of leaving it to training courses, tactical strategies or motivational meetings. He discovered that he could do something. It was very important for him to learn how to own, to take charge, to appropriate.  And money, money started to flow.
During the next 6 months, we designed the leadership dynamics that he required in order to achieve his desired results. He was able to exercise more power to transform and mobilize his sales force.

Are you ready to sell? Ableness, Closing and Action

This means being ready to ask:

• for the business-attempt at least once, to close the deal
• the required questions to define the client’s situation so they will be able to prescribe
• the next required action/movement defined by your sales process
• what your sales process require to be alive

And believe me, there are a lot of sales representatives that are not ready to sell.
This means that they are not ready to ask:

• for the deal, they just tell (they are in the telling business, as this case, not in the selling business)
• questions in order to have all the info required to craft a solution
• to the client to take the next action defined by your sales process

Let me illustrate with a case:

Recently, a client from Toronto asked for my help to design his selling strategies so he could sell the products that he was importing from his country. These were small, cheap and beautiful. They can be used as ornament in almost every part at home. We met in several opportunities to design precisely what he was going to say/do to sell them. He was planning to talk/visit the Buying Manager and send/leave to him a catalog containing photographs and descriptions of the products. This catalog was very well designed and printed. After having analyzed in detail his selling strategy, we arrived to the conclusion that sending/talking to the buying manager was useless. This was based in my experience.

Analyzing closely what he was trying to sell, we designed the following selling strategy:

• he was going to approach the sales representatives at the stores where he thought he could sell his products and engage with them in a soft inquiry conversation  about the products in the catalog, how well did they know their clients, who, among their clients might buy these products and "more than guess", if they were able to sell these products to their clients.

The thought that was behind this strategy was:

"The store sales representative have a lot of info related to the store's clients. They know the buying patterns of their clients, type of home that each one of them has and, most importantly, which of them where more suitable to buy, soon, the products that my client was selling. The buying manager wasn't an important person now, BUT indeed, he was an important person in the power chain, so we decide to leave him near the end of the sales process. The sales representatives were the ones that were going to sell these products. We were sure that if the store's sales representative thought that these products were 'sellable' to some of their clients, then, it was time to go to the sales manager. He will buy them."

After talking to several sales representatives, some of them suggested to start talking to the sales manager, what my client did immediately." Some of these visits went so well that they scheduled immediately a 2nd meeting to close the deal and make the first order.

A subtle but key distinction in closing.

After several 1st interviews with some sales representatives and sales managers, some 2nd interviews were scheduled with some sales managers. In our selling strategy design, these interviews were designed to close the sale. But before we created it, I asked him what exactly he was planning to do. He explained briefly that he was going to bring with him the catalog, he was going to review it with the sales manager and if he, the sales manager, asked for it, the catalog, he was going to leave it there, for further review. In fact, he thought in bringing some samples with him and show them to the buyer. In short, he was preparing himself to do more of the same: telling.

Then I asked:

• “What would happen if the client, in that moment, decides to place an order, how are you going to take it? What’s the purpose of you going to these 2nd interviews? Furthermore, what would happen if he, the client, doesn't decide to place an order, how are you going to help him to decide to buy from you?” 

I want to make clear that, yes, we were designing an entire sales process AND some selling strategies for his particular clients BUT, my purpose in asking him these questions was to find if he was thinking in closing the sale, in making a deal. And as you have read, I found out that that he didn't have that concept:

• how to make the client do something, in this case, accept the offer.

I know that for some of you, this could sound strange: not being aware of the ‘closing act’ of a sale, and please don’t take me wrong but, in my experience, lots of sales representatives, in order to avoid the uncomfortable moment that it represents, asking for something to the prospect/client, they just keep telling, hoping that the client will do the job for them. But if that doesn't happen, and normally it won't,  they leave the sales conversation, not only without having asked for the order but for anything in particular that could have helped him to move through his sales process. They go, as in this case, ‘just to tell’, not to sell.

The closing the sale mechanics and vehicles

He was in shock to discover that he didn't have the distinction: close a sale.. This concept of closing was missing from his selling repertoire so, after it was clear that we he needed to do something out of his normal and without risk presentation, we designed the closing mechanics. The other thing that I noticed while we were designing these closing mechanics was that he started to feel fear, some kind of uneasiness that he hasn't experienced before and then I knew it, he wasn't prepared to close the sale because he felt some type of nervousness and this is common in a lot of sales reps: they don't try enough to close the sale because they are protecting their EGO from rejection but that's another matter that I with deal with in future writings.

He discovered two things:

• that he needed a closing vehicle: a document or documents where to take the order and a receipt to register an advance or a deposit from the client
• that he needed a closing mechanics that allowed him to create the moment to ASK for and close the deal

How he did it? With the type of products that he was selling and the amount the clients were going to pay, we assumed, and later proved correctly, that it was going to be easy for him to say:

The dialog:

-“Now that we both know that your clients would want to have this in their backyards or in their living rooms or in their kitchens, and that we have arrived to some numbers them, then it is OK with you to start with 23 of this, 30 of this, and 15 of this?

(SILENCE... UNTIL THE CLIENT CONFIRMS AND/OR CHANGE THE NUMBERS AND TALKS VERBALLY.)

 -"Perfect, let me take the order here." (He writes and makes calculations to arrive to the final figure.)

 -"The total is X.00CAD. I need a deposit now and the rest at delivery."

(SILENCE... UNTIL THE CLIENT CONFIRMS AND/OR WANTS TO NEGOTIATE . THEN NEGOTIATE AND SILENCE AGAIN.)

 (Then, the client signs the order. My client asks and wait for the advance or makes a agreement to pick it up sometime in the future, agree on the delivery dates, says 'thank you' and leave.)

Some of you can imagine the amount of problems and anxiety that these mechanics produce in sales reps. Some are too shy just to follow this small but effective sequence. They don't execute it: they just tell, hope... and leave.

Results

When he 'got' the "I have to close/produce action in my clients" concept, he left the ‘telling’ mode and got into the ‘selling’ part which for him meant, start asking not only for the order but, as I have already mentioned, asking questions to better understand the client's situation, dare to ask for a the next appointment in order to keep alive his sales cycle, and, above all, being able to learn to ask. In that moment, ambition was installed.
He said: "A lot of things could happen if I just ask for them."

So... Are you ready to sell?

To close a sale, is required to ask for it. It's necessary to be able to produce action in the client. The client will be ready to take action just if he sees possibilities for himself in what he's being offered. I know that some prospects ask for the product/service by themselves but the majority of the sales reps still have to ask for the business/deal, particularly if they are selling B2C products.  There are thousands of books dedicated to the subject of closing a sale BUT, as I have explained to several clients, there is one critical distinction in the act of closing and this is the ability to produce action in other people. That is what closing is all about, to produce action, desired action in the client and the client is going to take action only if he sees possibilities for himself in the offer that the sales rep is doing.

Now, there is a huge difference about what a sales rep considers selling and what really is selling. There is a huge difference between selling and telling. Telling is a common presentation. They think that telling is selling and after some telling the client is going to 'jump' and say: "I want what you have, where do I sign?" But no, it doesn't work that way. If you want to break the inertia in which the client lives and want to move him in the right direction, you need to learn to ask.