Demystifying The Sales Process

Sales is frequently mystified and hopefully after reading this some of those convolutions will subside. There is no magic bullet to doing sales, it is simply yet again the basic notion of a practice makes perfect scenario. Sometimes professionals from an engineering background will see their credentials as a potential set back but it has its advantages when it comes down to sales. As entrepreneurs we are spearing and hunting rather than gathering acorns for the cold winter season like our sales professional counterparts. At the end of the day, generating or loosing profit comes down to a small number of key times where you can make or break the outcome in the transaction. You need to speak their language and mirror even the physical actions of the person you're selling to on any given day. Dig for those similarities that bind the two of you together, find that common ground. Don't artificially manufacture this commonality, but find genuine connections or you will be caught in lie after lie and your reputation will suffer. People buy from other people. Frequently this point is overlooked and we think that our prospects are buying a brand or a widget which they are as infatuated with as we are in having developed or sold it for any length of time. Company slogans should then eco something along the lines of, "We will never give up on your success". Making sales comes down to a few factors like how confident you are, how well you manage the sales process and how you reduce the risk in the transaction.

As the entrepreneur we are faced with the ultimate tasks of marketing, closing sales and delivering on the fulfillment of the sale. When getting started we must understand that there are 3 buckets to pricing approaches. The one that you select must fit with the pricing dialectics of your selected customer segment. You need to do adequate research regarding your pricing and it cannot be positioned so that you do not acquire your equitable value share. The three pricing strategies are 1) extraction 2) impartial 3) perforation. Extraction features a differentiated offer, establishes chances for competitors and is priced at a premium. The impartial pricing model is adjacent to competitive prices, avoids price conflicts and generally ends in competition on something other than price among competitors. Finally, the highly unrecommended perforation model where low price is the primary driver, price wars ensue, customers become disloyal and it leads to consumer indecision and uncertainty. You need to go through a process of identifying your value market, quantity, competitive offers, financial benefit then price surfaces. There are several factors required to make an accurate assessment including whether you are viewing your pricing compared to competitors, are you just trying to get your foot in the door, do you have varying pricing, blended pricing, is it more auction pricing or perhaps cost plus pricing. Determine if your logic for pricing your product or service matches the logic of your market segment.

Moving onto the sales process. There are three distinct steps in the buying cycle. Qualification, negotiation and close. Back to back with this process is what Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi teach is the hook, story, close. The idea is to match these processes together and make them work in harmony with one another. We now come to a very important acronym called MAP. Do they have the money to afford your solution? Are they allowed to buy it? Is solving this problem an immediate priority for them? If the answer is anything but yes to any of these questions then it is time to begin flushing out objections. We will not get into this in this article, that is warrants its own discussion. Realize who you are speaking with and make sure you are getting to the direct point of what they see as relevance. If you're speaking to an online developer making the purchase understand that they care about how this solution will integrate with the enterprise, whereas a manager will care about how the solution will impact the internal team and their existing clients and of course the decision maker who will be concerned with how the solution will save time and money, increase profits, hedge risk or improve their status in the community. The number one thing you need to be doing in the qualification stage is LISTENING. Ask them about their problem and the impact it's having and find out what their ideal resolution looks like to that pain or problem. From their you need to position your solution to be congruent with that specific pain or problem and have them describe their desired reality. Get into their costs and how they are impacted by them and examine and have them uncover their own pain and its magnitude.

Now we are moving onto negotiation. You need to go into price justification. Compare it to more expensive alternatives if possible. Price prejudice is a key tool in negotiation. Use the plan you have had your prospect uncover to justify your pricing and how it will be manageable given their desired transformation. In the case that your target segment has low price vulnerabilities you may acquire the upper hand and if they have a high price vulnerability you must differentiate. Pricing vulnerability can be managed when your solution has the perception of being superior, when the effort, cost and time commitment to research competitive offers is elevated or when urgency is apparent and time is of the essence. Another way to overcome price vulnerabilities is by using one of the many ways you are able to differentiate yourself from your unique experiences and expertise working with happy clients in similar verticals. Your ability to foresee and harness conflicts and your abilities to predict things your clients simply would not be able to do without your expertise.

For heavens sakes if you cannot ask for the sale please let someone else have the at bat. I'm not saying that you can never learn and the only way to do this is by exiting your comfort zone to learn by mistakes and failure. But if you have no intention of overcoming what is in the beginning an uncomfortable feeling, you must move aside and allow someone else to fill that role in your organization. If you ask for the business multiple times the likelihood of it occurring are significantly higher. In the current age you can not do this in a coercive manor but it must be in quite the opposite fashion. So what do you want to do now Bob? Be aware that you may be faced with a pricing objection again. Do not view a final attempt by your prospect to reduce the price as a negative, you could blow the sale! This is a great sign that you are finalizing the deal with them. If they didn't want to buy from you, would they still be working a discount with you this late in the sales cycle? It's a good idea to have 2-3 previously designed incentives which can be price reductions or value ads but the sooner you can stop these leaks the more manageable the contract will be for the organization. Don't be afraid to say no to people and gage their reaction. Frequently if you would have said no in the first place the other value ads or price reductions would have been avoided. Say no in the nicest way possible of course. Now that you have the deal closed it's time to go out an deliver all that incredible value you vowed to deliver in the transaction. Get it done!