Sales seems like a tough business where only the biggest talkers have the winning hand. Yet it’s not.
“The trick is in listening carefully to the customer and offering a solution to their problem,” explains Saul Janssen, sales coach at Brilliant Work. “Marketing and sales are also coming closer and closer together. As a result, marketing seems to have taken over the domain of the sales person, so to speak. Sales is a process that a customer goes through and you want to respond in the right way at the right time. This helps make sales more predictable and successful.”
There are actually two types of sales,’ Saul explains: inbound and outbound sales. Inbound can be a marketing campaign, good texts based on keyword research, or a booth at a trade fair. ‘This form of sales is difficult to measure,’ he explains. The potential customer may have already heard a radio commercial from you on their way to a trade fair and seen a billboard with an advertisement for your company. Then that conversation at the fair is your third point of contact, and that’s often what people remember. As a salesperson, you might think that the fair is doing well, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.”
How did Henry Ford bring the car to the masses for the first time?
”What’s important to know is that your role as a salesperson changes when you have contact with that type of customer: they are often well-informed about the product or service they want. So they may have very specific questions. The fact that people contact you themselves shows that you’ve done well in your marketing,’ Saul explains. ‘Somewhere you’ve demonstrated authority, that you understand the subject matter and the issue someone is dealing with. So you’ve been prominent enough for people to know and remember that.”
”Then you have outbound sales: that’s actively seeking out customers,’ Saul explains. ‘You then have to explain that they are missing something they don’t yet know they are missing. That’s a thought-provoking one, and it reminds me of Henry Ford being asked if he had done market research when he introduced the car. He said, ‘If I had, people would have said they wanted a faster horse or a better wagon.’ This later applied, of course, to the mobile phone or social media as well.”
What does it give the customer?
“When introducing new products and services, sales has a great role to play: it requires that you understand what someone is dealing with, what challenges they are facing, and what they are missing if they just stick with their current solutions,” Saul explains. “One thing is certain: people will get the job done with or without your solution now anyway. But what matters is that you can make it clear to them that with your service or product things can be done better or faster or that the qualities will go up.”
”As a salesperson, you need to show what a new thing will bring you. This is also immediately the pitfall of sales: many people say what’s good about a product but forget to tell the customer what they gain compared to their current situation. Many salespeople talk about themselves and the advantages of the product or service, but forget that it’s about the other person, the customer. You need to learn to turn the conversation around: the customer is central: what are their challenges, and what will it yield for them?”
A caller is better?
”If we look at the latest technologies, calling potential customers seems outdated. But Saul thinks differently about that: ‘Calling is incredibly old-fashioned, but it works! You do have to make it clear in the first 20 seconds why it’s interesting for the person you’re calling to continue talking to you. And if the word ‘I’ appears in your first few sentences, you can go back to the drawing board. Because it’s about the other person.”
”Many people dread a sales conversation,’ Saul explains. ‘Therefore, detach the conversation from the outcome: you can have a great conversation without getting an appointment or selling anything. Sometimes the timing is just not right for customers. And someone you call often immediately goes into ‘resistance’ mode: they don’t have time, they already have a supplier, or they don’t deal with that. You need to make contact by listening, asking questions, and sharing knowledge, just as if you were talking to a friend.”
”By making contact in this way, the other person is more likely to share things with you because you’re not focused on the sale. If questions then arise, you can suggest making an appointment. But the sale itself should not be the starting point of the conversation. The starting point should be whether the topic you’re calling about is relevant and a concern for the other person. If it’s not relevant and not a concern, well, then they’re simply not your customer, to put it bluntly.”
What new tools can you use for sales?
Saul has a few more tips for (new) technologies for sales that you can use nowadays:
1) LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator is really good: here you can see who falls within your target audience. You can filter by province or city, but also by industry or how long someone has been in a specific position
2) Having a good CRM system is always beneficial: it allows you to clearly map out who you’ve approached, what you’ve discussed, and what the next steps are.
3) Your website visitors: you can use the ‘Lead Info‘ tool to identify your business website visitors. This lets you know which companies have been on your site. That can be an indication that they are looking for your service or product. Do look at how often someone has visited your site: a one-time visit doesn’t necessarily mean genuine interest.
4) A good combination of the above is ‘HubSpot‘. HubSpot is software that helps companies with their marketing, sales, and customer service. It offers various tools to create websites, generate leads, and track customer interactions. This is not financially feasible for everyone, Saul explains, but with this tool you can automate things very nicely.
”For example, if someone has downloaded a white paper on a specific topic, you can set it up so that person later receives additional information or an update about it. Or a customer case about that topic, so that potential customer sees how the other person was helped and what success they achieved with it.”
Do you also want to take your sales to the next level? Could your employees use some sales training or input? Then contact us or email Saul directly at info@brilliantwork.nl.
https://brilliantwork.nl/contact/
mailto:info@brilliantwork.nl
Saul and our other sales coaches have years of experience in inbound and outbound sales and can really help you and your business get started!
