Learning to Listen

If I were to ask you about the basic personality type that makes a good sales person, what would you say? How well does that reflect the type of person you are?

It might be that you thought of a good personality match for sales as being someone who is outgoing, well-spoken and who loves interacting with others.

Think of the most outgoing, well-spoken, people-person you know. Is he in sales? Do you like him or not? Why?

It is important to make a distinction here. There is a difference between being a people-person and a me-person. It seems obvious, doesn’t it? But sometimes people get confused between liking to be around people and liking people. The best “good-with-people” people have very little to say about themselves and often don’t want to be the center of attention. They’d much rather hear about you and support your good efforts than promote their own agendas. Interesting isn’t it?

What does that have to do with prospecting and sales? Well, Hal Becker puts it this way:

Selling is asking, NOT telling.

Selling is listening, NOT talking.

(Hal Becker, Can I Have 5 Minutes of Your Time, Morgan and James Publishing, 2008, pg. 7)

Let’s make that more specific.

Prospecting is asking, NOT telling.

Prospecting is listening, NOT talking.

The same social skills that apply to developing any relationship definitely apply to prospecting and sales. The people you most want to know may not be the most prominent. They’re the people who make you feel like you matter most and they truly care about your happiness and success.

Prospecting is the same thing. You are looking for relationships, problems you can help the prospect with and expressing genuine concern for their needs and interests. Not trying to get them to care about your need to sell a certain quota or how great you think your product is.

When you’re prospecting call is over your goal is to have a new Highly Qualified Prospect. What makes them highly qualified? They are ready to buy and you can help them solve their problems with your product. You are looking for synergistic relationships and good matches not another sales number.

Before you can get them to listen to you, you’d better have done a significant amount of listening to them.

So, let’s go back to communication 101 and learn about listening.

Shut out distractions and give the prospect your full attention. Do your best to keep things quiet on your end of the line so that both of you can focus better.

If a customer is talking, it’s a time to listen, not plan what you will say next. You already have a planned script to help you with your end of the conversation, concentrate on understanding their side. When we talked about scripting, we talked about planning ahead to direct the conversation. Remember that’s not planning ahead to turn the conversation back to you, but to anticipate what you can ask the prospect that will help you both.

Listen, try to anticipate the direction the speaker is going and use your script to help you quietly direct the conversation.

Don’t interrupt. Don’t finish thoughts or ideas for them. You aren’t a mind reader and you’ll annoy them if you try to act that way.

Ask questions that go beyond “yes” or “no” answers. You may not get the full picture that way. But remember to stay focused on information you need to understand and help them.

Encourage the prospect to talk by using verbal interjections that show you are listening “Yes, I see,” and “Please, go on.”

Don’t act like you understand when you don’t. Verify information or points you may have missed.

Remember, an individual fact may not be as important as the overall message. Do you understand why the prospect is saying something, not just what they may be saying?

Validate what the prospect is saying as important.

Sum things up-- for you, and the prospect. Restate what you have concluded are the most valid points, it sticks in your brain better and gives the prospect a chance to confirm you are understanding their needs.

Remember to record pertinent information in your Marketing and Sales Database while you are talking or very soon after. Don’t let the information get jumbled or forgotten.

The next time you think about the personality and character traits it takes to be a good sales person, remember your goal is to be a people-person, not a me-person and listening to others more than you talk is a great way to show that. Besides, good listening is always a good idea. Thankfully, practice makes perfect. Practice listening more and talking less in every encounter: prospects, coworkers, friends and family. Soon it will become second nature and you’ll become one popular guy. Not because you’ve told people how wonderful you and your product are, but because you’ve made people feel wonderful about themselves.

Understanding Your Sales Pipeline

Do you remember that old television commercial—the one that said, “And then she’ll tell three people, and they’ll all tell three people,” on and on? Wouldn’t it be nice if actual sales really worked like that? The fact is the commercial never says all those people who got told would actually turn around and buy the product.

That’s the problem really: there’s a vast amount of difference between the hundreds of people who need to find out about your business before a few of those people will actually buy. Think about the number of people you had to tell about your business just to get it up and running. Now that you’re established, your focus has changed to both maintaining and increasing the sales levels you currently enjoy. Although your company was probably originally built up by your prospecting efforts, as a businesses matures the level of prospecting seems to fall by wayside. In today’s changing economy, you need to find the most efficient ways to keep qualified prospects entering your pipeline, nurture those already in process, and provide your salespeople with the candidates who are most willing to buy at the end of the pipeline.

A sales pipeline is a funneling process for sifting through every potential customer in order to find those who will actually buy. As you do this you will typically hear four responses:

“Not interested.”

“I’ll buy – but I’m waiting for budget approval.”

“As soon as the new warehouse is done, I’ll order.”

“I’m ready to buy right now.”

Of course, what we all want to hear is “I’m ready to buy right now.” This is where the first money is made for your business and your salespeople. But, with the funneling perspective of a sales pipeline you will understand that even when your pipeline is filled with highly qualified prospects only 25% of those potential deals will actually follow through to close. What happens to the other 75%? That’s the big question your sales pipeline needs to address.

The important thing to remember about sales pipelines is the “X” percentage factor I talked about in an earlier blog. Even if they didn’t buy from you this year, they might be in line for next year, or the next.

You want to fill your pipeline with the most qualified prospects available so that the highest majority of sales possible can come out the other side. But, you also don’t want to forget about the people still stuck at the beginning and middle of your pipeline. If you nurture those relationships, outside of the pressure of closing, then the majority of them will transition from point to point in your pipeline rather than going somewhere else when their “X” percentage factor for buying comes into effect.

Today’s compensation packages encourage salespeople to put most of their efforts into the end of the sales pipeline. It takes a little retraining to help everyone understand how best to nurture those “not yet” relationships.

Ekstrom & Associates specializes in helping you understand how to fill your pipeline with the most highly qualified prospects and creating nurturing relationship with the prospects already in your sales pipeline. When a prospect is ready to make his purchase, he is released to the salespeople. Until then, the prospect is nurtured without closing pressure.

Separating Sales and Prospecting

Prospecting and selling are certainly related, but they require different mind and skill sets. They are two different and distinct activities. You will only be effective in your prospecting efforts if you successfully differentiate the two activities. With the right training salespeople can make excellent prospectors, but they need to take their sales hat off and put their prospecting hat on when they are prospecting for Wanters (qualified prospects who are ready and willing to buy).

Although there are notable exceptions, without the right training most salespeople are not efficient or effective at prospecting.

Why is that you ask. There are two reasons. The majority of salespeople receive some type of base pay, plus benefits, sales commission, and often a bonus for achieving their sales quotas. The net result is salespeople naturally focus their energies and efforts on closing sales deals, because that’s where the money is. That’s highly motivating and a great process for driving sales, but it has an unintended and seriously negative impact on both prospecting and establishing relationships with prospects that are not ready to close—especially when industry research and experience shows that there’s only a 25 to 33% chance of closing those deals anyway.

The second reason is that salespeople have been falsely taught that the primary purpose of prospecting is to generate an appointment. Sorry, that is simply not true. The primary purpose of prospecting is to qualify a “suspect” company. Do they or do they not use the products and services you provide. After that the second prospecting objective is to gather relevant marketing and sales information prospect (business or needs). The third step is determine their Willingness To Buy. There is usually a big difference between a prospect’s use of your products and services and the immediacy of his need for more of them, now. In another blog I’ll have much more to say about generating appointments. Here is a teaser in the meantime. Prospectors have virtually no control over whether a prospect is in the market for his products and services.

Salespeople, even those who are very good at what they do, typically don’t work at anywhere near their maximum effectiveness. Five years ago, the average sales professional spent over 30% of her time in a face-to-face selling situation. Today, that number is 19%. (CSO Insights 2008 Survey Results and Analysis) It may not be the only way, but better prospecting is certainly one way of increasing face-to-face selling time.

There’s never been a greater need for effective prospecting than there is today. High quality prospecting programs make it possible for salespeople to do what they do best. Your prospecting program should be designed to work symbiotically with your sales process, not disrupt it any way. Its main goal is to produce more sales, but prospecting is not selling. Prospecting is making connections, gathering information, and building trust that in turn results in to high quality sales opportunities.

“X” Percentage: The Foundation Element of Prospecting

There are many ingredients that go into producing a successful prospecting system. Perhaps the most fundamental is an element that The Prospecting People at Ekstrom & Associates have dubbed, “X” Percentage. Understanding this one concept can give you the motivation to do the few simple things to increase sales revenues and drive greater profits to your bottom line. When you understand the “X” Percentage you can begin to realize the full potential of your business.

“X” Percentage is a simple and basic thought process:

Whatever product or service you represent some percentage of your prospects, or “X” Percentage, will buy this year. It doesn’t matter what you sell, it doesn’t matter the times or the economy, the fact is there will always be some percentage (“X Percentage”) of prospects ready to buy, or in the market place at any given time. It might be insurance, software, houses, cars, envelopes, furniture, tractors, whatever. “X” Percentage of the prospects within your sales territory will buy this year. It is a wonderful concept, one that will make you rich if you truly understand and use it. As the late Paul Harvey used to say, “Here is the rest of the story!”

“X” Percentage will also buy next year and the year after, and the year after that. “X” Percentage is perpetual and self-renewing. It’s just a fact. In times of expanding economies prospect buy more. In times of contracting economies prospects buy less, but on average “X” Percentage will always be ready to buy.

Armed with that knowledge you can get rich. Here’s how.

What portion of the X Percentage would you like to sell? Grab a piece of paper and write down answers to the following questions.

1. Whatever product or service you represent, how many units were sold last year? You don’t have to 100% accurate for this to be a valuable exercise. You can refine your answer to whatever degree of accuracy you want later. For now, just go ahead and jot down your answer and label it number 1.

2. Of the amount you wrote down and labeled number 1, how many unites did you or your organization sell? Write down that number and label it number 2. By performing a little simple arithmetic can calculate your market share.

3. Subtract number 2 from number 1. The resulting number represents the number of units your competition sold. Write that number down and label it number 3.

Now, what was your closing ratio? If you got in front of 100 prospects and sold 25, you have a 25% closing ratio. Write the amount of your closing ratio down and label that as number 4.

4. Divide the number of units your organization sold (number 2) by your closing ratio (number 3). The resulting number represents the number of prospects you got in front of last year. Write that number down and label it number 5.

5 Subtract number 5 from number 1. The result represents the number of deals you did not get in front of last year. Write that number down and label it number 6.

6 Multiple number 6, the number of deals you did not get in front of last year by number 4. The result represents the number of additional unites you would have sold had you gotten in front of the prospects you didn’t get in front of.

Prospecting is the key to getting in front of the prospects you didn’t get in front of last year.

More sales are lost because of failure to prospect than through the failure of any other step in the sales process. By failing to optimize prospecting … businesses and the salespeople that work for them deny themselves the sales opportunities … sales revenues and profits that would have otherwise resulted. We unconditionally guarantee that a failure to optimize prospecting needs never be an obstacle to you in growing your business and increasing market share again.

“X” Percentage, and what you can do with it, can begin to answer a lot of prioritizing and prospecting questions for you. Decide what your final number is worth to your organization and set your sites accordingly.