I’d like to share with you the simple yet profound awareness’s that gave me the confidence to build a £1,000,000 sales machine in my business.
(I use ‘salesman’ in inverted commas! That term often has a negative connotation in today’s world, creating images of a snakeskin oil selling manipulator who will try every trick in the book to get your cash!)
Life = Selling
Many of us are influenced that selling is a manipulative way of getting people to do what we want them to do. Being tricked into parting with our hard-earned money.
That’s the darker side of sales and unfortunately the impression a lot of people have when the ‘S’ word is used.
But everything in life is dependent on sales.
And a steady and predictable ow of healthy and ethical sales is the lifeblood of any business.
Without sales, there would be no jobs. no factories, no manufacturing, no packaging, no deliveries, no shops, no store assistants.
We owe it to people to sell to them. If we don’t, someone else will that’s for sure.
Whose product are you most confident in, yours or theirs?
If you rely on sales in your career or business, get used to the idea that you are in Sales!
“Are you sold?”
In order to have any success in your business or career, of course we must make revenue based sales, but before we put in the hard work developing our process and structure, take some time to think about the most important non-cash sale we will ever make.
In order to have a future-proof business that will provide you with a constant stream of healthy sales, you need to be sold on your product or service.
Yes, that’s right, you need to be sold yourself. Would you buy your own product?
Would you feel comfortable selling it to a good friend or family member?
If you’re not sold on whatever it is you are selling, you may find some success in the beginning, but it will slowly start to crumble away as you become more disinterested in your product.
This doesn’t just go for you either.
If you are employing other people to sell on your behalf, they must be sold on your product too.
For example, would you employ a vegetarian waiter to sell steak in a high-end restaurant?
Of course not.
What’s he going to say if he’s asked what he would recommend?
The biggest cause of a drop in conversion rates (how many sales per amount of opportunities), is a salesperson who is not sold on their product.
The last thing any business needs is to have to train and retrain its salespeople because they didn’t believe in the product they were selling.
Make sure you are 100% committed and con dent in your product, and that anyone selling on your behalf is too.
If you’re not sold, your customer won’t be either.
Passion = Success
I found my flow when I was passionate about my product.
I was so con dent about the quality of my roofs, and the suitability of these roofs to my prospect’s needs, passion radiated out of me like rays of sunshine.
I didn’t need any smart questions or clever objection handling, I was that passionate about what I was describing to my prospect, they were looking for the pen to sign up before I’d finished, asking about my lead time before I’d even given them the price!
I genuinely communicated to them that I felt duty-bound to steer them away from the arms of our corner-cutting competition, to avoid them getting caught out with shoddy workmanship or guarantees that expired as soon as the scaffolding was dismantled.
I knew how good we were, I spent 20 years perfecting our craft to ensure that the best looking, longest-lasting value-for- money roof was going to be delivered to them and improve the character and financial value of their property.
This passion and authenticity have helped me win more sales than any other part of my sales process.
If you don’t feel passionate about your offering, you can be sure your customers won’t either.
Commitment = Success
Once you are 100% sold and passionate about your product, commit to becoming the only person that anyone should go to buy it.
You owe it to your customers to sell them the right option and not some cheap lower value proposition that your competition is selling
Commit yourself to being the expert in your field.
Research and learn more about your product than anyone else in your field. Join organisations, attend industry events, read books and blogs about your field.
We rarely attend any event without taking away at least one or two little gems of information that will help us in our success.
The same applies with books & blogs.
If we can get 4 or 5 nuggets of wisdom a month, think about the compound effect that will have on your credibility over the course of a year.
You will soon become the expert in your field that radiates confidence and professionalism to your prospects.
Also, commit yourself to learning more about selling.
Amazon is full of books and audibles by the best-selling coaches in the world such as Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn and Grant Cardone. Read or listen to as much material as you can.
You cannot get enough different perspective on the subject of sales.
If you can take away a few neat lessons from each book you read, slowly that compound effect will kick in again, creating an unformidable expert who can also ethically influence his prospects with ease.
You owe it to your customers to sell them the right option and not some cheap lower value proposition that your competition is selling.
Commit to improving your mindset and attitude by studying the subject of sales, and by listening to inspirational material from these authors.
Use this new knowledge to build your own personalised processes, tools and sales structure based on the information that resonates the most with your style, product and most importantly your personal values.
Although the commitment to reading and listening is educational, learning about selling (for me anyway) has always been more about improving my mindset and my attitude, than absorbing a formal education.
Once you get your mindset straight, you’ll be making up your own rules, tools and skillsets that are unique and very difficult for others to copy.
Confidence = Success
How comfortable are you with your own prices?
Being con dent with your price list, rate or RRP is essential.
(A sure fire way of selling yourself short is if you think your own prices are too high.)
Don’t make excuses in your head about how good the competition are, or how no-one will buy at your prices.
If you’re not comfortable with the prices you are selling at, your customer will screw you down with a low price or go off to buy from your cheaper competitor.
Your prices are not based on how long it takes. It’s not about how much the raw materials cost. It’s not about how much the competition charges.
It’s about how much commitment you have put into your product over the course of your career through hard work and commitment. How much care you have put into your research so you can deliver a better quality service than everyone else.
That’s what your prices are based on. A sale is an exchange of value. Your valuable product for their valuable cash.
They must feel the value of your product before they are willing to trade with you. Only you can communicate that value.
Be confident in your prices. Look at your most expensive competitor. Is your product as good as theirs?
Is it better?
If it isn’t, commit to making it better than theirs and then raise your prices up to reflect this.
You owe it to your customer to be profitable, and still be around to deliver the same great service time and time again in the future
Commit to being unique, authentic and confident.
Add your commitment to your passion, and you have a winning formula straight away.
Observation = Knowledge = Success
How do you feel when you don’t win the sale? Does it hurt? It does with me.
Especially if you have put in a lot of time and effort to make that sale.
So what were the reasons for not winning it?
Most people usually evaluate sales that they didn’t win and try to dissect the experience in order to find the answers.
The answers are usually found in the sales that you do win.
Look at the sales you did win and ask yourself what you did right.
importantly your personal values.
Although the commitment to reading and listening is educational, learning about selling (for me anyway) has always been more about improving my mindset and my attitude, than absorbing a formal education.
Once you get your mindset straight, you’ll be making up your own rules, tools and skillsets that are unique and very difficult for others to copy.
Confidence = Success
How comfortable are you with your own prices?
Being confident with your price list, rate or RRP is essential.
(A sure fire way of selling yourself short is if you think your own prices are too high.)
Don’t make excuses in your head about how good the competition is, or how no-one will buy at your prices.
If you’re not comfortable with the prices you are selling at, your customer will screw you down with a low price or go off to buy from your cheaper competitor.
Your prices are not based on how long it takes. It’s not about how much the raw materials cost. It’s not about how much the competition charges.
It’s about how much commitment you have put into your product over the course of your career through hard work and commitment. How much care you have put into your research so you can deliver a better quality service than everyone else.
That’s what your prices are based on. A sale is an exchange of value. Your valuable product for their valuable cash.
They must feel the value of your product before they are willing to trade with you. Only you can communicate that value.
Be confident in your prices. Look at your most expensive competitor. Is your product as good as theirs?
Is it better?
If it isn’t, commit to making it better than theirs and then raise your prices up to reflect this.
You owe it to your customer to be profitable, and still be around to deliver the same great service time and time again in the future.
Commit to being unique, authentic and confident.
Add your commitment to your passion, and you have a winning formula straight away.
Observation = Knowledge = Success
How do you feel when you don’t win the sale? Does it hurt? It does with me.
Especially if you have put in a lot of time and effort to make that sale.
So what were the reasons for not winning it?
Most people usually evaluate sales that they didn’t win and try to dissect the experience in order to find the answers.
The answers are usually found in the sales that you do win.
Look at the sales you did win and ask yourself what you did right.
It’s easy for a winning team to get carried away in the celebration of success without evaluating how the winning formula was created.
Look into your successes and keep good records of your experience.
Use a simple evaluation process with these 3 questions on any sale you won or lost:
What went right? What went wrong? What would I do differently if I was to do it again?
How did the initial rapport building go, did you find out the exact needs and requirements of your prospect before making your proposal?
Did you re-cap as you matched their needs in your solution or proposal?
Can you remember your conversation with your prospect? What trust building statements did you use?
Was there anything you said that you wished you hadn’t? What should you have said instead?
It’s essential to observe and evaluate your experiences and look for the patterns that will form your winning sales process.
I hope sharing my journey and experiences will give you the confidence to start creating your own process.
This will help you sell at higher prices than your competitors, with winning conversion rates that would impress any seasoned pro.
There is so much more to share on the subject of sales, there are many other tools listed below that will help you build your process that I, and all of the other highly skilled members of Renegades will openly share with you.
- How to build a great trust-based relationship with your customers.
- Qualifying your customers to ensure they are a good fit.
- Pre-suasion – Adding that much value before the close that you don’t HAVE to close the deal!
- Price Conditioning- Setting realistic expectations through your marketing and proposals.
- The art of a restructuring a deal.
- Rescuing lost sales.
- Winning customers for life.
- Knowing the lifetime value of a customer (what are you prepared to spend to secure him?)
- Getting referrals from your customers (referred customers are the easiest ones to sell to, the trust is already there).
- Communication structure. Don’t ignore your customer after the sale if you want him to come back.
In the next issue we will cover:
Qualifying your customers. How to attract your ideal customer and repel the unsuitable ones.
We know what it’s like to have more questions than answers, and the glue that holds together the founding members of the Renegades is our passion to share, and most importantly to see your growth and success as a result of this.
You all have the £1,000,000 salesperson inside of you, being a part of this environment will help you find your answers and build the sales machine you need to boost your business to the place of your dreams.
