If you're thinking of going into sales, if you're already in sales, if you don't know what you want to be when you grow up (no matter your present age!) there's a top-rank article you need to read in the magazine FAST COMPANY.
It's "Why smart people should go into sales," by Andrew Yong, and among his accomplishments include authorship of the book, SMART PEOPLE SHOULD BUILD THINGS.
I'll leave the article to you, but add that "selling" is not just selling products or services, but it's also persuading, reading body language and other buying signals, pulling out objections and hesitations, presenting concepts, learning to find and fill needs (needs that often the other person isn't really aware of, so part of "selling" is showing the need and how you can best fill it). All of these abilities pay off many times over if you move from sales per-se to management, customer service — even to setting up your own business and marketing your skills, perhaps as part of career reinvention, or electing for self-employment as your new career option.
This five-step model approach in responding to objections and questions: Explore, Listen Well, Restate (if appropriate), Respond, then Move on.
1. Explore. Ask questions to get the person talking about what they really mean by the objection, and why it's important to them. (Why do you feel that way? will do if nothing better comes to mind.)
2. Listen well to their response. You may have heard this objection a dozen times already this week, but this person may put a different twist on it. Don't be too quick in cutting off the
If you're a reader of this blog who is selling services, particularly consulting or other kind of contract work, then — alas — one of the objections you need to be prepared to respond to is this one: "The IRS (and state tax people) look very closely over our shoulder when we try to work with contractors. The IRS prefers that we just put people on the regular payroll, so it is easier for the tax people to be sure we've paid all the taxes and such. So, sorry, we just can't risk buying your services."
So, given that objection, how do you respond? My suggestion: read this article in the New York Times Small Business Guide section. It's by Katherine Reynolds Lewis, and it links to some other comments and related articles.
The article is written to advise the businesses that may take on contractors; that tells you the concerns and hot-button issues, which you can turn around to your own situation.
One comment: I can't find the reference right now, so am relying on memory, but seems to me there was an article not long ago that the IRS was in the process of hiring 6,000 new agents, mainly to police this issue, of firms seeking to take on contract employees as the economy was so weak they couldn't risk taking on payroll employees.
The good news? That's 6,000 new jobs!Great news in the headlines!
The bad news? Let's not even think about all the contractors, consultants, free agents and free lancers who are not working because of the shadow of a potential IRS audit hanging over the process.
More bad news? Let's not think about the work and productivity that could flow if businesses didn't need to "invest" so much in fighting and avoiding audits.)
The five-step model approach in responding to objections and questions: Explore, Listen Well, Restate (if appropriate), Respond, then Move on.
1. Explore. Ask questions to get the person talking about what they really mean by the objection, and why it's important to them. (Why do you feel that way? will do if nothing better comes to mind.)
2. Listen well to their response. You may have heard this objection a dozen times already this week, but this person may put a different twist on it. Don't be too quick in cutting off the Prospect's response in order to interject your response. The more you know about the Prospect's needs and mindset the better you can target your response. Sometimes, the Prospect will actually respond to her own concern, and say something like, Never mind, I think I've answered myself. That's really not so important, after all.
3. Restate, if appropriate. In many cases, it can be helpful to both yourself and the Prospect to paraphrase your understanding of the core of the Prospect's response. For one thing, it forces you to listen closely, so you can restate it clearly. Second, it forces the Prospect to listen to you in turn, to ensure that your restatement is accurate. Further, in some cases, by restating, you may be able to defuse, or take the edge off, the customer's concern. 4. Respond to what they have actually said. There may be a deeper meaning behind the objection, so focus on that. Example
“You say that your firm has already tried using consultants, and isn't interested. But I'm picking up a deeper message that your dissatisfaction was with the work of one particular consulting firm that didn't work out for you. I'd like to explain how . . .”
5. Move on from there; don't get bogged down in your response. Respond to the objection, then go on with your sales call.
If you say too much in response to an objection, you may blow it up into something larger and more significant than the Prospect originally had in mind. If you bog down on it, repeating and elaborating your reaction, the Prospect will think this really must be a major concern, and take that as a reason not to buy.
Conversely, if you treat the objection as a small issue not very important, you are send the subliminal message is that it is just that— minor, not a significant concern, not an issue that could possibly stop the sale.
The content in this post has been adapted from my books, How to Sell Face to Face: Survival Guide, and Selling 101. They are available in various e-book and paper editions; see below:
Survival Guide:Order e-book as Amazon Kindle (Amazon offers free apps that enable you to read it on your PC, Apple I-pad, I-pod, Blackberry, and others)
Selling 101 (third edition): Order e-book as Amazon Kindle (Amazon offers free apps that enable you to read it on your PC, Apple I-pad, I-pod, Blackberry, and others)
Sales presentations– I'm doing my homework before branching into Squidoo, and part of that homework involves seeing what's out there.
This "lens" on Squidoo is titled "Best presentations ever" . . . and it's very good. It's actually a sampling of what the author thinks are the best.
Maybe most interesting is a young Steve Jobs, wearing suit, white shirt, and long hair(!) doing the introductory presentation for the first Mac, back in January 1985.
"COLD CALL SALES AND PROSPECTING CHECKLIST: 14 PRACTICAL STRATEGIES WHEN COLD-COLD CALLING" which had been here in four parts is now a short E-book, available via Amazon.
You can read it on a Kindle, or in various other E-reader formats, including your PC. Amazon offfers free apps to enable you to do that.
Objections and questions as buying signals — cues that the prospect is ready to buy, or at the very least, nearly ready.
Sometimes, when you look through a prospect's question, or even what appears to be an objection, you find that they are subconsciously signaling their readiness to buy.
For example, you may encounter the question, "How soon could you install?"
"COLD CALL SALES AND PROSPECTING CHECKLIST: 14 PRACTICAL STRATEGIES WHEN COLD-COLD CALLING" which had been here in four parts is now a short E-book, available via Amazon.
You can read it on a Kindle, or in various other E-reader formats, including your PC. Amazon offfers free apps to enable you to do that.