The Sales Advantage

How to Get It, Keep It, and Sell More Than Ever

Dale Carnegie, J. Oliver Crom, Michael A. Crom

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780743244688
• eBook ISBN: 9780743250764
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Education
• Index: Business

Now, for the first time ever, the time-tested, proven techniques perfected by the world-famous Dale Carnegie® sales training program are available in book form. The two crucial questions most often asked by salespeople are: "How can I close more sales?" and "What can I do to reduce objections?" The answer to both questions is the same: You learn to sell from a buyer's point of view.Global markets, increased technology, information overload, corporate mergers, and complex products and services have combined to make the buying/selling process more complicated than ever. Salespeople must understand and balance these factors to survive amid a broad spectrum of competition. Moreover, a lot of what the typical old-time salesperson did as recently as ten years ago is now done by e-commerce. The new sales professional has to capture and maintain customers by taking a consultative approach and learning to unearth the four pieces of information critical to buyers, none of which e-commerce alone can yield. The Sales Advantage will enable any salesperson to develop long-term customer relationships and help make those customers more successful—a key competitive advantage. The book includes specific advice for each stage of the eleven-stage selling process, such as:
• How to find prospects from both existing and new accounts
• The importance of doing research before approaching potential customers
• How to determine customers' needs, such as their primary interest (what they want), buying criteria (requirements of the sale), and dominant buying motive (why they want it)
• How to reach the decision makers
• How to sell beyond questions of priceThe cutting-edge sales techniques in this book are based on interviews accumulated from the sales experiences of professionals in North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. This book, containing more than one hundred examples from successful salespeople representing a wide variety of products and services from around the world, provides practical advice in each chapter to turn real-world challenges into new opportunities. The Sales Advantage is a proven, logical, step-by-step guide from the most recognized name in sales training. It will create mutually beneficial results for salespeople and customers alike.

CHAPTER 1

New Opportunities

Finding Prospects

Hard work alone will accomplish remarkable results. But hard work with a method and system will perform seeming miracles. No one can profit more by a realization of these truths than the person who sells for a living.

—W. C. HOLMAN

For most salespeople, prospecting is a task that’s greeted with very little enthusiasm. Why? Because it usually takes place behind a desk, at a computer, or somewhere else that’s not in front of our customers.

Of course, we all know that prospecting is to sales what seeds are to a garden. If we don’t plant seeds, we won’t get flowers. And the more seeds we plant, the more flowers we get. The same is true when it comes to the relationship between new selling opportunities and satisfied customers. Without prospects, we won’t have customer relationships. That’s why prospecting is so crucial for our success.

WHY WE DON’T PROSPECT

If we all agree that prospecting is important, why do we tend to make it a low priority?

Fear is one factor. When salespeople don’t have a good system of prospecting and merely view it as cold calling, they’re often faced with rejection. And it stands to reason, the more times we get rejected, the harder it becomes to start prospecting all over again.

Another issue is often the value we place on the time we spend prospecting. If we leave the office one afternoon to go to the library and research electronic databases, it may feel as if we’re neglecting elements of our job that have a seemingly higher priority, especially if our efforts turn up very few legitimate leads.

Still another reason we might avoid prospecting is our perception that we’re intruding on someone’s time. Often, when we look for new opportunities, we must do some networking to gain information about potential business contacts. We know many of the people we’re calling are busy. So, we convince ourselves that they don’t really welcome our interruption when, in fact, that may not be true.

For many of us, prospecting is really hit-and-miss at best. Sometimes we’re successful, and sometimes we’re not. That’s why it can be so frustrating. But in reality, a true system of prospecting creates a set of tools we can use to build a pipeline of new opportunities straight to our door. That’s right—a good prospecting system brings customers to us.

CHANGING OUR VIEW OF PROSPECTING

For top sales performers in all industries, prospecting for new opportunities is actually fun. It’s a treasure hunt—an adventure that ultimately leads to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Why do they view it that way? They’ve acquired the skills to make prospecting more efficient and productive.

Tips for Overcoming Prospecting/Call Reluctance

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Add Some Pep to Your Prospecting

Most sales professionals would rather do anything than prospect. But the fact remains, the more prospecting we do, the more customer relationships we’ll have. Here’s how to stay energized about prospecting.

1. Give yourself a pep talk.

Sell the idea of prospecting to yourself. Affirm that you are eager to meet more prospects because that will lead you to more sales. Don’t expect to feel better after just one pep talk. You may have to resell yourself five to ten times a day until your subconscious mind takes over and does the job for you.

2. Set a goal and force yourself to work toward it.

The unsolved problem of all time is how to make ourselves do what we know we ought to do. So don’t worry about beginning to make more contacts. Don’t put it off. Just do it. Help yourself by setting a manageable goal. For example, depending on your situation, you might set a goal to make five more contacts per week. Think about it: After one year, you’ve made over two hundred more connections to potential customers, simply by making a few more calls each week. Or set a goal of attending one community or business function each month and meeting five new people at each event. By the end of the year, you’ve met about sixty new people. How many more customer relationships will that bring your way?

3. Stop making excuses.

It’s likely that we’ve all used reasons such as these at some point in our career: “I can’t do any prospecting on Friday afternoon, no one’s there. It’s no use to find new opportunities in July and August because everyone’s on vacation. I can’t make phone calls on rainy days, no one’s in the mood to hear me.” We need to stop rationalizing our inactivity.

4. Overcome the fear of wearing yourself out.

If some salespeople survive one hundred calls a day, it’s possible to survive ten more a day, or whatever is realistic in your business.

Author Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.” In other words, if we acquire the necessary skills and make a commitment to prospecting consistently, any fear we have about it will most likely disappear. Then we improve the odds that we’ll increase our sales, because we’ll have enough leads to avoid the selling slumps that most average salespeople experience.

Think of it this way: If we are learning to play a musical instrument for the first time, it probably won’t be much fun at first. But once we start improving, we start liking it more. Instead of dreading the practice time, we begin viewing it as relaxing and enjoyable.

For most of us, prospecting will probably never be as much fun as strumming a guitar or playing a piano. But when we see how an increase in prospecting results in more customer relationships and higher income, we’ll see it in a whole new light.

In today’s selling environment, the quality of each opportunity tends to be more important than the quantity of opportunities. Still, it makes sense that the more prospects we have, the more customers we can ultimately help.

A timeless classic, The 5 Great Rules of Selling, validates this theory. Author Percy Whiting reports that one organization, when faced with a shutdown, challenged its sales force to contact ten extra prospects each day. Ten percent of those calls resulted in so many sales that, instead of shutting down, the factory went into twenty-four-hour production.

Where to Find New Opportunities

There are many people who can benefit from our products or services. Yet not all of them are customers. Why? Sometimes, it’s because we don’t know about them. Other times, it’s because they don’t know about us. The idea behind prospecting is to find those people who can benefit from what we have to offer—no matter where they are or who they’re currently doing business with.

The following are some ways to find new opportunities and generate leads. Not all of them may apply to your particular product or service, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore them. Remember: Top sales performers are open to all ideas for getting new opportunities. They try as many as possible. So add these to your list. Most likely you will discover a whole new realm of possibilities you never considered.

EXISTING CUSTOMERS

Often, our best new opportunities for increasing business start with satisfied customers. Unfortunately, we tend to spend most of our prospecting time knocking on doors of people who don’t know us or our company. Why? We typically convince ourselves that calling existing customers is not an important part of prospecting.

When it comes to current customers, we tend to assume that they know everything about what we have to offer. After all, they have our brochures and we’ve told them about our full range of products and services. But when we take for granted that current customers will remember everything about our company, we aren’t showing them the same courtesy we would show to new customers. That leaves the door open to the competition. How? Well, ask yourself this question: What if our competitor comes in and uncovers a need that we don’t know about, because we took for granted that the customer would call us if the need arose? What potentially happens to our good account?

Why not help our customers—and help ourselves at the same time—by using a tool called the opportunity chart? Simply, the opportunity chart helps us graphically depict the truth about our relationship with each of our existing customers, as well as past customers we’ve lost over time. In turn, we can identify new opportunities within those particular accounts. Complete an opportunity chart like the one on the next page for your current accounts. You’ll almost certainly find selling opportunities.

The opportunity chart method works no matter how long you’ve been in sales. If you’re new in sales or have changed jobs, completing an opportunity chart before an introductory call is an effective way to familiarize yourself with the customers in your territory. For more experienced sales professionals, the chart forces you to think creatively about accounts you’ve been serving for years. While the opportunity chart doesn’t work for all businesses, it will work for most.

Robert Priganc, a financial advisor with the Mony Group in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, uses the opportunity chart successfully in offering additional financial products to his existing customers.

“It’s always challenging for me to make my clients aware of all the products and services we offer. In fact, since they aren’t aware of them, I find out that many of them are purchasing these products from our competitors.

“So I list all the products and services we offer. I photocopy the list many times. Then before making calls, I write my client’s name on a chart and review it. I look at what they’re already buying and what additional products and ideas might be helpful.

Figure 1: The Opportunity Chart

“In one particular situation, I was managing a customer’s life insurance and retirement account. I noticed he didn’t have disability coverage. Knowing he was the type of person who really cared about his family’s well-being, I brought this to his attention. He agreed it was a smart idea and appreciated my concern about the situation.

“I really do care about making sure my customers are prepared for the future. By using the opportunity chart, I have a systematic way to know what products a customer might need. It’s also been fun to see how my sales have increased as a result.”

Robert’s example demonstrates why increasing account penetration can be so effective. After all, the relationships are already in place. In environments where large capital is involved, the cost structures are often in place. We’re dealing with a known entity. And we know the customer is financially reliable. So not only do we enhance our customer relationships, we typically see a more immediate impact on our own company’s bottom line.

Remember, we can’t expect our customers to buy what they don’t know we offer. So let’s help them out. And let’s not give business away to our competitors because we’re taking our customers for granted. The more products and services our clients depend on us to deliver, the less likely it is they will consider buying from the competition.

There are countless ways in which opportunity charts can be used throughout the sales process. You can use it in your pre-approach with new prospects. You can adapt it for re-entry into lost or neglected accounts. Some sales managers even revise it and use it to track the performance of their salespeople. The point is, the uses for the opportunity chart are limited only by your creativity. If you can find a way to take advantage of this powerful tool, do it.

DEVELOP CHAMPIONS

Champions in existing accounts also can be valuable resources for new business opportunities. Typically, a good champion is someone in an existing account who is well respected within the company and among peers. He or she is articulate and dynamic and understands what makes your products or services effective. Champions may not always have decision-making authority, but they can influence a buying decision or help us meet key decision-makers.

Andrew Winter, business development manager for Ignition Group in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, prospects daily. His main responsibility is to develop new business for Ignition Group.

Throughout his career, Andrew has worked with champions to help link him to new business opportunities.

“In one case, I had built a strong rapport with a customer at a division office in St. Louis, Missouri, by offering a high level of service from initial order through to completion.

“As the result of the trust we developed and our strong business relationship, this customer eventually became my friend. In turn, he became my champion. He spoke highly of our services to his Chicago, Illinois, Dallas, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia, offices. Most important, he talked to the corporate office in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: New Opportunities: Finding Prospects
• Chapter 2: Pre-approach: Doing Our Homework
• Chapter 3: Initial Communication: Gaining the Prospect’s Attention
• Chapter 4: The Interview: Building Trust
• Chapter 5: Opportunity Analysis: Determining Prospect Potential
• Chapter 6: Solution Development: Giving Customers What They Want
• Chapter 7: Solution Presentation: Sharing Our Recommendations
• Chapter 8: Customer Evaluation: Moving Toward Commitment
• Chapter 9: Negotiation: Finding Common Ground
• Chapter 10: Commitment: Moving from Prospect to Customer
• Chapter 11: Follow-up: Keeping Our Commitments
• Chapter 12: Objections: Opportunities to Communicate
• Chapter 13: The Biggest Sales Advantage: Our Attitude
• Our Thanks
• Index
• Copyright Page