Exactly How to Sell

The Sales Guide for Non-Sales Professionals

Phil M. Jones

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119473398
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sales
• Index: Business

The sales guide for non-sales professionals

Exactly How to Sell walks you through a tried and true process that draws on time tested methods that are designed to attract and keep more customers. No matter what you are selling (yourself, your product or your services) this simple read is certain to provide you actionable strategies to deliver you more of the sales results you are looking for.

Inside, Phil M. Jones writes from experience and explains how to get more customers and keep them all happy—while they're spending more money, more often. Using simple, practical, and easy-to-implement methods in line with the modern business landscape, Phil educates and guides you, giving you the confidence you need to develop the skills you need to win more business.

• Boost your salesmanship to support your core profession
• Create intent in a buyer and scenarios where everybody wins
• Choose your words wisely and present like a pro
• Overcome the indecision in your customers and close more sales
• Manage your customer base and have them coming back for more

If you want to up your sales game, Exactly How to Sell shows you how.

1
A Shift in Mind‐Set

It is rare that you meet a child who has aspirations of growing up to be a salesperson. You do hear alternatives such as politician, lawyer, doctor, sports professional, or artist—and in all these examples, the commonality is that without the ability to influence, persuade, and negotiate, the chances of success are highly reduced.

Having a talent or ability to perform is not enough by itself to secure success. Through the years there have been countless examples of highly capable businesspeople failing because of one simple reason: they did not know how to sell.

Salespeople or Sales Professionals

Finding yourself in a sales role quite often happens by accident. Perhaps you have just started in business or had an urgent business need, or maybe somebody else has put you into the role. The truth is we are all salespeople, and in every part of life, sales skills are useful tools in helping us to climb the ladder and realize more of our potential. When you reflect on almost everyone who has achieved a significant level of success, you will typically find that their achievement has been enabled, amplified, or accelerated through their ability to sell.

“Sales” is certainly not a dirty word. To illustrate my point, here are some high achievers I would class as being some of the most successful sales professionals on the planet:

• Steve Jobs
• Martha Stewart
• Leonardo DiCaprio
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Nelson Mandela
• Sir Alex Ferguson
• LeBron James
• Richard Branson
• Oprah Winfrey
• J. K. Rowling

There is probably a huge difference between your initial image of a salesperson and these decorated professionals.

During my seminars I often ask audience members to reach for adjectives that would describe a stereotypical salesperson. Common responses almost always include these words:

• Pushy
• Greedy
• A con man
• Obnoxious
• Overly friendly
• A liar
• Annoying

How would you feel if someone used those words to describe you? I would imagine less than happy. I also imagine that one of the reasons you picked up this book is your fear of being perceived that way.

In seminars, I then ask the same audience to reach for adjectives that do not describe a “stereotypical” salesperson, but a “professional” salesperson. The list of adjectives is quite a contrast:

• A good listener
• Problem‐solving
• Empathetic
• Genuine
• Knowledgeable
• Helpful
• Responsible

I always find this experiment incredibly interesting. It becomes obvious to me that the fear of being a salesperson is the fear of being perceived as carrying that first set of attributes. Today's world is a very different one, and given our reality—the huge transparency now created through reviews, the Internet, and the power of a consumer's voice on social media—then it really only leaves room for the sales professional to prosper.

Choosing to be professional means you are faced with two options for acquiring new customers. One option is to be reactive, await your inquiries, and respond promptly on receipt of some interest, and the second is to be proactive and take steps to make things happen.

Although there are plenty of strategies that can result in you creating more inbound inquiries, it is paramount that you take control of your circumstances and build a robust plan to proactively reach more potential customers. Success in sales is all about maintaining control. By building a process that allows you to direct and steer your future customer numbers, you can build your business with far more control and composure. Relying purely on a reactive approach will bring huge variance, with external factors largely responsible for your success or failure.

Choosing Your Focus

A significant difference between marketing and sales is that marketers look to attract new customers, while sales professionals take the time to choose their customers. If you can look back over your experience and think of a customer you wish you hadn't had, then I imagine that was not somebody you strategically chose as a perfect customer.

Choosing your customers ahead of time is a process known as “prospecting.” Outside of the world of sales, the word is defined on Wikipedia as “the first stage of the geological analysis…of a territory. It is the physical search for minerals, fossils, precious metals or mineral specimens…. Prospecting is a small‐scale form of mineral exploration which is an organized, large‐scale effort undertaken by commercial mineral companies to find commercially viable ore deposits.” This can be simply translated as the hunt for buried treasure. It's about extracting the maximum value from the relationships that we hold, the circumstances we find ourselves in, and the opportunities we create.

Your responsibility as a sales professional is to constantly be on the hunt for buried treasure. As a treasure hunter, you would have predetermined goals identifying the high‐value items you are looking for. As a sales professional, your job is to do exactly the same thing: decide in advance the precise, perfect people you would love to do business with.

Striving for more and having ambition are qualities that have fueled the sales profession since the start of time. This enthusiasm can also be a huge barrier to you taking advantage of the opportunities that are already available. You have the right to choose your customers, decide what success looks like, and identify the quality and quantity of people that you would like to work with. A common mistake is that people fail to execute that choice and find themselves trying to work with anybody and everybody.

I choose to take the perspective that every future customer is no more than a “missing person.” Instead of looking for anybody and everybody, get laser focused on exactly what your ideal customer looks like—to the point that you could describe them to a stranger, as you would with a missing person. Once you have that focused description in your mind, you will see opportunity more often, get more of the right kind of customers, and be more targeted in all of your activities. The additional benefit you gain once you can explain each of your target markets is that other people can help you to hit the target. You can describe them to everyone you meet and let those people introduce you to your missing people or opt in to be potential customers themselves.

There is a part of the brain called the reticular activating sensor (RAS) that is a component our conscious system. It makes decisions throughout the day as to what information is important and what we should ignore. Setting your RAS on the precise customer you would love to meet next means that you start to see and create opportunity everywhere you go. I am not saying that you will only deal with people who fit your perfect description, but simply being more targeted in your activity means you get lucky more often. I view it just like the game of darts. Every time you throw a dart, you are aiming for something specific. You don't always hit it, yet each time you miss, you still contribute to your score.

To identify your missing people, you can work through three simple steps:

1. Imagine your dream customer, the perfect person you would love to work with repeatedly. Once you are clear on this picture, take pen to paper and write a list of the exact qualities of this person and the reasons they are perfect for you.
2. In addition to the list of attributes, you may then need to apply some constraints and boundaries that narrow your gaze and place you in a stronger position to start identifying precise candidates:
   • Where are they located geographically?
   • What industry or sector are they in?
   • How big are they?
   • How long have they been doing what they do?
   • Who specifically within the company are you looking to help?
   • Why specifically would they need you? Combining the answers to these questions with the qualities from your list will put you in a very strong position to identify potential customers.
3. Create a detailed written profile of the precise people you are looking to do business with and make it as visually appealing as possible. This is your chance to create your “missing person” poster and share the details with all the stakeholders involved in your business.

If you have a range of products and services and have different target markets for each, then s...