CHAPTER SIX

Perfect a Great
Sales Process

“Nothing happens until a sale takes place.”

—RED MOTLEY

Many businesses are started by people with no sales experience. They may be entrepreneurs who love a product, or invented one, and now they have to sell it.

But they have no idea what goes on in the interaction between the careful, cautious, skeptical potential customer and the salesperson. They think that sales fall from the sky, like the rain, if you have a good enough product or service. They are then astonished when their companies run out of customers, cash, and credit, and they go bankrupt. The adage, “If you build it, they will come,” is rarely true. In business, “they”—the customers—will come only if they want to.

In today’s environment, any business that wants to successfully sell its products and services must begin by understanding exactly who its customers are and why they buy.

The New Realities of Selling

There is more competition for the business than ever before, and the competition is getting stiffer every week and every month.

Customers today are tougher to sell to than ever before. They are more demanding with regard to quality, service, and value. Customers today have more choices and therefore less urgency to decide. Customers are impatient; they want everything now.

What Customers Want

In selling a great product or service, perhaps the most important word is consistency. Your customer must consistently enjoy the results that you promised to induce the customer to buy your product in the first place. If your product delivers on its promises 90 percent of the time, then your quality rating is 90 percent. Your ultimate goal is to achieve a rating of 100 percent, which is the rating that you earn when your product or service consistently and dependably delivers on your promises 100 percent of the time. This is what causes customers to say you have a “great product!”

Three Types of Customers

There are three types of customers to whom you might be selling. First, there are businesses that use your product or service in the course of their activities. Second, there are businesses that resell your product or service in the market. Third, there are consumers who buy and use your product or service to enhance their personal lives. Each of these customers has a different set of needs to which you must appeal.

All buying behavior, however, is aimed at the achievement of a definite improvement of some kind. The product or service must solve a problem, satisfy a need, or achieve a goal. To offer a great product or service, you must be absolutely clear about what your product or service is intended to accomplish for your customer.

The goal of any business is to serve its customers and generate a profit, to generate revenues in excess of costs. A business can accomplish profitability by selling more of its products and services, by selling them at a higher price, by achieving repeat business, or by lowering the costs involved in selling, producing, and delivering the product or service in the first place.

Selling Great Products to Business Customers

Decision makers responsible for business purchases think continually about the bottom line, about how your product or service will affect net profits. In the simplest terms, in selling to a business, your primary aim must be to demonstrate that your product or service will generate greater efficiency, effectiveness, and therefore more bottom-line income or savings than the amount the customer will pay for what you sell.

Ideally, in selling to businesses, your job is to convince the decision maker that your product is, whenever possible, actually “free, plus a profit.” In other words, your product contributes to your customer’s bottom line; it makes your customers more profitable and successful than they would have been without it.

Your job is to demonstrate that, if the business purchases your product or service, the benefit that it can expect in net dollar terms will be well in excess of the cost. If your product costs $100,000 and saves or makes the business customer $50,000 per year, and continues to perform effectively for five years, the customer will get a 50 percent return on his money each year for two years, and then a net of $50,000 to the bottom line for the next three years. In this case, your product or service is “free, plus a profit.”

Of course, there are many products and services that businesses buy to satisfy ego or aesthetic desires. But even a product or service designed to improve the attractiveness or beauty of a business office or a location is ultimately aimed at attracting and keeping more customers and making more profitable sales.

Business customers want answers to four questions before committing to buying a product or service:

1. What is the value equation? (relative cost, quality, reliability)

2. How much do I get back? (return on investment, assets, clients)

3. How soon do I get it back, or on what schedule? (time to payback)

4. How sure can I be that I will actually enjoy the bottom-line financial benefits that you are offering? (risk management and guarantee issues)

These questions are usually unspoken, but they exist in the mind of the buyer. If you fail to answer them satisfactorily in the course of your sales presentation, the customer will put off the buying decision, or not buy at all.

The single most important determinant of whether a business buys your product or service and considers it to be a high-quality offering is time to payback. The sooner your product or service pays for itself and begins yielding a net financial benefit to your customer, the faster and easier it is for the customer to purchase your product or service. Your ability to demonstrate rapid payback and to convince the customer that he will enjoy this result with a high degree of certainty is central to your making the sale in the first place.

Selling Great Products to Wholesalers or Retailers

The motivation of this second type of customer is very different from the business customer. The primary concern of the retailer is net profit as the result of either high turnover or high profitability per unit sold, or both.

Of course, retailers want their customers to be happy. For this reason, they will be demanding high quality in the product you offer and requiring that you guarantee absolute satisfaction to their customers.

At one time, you had to offer an excellent product or service—one that delivered on your promises consistently—in order to increase sales, market share, and profitability. But today, your product or service must be excellent for you to even enter into a competitive market. Wholesalers and retailers have a lot of choices when it comes to products they will carry and services they will offer.

Selling Great Products to Consumers

The third type of customer that you sell to will be the consumer. The consumer or end user of your product or service has different motivations from the business customer or other resellers. Consumers seek improvement in their life or work. The consumer is more concerned about what your product or service “does” rather than what it “is.”

Customers are emotional. Their primary motivation to purchase what you sell is their anticipation of how they will feel after having bought from you. Will they feel happy? Proud? Secure? More attractive? More respected? Richer? More confident?

There is a difference between consumer needs and wants. They are not the same. People may need to be healthy, thin, and fit, but they want to eat delicious foods in large quantities. A product or service that seems like a logical choice may not be an emotional preference. Your ability to separate these issues is essential for your success in triggering the desired consumer response.

What do consumers really want? When grocers such as Whole Foods Market promoted the personal health benefits and enhanced environmental impact of organic foods, it wasn’t enough. For consumers to pay more, the food had to taste much better, too. When consumers discovered that organic ingredients made fancy cuisine taste great, a multibillion-dollar industry sprang out of the commodity grocery business.

When you go to a restaurant and order a meal, you want to be able to say afterward that “This is a great restaurant.” The goal of the restaurateur and every person who interacts with the dining customer must be aimed at triggering this response.

To offer any great product or service, you must be absolutely clear about the feeling that your product or service will create for your potential customer. It is only when you can generate that feeling and deliver on your promise that customers will call it a “great” product.

Three Ways to Increase Sales

There are basically three ways to increase sales:

1. Increase the number of transactions. Volume can be accomplished through marketing and advertising, using special promotions, discounts, and a variety of other means to get customers to buy from you for the first time.

2. Expand the size of each transaction. Once you have attracted a prospect, you can up-sell, cross-sell, and even down-sell if the customer cannot afford the main product or service.

3. Increase the frequency of purchases. You can take such good care of the customer that she buys again and again. This is obviously the most efficient type of customer interaction—selling more to existing buyers. All good business is about “exceeding customer expectations.” The key measure of customer satisfaction is repeat business. It is not possible for a business to succeed in the long term unless it takes such good care of its customers that they return again and again. This is only possible when the business can trigger the response, “This is a great product!”

Set Your Own Bar

Your competitors wake up every morning thinking about how to get your customers, take your business away from you, and put you out of business, if possible. Your competitors are often obsessed with winning your customers’ attention. Just like you, they realize that there is fierce competition for customer dollars, and they are determined to get as many of them as possible, even if that means that you get none at all. The best salespeople are obsessive about follow-up and the relentless pursuit of the best prospects.

Your job is to learn everything you possibly can about your competitors so that you can assess their strengths and weaknesses in the marketplace, then set your own bar. With more and more salespeople descending on fewer and fewer customers, persistence and knowledge matter more than ever before.

In Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne encourage you to set your own buying criteria for your business rather than rely on your competitors to determine quality, price, and ultimately, the survival of your products and services. They argue that you can sidestep “red oceans” of competition by not following their lead, by redefining a market and setting your own new rules.

Their favorite example is Cirque du Soleil, a company that created an entirely new way for people to think about the circus and, in turn, resuscitated a dying industry. It was a brilliant and fresh way to recapture entertainment dollars and it caught competitors flat-footed. Cirque du Soleil redefined the rules and reinvented the customer experience, and its new style of entertainment product sold itself.

The Measure of Sales Success

Customer retention is the key to sales success. Single-purchase customers are too hard and expensive to acquire. Your focus must be on the second sale, and the third sale. Your goal must be resales to the same customer, over and over. In addition, your goal should be to get referrals from your satisfied customers.

The most important sale is not the first sale; it is the second. You can win the first sale with promises, special offers, and discounts, but you only attract repeat business when your customers feel that you delivered on your promises. This causes them to prefer to buy from you again rather than someone else.

The second sale takes approximately one-tenth of the time and expense to attract, and it is therefore much easier and more profitable than the first sale. The fact is that winning customer loyalty today is harder than ever before. It takes more calls to find qualified prospects. It takes more callbacks to make individual sales, or more contacts or visits. It takes more service. This is why the majority of sales, and the largest purchases, from the most successful retailers and wholesalers come from repeat customers, not from first-time buyers.

The way that you generate repeat business is with high-quality products and outstanding customer service. The true measure of the success of your business is the percentage of your business that comes from repeat sales and referrals.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Your ability to actually sell the product, to convert the interested prospect into a confirmed customer, is where the rubber meets the road. It is another critical determinant of business success. Your ability to sell effectively flows from everything we have talked about in this program up until now.

Fortunately, all sales skills are learnable. You can learn any sales skill you need to learn to accomplish any sales goal you can set for yourself or for your business. There are no limits.

Selling is a simple, practical, proven process that has been learned and relearned hundreds of thousands of times by individuals and organizations. It can be learned and practiced by you so that your customers will say afterward: “This has been a great buying experience!”

A Doctor of Selling

Salespeople at every level should view themselves as “doctors of selling.” This is a helpful model that is easy to teach and easy to learn.

If you go to a doctor of any kind, anywhere in the world, the doctor always follows an established procedure. It consists of three steps: examination, diagnosis, and recommended treatment or prescription. Salespeople should follow the same three-step model in their sales activities.

The Examination

Just as a doctor would insist upon doing a complete examination of the patient before drawing any conclusions or making any recommendations, you must do the same thing with each prospect.

Never assume that one size fits all. Never conclude that the reason someone else bought your product or service is identical to the reason that this person might buy your product or service. Before a great salesperson launches into her presentation, she listens to the customer carefully.

During the information-gathering process, discipline yourself to hold back from talking about your product or service, or making recommendations. A doctor would not start talking happily away about various pills that he might prescribe for a particular ailment before he had finished examining you. So, be patient. Ask a lot of questions. Do a thorough examination of the needs, wants, hopes, and desires of the customer.

The Diagnosis

In this stage, you take all of the information that the customer has given you and double-check it for accuracy by asking questions to test your understanding. You then share with the prospect what you believe his real want or need is, and how it could be satisfied.

Many patients do not have a clear understanding about their real problem or needs. This is why a good doctor will always explain his findings to you, explain the various courses of treatment available to you, and then recommend what might be the best treatment for you personally.

It is the physician’s job, like the salesperson, to educate the patient about the various possibilities available. This process gives you credibility as a knowledgeable source of information and makes it clear that you have empathy for the customer’s challenges. It opens the customer to listen to the range of solutions you are selling.

The Prescription

Only after you have done a thorough examination, and both discussed and agreed upon the diagnosis with the prospect, do you move to the third phase: the prescription or course of treatment. This is where you recommend the ideal product or service for this prospect, all things considered, and urge the prospect to take action.

A great insulation salesperson doesn’t just show up to sell top-quality products and offer excellent prices. She first examines your house to understand how it is built and to find out how much you are currently paying in energy costs. She then shows you how you are spending twice as much as your neighbor on your energy bills because you have older insulation. She tells you about how your neighbors have fewer allergy symptoms because they don’t have mildew in the attic from old insulation. She explains why your neighbor’s house smells cleaner and fresher. She then recommends a course of action that you can take to install better insulation and get all the benefits that you have told her that you want.

Salespeople should consider themselves doctors of selling, as complete professionals who practice a craft, operate with a code of ethics, follow a set of procedures that work, and are completely devoted to the well-being of the customer (patient). This attitude of professionalism is practiced by the top 20 percent of sales professionals in every field.

Seven Rules for a Great Sales Process

Professional selling is an art and science, like cooking. Don’t go into the kitchen without the following seven sacred ingredients. If you are lacking any one for your recipe, or if you mix them in the wrong order or proportion, the sale will not take place.

If you prefer, here’s another analogy: Selling is like dialing a seven-digit telephone number. You must press each number in the proper sequence if you want to get through to the person at the other end of the line. In selling, you must follow this specific seven-step sales process to ensure the maximum number of sales, resales, and referrals.

Rule 1: Prospects versus Suspects

The first rule for sales success is “spend more time with better prospects.” There may be many prospects for what you sell, but they are not all your prospects. We are cautioning you here about your sales process in the same way we did in Chapter 5 on marketing strategy. Most prospects are inappropriate for your company and your products and services.

Who are the primary buyers of your product or service? In most businesses, it is likely that less than 20 percent of your customers buy 80 percent of what you sell. You have to make it your business to find those customers who are the top 20 percent. If you are a discount stockbroker, you have to find the customers who trade the most. If you sell advertising, you have to find the clients who buy the most advertising.

It sounds obvious, but many business owners behave as if they have no idea who their best customers are. We are amazed at how often we go into companies where they have done extensive research in the marketing department, but nevertheless the sales group ends up wasting time and money shooting in all directions. Get your customer service people and your marketing team and your sales force all together to talk about the best buyers in your market.

Your first job is to separate prospects from “suspects.” Take your time and ask questions. Your sales energies and resources are limited. You cannot waste them by spending too much time with people who either cannot or will not buy.

A good prospect has qualities that fall into several categories:

Timing. The prospect has a genuine need that your product or service can satisfy, and he has that need now.

Problem. The prospect has a clear, identifiable problem that your product or service can solve.

Value. The prospect has a clear goal that your product or service will help him to achieve at a cost that is clearly less than the value of the goal itself.

Pain. Your prospect is dissatisfied or has discontent of some kind that your product or service can take away.

Result. The prospect has a definite result that he wants or needs to accomplish, and your product or service will help him to achieve that result faster, better, and cheaper than he could in the absence of what you are selling.

In every case, the most important factor is clarity. Both you and the prospect need to be completely clear that the need, problem, goal, result, or pain exists and that your product or service is a cost-effective way of dealing with it.

Rule 2: Establishing Rapport and Trust

Despite all the data and expertise invested in the sales process, the vast majority of buying decisions end up being made on the basis of emotion, especially about how buyers (or their peers) feel about the product and the salesperson. How buyers feel about the salesperson extends to how they feel about the entire company.

The best sales process is one in which you educate consumers about the problems they face—with great factual detail—and then demonstrate the benefits provided by solutions you are selling. However, the biggest part of the sale goes on after the sale.

Once you have made the sale, you must deliver the product or service, make sure that it is satisfactorily installed and utilized, and take care of customer concerns or complaints for a substantial time afterward. That is why the customer wants a relationship first. As far as the customer is concerned, the relationship with the salesperson can become more important than the product or service you are selling.

There is a “law of indirect effort” in selling. It says that the more you focus on the relationship (the indirect approach), the more the sale will take care of itself. But the more you focus on the sale, ignoring the relationship, the less likely it is that you will achieve either a sale or a good customer relationship.

The most important elements in a sales relationship are trust and credibility. The customer must trust you (the salesperson) completely and have complete confidence that you will fulfill your promises. The customer must believe that your product or service will do what you say it will do, and continue doing it.

Telling is not selling. There is a direct relationship between the number of questions you ask about the customer’s wants and needs, and the strength of the relationship that you form. Telling is not selling. Only asking is selling.

In addition, there is a direct relationship between how carefully you listen to the customer’s answers, and how much the customer likes and trusts you. The fact is that listening builds trust. There is no faster or more effective way to build a high trust relationship between the salesperson and the customer than for the salesperson to ask lots of questions and listen carefully to the answers.

The more closely you listen to the customer when he speaks, the more he will like and trust you and be open to buying your product or service. Questions are the key and trust is the essential factor.

Rule 3: Identifying Needs Accurately

Many customers do not know that they have a need that your product or service can satisfy when they first talk to you. In their minds, they are tire kickers; that is, they are simply gathering information.

When you speak to a customer, he may have a need that is clear, unclear, or nonexistent. If the need is clear, the customer may be accurate or inaccurate about how to satisfy that need. Maybe what he needs is very different from what he thinks he needs.

If the need is unclear, it is only through the examination and diagnosis process that you and the customer become clear on exactly what need exists and how it can best be satisfied with what you offer.

In many cases, the customer may think that he has a need, but his situation is really satisfactory as it is. He does not need your product or service, and it is your duty as a professional to tell him that.

The way you identify needs accurately is by asking questions, from the general to the particular, and listening to the answers. This is why the highest paid salespeople prepare their questions carefully in advance, writing them down, and asking them in sequence.

The worst salespeople say whatever falls out of their mouth and lurch back and forth through the sales conversation like a drunk staggering from lamppost to lamppost. A disjointed questioning process invariably lowers credibility and makes the sale increasingly difficult to achieve.

Rule 4: Presenting Persuasively

The presentation is where the actual sale is made. You can make a lot of mistakes in the sales process, but the quality of your presentation determines whether or not the customer buys.

The best sales method is to show, tell, and ask a question. For example, you say: “This is a small business accounting software program. With it, you can manage all the numbers in your business. Is this something that would be of interest to you?”

Use the “trial close” throughout your presentation. This is a closing question that can be answered with a “no” without stopping the sales process, because it allows the salesperson another opportunity to respond. For example:

Salesperson: Would you want to install this software on your home office computer?

Customer: No. I would rather use it in my office downtown.

Salesperson: No problem. It works equally well on either home computer or server operating systems.

In addition, a powerful and professional sales presentation is one that continually refers to other customers who have used the product or service successfully in the past. Tell stories about other customers who are in the same or a similar situation as this prospect, but who bought the product or service and were happy as a result.

Rule 5: Answering Objections Effectively

There are no sales without objections. Objections indicate interest. The more the prospect questions you about your product or service, the more likely it is that she is interested enough to buy it.

The “law of six” applies to objections. It says that there are never more than six objections to any product or service offering. Sometimes there are only one or two, but never more than six. Your job is to sit down with a sheet of paper and write out the answer to the question: “What are all the reasons that a qualified prospect might give me for not buying my product or service?”

Even if you receive dozens of objections in the course of a week or a month, they can all be clustered around no more than six categories. Your job is to identify the major objections that you are likely to get and then to develop bulletproof, logical answers to each of those objections so that they do not stop the sales process.

Rule 6: Closing the Sale

In golf, they say, “You drive for show, but you putt for dough.”

In sales, you follow every step we have talked about up until now, but your ability to close the sale and to get the prospect to make a buying decision is where you “putt for dough.”

The most powerful word in the sales process is “ask.” Most people are terrified of rejection, of being told “no” in a sales conversation. For this reason, they don’t ask at all. They sit there passively and hope the customer will take the initiative and buy their product or service. But this seldom happens. Even if the customer wants the product, needs it, can use it, and can afford it, the responsibility of the sales person is to reach out verbally and ask for a buying decision.

Making an invitational close. Perhaps the simplest of all closing techniques is the invitational close. After you have made a presentation, you ask: “Do you have any questions or concerns that I haven’t covered so far?”

When the customer says, “No, I think you’ve covered everything,” you then roll into an invitational close by saying, “Well, then, why don’t you give it a try?”

Alternatively, you could talk about how they would like the product or service delivered.

Many customers are only one question away from buying. All they need is a little nudge or encouragement. When you ask, “If you like it, why don’t you give it a try?” you will be amazed at how many people say, “Sure, why not?”

The good news is that if you have built a high level of rapport and trust, identified needs accurately, made a clear benefit-oriented presentation, and answered any objections the prospect has, the closing of the sale follows naturally. It is simple and easy and almost foreordained. You must never be afraid to ask.

Rule 7: Getting Resales and Referrals

This is the most important part of the sales process. Everything must be aimed at taking such good care of your customer that he buys from you again and recommends you to his friends and associates. Treat him like a million-dollar customer, as if he had the ability to purchase enormous quantities of your product and to recommend you to a substantial number of other prospects.

On average, a person knows 300 people by their first names. They can be friends, relatives, teachers and classmates, coworkers or other job-related contacts, and associates of all kinds, such as your banker or accountant.

Imagine that only 10 percent of the people whom one of your customers knows are prospective customers for your products or services as well. This would mean that each person who buys from you has the potential to bring you thirty additional customers, if you treat your current customer really well. Each of those thirty additional customers also knows 300 people. And approximately 10 percent of those additional people can buy from you as well.

This means that each person that you sell to can potentially bring you 900 (30 x 30) prospects in the months ahead. Does that get your attention? Does that have an effect on the way you treat the individual customer standing in front of you? We hope so.

Selling to a referral takes one-fifteenth of the time, money, and energy required to sell to a cold-call or a new customer. In consumer retailing, for example, when someone is referred to you by a happy customer, that person is 95 percent sold before she’s even contacted you for the first time. Word-of-mouth is extraordinarily powerful in growing your business if you can tap into it on a regular and systematic basis.

Asking for referrals. The key to getting referrals is to “be referable.” Give such good service and educational information to the customer that he feels confident recommending you to his friends, family, and associates. When you take good care of your customers, they will want their friends to enjoy the same experience.

Be sure to ask for referrals at every opportunity. You can say, “Mr. Prospect, I really like working with people like you. Do you know any other great people like yourself who might be interested in my product or service?”

Who is going to tell you that they don’t know any other great people?

When you get a referral from a happy customer to a new prospect, be sure to report back to the customer and share exactly what happened. People are inordinately curious about what you did and said to their friends or associates, and how they responded.

When you make a sale to a referral, send a thank-you letter or, even better, a gift to the source of the referral. My favorite choice is a gift basket with delicious foods of some kind. People always like to receive gifts, and they will be much more likely to give you more referrals in the future if you show your appreciation.

There are many books, articles, CDs, and sales training programs that expand on these seven steps in the sales process. What’s especially important to know is that sometimes, a small improvement in any one area can lead to a dramatic improvement in your success.

Six Elements of Mega-Credibility in Selling

Today, it takes credibility for you to get a hearing with a prospect, but it takes mega-credibility for you to get the sale. There are six elements of mega-credibility you can develop and use in your sales activities:

1. Your market visibility

2. Your company

3. Testimonials

4. Professional presentation

5. Your salesperson

6. The product itself

Your Visibility in the Market

Few things are more effective in building credibility than to be a “known quantity” in your business. The best sales organizations are intimately tied into the activities of the press organizations that specialize in their industry. They know the top reporters and editors. They make presentations at all the key trade shows. They become valued volunteer officers of the right professional associations. They participate in their professional service organizations and the community organizations that give them visibility. They know the analysts who write research reports, the columnists who specialize in their industry, and the bloggers who cover their market. They write their own blogs and newsletters, helping to educate customers in the marketplace.

Who are the people who “influence” your clients most? Who are the thought leaders they look to for advice and insights? What publications and/or thought leaders do your prospects pay the most attention to? Who has the most impact on public opinion about your product or service?

Your Company

Your company has three elements that build credibility: its size, reputation, and longevity. With regard to size, the bigger a company is, the more it is assumed to be offering a high-quality product or service. Why else would so many people buy so much of it?

If you don’t have size going for you, then you need to compensate with other creative and useful features that make your offering better. As a small businessperson, you must demonstrate that big is not always better—your small business provides more specialized or more personal and attentive service, for instance.

The longevity of your company could make its products more trustworthy. There is a natural assumption that if your company is large, has a good reputation, and has been in business for a long time, it must be selling high-quality products and services that are obviously worth more than those sold by newer or lesser known companies.

The reputation of a company is extremely important, perhaps more than any other factor, in building mega-credibility. One of the most powerful trust-building actions a salesperson can take is to mention how large the company is and how respected it is in the industry. Never assume that your prospective customers have any knowledge about your company when they first talk to you.

Testimonials

Testimonials are a great way to demonstrate and promote your reputation in the market with your prospects. After all, one of the most common, though sometimes unspoken questions that every customer has is: “Who else has bought your product or service?”

There is nothing that builds the credibility of a product, service, or company faster than the knowledge that lots of people, hundreds or thousands, have already bought the product or service, with satisfactory results.

Be sure to tell the prospect how many people have already bought this product or service and are currently enjoying it. Share with the prospective customer testimonial letters from your existing customers. Show the customer lists of other people who have bought the product or service. Show the customer photographs of other customers using or enjoying the product or service you are selling. Shoot video testimonials from happy customers and play them for your prospect on your laptop.

The use of testimonials is one of the fastest and most powerful ways to build the mega-credibility you need to make the sale.

Professional Presentation

Your sales presentation must be thorough, prepared, and customized for this prospect. By some estimates, you can increase the perceived value of a product or service by two or three times by the simple act of presenting it professionally. That means doing careful preparation in advance and learning everything you can about the customer. You plan your presentation thoroughly, in every detail. You make your presentation smoothly and fluently, answering each of the customer’s questions or concerns. A professional sales presentation—customized for your specific client’s needs and challenges—significantly lowers fear and skepticism and raises trust and credibility.

Your Salesperson

The quality, character, and confidence of the salesperson have a huge influence on the sales result, and they are conveyed, variously, by the salesperson’s conduct and appearance, knowledge, and attitude.

Conduct and Appearance. It’s difficult to build a relationship with your customers if they are uncomfortable with you from the moment you meet them. Do you know how to behave appropriately with your prospects? Do you speak your customer’s language? Do you understand their culture and customs? Do you dress for success so that you are taken seriously in the customer’s organization?

It is absolutely essential that salespeople study proper conduct, behavior, and dress for the business, organization, or individual to whom they are selling. The rule is, “If it doesn’t help, it hurts.” Everything counts.

Knowledge. The best salespeople learn every possible detail they can about the customer’s business before they meet with the customer for the first time. They research and think through how the customer can most benefit from what they are selling. The more you can demonstrate genuine interest and value-added knowledge about how the product or service will be used, the more powerful an impact you will have on the prospect.

While there is much truth to the notion that a talented salesperson can “sell anything” to anyone, the greatest salespeople generally care enough about the customer and the product to become an expert. They are genuinely concerned about their customers and want to help them to solve their problems and achieve their goals.

Attitude. Top salespeople love and enjoy the product they sell. They like to talk about it and explain it to others, especially customers. They want to learn more about their product and what it can do for their customers. People who love their work and think it matters will learn twice as much and work twice as hard as those who don’t.

The Product Itself

The final element for building mega-credibility is an ability to demonstrate to the customer that your product or service is the ideal one for him at this time, and that your price is reasonable and fair, relative to the value that the customer receives. Having the right product for the right customer at the right time and at the right price is the ultimate test of credibility.

The Ultimate Test

In the final analysis, your ability to convert interested prospects into buying customers is the critical measure that determines success or failure. Top companies of all sizes see themselves as “sales organizations.” The top people think about customers and sales all day long. The best salespeople are the highest paid and most respected people in the organization.

In sales, remember that you become successful when you give success to others. If your financial results are not what you want today, put everything else aside and get out there and talk to buyers. Partner with your customers and commit to helping them achieve their goals. Sell something you really believe in that provides lasting value to customers, and they’ll reward you by sending money right back in your door. And never give up!