20
When you want to make a sale
If you work in sales, I imagine:
So I wanted to create a short chapter to address both of these, by explaining my five steps to winning a sale. To keep this chapter as punchy as possible:
Before running through the steps, here are my three Golden Rules of Sales:
These rules mean we no longer use some traditional sales messages. After all, when you say:
Customers see:
My five steps of selling are:
Looking at each in turn:
Since selling is all about helping the customer achieve their desired future (Rule #2), start by finding what this future is. In other words, why they’ll be better off AFTER working with you. (Chapter 31 has much more detail on AFTERs.)
The two best ways to uncover their AFTERs are by asking and guiding them:
Asking means using Future-Based Questions (FBQs) to uncover their desired AFTERs, like:
FBQs work well, as long as the customer knows the answers. Sometimes, a better approach is:
Guiding, where you help shape their thinking, either by:
Once you’ve uncovered the AFTERs:
Let’s assume that you uncover they only have one AFTER: to successfully export into Belgium.
Customers want to feel certain you can help them. So when you’re certain you can deliver their AFTERs, say so: “We can definitely help you with that” or “I’m completely confident we can help you achieve those objectives.”
Whereas the A of ABCDE – uncovering AFTERs – takes a while, step B takes 10 seconds max. It’s just one sentence. But it’s important: it starts to build their feelings of certainty.
“We can definitely help you export into Belgium.”
If you’re very lucky, when you say step B’s “We can definitely help you”, the customer will say “Great. Let’s start”. If this happens, remember Golden Rule #3 – the customer’s said “Yes”, so shut up! Get the order book out and crack on.
In all my life, this has only happened to me once. (It was great when it did!) But in practice your next step will be to convince them that you can definitely help them.
There are lots of ways to do this – chapter 19 discussed lots of them. In our example though, some could be:
Customers will probably have some concerns about buying from you – your price, your experience, your impressive competition, they might feel it’s easier to do nothing, and so on.
You must address these. If you don’t, they might never get dealt with. This means they won’t buy.
There are two ways to uncover, and then remove, their concerns:
Then, of course, you have to persuasively remove these concerns (chapter 53 has loads of techniques for doing this). After all, if someone said they were worried about cost, you wouldn’t follow that with “Yes, you’re right. It is a lot”!
“If I was you, I might be concerned that we haven’t worked together before, and that giving such an important campaign to a new partner is risky. Is that the case?”
[Yes, it does feel uncomfortable]
“Well, I totally understand that. In fact, a couple of our best customers originally thought the same thing. Do you mind if I explain how we can overcome this?”
When you give someone a “Yes/No” choice (“Our proposal will cost you £120,000 – do you want it or not?”), you can’t complain if they choose “No”.
So, offer the customer 2–3 different options, and work with them to choose the one they feel is best for them. Use chapter 18’s BO approach to do this.
Also, before giving the price, remind them of the value, so the price then looks the excellent value for money that it is.
So, we’ve agreed your projected returns from our work will be £1–2 million in the first year. There are a couple of ways we can help you achieve this: we could do X for £50,000 or Y for a total of £75,000. Which option do you prefer?
By now, you might be thinking ABCDE sounds obvious. After all, all I’m saying is that you find what the customer wants to achieve, prove you can help them get there, and ask how they want to proceed.
However, knowing the steps and doing them every time are two very different things. This quick self-test might help. How does your company stack up?
Unless you scored 100%, you can be even more AFTERs-y than you are now. And doing so makes a huge difference to even the best people. For instance, one of my customers – Marc Berendes – was very successful before I met him:
So, a successful guy! But he found AFTERs-based selling took him up another level: “AFTERs completely changed the way we presented offers to customers. After taking my new job and witnessing the ineffectiveness of our offer presentation, we changed everything, so it became based on the customer and their AFTERs. This has helped us to win many more deals.”
The great thing about selling is you can always improve. Which one thing can you take from this chapter to help you be more successful?