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Archive for the ‘Overcoming Obstacles’ Category

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Video: Sandler Rule #38: The Problem the Prospect Brings You Is Never the Real Problem


Wouldn’t it be wonderful for a prospect to accurately and honestly lay out all of their issues for you in your first meeting? This means no more seemingly-perfect deals to disappear, no more “perfect matches” to end with unreciprocated phone calls, and best of all, no more “What went wrong?”

The first part of any sales training program should teach you that your questions never end when the prospect first tells you what they believe to be their “problem.” When you refuse to take a prospect’s “diagnosis” at face-value, you’ve begun the process of accurately diagnosing their real problems.

That diagnosis, as outlined in Sandler Rule #38, is precisely why salespeople are paid for their services. A good sales professional listens to the prospect, probes further into their immediate symptoms and uncovers the prospect’s true pain–oftentimes revealing the actual problem to a prospect who couldn’t diagnose it on their own. When you treat their first symptoms with some skepticism, you’ll find that the real problem will later reveal itself–but only to those who know that the diagnosis doesn’t begin and end with “What seems to be the problem?”

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Posted in Customer Relationships, Overcoming Obstacles, Prospecting, Qualifying | No Comments »

Video: Sandler Rule #31: Close the Sale or Close the File



Through any sales training seminar you may have attended or any job training you’ve experienced, people seem to put a lot of energy into teaching you how to avoid or resist one word: “No.” The fear of rejection alone is enough to drive the timid and easily-bruised away from sales altogether.

So what happens when you spend months chasing after a “no” when you know it’s probably not going to be a good fit? The true “yes” that’s out there may have done business with your competitor. Sure, you’ve technically avoided a “no” for a while, but keep in mind that your job isn’t to run away from failure. Your objective is to chase after success. Avoid the slowdowns involved in spending countless hours trying to force a poor fit to do business with you.

Close the sale or close the file.

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Posted in Closing, Overcoming Obstacles, Prospecting | 1 Comment »

Video: Sandler Rule #41: There Are No Bad Prospects, Only Bad Salespeople


Sandler Training’s Jody Williamson explains Sandler Rule #41: “There Are No Bad Prospects, Only Bad Salespeople.” Sure, it’s easy to externalize your problems if things aren’t going well. “The economy,” “they don’t know what they want” and “they just buy on price” seem to be repeat offenders in the sales world. Remember: as a salesperson, it’s your job to sweep those excuses aside. You’ll never grow as a sales professional if you leave every call thinking you’re just unlucky to run into the world’s pickiest prospects. Take responsibility, and you’re well on your way to a “Yes.”

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Posted in Behavior + Attitude, Overcoming Obstacles, Prospecting | No Comments »

Video: Sandler Rule #42: A Winner Has Alternatives, A Loser Puts All His Eggs in One Basket


As Kevin Hallenbeck explains in the video above, it is absolutely necessary to always keep your options open. Forcing yourself to stick to a script will only make a deviation out of your control even more jarring. Be flexible, and who knows what may happen. It’s possible that allowing yourself to deviate from your initial plan and follow a new path may just be what it takes to get you to the bank!

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Posted in Adapting Sales Techniques, Behavior + Attitude, Overcoming Obstacles | No Comments »

There’s No Summer Slumber. People Will Still Spend Their Money.


By Ken Edmundson

We are right in the middle of summer, and I love the summer. And in the midst of this nice warm weather, it may be strange to say that I also love the winter–but I do.

That’s when the business world almost uniformly decides to go into a slumber because they believe buying slows down. That’s called a self-limiting belief. That’s when I’m at my best because this is what I have found–people actually still have money and are willing to spend it if you’re good enough to find their pain.

You see, businesses today are not spending money on pleasure and fluff. They are, however, willing to spend money at any time of the year on things they need or that are going to save them money, avoid a cost or help them increase their revenue. You have to get really good, really fast at learning how to find pain, and you need to work on having patience so you do not pull the trigger too soon, but learn how to develop the pain and find the emotional connections that will make your prospects spend their money.

Owners, quit taking excuses that people don’t have money because they do for the things they want and the things they need to solve problems.

Good salespeople don’t even know there is a recession because they are good at finding the pain.

Ken Edmundson is the CEO of the Edmundson Northstar Institute, a Sandler Training franchise based in Memphis, Tennessee.

Illustration by Rob Green

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Posted in Motivation, Overcoming Obstacles, Sales Development | No Comments »

Ouch! That Stings: How Salespeople Got a Bad Rep


By Ken Edmundson

I’ve spent a lot of time considering why the occupation of selling has been given such a low approval rating over the past 40 years. It wasn’t always that way. Here’s a story that got me thinking about this again.

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, “If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?”

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, “Sure, Why not?”

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Blackberry that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized LaserJet printer and turns to the cowboy and says, “You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.”

“That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,” says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Bud says to the young man, “Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your occupation is, will you give me back my calf?”

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, “Okay, why not?”

“You’re a salesman”, says Bud.

“Wow! That’s correct,” says the yuppie, “but how did you guess that?”

“No guessing required.” answered the cowboy. “You showed up here like you knew everything; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter you are than me; and you don’t know a thing about cows. This is a herd of sheep.”

“Now give me back my dog.”

It’s a funny story, but there is a stinging sense of truth about what Bud the cowboy is saying; this is the image of the modern day salesperson to many people, and it should not be the case.  The title, “professional salesperson” should mean something. Selling is an honorable profession done by people who are very skilled and uniquely talented, and only the most focused, organized, driven, conscientious people achieve at the highest level in selling.

One of the mistakes made by many companies in hiring for their sales force is that generally they have low barriers to entry and low accountability for their sales teams. If you make it easy for people to get in and you don’t hold them accountable, you are destined to have a low performing sales organization. In any great organization–whether it’s a club, church, business or your family–the standards for membership must be high and the accountability must be rigid if you want results to be high.

Professional selling is not a game for cowards; it’s a tough business, it’s an honorable business, and if you’re good at it, you have one of the most secure jobs on the planet and probably rank in the top 5% of wage earners in the world. The word “professional” should be a noun, not an adjective. Think of what the word professional implies in every other context. A professional athlete, a business professional, a professional author, a professional painter, a professional photographer, or a professional plumber or electrician implies that they are the best, they are trained, they are skilled at their craft and art and usually they have chosen it because they have special talents or abilities which support their craft. Selling should be no less so.

If you’re a trained professional salesperson, you have a tremendous business advantage.

I get to meet a lot of salespeople. If you’re privileged to be one of the 18 million salespeople in the U.S., are you a professional?

Ken Edmundson is the CEO of the Edmundson Northstar Institute, a Sandler Training franchise based in Memphis, Tennessee.

Illustration by Rob Green

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Posted in Behavior + Attitude, Customer Relationships, Overcoming Obstacles | No Comments »

Low Self-Esteem: 100% Fatal for Salespeople


By Ken Edmundson

Q:  What’s the one thing a salesperson must avoid if they are to be successful?

A:  I study salespeople for a living. The majority of them don’t lose because of product inferiority, pricing excesses or poor sales technique. They lose because of low self-esteem! We all start out with perfect self-esteem. Ever met any three-year-olds with self-esteem problems? Didn’t think so.

We do, however, meet a lot of salespeople with a crippling success disease caused by “low self-esteem.”  This disease is 100% fatal in destroying a salesperson’s potential and performance.

Signs salespeople exhibit when they suffer from low self-esteem are:
•    Lots of excuses
•    Quick to become defensive
•    Enjoys seeing others struggle
•    Nervous and bails out quickly in tough negotiations
•    Call reluctance (phone handset weighs 60 pounds)
•    Avoids taking risks for fear of failure

Solutions for low self esteem:
•    Get them proper training
•    Give unconditional strokes
•    Eliminate critical coaching
•    Facilitate stretch goals
•    Don’t just manage results, manage behavior and technique
•    Spend 50% of the coaching on self-esteem, the other 50% on technique and product knowledge

When all else fails, avoid hiring these people. An organization whose salespeople have strong self-esteem consistently outperforms others by 40-50%.

Ken Edmundson is the CEO of the Edmundson Northstar Institute, a Sandler Training franchise based in Memphis, Tennessee.

Illustration by Rob Green

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Posted in Behavior + Attitude, Motivation, Overcoming Obstacles | 2 Comments »

How Do You Respond to Your Client’s Budget Objections


By Ken Edmundson

Many salespeople bail out long before they get thrown out. Do you ever wonder why so many salespeople leave a sales opportunity too early?

Salespeople often enter a sales discussion worried about the inevitable money step. What will I say? What will I do? What if they don’t like the price we are charging? What if they can’t afford it? All these questions linger in the mind of the salesperson not only before, but during the sales presentation. It can often be the result of the salesperson’s own mindset about money: “Is my product worth what I’m charging? Could I pay for it if I were in their shoes? Is this too expensive? Do my competitors offer something less expensive? Is my product any better?” These thoughts impact a salesperson in their work with a prospect. This doubt can often diminish the enthusiasm and excitement that a salesperson shows for their product or service. A good prospect can smell the fear and doubt in a salesperson’s mind about their very own self-confidence, or their product, or their price. The salesperson that shows the least amount of doubt will be the most powerful.

The mental part of the sales process is critical, but so is the salesperson’s selling technique–the ability for the salesperson to understand the true pain and problems of their prospect and their understanding of how to uniquely solve those challenges for the prospect. That technique doesn’t come automatically–it’s practice, practice, practice, studying and more studying. It’s understanding your product/service and its power, and also your own skill in managing a sales conversation. When we talk about technique, we are not talking about moves or tricky statements. Technique is the sense of putting the right things in the right place at the right time. Salespeople bail out because their mental focus is weak and their technique is poor.

A professional selling technique reveals that when you talk about money to your prospect before there is a real understanding of what the problems are, money will seem out of place. It will be an uncomfortable feeling; it will be a difficult conversation. It would be no different than sitting down for dinner and asking for the check before you’ve ordered. When things are put in place, when things are orderly, when the salesperson really and truly understands their role and guides the conversation (technique), many of the pricing questions and challenges that occur in a sales conversation are never seen, never experienced, and for the best salespeople in the world, it is truly an engaging and fulfilling opportunity.

Salespeople who understand the problems they solve and the real pain that they eliminate for their prospects move through the budget step in the easiest, most profitable manner.

Recognizing that the mental aspects of a sale and the technique used is critical, I have provided some typical technique responses for you to consider when faced with the five most hated words in sales:

“Your price is too high.”

These responses when used alone are not powerful. They are not tricks or moves. They are simple transition techniques, ways to go from where you are to where you need to be. They are not designed to shock or to challenge or to change the prospect’s mind; they are simple transitions to help you go back to pain if there is a budget challenge or to really, truly understand what the prospect is trying to communicate when they say certain things.

This is where your technique becomes critical. Watch, study, learn, practice, role play, read about your technique and particularly the technique of transitioning from pain to budget. Here are some examples to consider: (more…)

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Posted in Adapting Sales Techniques, Closing, Overcoming Obstacles, Presentations | 6 Comments »

Having a Poor Memory Is Essential to Sales Success


By Ken Edmundson

How’s your memory? Do you fall into the category as described the old adage, “I’d forget my head if it wasn’t connected to my body”? Are you constantly setting traps for yourself to be on time for meetings or where your car keys are placed or what’s supposed to be happening on your schedule from hour to hour?

Based on the title of this article, you might think I would congratulate you and say there’s research or evidence that great salespeople fall into this category, but actually those issues are more about being forgetful, even in some cases being disrespectful. You need to fix that, and you need to be more organized, consistent and focused. There is no place in the upper echelon of sales professionals for being forgetful, being disrespectful, or being inconsiderate in your scheduling.

However–and this is a big however–there is a huge difference between being forgetful and something I find essential for salespeople: having a ‘poor sales memory’.

Sound contradictory? Let me explain.

Sales memory is about how well you recall recent and historical events in your work. Salespeople live in a world of rejection. They live in a world of constant pushback, accountability and public comparison, and while that doesn’t sound like a great advertisement for a career, I’ve never seen a top level salesperson who doesn’t have the ability to erase those memories–and I mean totally remove from their memory all events that could impact their desire, self-esteem or results.

Perhaps you’ve heard the saying, “Your past is not your past if it still affects your future!” Or maybe the one by Mark Twain that goes, “Your inability to forget is infinitely more destructive than your inability to remember.” 

As a sales professional, if you remember rejection and negative comparisons and comments from prospects, they will build a spider web in your mind that will absolutely paralyze your ability to function. Sales pros erase from their memory comments like:

•    ”Your price is too high. That’s why we can’t do business.”
•    ”Your product is just like everyone else’s.”
•    ”We’ve got a great relationship with our current vendor. We don’t need you.”
•    ”We’re not interested.”
•    ”How did you get my name and why did you call me?”
•    ”Oh, you’re a salesperson.”
•    ”We’re going to need three bids for this product or service.”
•    ”We are delaying the start of our project, therefore, we are going to need to delay the purchase of your product or service.”
•    ”We like you, but we are going with another suppler.”
•    ”Can you send us a proposal?”

How many of these comments stick in your memory? How many times when you hear these comments does your mind say to you, “Oh no, here we go again”? How many times do you enter a sales conversation with a good prospect when you have low emotional energy or believability in your offering because you are sapped by recent bad memories?

The mind is a powerful piece of equipment, and if it’s not kept clean and sharp, it will operate at much lower efficiencies, even to some point of being a total barrier to your success. Your ability to erase negative events from memory is the equivalent to a professional golfer erasing a bad round of golf and moving forward, or a quarterback throwing an interception at a critical part of the game and yet coming back on the next series of downs and throwing a touchdown pass. You will never be effective if you don’t learn to eliminate negative events from memory.

Good salespeople do mental exercises. They learn ways to maintain a positive psychology. Salespeople understandably work so much on technique and behavior to install systems and processes to ensure that they are prospecting effectively, but often when I ask a salesperson what are you doing to keep yourself mentally sharp and keep the spider webs out, I hear very little that’s meaningful.

Ken Edmundson is the CEO of the Edmundson Northstar Institute, a Sandler Training franchise based in Memphis, Tennessee.

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Posted in Behavior + Attitude, Motivation, Overcoming Obstacles | 2 Comments »

As a Salesperson, Are You a Thoroughbred or a Greyhound?


By Ken Edmundson

If I asked you casually in passing, which would you consider analogous to your sales style – being a greyhound or a thoroughbred – you might pause and consider the characteristics and traits of both, and after pondering, see value in both. It might be a difficult choice on the surface, however, if you look more closely, you would reconsider. I was listening to a minister recently break it down in an interesting way, so let’s consider his analysis. (more…)

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Posted in Behavior + Attitude, Motivation, Overcoming Obstacles | 1 Comment »

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