Hey everybody, Dan Holstein here, helping your business take flight.
This week we'll be helping your sales take flight.
Did you know that many business owners struggle
to make sales because of the poor buying experiences that they've had in the past?
Also the salespeople, not good ones, that they've known in the past
and what they've come to believe about sales in general.
If you've ever had challenges in following up, in prospecting,
in handling objections, and feeling comfortable asking for the order,
you're going to want to watch this video because I can help shift your mindset
around what sales is, so you can make more sales, more easily, more often.
Stick around, and check it out.
To kick off our conversation on sales, we're going to start with a little exercise
and here it is: what are the top three things that come to mind when you hear
the word: Salesperson. It can be a word or a phrase.
When you hear the word Salesperson, what are the top three things that jump to mind?
Were they on the positive side like helpful and knowledgeable and sincere and honest or
is it maybe over on the negative side where you think slimy and aggressive and
rude and pushy and greedy and dishonest?
To the extent that you think salespeople are more the negative,
your sales are suffering. And the reason is
when you're in a sales situation you might feel like,
to be a salesperson is to be those negative things.
But it's not. I'm going to share with you a definition in a minute
of what I think a salesperson is.
Let's get back to this negative sales mindset.
Where does it come from? Rather where does any mindset come from?
It comes from when we're younger, the people that are around us.
our parents and caregivers, guardians, teachers, things like that,
and the media that we expose ourself to.
If we have parents when we're growing up that complain about salespeople saying
that they're greedy, or "hey when we bought that car last year we got ripped off."
Or "I was at the store and the clerk or the salesperson was so pushy."
We may associate salespeople with ripping off and pushy.
And it's not necessarily true, it's just one person's experience.
Maybe those weren't good salespeople, and they probably weren't.
But that's not you.
You're a good salesperson right?
You're a great business owner with a fantastic
product or service to offer so you don't need to feel like you're being any of those things
when you're in a sales situation.
We have to realize there's we adopted and osmosed that identity
that sales are maybe a little bit negative, that salespeople are negative.
But we want to shed that, and we want to do it like this:
we're gonna replace it with a new definition of what a salesperson is.
Here's the definition that I love:
"a salesperson is a person
who professionally helps another person
solve a problem
or fulfill the need or desire."
Let's break that down for a second.
A salesperson is a person,
professional person, like professionally helping, another person,
so it's a person helping another person, in a professional way,
to solve a problem or to fulfill a need or desire.
That means that we are doing a benefit to the person
that we are in a sales situation with.
to our customer or our prospect.
We're there to help, we're there to serve, we're there to help solve problems
and make their life better.
A word on this - if you don't believe in your product and service,
get out of that line of business, leave that company, wherever you are,
do something different where you really truly do believe in the product or service.
That's key. You must believe in what you're doing, that it's helpful,
and better than the competition.
If you truly believe that what you do is better than the competition
and you see yourself as a professional helping,
you're always going to do the right thing in sales
because you would never want your customer to end up
with the crappy competition.
Let's examine a few key sales scenarios where the sales mindset,
whether positive or negative,
is going to get us stuck or keep us moving forward.
so here's the four sales scenarios:
1. Prospecting. Getting out there reaching out to potential decision-makers, potential buyers.
2. Following up. We don't always have a good sales conversation
or a conversation that closes the sale the first time,
we may need to follow up.
3. Objections and how we handle objections.
4. Asking for the order. There's more in-depth things we can talk about in sales,
I just want to keep it high level.
Let's get back down to 1. Prospecting.
If we don't prospect, we're not to have as many clients as we could.
If we think of ourselves in a negative way, when we're prospecting,
we're not going to make as many prospecting calls
or reach outs or go to as many networking events,
or follow up on as many leads as we would if we have a positive mindset
knowing we're a professional, and that we're going to help somebody.
We're reaching out because we know,
we have value, we have a great product or service,
we're professionals, we can help.
If that's the mindset you have, you'll do more reach outs, more prospecting,
speak with more potential decision-makers,
more potential buyers, and close more sales.
We need to make sure that we do enough prospecting,
we need a healthy sales mindset to do that.
If we think negatively about ourselves and salespeople,
we're just plain old not going to prospect as much,
and that's our number one lead gen right there.
It starts right there with prospecting.
Anything else, we're going to have a percentage of the prospects that will turn into customers,
but if we have a low number of prospects in the first place,
We're going to have a low number of customers.
So, healthy mindset on prospecting.
Second item here: Following up. We don't always
close the sale in the first conversation. We need to follow up.
Or maybe we're given a referral and we follow up, and we don't reach them.
If we have a positive mindset, we're going to continue to follow up
until we make contact or they clearly express no interest,
in which case we'll follow up later, but with permission.
Now if we have a negative mindset we might follow up once
maybe twice, and then we might think
"oh I don't want to keep following up, they're gonna think I'm pushy
or I'm aggressive." Whereas with the positive mindset,
you're going to think to yourself "I'm a professional,
I said I would follow up, I'm going to follow up,
they're probably just busy, they're probably happy to hear from me,
they're probably glad that I continue to follow up to make contact
and make their life better." Positive mindset: we will follow up
with confidence and with excitement.
Negative mindset, we're not going to follow up as much
and so our pipeline is getting smaller now.
When we do our follow-ups,
we're having the sales conversation,
invariably we're going to have the odd objection that we need to handle.
Maybe it's timelines, maybe it's price, maybe it's which model, this or that.
We need to be able to overcome those objections to help our client out.
Negative mindset: objection - we might take it personally
or we might not be prepared to handle it
and help the client see that we are truly the best resource for them.
With our positive sales mindset, we're going to be able to deal with that objection without feeling
personally attacked when they say "no" or "you're too expensive" or whatever the case might be.
We're going to communicate with them, we're going to isolate what's going on
with that objection, make sure we truly understand what their situation is,
what their mindset is around the objection,
and work with them. And we may or may not be able to have a sale with them
but at least we're going to find out for sure, one way or the other,
what would need to happen so that we can make a sale.
With that negative mindset, we might try to push,
we might think "hey salespeople are pushy at this stage,
I don't want to be like that" and we don't
handle the objection, then the customer doesn't get their needs met.
They have to go to the competition. Remember how the competition isn't as good as you?
Right! You did your customer a disservice
by not handling and overcoming that objection with them
The next thing is asking for the order.
If you've ever been in a sales situation where you think it's time to ask for the order,
it probably is. If you sit there and you don't ask, and the customer says
"okay, well we'll be in touch, this has been great."
You go *whew* "I didn't have to ask for the order,
I didn't have to be that pushy greedy person asking for the money."
Guess what happens? You're go into a follow up loop
where the customer is going to wish you asked for the order,
you're just going to give up following up, and they think you don't want the business,
and they're gonna go elsewhere.
With a positive mindset you're going to ask for the order.
You'll give them an option. You'll ask if they're not sure, you'll be able to
re-explain something. You'll make sure that you ask them to move
ahead and take that next step. Which means you're going to close more business.
All right so that's it for this time. I really want you to have a
positive mindset about sales. Sales is a noble profession.
Nothing happens until a sale is made.
Salespeople are super awesome and important,
and you're an awesome super important sales person too.
You've got to shift that mindset so you really start to believe that.
Have that confidence in your product and service,
Believe you're a professional helping somebody.
Get out there, get on the phone, go introduce yourself, make some more sales,
serve some more people, solve some more problems and be awesome.
That's it for next week, catch you next time,
happy selling, happy serving!
Jeez, I almost forgot to ask for the order!
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Thanks for watching, catch you next time.