Reality Sales Training

The Purpose Of My Call

Many struggling sellers believe master sellers are saying magical things that are getting customers to buy from them. The reality is most master sellers:

1. Have a crystal clear idea why they are calling their customers

2. Use a simple approach

3. Ask for the order more often!

When I started selling, a great salesman, Jack Greene, taught me a simple opening that at the time seemed too simple, but has proven to be a sure winner:

“Good morning Mr.Customer, the purpose of my call is…” then present, promote and sell our idea.

Working with struggling sales people, I find one of the biggest mistakes they make is not knowing why they are calling on the customer. Does this seem unbelievable? Many salespeople call customers with only a vague idea what the call is going to be about, much less what they will sell the customer.

When we enter conversations with customers with no direction, they sense it. What will happen when a customer senses that we have no purpose/direction? Several things can and will happen; none of them good for us as salespeople.

The customer will become irritated and show us to the door (end the call). The customer will take control of the call. This in turn wastes our time and/or drains the profitability out of our proposal. When we turn control of our sales call over to the customer, we automatically turn ourselves into quotron units. We are no longer selling our customer, but servicing their inquiry. Servicing inquiry is not partnership selling.

Many salespeople think they are calling to ‘Touch Base’. This is a waste of the customer’s time. Customers will become annoyed when this happens and will begin to treat the seller badly. Why wouldn’t they? The seller is wasting their time. Many sellers blame this bad treatment on the customer, when it is really their own fault.

The customers who don’t get irritated are still confused. Many will begin to treat the seller as if they are a service agent. Customers will ask the unfocused seller for all kinds of options and information but will not buy. Again, sellers will get upset with these customers for wasting their time, when they (these sellers) have not sent the I-am-here-to-get-the-business message. These sellers mistakenly think that if they send this message the customer will shy away. Most sellers underestimate how hard they can push for an order without upsetting the customer. Conversely, many sellers would sell much more if they quit sending the I’m-here-to-talk-about-the-market message.

Sellers who send the right message work in their own favor. How? The seller who sends the message “I am here to get the business” and does it on every call, conditions the customer. When a customer goes to a meeting or picks up the phone with these sellers, they know, before they go to the meeting or pick up the phone, they will be asked for the order. When customers already know this going into the meeting, our job is half done.

Sellers who send the ‘I’m here to talk about the market’ or ‘I’m calling to touch base’ messages have twice as much work to do on every call. They have to convince the buyer they are a salesperson and then they have to sell the buyer!

Timid sellers are afraid the customer will get mad at them if they ask for (and fight for) the order. If a customer gets upset with us for trying to get their business, we should ask ourselves why we are spending time with these customers.

Do we have to service our customers? Yes, of course. Should we service them for free, forever, never! There will always be give and take in a competitive sales environment. I am not suggesting we tell customers who don’t buy from us every time to go take a jump. I am suggesting that we not work against ourselves by sending the wrong messages.

Our attitude with customers should be one of purpose, partnership and mutual respect, not servitude. When we call with a purpose we send partnership messages, and develop partnerships. If we send servile or vague messages to our customers they will treat us like servants.

What is the purpose of our call?

The (Action) Attitude that Sells

I used to work with a guy who made fun of the “positive attitude” people. “Oh, so all I have to do is have a positive attitude and I will sell everything I need to sell. I’d like those positive attitude idiots to come in here and try to sell some lumber in this market!”

I admit, I am one of those positive attitude proponents. But to me attitude is more than a state of mind; it is also a state of action.

Sellers often give all the power to the customer and then complain that the customer doesn’t treat them with any respect. How do sellers give customers all the power?

Giving up the Power

When we enter conversations with customers saying, “What do you want to pay?” and “What do you want to buy?” We send these messages:

I don’t know anything - You tell me.
I am too lazy to work for you - Mr. Customer - Please do all the work. - Tell me how to price my product. I am too lazy to even work up a price.
Pay me as little as possible.
Counter my price. (If I have even given one)
Go for the juggler vein. (I don’t know anything- take advantage of me.)
I am lazy - just give me a cheap price.

It’s amazing that these sellers continue to get mad at customers that give them no respect and bad prices. When we call a customer and say, “What do you need?” what we are really saying is,

“Mr. Customer, I’m too lazy to do any work for you, will you work for me? Will you tell me, what you want to buy, when you want it to ship and what you want to pay for it?”

This is not the attitude/action of the professional seller/partner. This is an employee attitude. Professional sellers share power with customers. The seller’s power is promotion. Offering product, solutions, and proposals to our customers is sharing power. We must do our part.

If we want our customers to treat us like partners, we have to bring value. If we come to our customers with a “What do I do now?” or “What I do next?” attitude/action, our customers will treat us as employees rather than partners.

If we have a business partner who starts each day by saying, “What do I do next?” it won’t take us long to buy this partner out. Why? Because this partner is not bringing value, or at least not partnership value. Our customers think and feel the same way. Our customers need and want partners, not another employee (salesperson) asking them what they need.

Why are we asking our customers what they need? Didn’t we find that out when we prospected them? (I detail how to make a great prospect call in my book, Selling Lumber, Sales Secrets of a Lumber Broker.) If we did give a good prospect call and we know what our customer uses, we offer those specific products on every call after the prospect call.

The Secret Benefit

When we promote product on every call we are, what I call, playing offense. We are acting and pro-acting. When we come to customers with the - “What do I do next?” attitude, we are playing defense; we are re-acting. Acting instead of Re-acting, playing offense instead of playing defense - whichever metaphor we choose to use - when we promote product we will feel better at the end of the day.

Yes, but does a good feeling get me the order? In the short (not immediate - short) and long term my answer is: YES, YES AND YES. Remember, in tough markets our customers are struggling also; they don’t need another whining salesperson telling them how tough it is. What they need and want is a positive force to come in the door or over the phone and tell them why something is a good deal for them!

Positive attitudes alone will not save us. We must hustle. (Action) We must prepare (Action). We must promote products, deals, proposals that benefit customers in a financial or business way (Action). But we also bring with us a spirit and attitude of positiveness. Our customers want to buy from positive, pro-active, promoters of product.

Thanks for the number; I’ll let you know…

Nothing can be more frustrating than working up an offering for a customer and then having them tell us, “Thanks for the number, James, I’ll let you know…” No salesperson is needed because no selling is involved; we just give a number and wait for the call-back or call back ourselves to find the product has already been bought. The only thing worse than losing orders is working for an order but never really having the opportunity to compete for it!

Below are two sure-fire ways to get out of the quoting business and get into the selling business!

I. Offer Product

One of the best ways to compete on price is to offer product and/or product solutions for our customers. Many of the salespeople we compete against every day are just shopping services. They never propose anything to the customer. If we never propose anything to our customers they are going to start treating us like shopping services.

Every sales training customer I work with tells me they want to form a ‘partnership’ relationship with their customers. If all we are is a shopping service, our customers will never treat us as partners. Imagine you own a business with a partner who never has an idea. They always come to you and ask you what to do next. This may be nice for getting our own way, but after awhile we are not going to feel like being ‘partners’ with this person.

Our customers feel the same way. The last thing they need is another person asking them what they should do next. This is what most salespeople do. They are too lazy to work up a proposal for their customer. They ask the customer, “Is there anything you are looking for today?” What this question really says to the customer is, “Hey, John, I’m too lazy to work for you today, will you work for me? Will you tell me exactly what you need and exactly what you want to pay for it?” “Will you negotiate with yourself, so I don’t have to?” These same salespeople complain about how poorly they are treated by customers.

After our initial call to our customer we should never call and ask them, “What do you need?” We should have found this out on our prospect call. After the prospect call we should always call with a product, a solution or deal that will interest our customer. When we call and offer a solution or product we are setting ourselves up with our customers as partners.

II. “What do you think of my deal?”

One of the best ways to break through the “Thanks for the number, I’ll let you know” scenarios is to ask the question, “What do you think of my deal?”

Customers will often answer, “Gosh, I don’t know, I need to get more numbers, I just started shopping for this, I haven’t bought it in awhile, I’ll let you know etc.” None of these answers allows us to do our job, sell. They all make us shopping services. The customer has an idea about your offering or they wouldn’t be listening in the first place. It is our job to get them to share their idea. We need to persist, “I understand you have to get other numbers, but what do you think of what I am offering?” Be prepared to go back and forth a couple of times, but please persist with the “What do you think of what I am offering?” question. This can cause some friction. So what? If we let our customers off the hook after we have given them our offer, we severely lower our Closing percentages. Do we really think the customer is going to “Let us know?” “Call us back?” They may, but not as often as we need them to! Getting our customers to talk about our deal is the beginning of Closing. We surely cannot get to a Closing situation by accepting the, “I’ll let you know…” response. We must get our customers to talk about what we are proposing. When our customer begins to talk about what they like or dislike about our offering, we are in a Closing situation and can now sell the customer.

In competitive markets we must make ourselves partners by offering product solutions and we must force the issue from time to time with the “What do you think of what I’m offering you?” question.

Selling in Down Markets

Down markets can be difficult to sell in. Let’s call them contracting markets, because that’s what markets do; they expand and contract. We are in a contracting market right now. What is the solution? Get back to the basics:

Cast a wider net. If we are to grow our business is contracting markets we will have to call more customers, not just the same customers more often. Many of us who have established connections haven’t prospected in awhile. This won’t play in a contracting market. The good news is we are going to be better prospectors than we think we are. We have experience. We must use it. An experienced seller will have a much better chance to break into accounts and break into them quicker than a rookie salesperson. Prospect, you’ll be presently surprised by the results.

Go to customer need. As sales people we need to get off the “Wow, this is a terrible market” conversations and start talking about customer need. So many sellers jump on join in the negative conversations started by customers. Don’t be one of them. Negative, down market conversations do not lead to sales. Get off the negative and talk about customer need. We will have to dig. If we find out that the person we are talking to doesn’t have an immediate need, let’s find out when they will have a need, end the conversation and move on.

Start positive. This may seem very simple, but is often overlooked by salespeople. We need to go into conversations with a positive first sentence. “John, I’ve got something that I know will make you money”. “Judy, I’ve got exactly what you’ve been looking for”. Even with negative of customers, we have control of our first sentence; we need to make it a positive one.

Treat contracting markets as opportunities. “Yes, some people have lost faith in this market. Isn’t it great Mr. Customer? This is a great opportunity for us to make great deals. Speaking of great deals…”

Pick something and promote it. Going to customers in any market and asking them, “Do you need anything?” is the worst salesperson’s opening of all time. The “What are you needing?” opening is even worse in down markets. We must promote something to our customers. Even if customers deny our initial promotion, they will open up to us, and tell us what they do need.

Push for volume. When we reach agreement with customers on a price that works, we must push for volume. Tying customers down to a price can be difficult. In contracting markets it can seem impossible, so when we do get our customers to agree on a price, we must push for one more, two more or a contract at the given price. The rookie mistake is to be overly thankful or satisfied with the single order. The professional seller pushes for volume on any agreement.

Take all offers. When markets are good we may fight for a better price. This is good salesmanship. When markets are contracting, we must take the offers we get and work them to death. When we can’t meet the terms of our customers’ offers, it is imperative that we come back to our customers talking about the positives. Three mistakes made by sellers when coming back to a customer on an offer whose specifications haven’t been met:

1. Starting with the negative. “Well, John, we couldn’t get the price done …” it doesn’t matter what we say next. We’ve started negative and have given our customer permission not to buy. Instead of starting negative, let’s start positive, “John, great news, we got the tally you wanted, the shipment you wanted and we got very close to the price we are looking for…”

2. Acting embarrassed. We are not embarrassed if the specifications aren’t met. We accentuate the positive and keep selling. (With our heads high).

3. Stop asking for offers. Many sellers will be embarrassed when they don’t meet their customers’ offers and will stop asking for offers. This is a mistake. Contracting markets call for offers. Keep asking for them and keep working them. Not all of them will work out, but some of them will.

Champion sellers will continue to sell in the face of negativity. The rest will let the market dictate their success.

Which kind of seller are we? Contracting markets will tell us.

How Do I Grow My Sales Force?

Business owners and sales managers ask me two questions. “Should I hire experienced or inexperienced salespeople?” And “How do I grow my sales force?”

Let’s look at the pros and cons of hiring experienced and non-experienced sellers.

Experienced Sellers

Advantages:

They usually produce immediate results.
They don’t have to be trained.
They open new customers and markets to our company.

Disadvantages:

They often bring unseen baggage. Why are they changing in the first place?
Loyalty. Loyalty must be earned with any employee, but once a seller begins to move from company to company, they often continue.
Overconfidence. Many experienced sellers have an exaggerated idea of their skills and value.
Management. They often have trouble adjusting to the new (our) company culture.

Inexperienced sellers:

Advantages:

It will be easier to get new sellers to adapt to our company culture. We will not have to “un-train” bad or different sales habits.
Loyalty. Again, loyalty will have to be earned with any employee, but sellers who grow with our company, management team and culture will be more likely to stay longer than the seller who is used to changing cultures.
Management. It will be easier to train to our culture than to un-train a different culture.
Controlled growth. When we have an established sales training program, we can hire to the program, and establish a track record of controlled growth.

Disadvantages:

Cost. Inexperienced sellers will have to be trained. They also will have a slower ramp up to profitability.
Failure rate. Our investment of time and money will not always be rewarded by the new sellers. Some will succeed, some will fail.

Companies that have consistent growth have an established, ongoing training program for new hires. They will hire experienced sales people but are judicious when doing so. They do not shy away from them, but treat them as icing on the cake of sales growth.

Once we have hired our sales force, how do we maintain and grow?

Growing a Sales Force

Below find ten concepts for ongoing sales team growth.

1. Always be looking. We aren’t always hiring, but we continually are interviewing and searching for new candidates.

2. Hire the right person. Easier said than done. Each company has a sales culture. We must know the kind of sales person we are looking for and hire to that position.

3. Set expectations high from the beginning. When we set the activities and expectation high and clear from the first day, we will have an easier time managing to these goals.

4. Give solid initial training. Training must be thorough and specific.

5. Monitor progress. Sales people respond to attention. When they receive it often and early, they respond in a positive way.

6. Account Management. The biggest time and money management mistake made by sellers is calling on non-profitable accounts too long. Account management is the best thing management can do to insure growth of the team. Left to individual sellers account management will be sporadic or non-existent.

7. Ongoing training. There are people that pick up the selling game quickly. They are the exception. Most sellers will need ongoing training to reach their potential.

8. Show we care. Take sales people to lunch. Have a drink. Spend some personal time. It pays big dividends in productivity and slowing down turn over. One of the biggest mistakes I see is managers who do not spend time with their sales people professionally or personally.

9. Hire two at a time. From a business point of view this is probably the most important. If we want to have sustainable, controlled growth, we must commit to hiring more than one salesperson at a time. Sales has a high failure rate. If we ignore this basic truth, we will be subject to erratic growth. When possible, hiring two salespeople gives our new hires a person to compete with and relate to. It also gives us a growth insurance policy. If one fails, we still continue to grow.

10. Account visits. Management visits to salespeople’s accounts. These visits help us evaluate and educate the salespeople while in most cases increasing business. These visits also help make the account loyal to our company, not only the individual salesperson.

Hiring the right salespeople will make management and growth easier. Companies that are committed to training and giving ongoing attention to salespeople will grow their sales force.

10 Ways to Overcome the Price Objection

ompeting on price is often just being in front of the wrong customer, with the wrong product at the wrong time. Avoiding that situation is a subject for another article.

But in the hyper-competitive lumber industry, we are often in front of the right customer, at the right time with the right product, and we still are forced to compete on price.

Use these techniques to battle price:

1. Assume the order. “When we put this together” not “If we put this together.” Act as if the order is yours.

2. Don’t bring up price until the customer does. When we hold off on price we show confidence in our proposal. This relaxes our customer. When our customer is interested, they will ask about price.

We can close from “What is the price on this?” - “That’s the good part, we can get this to you at $350, when would you like to take delivery?”

Propose don’t Quote. Questions like “What are you looking for?” or “What do you need?” Make us shopping services or quotron units. When we propose solutions to our customers, we are proposing something unique, special, all our own.
When customers say, “Your price is too high.” We say, “Oh, (really), we’ve been selling at these levels, what were you thinking/feeling/hearing about price?”

“What are you thinking?” is a discussion question. ”What do you want to pay?” gives all the power to the customer and will produce a lower price discussion every time.

Quality with a Similar Story. “Mrs. Customer, the quality warrants the price. I have a customer in Texas, a real price shopper. For six months I tried to get him to try this product and he wouldn’t. A couple of weeks ago he was caught in a bind and had to try it. He loves it and has re-ordered. The quality makes it a great deal for him and for you also, let’s put this together!”
Fear, Scarcity and Urgency Closes combat price.

Example:

“I know this is more than you are thinking of paying Tom, but people are paying these prices and we are running out of stock, so let’s take care of this before they’re all gone. What’s your PO# on this?”

“Tom, you’re a busy man. You can shop this thing and maybe save a few bucks, but your time is worth a lot, and when you come back these could be gone. Let’s get this one off your To Do list. Give me your PO number, this is a great product.”

Is price the only thing standing in the way of us putting this deal together? We bend ourselves three ways from Friday to get the price right, AND THEN, there is another slight problem… Ask this question early and save lots of time! The beauty of this question is that it is a Closing question. Either way the customer answers, we are moving towards a Close.
Just because that is a good deal doesn’t mean this isn’t a good deal also. (Or, that’s a great deal, and this is also.)

When a customer tells you they can (or did) buy something similar for less money, DO NOT ACT DEFEATED. These supposed lower prices are a test to if we believe in our product and our price.

Don’t lower the price without customer participation. Don’t negotiate with yourself. If your customer won’t talk about price don’t fish for a lower number alone.
Best Quote Price Vs Best Sell Price. When we try to ask customers where we need to be on price, they say, “I don’t play that way, you tell me the best you can do and I’ll let you know.”

Change the paradigm.

“Mr. Customer, we sell this product all over the U.S., do you know who gets the best prices from us?” Most of the time the customer will answer, “Probably the customers that buy the most from you.” You say, “No, the customers who get the best prices are the customers that work with us.”

Go on to explain, “Mr. Customer, I am giving you my very best Quote Price, but we will have to work together to get my (our) very best Buy Price.”
Sell “teamwork” to our customers when they try to make us their adversary.

Let’s treat price as just another detail. Propose unique solutions and use the above techniques to compete against the price objection.

Our Approach Matters

Recently one of my students told me he learned something. “James, I’ve finally learned how to sell manufacturers.” I asked him what had changed. “I speak to them with a more serious tone.” This student happens to have an outgoing personality and approaches most people with an open, joking style. “James, when I sell distributors, they love the jokes and the negotiating back and forth, but these manufacturers are more serious. They want me to slow down and explain the product and the logistics of delivery more.”

We can all learn from this student’s experience. It’s not that we must speak seriously to manufacturers and joke around with distributors. What we learn is that whatever our natural style is, if we want to sell a broader range of customers, we will have to develop other styles or approaches.

I think this is one of the most difficult things that I teach. Let’s face it, most of us have lived through childhood and adolescence working on our personalities and how we approach our fellow man. Some of us have struggled more than others to get along socially, but we have all found a way to communicate in the world.

As salespeople, we need to be more flexible than non-salespeople. Because we deal with a larger number of people than most and because we are trying to move those people to action. It’s one thing to sit around talking about the latest ball game or the weather; it’s a different thing to talk to someone about spending money. This is where professional level communication skills are needed.

Two Common Problems and Solutions

I work with salespeople nationwide to help them communicate in a way that will help them sell more. Here are a few of basic mistakes we work to correct with salespeople.

Hesitant speech. We must prepare. Many salespeople are just saying what comes out of their mouth. This is not professional. Sure, we can wing it, but somewhere in an important call there will be hesitation on an answer or a solution. When we hesitate, the customer begins to doubt what we are saying and will buy less. I’m not talking about sounding sure about something we are not sure about. I’m talking about sounding sure about things we know are true! The knock on salespeople is they are liars. They say they are sure about things they are not sure about. There may be a small percentage of salespeople that are giving the rest of us a bad name. But the majority of salespeople I work with are honest, hard-working people.

What I see more often is salespeople who are afraid of living up to the poor reputation of the few bad apples who do lie. The problem is these salespeople speak hesitantly even when they are sure of what they are talking about. “We are selling these” is better than “This might be a pretty good deal.” Preparation is the best cure for hesitant speech. We plan out our calls before we make them. We have a plan for how the call will progress. We think about, write down and practice our answers. This way we will sound more confident and our customers will want to buy from us.

Couching Statements. Anytime we use a weak qualifier in our speech we are telling people we don’t truly believe what we are saying. “This might be a good deal.” “I think this will work for you”. “We will probably deliver this on time.” If we know something to be true, then we say it is true. “This is a great deal!” If it’s a great deal say so! If we are going to do something, we say we are going to do it, we don’t say we are probably going to do it!

Change a losing game. We have to be smarter than the monkeys in the zoo. As with my student above, if we are pushing a button and no candy is coming out, we need to push a different button. Whether our approach is light or serious, it will not work with all customers. When our current approach with customers isn’t working, we change that approach!

Mental and Emotional Preparations of a Closer

Technique is not enough

In the movie “Million Dollar Baby” Clint Eastwood plays a hardened boxing trainer. Above his office a sign reads, “Tough is not enough”. ”Show me a fighter with nothin’ but heart, and I’ll show you a fighter who is about to take a beating.” His point is that boxing is an art. Being tough and having heart are simply the buy-in money to the fight game; a boxer must train in the art of boxing to stand a chance against anyone who is a real pugilist, not just a tough-guy swinging roundhouses in the air.

This concept is also true for us as salespeople. “Show me a salesperson with nothing but technique and I’ll show you a frustrated, underperforming salesperson.”

What do I mean? I work with many salespeople who have a handle on the techniques of selling, who are mentally and emotionally unprepared for the work of the professional seller. Sellers often go into sales calls with product knowledge and techniques at the ready, but never get to use them. Why?

Mental preparations

Many sellers do not mentally prepare before going into battle. These sellers enter their customer’s office and sit down as if they were plopping down on their best friend’s couch.

What are our pre-call mental preparations?:

1. What is the purpose of the call? The purpose of our call must be crystal clear to us before we will be able to communicate it to our customer. For example, if we are there to ‘touch base’ instead of ‘To Close’ it will come across in every word we say. (And will not lead to orders.)

2. What will be the customer’s number one objection and what will be our response to that objection? In the best of worlds we think through all possible objections, problems, and negotiating points before we enter Closing conversations with our customers. We are as thorough as possible in these mental preparations, but for Pete’s sake, we must at least anticipate our customer’s first objection or the call will end before it starts.

3. Five Closes. How will we ask for the order? How many times will we ask for the order? We sometimes get business with one Close. Often it will take more. We can’t thump away at the customer with the same Close over and over. This is boring and irritating to customers. We must ask for the order (Close!) in different ways to find the one that will engage the customer and ultimately get the business. As professionals we develop five Closes for every Closing situation. This habit, over time, will take us to the level of the top Closers.

Emotional Preparations

While mental preparations are important, even more essential to Closing success is the emotional fortitude of the seller. Many sellers are not emotionally prepared for their sales calls. If we do not prepare emotionally for each call, we will crumble, wobble or give away profit as soon as our customers begin to pick away or totally reject our proposal.

What are our emotional preparations?:

1. What is the personality of my customer? This question is especially important when dealing with someone who has a different personality than we do. We must calibrate our approach to the personality of our customer. Only an amateur expects the customer to calibrate to them.

2. The customer is going to say no. Not in a negative, I’m-not-going-to-get-the-order way. Just as a boxer knows he will get hit and still plans to win the fight, we prepare ourselves for no’s but still plan to win the business. We project the attitude, “I thought you might say that, let me tell give you more information to consider.”

3. Self talk works. We tell ourselves we are going to get the order. Our subconscious mind does not know the difference between what we tell it and the truth. So let’s psyche-out our own psyche. Telling ourselves we will win is an emotional must in our business of (some) rejection. When we motivate ourselves it comes across in what we say as well as our body language.

We must prepare our presentations. We must know our product. To get the business we must also prepare ourselves mentally and emotionally to Close! Happy Closing!

Fear of the Big Bad Customer

What do we feel for the fearful? We pity them, we feel sorry for them, right? These are not the feelings we want our customers to feel for us. We respect and revere the fearless. Don’t we want our customers to respect us?

If we are fearful, our customers will feel it.

When my son was four, I took him to swimming lessons. The pool was just a big bathtub - a little deeper maybe - but not scary - dad was there. He’s learning to swim and having a great time with it. After six lessons we thought it would be a great idea for my wife to come along to see how our big boy was learning. My wife is deathly afraid of (deep) water. When she got in the pool with us, my son was fine until she touched his arm. I felt her fear course from her through his body and to mine like an electric shock.

What does this have to do with sales?

Fear kills sales. Our customers will feel our fear just as my son felt his mother’s fear. Working with salespeople I find that fear of (upsetting, bothering, negotiating with - real give and take negotiation) the customer is the number one emotional problem for struggling sellers. When we feel fear, our customers feel sorry for us and may pity us. When we are fearful customers will not respect and revere us, much less treat us like a partner. When customers feel our fear two things will happen. They will take advantage or they will want to get away.

I work with charming, likeable, hardworking salespeople who understand sales techniques and strategies, but all this charisma and sales knowledge is wasted because of the fear these salespeople have of their Big, Bad Customers!

How many of us married the yes-man or yes-woman? When I ask for a show of hands on this question in classes across the country no one ever raises their hand. Why? Wouldn’t it be easier to spend our lives with someone who always gives us our way? Of course not. It would be deathly boring. We want someone who has their own ideas and maybe someone to keep us in check from time to time, right? Sales, like marriage, is a relationship. Our customers don’t want to buy from a yes-man or yes-woman. (They may throw’em a bone now and then to keep them giving numbers, but these fearful salespeople will always under-achieve and get the leftovers.) Customers will buy from sellers who know who they are, what they have to offer and are willing to stand up for it.

Here are some solutions to overcome our fear of our B.B.C’s:

1. Prepare. Don’t just call - prepare everything!

2. Prospect. Talk to new customers and practice a confident approach. Fake it till we make it. Prospecting will help us build our account base. A big reason sellers are afraid of losing accounts is because they don’t have enough of them. How can we win a negotiation when the other negotiator knows we’ve got no place else to go?

3. Prepare and Offer product. Back to the marriage metaphor, nobody wants to be with someone who always says, “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” Offer product and solutions on every call. No more “What do ya need today?” calls.

4. Call a friendly. Start our day with the accounts we do have a good relationship with. The best time to call a B.B.C. is right after we have sold something.

5. Psyche up. Self talk works. We must convince ourselves before we put ourselves in front of a customer. (Many sellers are embarrassed by self affirmations - “And Gosh Darn It - People Like Me!” I agree that it seems corny - but it works.

6. Smile. Smiling before and during the sales call will make us feel more confident. Humans are drawn to and are more comfortable around people that smile.

Technique is important. Sales skills are necessary to maximize our efforts. But as the saying goes, we must get our hearts right before sales techniques will be effective.

Salespeople unite! Let’s buck up, screw up our courage and approach our customers with confidence.

Excitement or Boredom?

In the mid-nineties I was reloading spruce boards in Birmingham and selling them into Atlanta on truck. Life was good. I was making good margins and having a great time. One market started at $495. I bought five cars, shipped them to Birmingham, and sold twenty trucks to Atlanta. I did this four times. When I sold the last block at $695, I bought five more and went on vacation for a week. While on vacation a friend called and informed me that #2 spruce had fallen $100/MBF! The week after my return, the market dropped another $100 leaving me with 450/MBF of #2 spruce -$200/MBF in the grease!

Next came a call from my best customer. “You top-ticked me, James!” he said. “You sold me twenty trucks at the top of the market. It is going to take me six months to get out of these. I won’t be buying any of that reload wood from you any time soon!” I went home that night and asked my wife if she liked our house. “Yes, why, honey?” “Because we might not be living in it much longer!” was my answer.

The next week when I awoke at three in the morning because the sweat from my right leg was dripping on my left leg, I learned that I could be stressed out even while sleeping!

In this changing market many of my clients have begun to ask me how to battle stress. I am not a medical doctor, nor do I have a PHD in psychology. But I have spent thirty years in sales, thus for today I will grant myself an honorary degree in stress relief learned (and earned) in the unsettling, dark hours of many nights spent worrying about how I was going to make my number.

Here are some surefire stress relievers:

Exercise. Exercise will not only relieve stress, it will fortify us against stress. Exercise makes us feel stronger physically and mentally and gives us a feeling of accomplishment watching TV or drinking a martini never will.

Turn off the TV. Enough is enough. We don’t need to be that informed! The people on TV are selling also, and good news is no news, so turn it off!

Refuse to talk about bad markets, bad economies and the rest. These conversations add to our stress and do not lead to orders!

Control our minds. Just like turning a car left or right, we can choose what we think about. Many people want to victimize themselves by disagreeing with this. Don’t listen to them and don’t be one of them. When we begin to think negative (stressful) thoughts, let’s stop and think of other things. Thinking and planning for our future is a must to be successful, but thinking over and over about a problem whose time to be solved is passed or in the future is a self-inflicted wound we must fight against by controlling our own minds. (Mathew, 6:25-34. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”)

Do something we love. Exercise, garden, spend time with our families, something, for gosh sakes. Organize our day, if possible to do the thing we love right after work. Break away from the work-place mentality. We are more than worker bees. There is more to our lives than work, but we must take active steps to remind ourselves of this.

Spirituality. I am surprised by the number of people who profess their faith to me, who will not turn to their faith for stress relief. If we believe in a higher being and life after death, then this life is something between fool’s gold and a grand test for glorious eternity.

Sell our way out. Activity is good for humans (and salespeople!) and will produce more orders - relieving stress.

I believe we have two choices as human animals. A life of boredom or a life of excitement. With excitement comes stress. Joe Torre, major league baseball manager, calls it “vital tension”. As salespeople we have made the choice for excitement. We do not work in libraries. We have chosen vital tension. We must embrace our choice, fight stress the best we can and get out there and get some orders!