Sales Blog with Professional Sales Tips

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[Note: Watch for upcoming posts where I'll be interviewing some CEO's of companies that are changing the tools we use as sales professionals.]

If you’re selling a product that is virtually, if not exactly, the same as all of your competitors, then you are selling a commodity. Many salespeople mistakenly resort to discounting as their only selling strategy in order to get business when selling commodities.

You don’t always have to resort to this. There is a way to deal effectively with commodity selling that I’ll share below.

When selling a commodity you are also selling your personal capital too.

What is personal capital? It’s the attitude, knowledge and skills that you bring, as a sales professional, to the customer that are independent of the products you sell.

What are some examples? There are a million of them: product knowledge, knowledge of how the customer needs to be invoiced/shipped/packaged, good people skills with the employees at the customer, ability to run customer meetings with productive outcomes, anticipation of customer needs before they are expressed, etc.

Here’s the best part about all of this. Customers are willing to pay you more for the same product they can buy from your competitors because of the personal capital that you bring to the table. This is exactly why order takers make such poor commodity salespeople.

“This sounds great Scott, but my customers don’t even appreciate that I do these things for them. All they talk about is price.”

The problem is that you haven’t communicated to them the extra value that you bring. Customer surveys have consistently shown that most customers don’t know the added value that you provide to them. Furthermore, these same surveys also show that if they were aware of the added value they wouldn’t be as price sensitive.

So, how do we communicate this extra value?

Every six months show them a formal report that tells them what they are buying from you and include a section labeled “Additional Services.” List all the added value services you provide (such as the examples listed above) in the Additional Services section and put a big N/C next to each item. You can deliver this report to them at a scheduled meeting that you advertise as your semi-annual customer satisfaction/update meeting. This information will open their eyes to all of the added value that you bring that goes unnoticed. You’ll probably get some good feedback too.

If you’re selling a commodity, be sure to sell yourself first and your product second.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

Every customer you have was once a prospect. Either you, or someone in your organization, had to initially get a decision maker’s attention. The following are some things I have learned about doing it simply and effectively.

What I’m talking about here is what is commonly called an Elevator Speech because it represents how much time you have to show the prospect your value when you first meet. An elevator ride is usually no longer than 30 seconds, which should be the maximum length of your Elevator Speech.

I first met many, if not most, of my best customers in the most unexpected places (car dealerships, weddings, drivers license office, etc.) where having a good Elevator Speech in my hip pocket paid off. It can also be used effectively in routine prospecting.

Decision makers have two things you want: attention and time. You’ve got about 30 seconds to get their attention. Here are the basics to start crafting the two different types of Elevator Speeches that you’ll need (you’ll use one of the two depending on the situation).

1. Someone asks you what you do for a living.

a. Introduce yourself if you haven’t already. b. State one or two key standout value propositions that you and your company provide to your industry. Please do not sound like you are reading from the Yellow Pages. Boring! I do not believe these value propositions necessarily have to be unique in your industry; they just need to be compelling. c. Tell them the bare bones basics about your company and its products/services. d. Ask for their Elevator Speech, which will help qualify them and provide you with their contact information (not to mention that it shows you have some interest in them, which never hurts).

2. You initiate the conversation. Basically this just represents some important changes to the sequence.

a. Introduce yourself. b. Ask for their Elevator Speech. You can optionally skip the next two steps if they are absolutely not a prospect for you. c. State one or two key standout value propositions. d. Tell them about your company.

This is one skill that requires a lot of practice. My wife used to make fun of me for practicing my Elevator Speech prior to going to a prospect rich event until she saw the positive results. I eventually even got her to play the role of the prospect when I was practicing.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

We have subscribers from many different countries. Today’s post is meant primarily for my U.S. readers.

I’ll admit it. My eyes water every time I hear the U.S. national anthem. Here’s why.

Today is Memorial Day in the U.S. and it’s a holiday that honors the men and women that have given their lives in military service. This holiday does not honor war itself in any way, but rather gives tribute to those that have made the greatest sacrifice as a result of it. Because they have given their lives, we enjoy many freedoms. One of these liberties is the ability to pursue the career and destiny of our choice.

If you are a U.S. citizen celebrating Memorial Day today, please pause, if just for a moment, to remember what these men and women, and their families, have done. All of us are beneficiaries of their heroism.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

Fact: As sales professionals, we are ultimately in control of our sales career. This isn’t a good thing, this is a great thing! But it also requires us to take on certain responsibilities if we want to maximize this control.

The following are five truths about our sales career:

1. We are our own best sales career counselor. No one cares as much about our career as we do, not our
employer, our manager or anyone else.
2. We are responsible for our own development and training. This may mean getting our employer to train us or for us to seek training on our own.
3. We must think beyond our current sales job; we are in a career, not a job. As I’ve written in another post, Sales Staff Turnover, few sales jobs are permanent.
4. We are ultimately our own best motivators; no one else can motivate us over the long haul.
5. The most successful sales professionals are those that stick with it. I’ve never met a number one salesperson that got to that position in 3 months - it took years and usually spanned over several employers.

Do we have 100% control of our sales career at all times? Hardly. The “Divine Director of Sales” in His heavenly office can grab the wheel from time to time, but our individual actions, and inactions, will have a huge impact on our sales career.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

In the 1973 movie, Magnum Force, Harry Callahan (played by Clint Eastwood) says his now famous line, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

No matter how inflated our ego is or how much we suffer from low self esteem, we all have two things in common: a key selling strength that must be optimized and a key sales weakness we must navigate around. It’s how we are put together by the big man upstairs. No one is exempt.

Highly successful athletes, politicians and actors are examples of people that showcase their greatest strength and do their best to conceal their greatest weakness. The key to all of this is that they know these things about themselves.

Since sales success is so critically dependent on a number of skill sets, doesn’t it make sense that we should be aware of our greatest strength and use it to our advantage? At the same time wouldn’t it be helpful for us to be cognizant of where we are not strong?

Tiger Woods is generally considered to be one of the best golfers that has ever lived. He acknowledges that his short-irons are a weakness for him, but he also knows that he can hit a driver like no other. Guess what his game strategy is? He uses his driver (his strength) in a way to avoid as many short-iron shots (his weakness) as possible.

We might be tempted to ask, should we work on our weakest sales skill in order to make it stronger? Yes, but I have a few rules for this:

1. We must work on our weak area only after we are sure that our strongest area is razor sharp. Our strongest area is our money maker.
2. When in front of a customer we must be sure to leverage our strength to the maximum; this is not a time to be experimenting with improving our weakness.
3. We can and should use a coach (e.g., sales trainer, sales manager) to help us with our weak area.
4. We can’t always avoid exposing our weak area, so we should ensure that we have at least an adequate and acceptable strategy for handling it.

Sales professionals can be either weak or strong in the following areas: prospecting, account management, presentations, customer meetings, product knowledge, account planning, time management, record keeping, etc. This is a concept where sales management can play a valuable role in helping their individual team members fortify their strength and manage their weakness.

Now go to work on making your sales strength even stronger and your weakness manageable.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer