A nine-step sales process

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"Adam, over the past six years, I've had the pleasure of 'bumping into you' on at least three business and marketing related forums. Your contributionsto discussions have always been courteous, astute, incisive and practical,delivered with good humour, and based upon 'real-world' business experience. You are clearly an experienced business professional who actually knows what he is talking about. I wonder if your clients know what a gem they have in you? As one business professional to another, I salute you.

Good Wishes,
John Williamson - The Wealth Coach
www.thewealthcoach.com
www.retaildisplaysecrets.com

+++++++++++++++++++

I just LOVED "7 Clues to a Profits Leak".

Steven Walker - Profit Improvement Advisors
Calgary, Canada

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You will be proud how your protégés are proceeding! We have expanded the business to Katherine and Alice (Tennant is also on the list). T he catering side of the business is far less stressful and is actually profitable, now that we only take the good jobs.
We will never forget the assistance you gave us in re-inventing our business!

Karen Sheldon

Managing Director

Karen Sheldon Catering

Darwin, Australia

+++++++++++++++++++

The chap is Adam Gordon whom I have known for many years. He is a former resident of Darwin having lived here for perhaps 25 years, is an excellent communicator and has a very good appreciation of small business, business plans and all that goes with it. In fact Adam is regarded as a business guru.

Charles Wright, QS Services, Darwin, Australia

+++++++++++++++++++++

Thanks for the catch-up the other day. It's great to be working with a legend in the small business community.

AJ Kulatunga, BLKMGK ICT

Darwin, Australia

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The 7 Clues is a great.

What I like the most in the Seven Clues report is that it clearly explains that accounting is merely a subset of proper financial management and

that only the business owner can practise financial management. The accountant does the accounting, and in doing so supports the business owner's financial management. And the business owner uses the accountant's information, but relying on the accountant to do full-blown financial management is short-sighted.

The report nicely "grounds" an otherwise complex topic which many business owners are afraid of touching, so they often move ahead in blissful ignorance. The water hose and the soggy soil under the leak makes an excellent and easy-to-comprehend example, upon which the financial management concept is nicely built.

Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur Dynamic Innovations Squad
Personal and Firm-Wide Performance Improvement for Management Consulting Firms

Vancouver, BC Canada

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You have played a very important role in my development in business.

You were there with the right information at the right time, I thank you for that.
By adding the next level of systems, and marketing knowledge that you brought to the table we able to identify our objectives, acknowledge the gaps in our business and put in place the planning so as to achieve those objectives. Within 5 years we achieved 9 of our ten stated objectives. In that same year we won the NT Telstra Small business of the year"

Greg Haigh
Director - Trade Group
Regional And Northern maintenance services
RANms

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The perils of profitless cash flow!
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Profit leaking processes
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Lies, damn lies & statistics
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Is selling a necessary evil?

A nine-step sales process

That leads to success

It appears some sales processes are universal, not learnt by studying some ‘expert’ but by testing over time to find what works and what doesn’t. There’s a little aside here: how many of you test your marketing or sales processes to find out what works and what doesn’t?

But back to the point of this blog. My wife and I are on a long anticipated trip to India. And rather than tripping around, wandering into one monument or another without any idea of the story behind it, and wanting to avoid the boredom of a busload of babbling tourists we opted for individual guided tours of each destination. And very worthwhile it has been too.

But there is another side to tours. Whether you are with the babblers or on an individual tour, sooner or later you will be guided to an outlet where the wares will be demonstrated (with no obligation to buy of course) and ‘sold’ to you.

Now in some ways this is not a bad thing. On our experience at least you are likely to be taken to a reputable place with quality products, rather than left to the mercies of sidewalk hawkers. Be aware of course that your guide will be on a commission for anything you buy, at least 2 – 3% as one guide told us in a moment of transparency.

The sales lesson was in how the sale is achieved, a nine step process which leads to YES.

Firstly comes education. The skill and expertise of the craftsman is demonstrated, working in the traditional way to make the product. Authentic craftsmen and women from the villages where this work is done.

Secondly you are asked to appreciate how the skill is applied and how such skills are a dying art in this rapidly changing world (build up the scarcity).

Thirdly see the variety of finished products that are available (more education, but also seeking to identify your point of interest).

At some point the Law of Reciprocity is fed into the process. This is where a sense of obligation is created so that you will start to feel at some point to you need to reciprocate by buying something, just something small of course. There’s always a touch of reciprocity from the demonstration as well. At some stage a tea, coffee or even a beer is offered, no charge of course, “accept a little hospitality” building on the Law.

Then their USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is demonstrated – just why these products are so different from anything that you can buy elsewhere – the fifth step.

So the tipping point process is started, the sixth step. The first products that are demonstrated are well within your price range and your interest starts to be engaged. You can afford that product of course.

Graduation - the seventh step. Having got your engagement, more products are bought out, each of even higher quality and skill, and a higher price of course. So you start to finger the material, or whatever the product is, hold them up to the light, step back and examine.

Touch it, feel it, picture it in your home. There is nothing like engaging the imagination, which of course is what every tourist brochure does with its photographs – can’t you see yourself here, having that experience, the eighth step.

By now you are well past the moment of that low priced product you initially considered, the one that took you past the tipping point. The question is no longer whether you are going to buy, but what you are going to buy – the ninth step.

Yes, it worked on us, even as I admired the process. But why did it work?

As a process it works because it has been tested and improved over time, a long time. And it mirrors the process so many marketing or sales gurus will tell you to follow. But of course they developed their expertise is in a completely different market. It just happens to be a universal process that works.

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