Are you trying to educate everyone?

Having written on this subject in the last blog I then read an article which lead me to think that I should come back and clarify some aspects of the blog, just in case I had you busy trying to educate everyone in your sales efforts.

Education to assist customers see the solution to their problem is a powerful and effective sales tool, but trying to educate everyone puts you on the road to failure.

But just in case you were, the clues were in the blog:

• Note "your customer" - it is not everyone you are trying to educate, just your customer.
• And I quoted a bloke called Doug D'Anna "The best salespeople aren't trying to sell you anything. They are trying to help you get what you want in relation to what you're looking for." Note the "what you are looking for". In other words, they're likely to be a customer

The article I read was by a bloke called Gary Bencivenga.   Now you are not likely to have heard of Gary.  He works in the field of copywriting, which is writing direct response sales material such as sales letters and advertorials.  I'm not talking of your common or garden type advertising here but someone who understands that copywriting is salesmanship in print.

As he put it, the ultimate secret of how to sell anything is "Find out what others want and help them get it."  He then made the point that you can't educate someone in to realising that they have a problem.  You can't motivate them to want something they don't already want.  If you have to do that, you're already losing the battle.

And that means you have to listen before you can educate, and find out if they are a potential customer.  Otherwise you are wasting your breath, and the potential customer's time.

To reinforce this, a bloke in a workshop on Customer Management I was running recently commented that a problem many sales people have is that they try and present their solution before they've heard what your problem is.

In fact that is the perfect way to lose the sale. Either the customer will decide that they are not being listened to, and walk out.  Or the product or service being offered will not solve the customer's problem.  Both situations could have been resolved had the salesman listened.

If you are the one making the sale, and as a reader of this blog you probably are, then your job is to find out what is motivating your potential customer, why has he or she come to you, what is their problem.

And that is where the education comes in. The customer is not likely to know as much about your area of expertise as you.  Sometimes they will have no idea of the best way to solve their problem, so need to understand the options available.  Sometimes they will have already decided on a solution, the wrong solution.

Either way, your job is to educate them and show them how they can solve their problem through your product or service. Only then will they buy.

But if you have to educate them to understand that that they have a problem, then they are not your customer.  You are not trying to educate everyone, just your customer.

The power of educating your customer

As I packed up from the workshop I'd just delivered, an attendee came up to me and said, "I've been coming to these workshops for two years, and that was by far the best I have attended".

That's nice to hear, and if she had been coming to them for two years, she must have been getting something out of the others as well to keep coming back for more.

Now this is not a pitch for our workshops. It led me to think about you and your business.  You see, the workshops we run are designed to assist small business owners and managers develop and grow, to give them something they can use in their business to make their businesses better businesses.  Obviously this repeat customer thought she was getting just that.

You will know that the most effective tool you have in winning sales is to educate and assist your customer.  We discussed just that in a previous blog.  Customers don't buy because they have been bludgeoned into handing over their money.  They buy because you are solving a problem for them, removing an itch that has been troubling them, overcoming a roadblock, making them feel better.  In short, your offer is of benefit and value.

As a bloke called Doug D'Anna said "The best salespeople aren't trying to sell you anything. They are trying to help you get what you want in relation to what you're looking for."

And the education and assistance you offer helps them see the solution to their problem.  They will be better, have gained, because of your solution.  When you provide valuable information and confirm a belief that the prospective customer already has, it transforms you from being a salesman to being an ally.  You will have given every sensible reason to buy, answered all the obvious questions, and overcome all reasonable objections, and the sale is yours.

If that customer walks out of the door of your business feeling like they have gained from the education and assistance you have provided, that you did have the solution to their problem, feeling relieved, do you think your customer is likely to come back?

Even better, do you think that customer is likely to tell someone else about how helpful you have been?  The ones who tell others about you are those customers that you have delighted.  So if you think about it solving the customer's problem not only gets you the sale, it gets you the long term customer.  And long term customers are the most profitable.

This is why smart businesses make initial sales to acquire customers. Dumb businesses make initial sales to make a profit.

Educating and assisting your customers is the most powerful sales tool you have.

 

Would you trust a fast talking sales pitch?

It's a common tale, but true.  And there is a marketing lesson in it.

Recently we needed to have a new driveway for our home.  There were a number of options available and, after some research, we settled on the type of driveway we wanted.  So then we needed to get some quotes for the work.

And that's where the sale was lost and won. Why oh why do sales people think they can, or should, talk you into an order.  One of the prospective contractors was garrulous, to say the least of things.  We couldn't get a word in edgeways, let alone explain the issues from our viewpoint.  A constant stream of opinions, views and self-confessed expertise swamped us, rolling in on an unstoppable tide of words.

On and on and on it went. He had all the answers.  It was if we were expected to crumble under the sheer weight of verbiage, and gratefully sign on the dotted line.

Is that how your sales people operate? Because if your customers are anything like us, all the onslaught does is get their backs up.  And they stop listening.

The reality is that most sales are not made on one call or presentation.  Customers like to be comfortable, like to evaluate both the offer and the options.  And in these times, particularly if your customer is another business, decision making is even slower.  More people are involved in the decision, and approval is taken up the line.

One study suggested that in downturns business procurement decisions take up to 2.5 times longer to be made.

There is another way of course, several in fact.  And about the only fast step is to follow up.  The others require you to slow down.  So what might you do?

1.    Listen - there's an old sales saying that you should listen twice as long as you talk - ""We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less."  Some people are slow learners.  That saying is so old that it goes back to an old Greek bloke called Diogenes a couple of thousand of years ago.  Of course you need to listen as well as hear.

2.    Don't offer a solution until you have understood the problem. So many companies proudly proclaim that they offer a "solution".  A solution to what?  People don't want to hear about your solution until they know you are talking to them about their problem.  Slow down to listen, and understand.  Craft a solution for their problem. A solution to everybody's problem is a solution to nobody's problem.

3.    Cut the verbiage. People can spot B.S. a mile away.  They are cynical.  They've heard it all before.  So when unsupported grandiose claims (unique, leading edge, leaders in the field) are made the barriers start to come up.  Having judged many a business award I can't tell you how many businesses claim they are unique.  They can't all be unique, and the very rare demonstrations of why they are gives lie to the claim.  Slow down and cut the crap.

4.    Keep it simple. If you inundate your prospect with too many choices their eyes will glaze over.  It all becomes too hard and the easiest decision to make is not to make a decision.

Slow down, allow the client to talk, and they'll talk themselves, and you, into the sale.

 

They can't all be wrong

There seems to be a consistent message coming from many sources about how small business should be responding to the current economic situation.

A recent newsletter from John Forde of CRT picked up some suggestions from US Business Week.  The tips seem pretty sensible, probably because, as I say, many others have been saying it and, says he modestly, I've been saying similar things in this blog and my newsletters.

Here's the summary courtesy of CRT:

1) Don't panic. You can't sit still, but you also don't want to swerve like a drunk on ice skates.  Cycles happen. Sometimes they happen hard, but we'll come back around eventually.

2) Cut fat, not muscle. And, says the article wisely, marketing is muscle. Slow downs are THE ideal time to snatch up market share.

3) Don't water down your message to "go wide." Desperate for customers, it's easy to try to widen your market appeal. Stick to your focus instead.   Just get better at it.

4) Watch out for "discount training." If you keep offering "special deals," eventually the deals are no longer special... and customers learn to wait for the next deal instead of buying right now.

5) Don't ignore the facts, just have a plan. You can't wish the crisis by ignoring it.  Mention it, but do so in the context of showing leadership on how to get past it.

It was interesting to note recently that the major Australian retail chain, Myers, is increasing, not decreasing their marketing budget this year.  They are obviously hoping to ‘snatch up market share' from their competitors.  Mind you, I'm not suggesting that small business should launch into a major general advertising campaign.

Increase your promotional efforts by all means, but there are more effective ways for small business to increase their promotional efforts which will give them a better return on their promotional investment than general advertising.

The late Peter Drucker said that "The perfect advertisement is one of which the reader can say, 'This is for me, and me alone'."  And what is wide about that.  Mass advertising simply cannot be that personal and relevant, which helps explain why direct marketing - online or off - has overtaken it.  More particularly, it helps explain why the database is so important.  If you would like to discuss how you might go about this, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Another recent webinar suggested that small business should be spending 75% of their efforts developing and growing their relationships with their existing customers, and only 25% of their efforts on developing new business.  You will always get more sales and better profits from your existing customers than new customers, provided of course you look after them.

In other words, don't go wide!

As for discounting, reread the article "Don't increase sales, increase Gross Profits" , or read it if you haven't.  Small business, because they have low overheads, are more likely to improve their profits more by magnifying their margins than chasing sales through reducing their margins.

And I know you have a plan, as we talked about a couple of blogs ago.

The message is consistent.  Can you be?

A lot of pain

As Nelson Burr (he has a real name) kept telling me, he'd been a, well it doesn't matter what his trade was, for 30 years.  I think he was trying to tell me that he knew all there was to know about his trade.  Certainly there was nothing wrong with his workmanship.  But you couldn't say the same thing about his business.

Nelson had a problem. He always needed money, money to pay his suppliers, money to pay his sub-contractors, and probably money to feed himself.

His problem in getting money from his job was that he didn't plan things out, other than in his head.  There was no project plan, no schedule and no checklist.  So things weren't finished on time, and that delayed progress payments.  Things were forgotten and had to be chased after he had started for the day.  That took time, time that could have been more productively spent.

Lack of time lead to short cuts, to things not being done properly which, when spotted, had to be redone.  More time!  Lack of money lead to cheap solutions outside the specification which, like the short cuts, had to be reworked.

Lack of money, trying to catch up, trying not to be caught out, lead to frayed nerves, and inevitably a short temper.  And a short temper lead to strained relationships with, well, almost everybody, suppliers, sub-contractors, even the customer.
In a word - a lot of PAIN.

Of course there was a solution, but having been in his trade for 30 years he knew it all.  .  The solution was a little planning, a little preparation, some documentation to go with the job.  So let's look at what he could have had:

• A simple project plan in the form of a bar chart. It didn't need to be software based, but that would help. Something that laid down on paper (not in the head) all the major tasks in the job, the sub-tasks within those tasks, and when they were to start and finish.
• Some clearly established milestones before the commencement of the project - when he could get paid.
• A checklist of the resources required: people, raw materials, parts, equipment, and supplies would certainly help.
• A plan for co-ordination and review of progress.
• Some contingency planning - what risks could delay or cost more.

As a colleague used to say: "Slow down up front to speed up delivery".  Taking the time for a little planning at the beginning of any job prevents a lot of pain along the way.

Success is very, very rarely accident.  Failure's no accident either.  You don't have to get it right, you just have to get it going.