Selling to Consumers | Sales Training Blog by Skip Anderson

Selling Intangibles to the Consumer: Utilizing a Tangible Substitute During Your Presentation

Sales of intangibles can be challenging. Working with prospects on tangible products allows the senses of touch, sight, hearing, taste, or smell to play a role in the prospect's decision. To improve the success at selling Intangibles (for example, insurance, services, design, educational programs, etc.), sometimes salespeople can benefit by compensating for the lack of physical properties during a sales interaction.

One of the most beneficial strategies for salespeople who sell intangibles is to bring something tangible into the sales interaction. This item, whatever it is, can act as a stand-in for the product or service you sell to satisfy the customer's preference for interaction with something that has physical attributes. Many buyers need this stand-in to help their senses become involved in the buying decision.

For example, if you are presenting a particular investment instrument to a prospect who is currently not investing, prepare two envelopes with your prospect's name and address on the front, and with your company's return address also. In one envelope, enclose a physical "sample" investment account summary. Date this statement for today's date, but for twenty years from now. Put the prospect's name in the name/address section of this "statement" to customize it, and make it look like a real account document (like something they might actually get in the mail). Your statement should show an account balance that is the result of the investment instrument you're presenting to your prospect. Make sure you don't oversell the investment opportunity on this statement; Use conservative rates of return when creating this sample (and include sufficient disclaimers so it's clear that this is just a sample).

In the second envelope, enclose a second account summary for the same prospect, but show the account balance as "0" as if they did not spend the next twenty years investing in this vehicle.

Now paint a picture for the prospect and encourage them to participate as you ask them to imagine where they'll be living in twenty years. Ask them to describe it in detail. Ask how old their kids will be.  Ask them to predict if they will have any grandchildren, and if so, how many. Ask them to imagine going to their mailbox to retrieve the mail and then opening an account summary from your company.

Ask the prospect to open these envelopes and pull out the enclosures. Let the prospect touch these papers, and get them to walk through a twenty-year-from-now scenario with you.  Hand the prospect the envelope with the zero balance first. This will show them what will happen if they don't invest. Then have them open the second statement (the one that shows an estimated balance based upon regular monthly payments for twenty years). 

Ask them to talk about how they would feel if the first envelope was the real one they will open in twenty years. Ask them to reflect on how they felt opening up the other one. Get the tangible letters to represent your intangible investment product.

This is only one example in one industry of how a physical thing can become a stand-in for an intangible product. In this case, it involves the customers' senses of sight and touch. But other tangible solutions might use the sense of hearing, or taste.

If you sell an intangible, what is an example of how you could creatively use a physical something to stand-in for your product and give your prospect an opportunity to physically interact with an object that represents what you sell?

Please share your ideas!

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

How to Handle "Can You Do Better On Your Price?"

This advice pertains to a sales scenario wherein a customer asks you if you can do better with your price. In this scenario, we are going to assume that you have the authority to discount your price, and that you've decided that discounting would make good business sense for this scenario with this prospect.

[Deciding if you should discount is a separate issue and is not covered here. Of course, appropriateness of discounting depends upon your industry, your company, and the product or service you sell.]

Step 1. Validate your prospect.

This is an important step when dealing with virtually any objection. Validiation helps put the prospect at ease and can even be a pleasant surprise to the prospect. Examples: "I thought you were a shrewd buyer, and by gosh you are!" or "I really appreciate that you're sharing with me exactly what's on your mind."

Step 2. Ask if the prospect is ready to commit to a purchase today if you can agree on the price.

If they say "no," there's no reason to negotiate a price because it's a waste of your time and a waste of your prospect's time. You've got other things to discuss with your prospect, like why they are trying to get a better price when they aren't even ready to buy yet.

If the prospect answers affirmatively, you have a green light to go to step 3.

Step 3. Ask, "Where would our pricing need to be in order for you to move ahead with this purchase today?"

Too many salespeople automatically start discounting when a prospect asks about it. Asking this question encourages the shopper to suggest a price that they would be comfortable with. If you can meet that price, it will be very difficult for them to back out of the transaction. If you can't meet their price, tell the prospect that you won't be able to sell your product to him/her at their dream price. Then, ask them if they're willing to come up from their dream price so the two of you can continue negotiating. Many will bite on your question and come back with a more reasonable offer that you do feel comfortable accepting. Otherwise, you can negotiate up from their revised offer to close the transaction. If the prospect is not willing to make a revised offer, then you will have to either meet their demand or lose the sale, but most customers won't take this hard line approach so early in the negotiation process.

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Selling Design Products and Services to the Color-Sensitive Customer

There are a lot of readers of this blog that sell design services or design-oriented products. Today, I offer some sales advice to these readers.

If you sell design-oriented products, some of your customers are design-oriented while others are definitely design-challenged. Some of your design-oriented prospects may especially enjoy the space utilization portion of the design process, others like form and function issues, while others are turned on by color.

Your clients who are keenly interested in color are what I call "color sensitive." They have an intense awareness of color above and beyond the typical customer (even more than other design-oriented customers). I estimate that 10-15% of prospects are color sensitive. Typically, color sensitive individuals get energized by looking at colors in fabrics, paints, and swatches, and they like to talk about color. These highly visual people can be emotionally effected by color, and color decisions should never be treated as an after thought with these prospects.

If your prospect is color-sensitive, it's important to identify this during the selling process. Salespeople need to not only probe for needs, but also probe for an understanding of the prospects design point-of-view, if they have one. A prospect who is very in-tune with color can be a fantastic prospect, but only if you leverage their passion for color into a buying decision. A color sensitive prospect can derail the selling process if the salesperson gets too far into the selling process without developing an understanding of the prospect's color biases and goals.

For instance, designing an entire room without having in-depth color discussions with the prospect can be deadly. Since these color-sensitive people are all about color, they may make furniture decisions more on fabrics and color than on comfort, style, and design. If you show them the perfect side chair but in a fabric that's the wrong color from your client's point-of-view , they may veto your chair proposal because they can't get past the color palette you chose. The deeper you go into the project, the greater the potential set-back.

During the needs and desires investigation, you need to accomplish two tasks:

1. Find out if this prospect is a color-sensitive individual; and

2. Find out as much as possible about the prospect's color biases and preferences for the project or product.

Treating these special prospects with care will help you maximize their buying potential. The right color can help you rock their world, but the wrong color can do severe damage to your relationship.

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

So What Should Retailers Do Now?

I have a prediction: Because of the recession, some retailers will begin to hire salespeople again, not just retail clerks, cashiers, and customer service reps. Others will (unwisely) continue to wait around for the economy to turn around, hoping it will return to "the way things used to be" (read Jim Mathis' article "The Recession Won't End."

Through the last couple decades, many retailers have moved steadily away from commission compensation and away from hiring (and then training) sales professionals. This has turned most retail establishments intro customer self-service environments with little or no added value for the shopper, and reduced abilities to turn shoppers into buyers and to turn buyers into bigger buyers.

Nobody likes pushy salespeople. But I believe nobody likes non-existent salespeople, either. Retail customers love to work with competent, professional, skilled sales professionals. So I say, let's not hire pushy salespeople, but let's also not hire robotic customer service representatives.

Retailers take a proactive approach with the prospects that come to their establishments, or they can take the reactive approach by merely showing their merchandise on their retail floors and placing human drones adjacent to this merchandise but who do nothing but answer customers' questions and ring up sales.

Can retailers afford to continue down the clerk/cashier path in a post-recession economy? I say no way.

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Skip Anderson Interviewed for StarTribune Article

I had the pleasure of being interviewed for an article in the Minneapolis StarTribune newspaper on Sunday, March 16th. The article, written by Brett Pyrtle, is titled "Get Specific for Success."

The article is about the importance of sales training in a slow economy. Read the article here.

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Read This Good Stuff

1. Colleen Stanley has three great suggestions for sales managers who lead sales meetings. I love her suggestions. Since many sales meetings are less than impressive, this is a must-read for sales managers.

2. One of the major reasons salespeople don't achieve their maximum sales performance potential is because they have difficulty looking at the sales interaction through the eyes of their prospects. By this, I don't mean you shouldn't ask for the sale, or ask challenging questions, or cower in the corner when they give you objections. What I mean is we sometimes we tend to sell as if WE are the most important ones at the table.

Read Mike Sigers account of his customer service nightmare. Then rethink your entire process (if you're a salesperson, think through your entire sales process; if you're a manager, think through you're entire management process; if you're a business owner, think through your company's entire customer interaction cycle). Then, identify what you must change to ensure what happened to Mike never happens to one of your customers.

3. Things are a bit wacky these days in most industries with the recession and all. But employees are still important, and always will be. If you can't keep your key employees (or any employee for that matter) happy by giving them more money, here are 12 ways to keep your employees happy without raising wages.

4. What's the next big thing? Forget about the recession. Quit looking back and look ahead instead. Here's the next big thing in China. It's crappy.

5. If you do any custom-order work for your prospects, it's important to achieve absolute clarity with your customers before you embark on the custom work (please take note, home remodelers, custom closet companies, landscape designers...and cake bakers).

Let's imagine you call the cake bakery to order a cake. The associate asks what you want written on the cake and you say, "Best wishes Suzanne - underneath that we will miss you."

When you go to pick up Suzanne's cake for the big going away party on Friday afternoon, this is what they have waiting for you:

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

You Can Lead a Salesperson to Training, But Can You Make Him Learn?

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."

I was chatting with a salesperson at a networking event a couple weeks ago. I'll call him Eric. Eric was familiar with me and had read some of my material on this blog and on my main website. We had a nice chat.

After the event, Eric and I spent some more time together. He was in a talkative mood and I guess I was, too. He started asking me questions about how to handle various sales challenges, and because I love to talk about the art and science of selling, I spent quite a bit of time with him and offered him a bunch of free advice.

He was having some selling challenges, and was looking for help. That's a good thing. But here's what stood out to me. Despite the fact that I had a great (in my opinion, at least!) solution for every single sales challenge he was serving up, he wasn't drinking it in. He was paralyzed, really, by his current mindset. Everything I offered was logical and has been proven to to be effective. But he couldn't step out of his current reality long enough to see the solutions that were right there in front of him.

He was competent at understanding his problems, but he was incompetent at recognizing the solutions even though they were right there in front of him. He heard my words and nodded his head in agreement, but he was dazed and confused, and I wasn't having an impact on his situation.

This is frustrating for someone who lives every day of his career to help others achieve their maximum performance.

Contrast Eric's scenario with two gentlemen I talked to last night. At a social function after a conference at which I spoke, these two guys came up to me and started asking questions that were similar to what Eric had asked. I offered them a boatload of free sales advice. These guys were sponges of learning. They soaked up everything I had to say, and I could see the wheels of comprehension turning as we talked.

They were led to water, and they were drinking it.

Become a sponge for sales knowledge. Before you can dismiss a concept, you've got to soak it in first. Before you can ensure your current sales methodology is the right one, make sure you know what other options you have. Before you become an individual that's destined to a future of sales and career constipation, open your ears and your mind to knowledge.
Drink up!

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Three Misconceptions About Why Customers Buy

Customers' needs can be complex. When we meet those often complex needs, we have an increased opportunity to turn a prospect into a customer, or to keep an existing customer.

But I believe there are three misconceptions about why customers buy, and all are relative to customer needs.

Misconception #1: Customers always buy to solve a problem.

Customers often buy to solve problems, but there are many other reasons shoppers spend money (and choose when to spend it, and with which company and from which salesperson). If you believe everything you read on the Internet, you would be led to believe that customers only buy to solve problems. This is a common theme of articles about sales (usually written by business-to-business folks). But I believe that only looking for "problems" to solve can distract you from the real reasons prospects will spend money with you.

Sarah collects a famous brand of crystal. She started collecting these pieces nineteen years ago. She owns vases, candlestick holders, wine glasses, and many other pieces. She usually gets a piece from her husband for her birthday, and another one for Christmas. She may pick up a couple other pieces throughout the course of each year to add to her collection.

Sarah's best friend collects this same brand of crystal, as do a couple colleagues at work, including her boss. Her mother has collected the same brand since she got married forty years ago. Sara perceives that people who collect this brand of crystal have good taste, an appreciation for the finer things in life, and to be members of a desirable economic class that can afford these pieces.

Does Sarah buy these pieces because she wants to solve a problem? No. Sarah buys these pieces because she wants to belong to (or continue to belong to) the group of people who own this brand of crystal. Her buying motivation is not to solve a problem; it is to confirm her membership in this self-defined (with the help of the manufacturer's marketing!) group of people with whom she identifies.

Misconception #2: Customers buy the least expensive option.

Having the least expensive product in your product category can be desirable to a certain segment of the market. But most people don't buy the least expensive option. "Saving money" is a key buying motivation of some customers, but certainly not of all customers.

Here's a story about Richard. Richard is not real. He and his story exist only in my imagination.

Richard owns a dry cleaning company that has a competitor one block away. His competitor is a recognized discount cleaner, and Richard has matched his competitors pricing since they appeared on the scene twelve years ago. Eventually becoming frustrated with this approach, Richard decided he was tired of chasing the low price market. He changed his brand and his approach to doing business.

Richard raised his prices and offered several new services. He re-branded his business as being the dry cleaner of choice for the busy professional. Over time, this branding message started to resonate with his new market. Since most customers of dry cleaning are professionals, and most self-classify themselves as being "busy," he started to add services to his menu to attract this clientele.

He offered curbside pickup and drop off. Customers could drive up to the front door and one of the associates would come out to retrieve their dirty laundry, or deliver their cleaned clothes to the customer's car. Eventually, he added "call ahead service" where a customer could call when they leave home or work, and Richard would have their cleaning ready to deliver to the customer's car when they arrive. This was a much-appreciated time-saver for Richard's customer base.

He implemented a payment plan where a credit card would be kept on file, and the customer would sign off on the charge without having to swipe the card, again saving time. He opened credit accounts for customers who would receive monthly statements rather than pay for each order.

Richard implemented effective promotional programs. Once a month, he would promote an upcoming "coffee day." Anybody who would drop off laundry by 10 am would receive a free large cup of famous-brand coffee. Richard hired a service to come in and prepare the coffee, but he saw his business increase by 125% on coffee days. The concept of free coffee resonated with his market of busy professionals and he found word-of-mouth buzz added to the success of the program.

"Goodwill Day" allowed customers to donate gently used clothing in exchange for a coupon good for a discount on future services. Richard's valet service would deliver and pick-up dry cleaning at customers' homes or businesses for a fee, and since his market was busy professionals, this service was seen as valuable and customers paid extra for it.

Align yourself with customer needs, not with an often tired and ineffective focus on lowest price.

Misconception #3: Customers buy the best quality.

Customers may or may not buy the best quality. It depends upon their buying criteria and the customer's individual definition of "quality."

When I was a sales manager a number of years ago, I went to a department store and bought two similar men's short-sleeved shirts. Both had zippers instead of buttons. Both had a fabric with a waffle-like texture. Both were 100% cotton, both were a similar color, and both were attractive and stylish (at least in my estimation). One of these shirts was a Ralph Lauren Polo brand shirt. The other was an inexpensive house brand.

I placed duct tape over the labels of both shirts. I put a small patch of duct tape over the left chest area where a embroidered brand identifier would be if there was one. I covered up the fabric and care labels with duct tape.

I then passed both shirts around my sales team and asked them which one they would buy. Having no clues about the brand of the shirts available to them (thanks to the duct tape), they had to base their decision on other criteria.

Every single salesperson chose the house brand shirt, which sold for less than fifteen dollars at the time. Nobody chose the Ralph Lauren Polo brand shirt which sold for forty dollars (if my memory serves). When I removed the duct tape, this group of mostly stylish and design-oriented folks were intrigued and surprised.

I asked which shirt they would have purchased if the duct tape was absent at the time of purchase. The vast majority of my group confessed they would have purchased the Ralph Lauren Polo shirt. When the labels were visible, the "customers" would have purchased the brand with the perceived best quality (or maybe it was the brand with the perceived highest value). When the brand information was missing from the decision, the "customers" would have purchased the low priced option because they all felt this shirt was of higher quality and was more attractive than the other.

Customers make complex buying decisions based upon their perceptions of quality, value, and their perceived appropriateness and attractiveness of the product. If customers bought only the best quality products, then all car buyers would buy Hondas, Toyotas, and Subarus (who seem to have made the best quality cars over the last decade according to a leading consumer magazine).

Customers often buy the best quality, but often do not because other buying criteria are more important.

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Customer Engagement: Two Retail Tales

I had two shopping experiences recently, and the customer engagement skills of the two salespeople could not have been different.

First, I stopped at a local garage storage products showroom. This is a higher-end showroom that sells garage storage cabinetry and accessories. I had been to one of the company's other showrooms about five years ago, but hadn't seen this particular showroom.

"Hi," said the salesperson.

"Good morning," I replied.

"Have you been into our store before?" was his first question.

"Not this one, but one of your other stores, but it's been about five years ago," I offered.

The salesperson continued, "Well over in this corner we have some of our clearance product including the Gladiator line which we're discontinuing. And over there is our top-of-the-line product. And we've got accessories over here and such-and-such over here."

"Great," I responded.

"I'll let you look around; let me know if you have any questions," he said.

I looked around for 5-10 minutes and then left. Business must be very good for the salesperson because he didn't show much of an interest in engaging me.

This interaction had almost zero customer engagement. I can think of a hundred questions the salesperson could have asked me to engage me in honest, sincere, human-to-human conversation. But he took the ineffectual selling route instead. What about:

"What kind of garage do you have?"
"What are you thinking about doing to your garage?"
"What brings you in today?"
"How does your garage work for you now?"
"If you could improve your garage, what would you do to it?"
"What's happening in your garage?"
"Do you own a garage? Tell me about it."
"Who else uses your garage besides you?"
"What's your biggest frustration with your garage?"
"What kind of improvements to your garage would help out you and your family?"
"What kind of interest do you have in sprucing up your garage?"
"Tell me how your garage is working for storage now"

And so on.

My advice to this salesperson? Ditch your sales pitch. Engage customers instead. Have real life conversations that matter.

My other story is about when my wife and I stopped at West Elm, a contemporary furnishings store owned by Williams-Sonoma. The energetic salesperson with a fabulous smile greeted us with abundant positive vibes. After saying hello to us, her opening question was, "What did you come in to look at today?"

This is a great opening question, and far surpasses the bland and typical, "How can I help you?" that I often hear from retail salespeople. My wife told her that we were on their mailing list and got their catalogs, and thought we'd stop in. I added that we were on our way home when my wife said, "Let's stop at West Elm."

Then the salesperson asked us if we shopped at Williams-Sonoma or Pottery Barn. We confirmed that we did, and she told us they were owned by the same company, which would explain why we get their catalogs. She told us about their stores opening up all of the country, and then asked us this question: (again):

"What did you come in to look at today/"

I love that. She purposefully came back to a question she had already asked, but wasn't sure she had gotten very good information from us yet. We truly were just there to look around, and had no needs and no intention of buying anything, but she handled herself very well. If we had been in the market for a chair or a desk or a bed, her questioning would likely have gotten it out of us, which is one of the key skills of top-performing retail salespeople. She engaged us, checked back with us, and showed a lot of class, appropriate enthusiasm, and some decent selling skill. She had ditched her sales pitch.

If you sell, be more like the West Elm salesperson and less like the garage storage guy. Engagement of prospects is vital in selling. The right questions engage prospects. Selling is about asking the right questions.

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

The Miracle of Customer Engagement

I'll be speaking at the Closets and Home Organization Conference and Expo next week in Schaumburg, Illinois (suburban Chicago). My presentation, "The Miracle of Customer Engagement," will teach one of the three dimensions in our 3D Selling™ model.

Back when I was selling employed as a full time salesperson, I started to have incredible sales success when I noticed that doing a better job of engaging prospects in the selling/buying process resulted in much better sales results. Eventually, I developed a system around this concept and started teaching it to others when I became a sales manager and training manager. Now, a couple of decades later as the founder of Selling to Consumers, I teach 3D Selling to my corporate and individual clients to help them ignite the buying potential of each prospect.

Many salespeople limit their sales success because they don't spend enough effort, or have sufficient expertise, to fully engage their prospects. I'll present my 10 Paths to Customer Engagement which will present concrete strategies to develop and leverage customer engagement in attendee's individual selling situations in the field.

The conference is for sellers of customer closet systems and home storage products who sell primarily in customers' homes, but also in showrooms and trade shows. For more information on the conference, go to www.closets-expo.com.

For more information on how our training on 3D Selling can help you or your company, contact Selling to Consumers at www.sellingtoconsumers.com/contact or call us at 651.681.8568.

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Missed Opportunities to Add Value

Are you missing opportunities to add value to your prospects and customers?

In today's complex world, prospects and customers have a deep desire for added value from the people they do business with. They want salespeople to make things easier for them, to help solve their problems, and to watch their backs. A salesperson who can add value is more likely to make the sale than the salesperson who doesn't seize "adding value opportunities."

Last week, I received this email from my daughter's school. The email itself was a "value added" communication, and I appreciate that. But as you read the message, can you identify how the school missed an opportunity to add more value?

- - - - -

TODAY AT WXY SCHOOL
County Public Health Department Recommendation

In light of recent cases of chicken pox among some District ABCD students, the EFGH County Public Health Department and the Minnesota Department of Health are recommending that a second dose of varicella (chicken pox) vaccine be administered to all students who have had just one does. (Please provide your child's school nurse with the month/date/year of the second dose.) This fall, a new state law will require two doses of varicella immunization for all incoming kindergarten and 7th grade students. For more information about chicken pox, please see the fact sheet developed by the Dakota County Public Health Department. [link followed]

- - - - -

Okay, did you identify the missed opportunity?

Parents of 700 students were asked to contact the school nurse when their child had received their second chicken pox vaccination. How many parents have an email address or phone number for the school nurse? My wife and I are active in the school and we don't have them. My guess is that few do.

Here's a very simple way the school could have added value to the clientele of the school:

Include an email address (or email link) or phone number for the school nurse directly in the email so dutiful parents of 700 kids who are following directions to notify the school nurse of the second varicella vaccination aren't forced to call the school office to get this information. Not only would this add value to the lives of the parents, it would make life easier for the school personnel who have to field all those phone calls. 30 seconds up front would have saved hours of cumulative wasted time in the end.

Sometimes little things can make life much easier for your prospects and customers. You just have to identify, and then do, those little things.

What opportunities to add value to your customers are you missing?

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Is Your Business Cluttered?

When a home gets cluttered, a family can lose efficiency, feel increased stress, and family members' moods can become lowered. When a business gets cluttered, it too loses its efficiency, and it feels more stress, and it is more difficult to earn desired profits.

Note that I'm talking about the cluttering of a business, not a cluttering of a workplace (although that can be a bad thing, too!). Clutter in business is the baggage (that can felt but not seen) that slows down an organization. It resides in employees' minds, in the marketplace, and in every nook and cranny of an organization.

Is your business suffering from business clutter? Here are seven causes of business clutter that could be hurting your organization:

1. Lack of clarity.

Businesses need clarity. Employees need clarity of expectations. Management needs clarity of priorities. Customers need to experience brand clarity. Business clutter accumulates quickly when clarity has not been woven into the fabric of an organization.

2. Lack of adequate systems.

Organizations need systems to run efficiently because they tell employees what to do in common business situations. Systems are any repeatable process used in the day-to-day operations of a business. Without systems, your business is working at less than peak efficiency.

3. Lack of communication.

Clutter starts to accumulate in an organization when there is insufficient levels of communication within it. If management doesn't communicate sufficiently with employees, and departments don't sufficiently communicate with each other, and employees don't sufficiently communicate with management, clutter can become a cancer that spreads quickly.

4. Lack of leadership.

Leaders get followers pointed in the same direction. When different employees or different employee groups within an organization are pointed in different directions, it's difficult to make forward progress. Lessen business clutter in your company with improved leadership.

5. Lack of decisiveness.

People need and want decisiveness. Without it, clutter forms in an around employees. Organizations become reactive rather than proactive. Groups spin their wheels and waste time and effort.

6. Lack of focus and consistency.

Businesses that lose focus or consistency are breeding grounds for business clutter. Did you follow through on the initiative you introduced six months ago, or did it die in the water? Decide what to focus on and then pursue it until the desired goals are met. Consistency and focus help keep business clutter to a minimum.

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Windows to the Salesperson's Soul

I meet lots of salespeople every week. I teach them. I observe them in selling situations. I talk to them. I listen to them. I watch them.

Some have mastered the art of eye contact. An individual's eyes can draw you into conversation. They can put you at ease. They can make you listen. Great salespeople make great eye contact.

On the other hand, I see many salespeople that have very weak eye contact with others. They look down. Their eyes dart left and right and up and down. Their eyes fidget. They avoid eye contact or give up eye contact too quickly.

You know what Shakespeare said: "Eyes are the windows to the soul." Here's what I say:

"If eyes are the windows to people's souls, then eyes are certainly the windows to salespeople's souls, too. If you have a soul, and you want your customer to see it, make plentiful eye contact. And you might even see the customer's soul looking back at you."

-Skip Anderson

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Marketing Stuff

Spend fifteen minutes with these marketing and branding resources and learn something today to make your business stronger:

1. Martin Lindstrom.

Many readers of this blog contacted me about my podcast interview with brand futurist Martin Lindstrom (Listen to the interview with Martin Lindstrom). You appreciated the discussion about neuromarketing and listening to Martin's stories.

If you'd like more from Martin, watch the Martin Lindstrom Video Report, his video podcast for Advertising Age.

2. Your Personal Brand.

Everyone needs to understand the power of their personal brand. Sure, you might work for XYZ Corporation, but you (an individual) should give some attention to the characteristics of your brand. Read Your Personal Branding Statement.

3. IKEA Buzz.

How are you getting the word out about your business? Tried anything new lately? Check out what IKEA did to get some attention and create buzz in the market.

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

4 Ways to Learn How to Sell

Here are the four ways salespeople learn how to sell:

1. Trial and error; instinct.

Learning by trying different tactics is how many of us learned how to sell. We try different things to see what works. We rely on our instincts to guide us. This is basically a self-teaching model of sales learning.

2. Observing others.

Many salespeople learned to sell by watching other salespeople work and then assimilating what they observed into their own selling methodology. If those being observed are high quality salespeople, this is a viable way to learn how to sell.

3. Books, seminars, audio/video, sales training.

There's a wealth of sales learning products available in the marketplace. Excellent books from decades past, along with present-day training utilizing new technologies are plentiful. But there is incorrect advice out there, too.

4. Coaching and mentoring.

Salespeople who have found someone to coach and mentor them early in their careers (and throughout their careers) are fortunate. This coaching and mentoring can come from a sales manager, a veteran coworker, a spouse, or someone else. If the mentor is a good coach, this can be an excellent way to learn. If the mentor isn't a good salesperson, this isn't such a great way to learn.

How did you learn how to sell? Take the poll:

Have a reaction to this post? Please leave a comment below. Subscribe to our free sales tips email newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Successful Selling: The Secret & The Puzzle

If you knew there was a secret to selling successfully, would you want to know what the secret was? Of course you would.

First, I want to say I don't believe there is one secret to selling. Secondly, I'm suspicious of sales trainers and authors who try to sell books, seminars, and webinars by overstating the importance of their offerings with outlandish and exaggerated statements. 

Having said that, I believe that good selling skills are like a secret. Once you know how to accomplish this or that, you've unlocked almost magical powers to achieve remarkable sales success. There isn't one secret to successful selling; there are many secrets.That's why I started Selling to Consumers Sales Training: to help companies and salespeople achieve remarkable sales performance.

Here's a puzzle that illustrates the value of knowing a secret morsel of information: 

Directions: Connect all nine dots below by drawing four connected straight lines without lifting your pen from the paper. Each dot must have only one line touching it, and you can't backtrack with your pen.

You can download a pdf version of the 9 dot puzzle (sales managers: this is a nifty thing to do with your salespeople during a sales meeting).

When you're ready to see the solution, you can see it here, or download a pdf version of the solution.

Could you solve the puzzle successfully if you didn't know the secret? Could you achieve your maximum sales performance if you don't know the secrets to successful selling? 

Suggestion: Subscribe to the Selling to Consumers Sales Tips Newsletter for more sales secrets, and consider subscribing to the RSS feed of this blog. Learn the secrets to successful selling!

If you like this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

Sell with Enthusiasm

Don't we just love it when we run across an individual with sincere, genuine enthusiasm? It could be an athlete, a public speaker, a politician, a teacher, or a new friend, but people love to be around enthusiastic others.

We're talking about real, natural, enthusiasm here, not faked enthusiasm. Nobody likes to be around someone who isn't really enthusiastic but is trying to act like they are.

If you could watch a video recording of your last dozen sales interactions, or your last week at work, or your last week at home, where would your life rate on the enthusiasm meter? How would your customers rate your enthusiasm? Your coworkers? Your manager? Your employees? Your family?

Today, be enthusiastic about:

• your product;

• your company;

• your job (lots of people don't have one right now);

• the opportunities you have in your career;

• your life; your family; your friends; your health, if it's in good shape;

• your potential as a sales professional; and most of all...

• your prospects.

Do you need a bit of inspiration to help you along today?

I'm a big fan of classical music (and lots of other music, too). I was blown away by a TED video of a youth orchestra from Venezuela under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel (The 28-year-old Dudamel will become the Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic this fall). In the video, these young musicians play extraordinarily difficult music with incredible enthusiasm. Even if you're not into orchestral music, I hope you'll take a few minutes to watch this video. It's awesome. Crank the volume!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

TMI in Selling

Providing TMI (too much information) is an affliction from which many salespeople suffer. Giving TMI is worse than TLI (too little information).

Prospects don't want all the information you have. They only want the specific bits of information that applies to them, their needs, and their particular situation. Anything above and beyond that is TMI.

I experienced the TMI effect recently (and I was to blame for it) when I told a group of my buddies how I like to sit around the house in my underwear and watch TV on my days off. I told them sometimes I even leave out the underwear. Disgusted shouts of "TMI" wafted from the group.

I was just kidding about the whole thing (much to their relief) but it's clear that TMI has the potential to be a very damaging element in any interaction, and that includes a sales interaction. Control your urge to give too much information.

Here's a conversation I witnessed when I stopped at Bruegger's Bagels recently for lunch (note that Brueggers has recently started selling panini, which is made out of bread rather than bagels):

CUSTOMER: How much is a loaf of your bread?

BRUEGGER'S GUY: You know, we'd have to charge you so much that it wouldn't make sense.
CUSTOMER: I love your bread; can't I buy a loaf to take home?

BRUEGGER'S GUY: They haven't found out a way to price it so that it would be affordable. The way it is right now, I would need to charge you an immense amount because of how the sandwiches are priced, and so it would come out to some astronomical price like fifty dollars or something, and I'm sure you don't want to pay fifty dollars or more for a loaf of bread. We've been talking about the pricing and I know they're working on something but what I'd have to do is charge you for a sandwich but without the filling and stuff and multiply that by how many of slices there are in a loaf of bread. We get our bread from a supplier and we'd need to get better pricing if we were going to sell just the bread alone and not in a panini or sandwich. The way it is we have some problems with our supplier so I don't know if they would look for a different supplier or maybe something else because we don't bake the bread in our stores like we do the bagels. So I can't sell you a loaf of bread unless you want to pay like fifty dollars.

Most of Bruegger's Guy's words were wasted words. They didn't add value to the customer or strengthen the relationship between the customer and the vendor. All the Bruegger's Guy need to have said was, "I'm sorry, but we don't sell loaves of bread at this time, but feel free to check back again in case that changes."

Or better yet: "...if you want to leave me with your name and phone number or email, I'll let you know if we start selling loaves of bread."

Don't fall prey to the TMI effect!

- - - - -

There are two free tickets being given away to the Art of Sales conference in Toronto on March 26, 2009. The conference features Jeffrey Gitomer and other presenters. For more information, go to Art of Sales.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more. 

March: In Like A Lion

It's the first of March today, which means we have two months of 2009 under our collective belts. That means the year is one-sixth over, with five-sixths remaining. Are you on track to accomplish what you need to in 2009?

The economy is challenging for many of us (for some, that's an understatement - it's downright frightening). Some businesses are in turmoil or transition, while others are chugging along at near-normal pace.

But whatever you want or need to accomplish this year, you now have one-sixth less of the year in which to do it. Time is moving along despite the challenges in your career or company, so if you want to be moving along, too, you've got to make sure you've made one-sixth of your goals for 2009 already.

The beginning of March is an excellent time to "FEAC":

F = FOCUS. The "down economy chatter" can hypnotize a salesperson into a lack of focus. Combat that effect and refocus yourself mentally on the tasks at hand.

E = EVALUATE. Any plan needs periodic reevaluation, and with one-sixth of the year behind us, this is a great time to do it. What's working? What's not working? Do some analysis and and make some conclusions.

A = ADJUST. Salespeople, like much of the general public, seem to have a preference for readjustment on New Year's Day. But why wait ten more months before you adjust the direction of your efforts? With five-sixths of the year remaining, it's a great time of the year to make small or big changes in your direction.

C - COMMIT. Renewing commitment to your goals now can help you maximize the rewards of the next ten months. A major reason for sales failure is a lack of commitment on the part of the salesperson; don't fall prey to a lack of commitment.

So you've got five-sixths of the year remaining. Yes, it's tough out there. But make the most of it as you dive into March 2009 (why not enter March like a lion?).

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to our free sales tips newsletter.

Skip Anderson is the Founder of Selling to Consumers Sales Training, a B2C and retail sales training and management consulting company. Skip is nuts about helping companies and individuals sell more.