Selling to Consumers | Sales Training Blog by Skip Anderson

It's Time to Calibrate Your Sales Radar!

I was driving along the scenic north shore of Lake Superior with friends twenty-five years ago. As I came around a curve in the road, a police officer's car was staring at me, and as I passed it, the car quickly turned around and followed me and soon beckoned me to the side of the road with the help of some out-of-date flashing red lights and an anemic siren that sounded as if it had wailed one too many times.

The "town constable" of the hamlet approached my car and scolded me for driving my car at an inappropriate speed. He notified me of his radar reading and quickly presented me with a hastily written ticket.

Believing I was not speeding, I decided to appear at court several weeks later rather than simply pay the ticket. Even though I lived outside Minnesota at the time, the matter of principle kicked in, and I spent a lot more money getting to the courthouse in Duluth, Minnesota for my court appearance than the ticket would have cost me. And did I mention the attorney I hired to get me out of this ticket? But principle is like that.

The prosecuting attorney called his first witness, the constable I had gotten to know a few weeks earlier. The attorney asked the constable several introductory questions, but then the judge began to intensely question the witness. He soon settled on a series of inquiries about his calibration, or lack thereof, of his radar gun.

It quickly became apparent that the constable had not calibrated his radar gun, or at least had not done it properly. With frustration with the constable in his voice, the judge dismissed the case, and i was a free man, exonerated from my alleged crime, and with my principle nourished.

As salespeople, we can think of our group of perception abilities as "radar". These are the qualities that help us perceive truth or falsehood in our prospect, or adjust our pace of speaking to our prospect's, or judge the value of a morsel of information that appears from our prospect during a sales interaction.

But if our sales radar - our perception - is out-of-whack, the valuable information that is before us is interpreted incorrectly. Information that should help us becomes a prospect's confusion that hurts us in our sales endeavors. What should be prescriptive advice becomes bad medicine for our prospects. We can end up living in a Picasso painting while we think we're experiencing a Norman Rockwell oeuvre.

So it's time for all of us to calibrate our "sales radar." Just as an annual physical exam by our physician, a calibration of our sales radar helps us to understand what's going within our [selling] body and identify a prescriptive course of action to manage and control any medical [sales] issues we're currently facing, even if we weren't aware of them previously.

Here are four tips to help you calibrate your sales radar:

1. Get some fresh perspective from an outsider.

That's where a sales coach comes in. Or a representative from a vendor's firm. Or an ex-sales manager or colleague you once worked with who you trust. Talk through some of your challenging sales scenarios with your outsider. Ask your outsider to observe some customer interactions and critique you. Just make sure your outsider is fresh.

2. Read a book, go to a seminar or webinar.

The body of written work about selling is large. High qualities seminars and webinars are readily available. Yet many in our profession rarely call upon any written or spoken knowledge in their quest for more sales. Fresh insight from a sales guru or speaker can help us calibrate our sales radar in short order. My congratulations to you reading the Selling to Consumers Blog - you obviously understand the importance of learning, and I'm guessing your sales radar is pretty well calibrated!

3. Get real.

Feedback from customers and prospects is essential to accurately calibrate sales radar. If you've not been getting feedback from your customers, find a way to do so, even if your company doesn't provide a mechanism for you. Have a buddy call twenty-five of your previous prospects and customers and ask them questions about you. It can be an eye-opening experience.

4. Record your interactions.

I've often recommended video or audio recording sales interactions as a means to improve salesmanship. It also helps calibrate our sales radar. When you hear the real you speaking as a third party in a recording, we hear our voice as others hear it, our words as they help or hurt the process. We can zero in on our speaking volume and pace, our use of language, our nervous ticks and laughs, all of which help us quickly calibrate our sales radar.

What do you do to calibrate your sales radar?

If you like this post (or don't) please leave a comment.Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers Sales Training. He works with companies that sell to consumers in all B2C sectors to increase sales by realizing the buying potential of every prospect.

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Retail Sales Clerk v. Retail Sales Professional: Which One Are You?

I'm on a mission to advance the sales professionalism of retail sales representatives, especially in big ticket retail sales.

Most definitely, retail clerks have their place in the retail industry, and if you're a retail clerk, please don't be offended by this post. Retail clerks work very hard at what they do. Different skills are required for a shopper interested in a $3.49 bottle of shampoo than a shopper interested in a $34,900 car (having said that, if all sellers of shampoo were properly trained on how to sell, they'd sell more $34.99 bottles of shampoo, not to mention all the add-on sale possibilities!).

What I have a problem with are retail clerks filling a position that requires a sales professional (or a company hiring clerks when hiring salespeople would be so much more profitable!). The roles of clerk and salesperson are very different.

Part of success in B2C retail selling is determined by how you view your job. Your thoughts and beliefs about your job will direct your behavior in your job. If you see yourself as a retail clerk, you'll act as a retail clerk. If you see yourself as a professional salesperson, you'll act like a professional salesperson, and a retail clerk and a retail sales professional are as different as nurse assistants and physicians: both work in a similar field, but the difference in education and expertise is significant.

So how do retail sales clerks and retail sales professionals differ?

Clerk: Is always busy with busywork.

Retail sales professional: Is always busy advancing the sales process.

Clerk: Is reactive.

RSP: Is proactive.

Clerk: Understands how to restock shelves

RSP: Understands shoppers and how to influence them.

Clerk: Completes transactions.

RSP: Makes transactions happen.

Clerk: Checks stock.

RSP: Checks if the prospect will buy if it is in stock.

Clerk: Is product focused.

RSP: Is customer focused.

Clerk: Knows how to merchandise a display.

RSP: Knows how to sell the products on a display.

Clerk: Understands prospects' needs on a very basic level, if at all.

RSP: Strives to develops a rich understanding of prospect needs.

Clerk: Gets you to sign up for the store credit card.

RSP: Gets you to spend twice as much (or more!) as you intended to spend.

Clerk: Asks, "Do you have any questions I can answer?"

RSP: Engages the prospect in conversation, even if the prospect doesn't have any questions.

Clerk: Talks about his product knowledge.

RSP: Talks about his product within the framework of the shopper's stated needs.

Clerk: Earns minimum wage; sometimes a bit more.

RSP: Earns a lot more.

If you like this post (or don't) please leave a comment.Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers Sales Training. He works with companies that sell to consumers in all B2C sectors to increase sales by realizing the buying potential of every prospect.

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10 Ways to End Sales Drudgery in Sales Teams

I love consistency in selling. And consistency in management, policies and procedures. While consistency has it's place in the running of a successful sales organization, there are times where consistency leads to drudgery.

Salespeople in retail do the same thing everyday, opening the cash drawer and maintaining this display and entering information there. Those who sell in customers' homes drive to appointments every day and do their thing, and then drive to the next appointment. Door-to-door canvassers are out in the streets of the community drumming up prospects or closing sales. Prospectors are on the phone day in and day out.

"That's their job," you might tell me.

Of course, we all have to do our jobs to make the organization work, but there is a time to shake things up to end sales drudgery: that automatic pilot selling during periods of lowered enthusiasm that usually drive sales numbers down, and with it the spirit of salespeople in the company. Sales drudgery is sameness, it's boredom, it's low engagement of employees.

Here are ten ways to end sales drudgery in your sales team, if not forever, for a while:

1. Hire a sales trainer or author to speak to your group.

When I work with sales teams, I know that not all of the information I present is new. Some of it has been spoken before, by the sales teams' sales manager, and probably has been spoken repeatedly. But having a fresh face and voice present sales information can spark a sales team out of their drudgery stupor.

2. Have a contest.

Contests are so commonplace in some sales organizations that they actually promote sales drudgery. But maybe a new kind of contest is in order. Instead of awarding a something-or-other to the top seller for month, offer an incentive to anybody who increases their closing rate by five points during the month. Do something different. Different is good when your mission is to combat sales drudgery.

3. Meet off-site.

If you have a weekly sales meeting and it's always in your office, schedule a meeting off-site: in the conference room of a friend's company, at a vendor's facility, at a restaurant, at a food shelter, in a hotel next to your competitor's location, in a party bus or a limo, in a public park shelter, or at your home. Same-old same-old sales meetings promote sales drudgery.

4. Require a 12 hour day.

Traffic is up in your store? Sales are going gangbusters? Have your team put in a 12 hour day to meet the demands of the business. But make it fun. Go out for a beverage afterward as a group. Take pictures throughout the day and post them in the breakroom. Give them a $12 bonus for working a 12 hour day.

5. Have a pot-lock.

Invite your sales team to bring in food for lunch to share with each other, if this is not part of your normal operations. If it is part of your normal operations, then stop having pot-luck on the second Wednesday of the month (or whenever you traditionally do it) and order pizza instead. Better yet, order something different and uncommon: Have a restaurant deliver pancakes and bacon, or fish and chips, or have dim sum, complete with wait-staff. Remember, different is good.

6 . Have a sales employee present all or part of a sales meeting.

Agree on a topic with the employee and schedule it ahead of time. Promote the event ahead of time. Sales managers aren't the only ones with good ideas about selling.

7. Team sell for one week.

Assigning a high-performer to a low-performer is a no-brainer. But pairing up two high-performers can work wonders for fighting drudgery. Let the top-performers compare notes, learn from each other, and bond. Even pairing low sales performers can be great: there are often great things low-performers do that can be taught to other low-performers, thereby raising the quality of your team's work.

8. Do something silly.

As a silly person myself, I am fond of doing silly things to fight drudgery. Wear Hawaiian shirts for a week (especially effective in my home state of Minnesota in February). Require a change of clothes during the day. Call in after every sales appointment, but require the employee to start their report with a joke (just give him time to research jokes beforehand).

9. Give responsibility for employee's B's sales performance for the month to employee A.

Give a bonus to employee A if she can get employee's B's sales to increase by 5% or more by month-end. Do the same with employees B & C, D & D, etc.

10. Library time.

My daughter has library time in third grade. Have library time for your sales team. Bring in a stack of sales books and set them on the table in front of your sales team. Have each member select a book, and assign them to go to a personal space in the facility and read in an hour, then have them return to the group and have them share what they learned with the entire group.

These are merely ten sales-drudger-fighting ideas, but there are hundreds of things a sales manager could do to combat sales drudgery. What wacky, different, or brilliant ideas do you have that might help end sales drudgery in a sales team? Please share your thoughts with our readers.

If you like this post (or don't) please leave a comment.Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers Sales Training. He works with companies that sell to consumers in all B2C sectors to increase sales by realizing the buying potential of every prospect.

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Objections: The Roadblock to a Sale. But...

I'm not the first person to draw the analogy between a roadblock and a customer objection during the selling process. Both can prevent progress: one in driving and the other in selling.

Most road barricades are there for good reason. Maybe a bridge is out, or a power line is down, or the road is under construction. In northern Minnesota where I went to college, there were often logging trucks on the roads, and sometimes trees would fall off those logging trucks. That's a good reason to place a road closed sign on a road. These are the reasons someone invented road closed signs in the first place.

And prospects' objections, too, are often legitimate. They might have the desire to buy, but no money to pay for your product. They might have the desire to own what you're selling, but their spouse would kill them if they came home with it. They might have the desire to purchase from you, but the bank will not approve their loan.

These are merely a few examples of how objections can be legitimate, or true, objections.

But things are not always as they seem. This is true with road barricades and it's true with customer objections.

When I was in college my freshman year, a bunch of guys loaded a road barricade into a pick-up truck and moved it from a road construction site (luckily, there were additional road closed signs on the road to prevent disaster). They moved the road closed sign to a road without any road construction. In fact, the sign ended up on a stretch of rural highway that was perfectly fine.

It was a college prank, but I'm sure at least one driver must have driven up to the sign, stopped, and turned around. This happened even though there was no road construction, no bridge out, and no tree on the road from a logging truck.

These drivers assumed the barricade was legitimate and heeded the warning of the sign. And I recommend this to all drivers who see a road closed sign.

But the freshman prank is like half the customer objections you hear from prospects. There's no legitimate reason for the road barricade, and, with this 50% of objections, there's no reason for the objections. Over centuries, consumers have developed A.R.M. - an automated response mechanism to blurt out objections to salespeople even if the objection isn't legitimate. Over centuries of history, mankind has learned that suddenly uttering "I have to think about it" will get rid of most salespeople.

But often the goal of the prospect isn't even to get rid of the salesperson - it's to prevent them from having to make a decision, from taking a stand, from making a change. Even if a prospect wants, needs, and can afford your product, they may still blurt out one of these false objections, such as "I have to talk to my husband."

So how do you know if a prospect's objection is legitimate or not?

1. You create selling hang time.

With continued dialog between salesperson and prospect, things often work themselves out and the salesperson is able to understand that the objection was simply the automated response mechanism in action.

2. You investigate.

Wildly successful salespeople have a healthy dose of skepticism. Interviewing your prospect (in a non-threatening way, of course) can help you to flesh out the facts and identify the real, and not real, issues surrounding the potential purchase.

3. You offer new perspectives.

The prospect shopping for a new stove but announcing the "I have to talk to my husband" might need to hear this: "Your husband would want to make cooking and baking easier for you, wouldn't he?" Sometimes we have new perspectives that shed new light on the potential purchase, and that new light helps create a new paradigm for the prospect.

If you like this post (or don't) please leave a comment.Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers Sales Training. He works with companies that sell to consumers in all B2C sectors to increase sales by realizing the buying potential of every prospect.

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Sales News

Branding expert Martin Lindstrom, author of Buyology, was interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today Show this morning. You can listen to my podcast interview with Martin Lindstrom on the Selling to Consumers Podcast.

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I've been named to "The Sales 2.0 Pro Bowl Team" along with such notables as Gerhard Gschwandter (Publisher of Selling Power magazine), Jeb Blount, and fellow Minnesotan's Jill Konrath and Lee Salz.

There are AFC and NFC teams. I was assigned to the NFC team. Check out the list of sales experts on the Sales 2.0 Pro Bowl list, then please vote for the NFC (regardless of your football allegiances)!

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I'll be attending "Senior Sales Executive Conference" in Chicago later this month as a blogger thanks to The Conference Board. I'll be covering the conference on this blog and also on Twitter. If you're not attending the conference, tune in for updates!

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If you haven't joined the Selling to Consumers group on LinkedIn, please do. It's for all executives, managers, and salespeople in the B2C space, as well as other sales and business experts. Selling to Consumers LinkedIn Group.

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Blog.com named the Selling to Consumers Blog one of the "Top 10 Sales Blogs." Check out the list of top sales blogs. All the blogs named to the list are fantastic and worth following.

If you like this post (or don't) please leave a comment.Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers Sales Training. He works with companies that sell to consumers in all B2C sectors including retail, in-home selling, health care, financial, real estate, and insurance,etc.

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