Photo by Grant MacDonald via Flickr

A successful sale – for everything but the simplest transactions – is a series of steps…and in order to reach a win-win conclusion you have to make it through all of the steps. But sometimes the most challenging part of the selling discussion is being able to link those steps together and keep everyone on the same page.

Luckily there’s an easy answer to hold everything together – the best way to maintain control of your sales process is to use an idea that Larry Lewis from Client Builder Sales and Marketing calls an Advance Agreement.

When it’s done properly, an Advance Agreement will guarantee you won’t have the potential buyer deciding to ‘Think it over’…or to have a perfectly good meeting end as a waste of time because the discussion got off track. It’s an invaluable concept and it’s pretty simple to start using consistently.

What’s an Advance Agreement?

An Advance Agreement is pretty much just what it sounds like – it’s the idea that before you have a sales discussion…or before you move on to the next step of your selling process, you reach an agreement with your prospective buyer on what’s going to happen in the meeting. At a high level, here’s what’s covered in an Advance Agreement – these are points that you BOTH need to agree on:

• Decide the time, place and duration for the meeting
• Agree that you’re going to respect each other’s time and limit interruptions
• Agree on an agenda (high level, it doesn’t need to be point by point)
• Agree on possible outcomes and potential next steps
• Agree that if the overall relationship isn’t going to be a fit, that you’ll make that clear right away (again avoiding wasting the other person’s time).

It sounds really simple – and it is…however it doesn’t happen very often and using it properly and consistently can have a huge positive impact on your sales. The reason this is so impactful is that it’s an engaging way to make sure you’re both focused on the same outcome. It removes doubts, it makes the whole process transparent and creates an environment where it’s easy to have a meaningful discussion.

Pretty powerful – right?

Sample Advance Agreement

The details of any given advance agreement are going to be driven based on your particular situation – do you typically close a sale in the first meeting? If so, then your agreement would focus on getting enough information on both sides to be able to make that decision…and setting the expectation that there will be a decision at the end (and you both agree to that). If your process requires multiple meetings, then agreement just focuses on what’s needed in order to move (or not) to the next step.

Here’s what a generic Advance Agreement might sound like as you start an initial meeting with a potential client:

Tom – thanks for taking the time to meet with me.  When we set up this meeting we agreed to get together for an hour – does that still work for you?  (Make sure you’re on the same page)

I also wanted to make sure this was a productive use of time for both of us – I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a meeting where you were constantly interrupted by calls or people coming in.  Is there any way we can make sure that doesn’t happen here?

(Getting clear on expectations and behaviors)

As we talked about over the phone, I don’t know if I can help you or not without knowing more about what you’re up against, so I’d like to spend a lot of our time really digging into the challenges you’re facing.  I also suspect you’d like to know a bit about what we do and how we do it – so I’d be glad to cover that with you.

Is there anything else you’d like to talk about today?

(Establishing a clear agenda that works for both of us)

Based on our discussion, it should be fairly clear by the end of the hour whether or not it makes sense to keep moving this discussion forward or not. Can we agree that if there isn’t a good fit (for either of us) that we’ll be up front and candid about that? (Keep us from wasting time)

On the other hand, if it does look like there’s potential here, the next obvious step would be to setup a follow up meeting and talk about your budget and how  you all make decisions – are you comfortable with that outcome…assuming that it looks like there might be a fit?

Imagine having the above discussion, in a very comfortable open way with a potential client. You’ve established respect and everyone is on the same page and knows what to expect from the meeting.

Have you ever used anything like an advance agreement in your sales process? Better question – do you use it consistently? I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

photo by ClintJCL via Flickr

Did you know that one of the best ways to communicate your value is based on your common complaints?

Well actually not YOUR common complaints, but the common complaints of your best / most likely customers.  One of the key tenets of great marketing is that you are always answering your prospective customer’s question of What’s In It For Me? (WIIFM)  And the best way to get their attention is to speak their language – in other words, start with their biggest problems, their common complaints.  Until  you can clearly get their attention with their own problems, you’re going to have a hard time getting them to listen to  you at all.

However, when you use their own common complaints, you’ve got a great trigger for all sorts of conversations – starting with networking and marketing and all the way into the sales process.  If you’ve found the right problems, your best prospective customers will say something like “Wow – I’ve got that exact issue…tell me more about how you help with that!”.

What are my customer’s Common Complaints?

Unfortunately your customer’s top complaints aren’t always obvious – there’s generally not a published list and they’re not very likely to just tell you, so you’re going to need to do some homework and figure it out for yourself.  The good news is there are several places to start your research:

Your Existing Customers – the best place to start is to think about your existing customers.  Imagine your best customer…before they met you…hanging out at a bar or coffee shop after a long day talking to one of their peers.  Imagine them sharing their biggest frustrations – “I wish I could find a way to ______” or “I am really frustrated by ______ – how do you handle that?“.   The stuff in the blanks are your common complaints.

What problems have you solved for your best customers?  Why did they go with you rather than a competitor? Is your relationship strong enough to sit down and ask them?

Industry Changes – Another possible source for common complaints are changes happening in your industry.  Take healthcare benefits as an example right now – you would be hard pressed to find a business owner who’s not concerned about the rising cost of healthcare and confused about where the industry is going.  Do you have something along those lines in your industry?  Do you solve problems that fall into those industry changing discussions?

Do you have major competitors in your industry who have rolled out some new ideas?  What are they addressing?  Is it the kind of thing your best customer prospects might be worried about?

Your Existing Marketing – Finally, look at your own marketing materials.  At some point in time, you pulled together a brochure or had the marketing guy write up your website and filled it full with all of the great features and benefits that you provide.  To find the problems, imagine pulling those features and benefits away from your clients – what would they complain about?  What problems do your features and benefits solve?

However you do it, finding your customer’s common complaints likely won’t take to long – the hardest part is to put yourself into their shoes and to simplify things down to how they see the world.

Some quick examples of common complaints:

A CPA’s Clients - We are paying too much in taxes and not keeping enough of our money in the business.

An Online Marketing Company’s Clients - We have to be able to generate more leads from our website, but I don’t even know where to start.

A Business Coach’s Clients – As the business owner, I’m working really long hours and I never seem to get ahead…and I can’t find good help!

A Personal Trainer’s Clients – I know I’m supposed to exercise and eat right, but I don’t actually know what that means or how to get started.

Finding the most effective complaint for a situation is usually a matter of trial and error – and often depends on the setting and who, exactly, you’re talking to.  However you don’t have to have the BEST issue, you just need one that is generally going to apply to who ever you’re talking to.

Your NEW complaint based 30 second commercial

Now that you’ve done the hard work and developed 2 or 3 really compelling issues that your best customers are struggling with, you need to start using those to engage your prospects.  One way to do this is to use them in your introductory pitch – you know…how you answer the question “So what do you do?”.  Here’s a quick suggested format you can use:

I work with ________(person in the company – CEO, CFO, etc.) in the ________ industry who are frustrated by the fact that (Common Complaint #1) and (Common Complaint #2).  You’ve probably already figured out the solutions to those problems a long time ago, haven’t you?

It can take some practice to sound natural, but If you’ve found the right issues, there’s a great chance that the person you’re talking to will respond with something like “Actually we struggle with that.”  Leaving  you with the opportunity to ask your new prospective client to tell you more…and jumping right into a sales discussion.

Do you know your best ‘common complaints’?  Do you use them when you introduce yourself at networking events or to potential customers?  We’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

Have you ever had an experience with a little kid where you had to tell them they couldn’t do something?  If it’s something they’re really into, then the response you got was likely a strong look of defiance, maybe hands on hips and a spirited “No…you can’t make me”.  In fact, the harder you pushed, the harder they pushed back…until one of you collapsed into a tantrum.

It turns out what that kid was demonstrating is something called “Psychological Reactance” - here’s a great article that really explains the theory:  Reactance Theory  In a nutshell, we are all wired (not just kids, but all of us) in such a way that if we perceive our freedoms are being curtailed unfairly in any way, we will push back and fight against the perceived limitation.  It’s not a logical thing, it’s an emotional thing.

Here’s a good summary from Jack Brehm – the University of Kansas psychologist who developed the theory:

“Whenever free choice is limited or threatened, the need to retain our freedoms makes us desire them (as well as the goods and services associated with them) significantly more than previously”

Think about the classic Romeo and Juliet scenario of ‘forbidding’  your daughter to date somebody you don’t like?  What’s likely to happen?  You just pushed her into pursuing the wrong guy?

Obviously with kids reactance plays out in a much more visible way, but it’s still happening with adults – and if you are trying to influence them…if you are trying to convince them of something, there’s a good chance that you are going to be perceived as limiting or threatening their free choice.

So what does this have to do with Sales?

All of this pulled together for me the other day – I’m doing a refresher course on sales training and one of the key principles from the training that really jumped out at me was:

“You can’t convince anybody of anything.”

This is based on Reactance Theory…it’s not possible for you to impose your will on someone else externally and have it stick (sure you could hold a gun on them, but I’m talking about in a normal, business influence kind of way).  In short, you can’t create the motivation for them to take action – that motivation has to come from within.

For someone who’s uncomfortable with the idea of selling, this notion is really powerful – you don’t have to develop and deliver the perfect argument, the perfect sales pitch every single time.  Even if you could, it wouldn’t matter because “You can’t convince anybody of anything” anyway.  In fact, the harder you push on your idea, the harder they are likely to push back if they feel like you’re telling them what to do.

You can’t make me buy your stuff…!

If that doesn’t work, then what does work?

The real key to sales is getting your prospective customer to convince themselves that it’s something they want to do.  That sounds like semantics, but from a psychology perspective there’s a huge difference between being intrinsically motivated (self-motivated) to do something and being extrinsically motivated (external push) to do something.

Therefore, getting your prospective customer to move requires you to get them to engage…ask questions and have them supply the answers.

“It looks like you’ve got a real problem with XXX, what do you think would help you solve that problem?”.

Let’s say they do have some ideas on what might help them – by asking the question you’ve engaged them and they start coming up with possible solutions (internally).

Maybe they legitimately have no idea what would help them.  If that’s the case, then you could present an example and ask them if they believe that might help them.

“I had a friend of mine who struggled with XXX as well – in that case we used the widget 9000 to break up the noodles and that ended up solving his problem – do you think that would work for you?”

Again the key is to engage them.  You’re not telling them what to do, you’re not threatening any freedoms but you are letting them decide for themselves what might work.

Reactance can work for you as well

Another implication of this idea is that people don’t like to be told they can’t do something.  So if you have a prospective customer who is clearly interested, but hasn’t been motivated enough to take action, a little Reactance might be just the thing to get them moving.

It’s a fairly simple idea, simple push them towards the opposite outcome.  Here’s the picture…you have a prospective customer who has expressed interest in your help or product, but they haven’t been willing to commit to anything.  They want to ‘think it over’ some more or they continue to focus on details that don’t really seem very important as a way to avoid a decision.  To use Reactance you have to draw the line – in short, tell them you don’t believe you can help them and that you are going to close their file.  They are now feeling an emotional pull to prove you wrong…who are you to tell them that you can’t help them?  Often this will provoke new interest and will get the ball rolling again.  And realistically, if they weren’t moving before, you really don’t have much to lose.

This idea / approach is also called Negative Reverse Selling and one of the first places I ran across it was via Sandler Sales training – here’s a good summary of The Reverse Sell per David Sandler.

What do you think?   We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, but I can tell you’re the kind of person who would never leave a comment on a blog.  (see what I did there…).  ;-)

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

Death of a Salesman at KC Rep Theater

The Kansas City Repertory Theatre is currently doing a run on the classic play Death of a Salesman, which got me to thinking about how the sales process has changed over the years.  What used to work in sales 10 or 20 years ago doesn’t really work now.

Here’s an example that happened to me last week – true story…I share office space with a few people and we have a secured entrance because we generally don’t have much ‘walk-in’ traffic.  I pulled up to our office the other day at 1:00 and there’s a guy waiting at the door.  He tells me he’s got a 1:00 appointment with one of my office mates…he uses my office mate’s first name…professional and casual.

It sounds plausible, so I let him in and let my office mate know that his 1:00 appointment is here.

That’s when it gets a bit ugly.  It turns out my office mate is heads down trying to get something urgent done…and he doesn’t have a 1:00 appointment and he doesn’t know the guy!  So he calls him out on it.  The sales guy tries his best to spin things – “We talked on the phone a few weeks ago.”  And “My office wouldn’t have sent me here if this wasn’t an approved appointment”, but it’s clear that he’s pulling something skeezy.

My friend isn’t buying any of it – he knows his calendar…in fact it’s on his phone that he’s carrying with him.  He knows who he’s talked to…and this guy isn’t on the list.  The outcome?  He forcefully (but professionally) asks the guy to leave immediately and not come back.  The sales guy, true to his nature, tries to jump into his sales pitch even as he’s being walked out the door – he’s with Konica Minolta and wants to know if our current printer / copier is working alright for us.  He’s wasted his time, our time and created a bad reputation all in one fell swoop.

Apparently this guy’s sales tactic is to go door to door targeting specific companies and attempting to trick his way into an initial appointment.  Presumably if he does get that initial meeting, he spins a few more lies in hopes of driving a sale – but not a sale based on, needs, honesty and trust.  The best he can hope for is a quick transaction and to disappear before his client figures out he’s scamming them…in short, a win-lose proposition!

Caveat Emptor?

The example above is fairly extreme – especially considering that it’s 2013, but 10 or 20 years ago, that guy’s tactics might have worked fairly well.  Buyers were generally more naive, it would have been more difficult to check your calendar and rather than an email that got ’lost’ it might have been a message left with someone else in the office.  I suspect at one point this was a tried and true way to sell door to door.

In fact for most transactions 10 to 20 years ago, the seller held all of the cards when it came to knowledge and information about the product and the industry…and knowledge is power when it comes to negotiating a deal

In his new book To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink calls this disparity information asymmetry – which led to the guiding principle for buyers of Caveat Emptor – Let the Buyer Beware.

Think about buying a car 10 to 20 years ago – you might be able get information on the make and model you were interested in, but it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t always reliable.  The seller could spin the information they had in a lot of ways, and as a buyer you didn’t have too many ways to counter the situation.  This often led to people getting taking advantage of and getting bad deals.  Definitely a win-lose scenario and a reason to not trust the next salesperson you met!

That’s not to say that all salespeople (then or now) are unethical or predatory, but it happened often enough to create a huge, negative reputation problem for anyone responsible for selling.  In fact, when I meet aspiring entrepreneurs, the idea that they are going to have to be in sales is often enough to keep them out business!

Compare the historical car transaction to today when a typical buyer not only knows all the details about a car (new or used), but they’ve also been able to hear from other buyers about how well that car has performed.  The balance of power has shifted to the buyer…and sales will never be the same again.

Sleazy selling tactics not only don’t work today, but even trying them will infuriate most buyers – driving them to share their story with the world and letting everyone know to stay away from that product, service or at least that salesperson.

The good news is that there are effective ways to sell that result in a win-win transaction, something everyone can walk away from and feel good about.  However it requires a different approach than most of the Traditional Sales tactics – here’s a quick highlight of some of the differences:

• Focus is on listening…what does the buyer really need?
• Problem solving – your job as a salesperson is to solve problems…and the solution may not involve your product.
• Relationships – the most successful sales people will create positive long term relationships with their clients.  A transactional, churn and burn mentality will put you out of business these days.

Obviously there are still hardcore ‘traditional’ sales people out there, but it’s becoming a hard way to make a living.  How are you approaching sales with your business?  Are you still targeting a Win-Lose scenario with your customers?  Or are you focusing on making it a Win-Win?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

The leaves are starting to turn; the heat of the summer is past. And fan or not, we are heading into the heart of football season. And like all sports, if you can think of a statistic that measures the performance of the team as a whole or individual players, it is probably tracked.

One stat you often hear referenced is a team’s “red zone conversion”. In football, the red zone is when you are 20 yards or less from the goal line. Or to put it another way, at least 80% of the field is behind you. Once a team crosses their opponent’s 20 yard line they want to do everything in their power to capitalize on this field position and not leave without putting some points on the scoreboard.  This is where the team (and coaches) really bear down and focus on delivering.

Red Zone Conversions getting down to Business…15-7 or 6-14?

Performance in the Red Zone clearly is an indicator for success in football. Currently there are 124 Div. I football teams in the United States. Through the first 4 games of the season, the 5 teams with the highest conversion ratio (in the Red Zone) have a combined record of 15 Wins and only 7 Losses. Conversely, the 5 teams with the lowest conversion ratio have a combined record of only 6 Wins and 14 Losses.

In fact, 99% of the time the top 5 teams managed to score either a touchdown or field goal once they entered the red zone. Meanwhile, the 5 teams with the worst performance in the red zone only managed to add points 57% of the time.

Throughout history the term “red zone” has been used in war, business, movies, sports, geography, and many other areas. In football, I am unsure who initially decided the last 20 yards of the football field was going to the red zone. Why not the last 10 yards? Why not the last 25 yards? The point is a line was drawn on the field and a clear objective is understood by the entire team that when you enter the red zone we don’t plan to leave without scoring some points…or in business terms make a sale! Generate revenue!

Where is your Red Zone and what will you do to score?

Knowing your basic conversion ratio from leads to sales is important. It helps you determine how many prospects you need to have in your pipeline, if you need to increase your marketing budget and if you are adding enough new prospects.  Prospects who are in the pipeline are important, but they generally don’t warrant special attention.  However at some point a prospect will enter the red zone…and that’s the point where your sales team and sales process have to step it up.

When you have a prospect in the sales red zone, it’s critical that the team is focused and that you have a clear plan for how you close that sale.  You’ve done your homework, you understand your customer’s needs, you have invested time (and money) getting to this stage and you don’t want them to disconnect from you because someone on your team dropped the ball.  You want the prospective client making an investment in your business.  The team plays hard all the time, but they need to step it up even more when they’re in the red zone.

The Red Zone varies by industry – depending on your business that may be right after an initial call or after a 2 year cycle, but the point is everyone in your company involved in the sales process should know where the red zone begins, when a prospective customer is in it and what your closing strategy is.

Take a look at your sales process, your current prospect list, the length of time in your sales cycle, and see if you can determine where your “red zone” begins and then calculate your Red Zone Conversion Rate.  Remember the winning teams are the ones who convert regularly in the Red Zone.  Once you do this initial assessment, brain storm with your sales team or a group of mentors on how you can increase your chances of putting points on the board when a customer enters your red zone.

Have you thought about your sales process as a team moving the ball down the field?  What analogy do you use?  We’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Chris Steinlage     Kansas City Business Coach