Is your DSI super?  Wait…let’s step back first.  A DSI is a Dominant Selling Idea – think of it as the modern day version of the Unique Selling Proposition (USP).  Basically it’s THE big idea inside a marketing brand – it’s the selling idea that establishes you as the #1 choice within your category and specialty.  You can learn all about the DSI concept from the book “Why Johnny Can’t Brand” by Bill Schley and Carl Nichols.

When they talk about a DSI, they’re not talking about marketing fluff and being super funny or creative (although that’s not excluded from a DSI).  A DSI is about having a simple (sentence or two) way to communicate the value you bring to your customers that makes you the top of your specialty and category. 

An example of DSIs? 

There are lots of car brands…cars are the category.  A specialty within the car category is safety.  What do you think of when you’re looking for a safe car?  Volvo established their Dominant Selling Idea a long time ago as the safest car brand – they pretty much own that specialty.  Here are some others:

M&Ms – the candy that melts in your mouth, not in your hand.

Enterprise Car Rental – “We’ll pick you up”!  (They created their own specialty of rental cars not at airports).

Halls – with ‘Vapor Action’ (lots of throat lozenges, but only one with ‘vapor action’)

The beauty of an effective Dominant Selling Idea is that it automatically makes you the top choice within your selected specialty (assuming you can live up to your claim).

The Test for a Super DSI

In Why Johnny Can’t Brand, the authors go through a lot of ideas and a process to help you figure out what your DSI should be.  It’s not easy…and not every business is going to be able to legitimately have a DSI, but here’s a test to help you figure out if you’re onto something.

Is your product or business idea:

1. Superlative

Are you as good or better than everyone else within your specialty?  Can you claim #1 in something?  Best in class within your boundaries? (i.e. best pizza in Kansas City).

2. Important

Does your differentiator – your DSI – address something that’s important for decision makers? You may sell cars that have top and bottom windshield wipers…but that’s not likely to sway many decisions.

3. Believable

Is it clear why we should believe your claims?  Do you have credible and important testimonials?  Does it logically follow that you would be good at this product or service? (Think about your favorite steak restaurant offering up an enchilada…probably not believable).

4. Memorable

Does your idea stand out from the crowd?  Does it link to an emotional feeling?  What would cause me to remember your idea if I looked at a dozen similar ideas within your category or specialty?

5. Tangible

This is where the rubber meets the road.  You might have created a great idea that establishes you as a believable #1 within your specialty in a memorable way, but if you don’t actually deliver on that promise you won’t last.  To have a Super DSI, it has to actually perform (and be more than just an idea on paper).

What I really like about the concept of having a DSI is that it’s not just clever marketing and it’s not just for big national players.  Any business or idea will benefit by positioning as a Dominant Selling Idea…and any business or idea will suffer without that positioning.

Think about the last time you told some friends about a great restaurant in your area.  Maybe you said something like; “They have the best fries…you’ve got try them!”  or “I was amazed at their service, I’ve never had an experience like that before!”.  That’s potentially their DSI…something they should build around.

Now think about how your customers describe your business…would they consistently isolate on your important strength?  Are you consistently positioning yourself as #1 in a specialty?

These are tough questions and they take a lot of time and soul searching to answer honestly, but if you can figure this out you will be successful.  A valid DSI can take you to new heights in your business.

What do you think about Dominant Selling Ideas?  Are you comfortable that you know what yours is?  We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

Photo by aka Kath

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If you have ever sold anything in your life then you’ve encountered a sales objections at some point in time. In fact, regardless of your profession, we all deal with objections in life with co-workers, business partners, spouses, and family.

The good news is, there are some simple steps you can take to better handle and even reduce the number of objections you are confronted with if you take a little time to prepare.

First of all, in the process of selling (a product, service, concept, etc.) when an objection arises it shouldn’t come as a surprise.  I would encourage you to embrace the objection and think of it as an opportunity. It’s a clue as to what your prospective buyer is thinking.  This simple step alone will take some of the negativity off the objection as you mentally process it.

When an objection presents itself listen completely, pause, and make sure you understand the situation. When you respond, the most effective responses are generally framed as a question.

Basic Examples:

Objection: Your Price is too high

Reply: “I understand your concern, what were you planning to spend?”

Objection: I want to think about it.

Reply: “That’s a fair statement, so what are the specific items you want to think about?

Dig for information

The main thing you want to do is get your prospect to open up and tell you more about what’s keeping them from making a decision. During this dialog be real, be sincere, be understanding, and be positive. Honest, heartfelt questions will normally get prospects to open up. And, you must answer the objection to the satisfaction of your client, before moving forward in your process.

Objections are never a signal to argue or debate with your client, there may be nothing that stalls or even kills a negotiation faster. They are also never an open door to speak poorly of your competition. If an objection forces you to compare your product or service against a competitor, use factual information only. Hearsay and rumors are not recommended for long-term success.

What if there was a silver bullet to eliminate Objections?

The reality is they are part of the selling process and they will never totally be eliminated. However, they can be greatly reduced. How? By spending more time diagnosing your prospect and getting confirmation about what the needs and expectations are before you’re get caught off guard during your presentation. You need to ask questions, lots of them. And then make sure you listen to the answers. You can defuse objections by clarifying the expectations before you ever start your presentation.

Example: At the end of a perfect presentation the potential buyer announces they need to consult with another person before they can commit. Could this objection have been prevented?  If the salesperson had asked up front about decision makers and had a commitment that everyone who needed to be there would in fact be there for the presentation, this issue could have been prevented completely, by simply asking the right questions ahead of time.

A short exercise to start improving the way you handle objections is to write your top 5 most common objections on one side of a piece of paper. On the other side, for each objections list 2 to 4 clear responses (framed as questions) that will address the objection and keep you engaging with your prospect. Remember – the point of the sales discussion is to really understand the needs of your prospect, the objections help you figure those out.  Review your list regularly and get comfortable with the idea of smoothly addressing the objections.

We would love to hear how you handle objections with your product or service. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Chris Steinlage Kansas City Business Coach

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I bet you’re really good at what you do.  You add a lot of value to the right kind of customers…probably way more value than you charge for (if you’re like most business owners I know).  You know your industry, your product and service inside and out.  In fact you could go into painful detail on how the work gets done…which actually might be part of the problem!

Which would you rather hear – a litany of facts and figures, features and benefits…or an engaging story that illustrates a problem, an approach and a solution (a happy ending!)?  It sounds like a pretty obvious choice, but look around at how most businesses present themselves from a marketing perspective.  The ones who don’t know any better talk way too much about themselves and about all the cool features they offer.  The smarter ones focus on benefits and outcomes, but even that can be pretty dry and unremarkable over time.

Maybe it’s time to think about telling some stories about your clients.

I had a great chance to hear my friend John Stevenson from Client Kudos talk this afternoon about the power of stories in business – which is what he does for his clients.  Story telling is an art and a science…and it just may be the missing component from your marketing mix.

Why Stories?

Interesting – Stories (done right) are always going to be more interesting than just facts and figures.  Sure you may need those details to help close a sale…you don’t want to leave them out, but in terms of painting the picture of why someone needs your product or service, a story is going to be way more compelling.

Relatable – Stories let people relate.  By telling a story about your best clients, you will inherently attract other potential clients who are like your best clients.  I’m much more likely to pay attention to a story about someone like me then just a random person who I don’t have anything in common with.

Engaging – People get into stories, the format ties directly into how people communicate – check out this great article from Psychology Today on the Power of Storytelling. 

“Stories are how we are wired. Stories take place in the imagination. To the human brain, imagined experiences are processed the same as real experiences. Stories create genuine emotions, presence (the sense of being somewhere), and behavioral responses.”

The real power of stories, especially for business, is the ability to create genuine emotions…people buy on emotions…and if you’re not stirring up some kind of response you’re going to have a tough sale!

Memorable – Finally stories are memorable.  Because they stir up emotions, because they’re packaged in a logical orderly way, people will remember your stories.  And because they remember, your chances of being top of mind when they’re ready to buy goes up immensely!

Are you telling stories in your business?  The odds are good that even if you are, you could stand to tell a few more.  You could go out and interview your best customers to get a moving story, but there’s clearly a benefit to having a 3rd party have those conversations for you (clients are more likely to open up to someone else) and to have a trained writer and designer to pull together a compelling final product.  It’s a difficult thing to do well, but a well crafted success story is really effective and can be used in lots of different ways.

If you’re looking to add some punch to your marketing – I strongly recommend meeting John so you can hear his story (I’m happy to introduce you or can reach him via his website).

What stories could your clients tell?  Share your thoughts in the comments below – I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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I started Aspire 4 years ago, give or take a couple of days, and it’s been a fun, exhausting and enlightening ride so far.  Not only have I had a chance to learn a ton of great things through my own business efforts, but I’ve picked up a lot of amazing things from my clients as well.

When I started Aspire, I didn’t realize I was ramping up my business a few months before the ‘Great Recession’ started, which has led to some really strong lessons as well (things like living within your means, slow and steady, bootstrap wherever possible, etc.).  It hasn’t been easy and certainly there have been plenty of stumbles and frustrations over the years but there’s also been steady growth and I’ve gained a lot of clarity with each lesson.

As they say…”If I only knew then what I know now…!”.  Which brings me to the point of this post – I wanted to take a shot at sharing the most useful things I’ve learned over the last few years – hopefully they’ll be helpful to others…and if you’ve got some useful things that I haven’t learned yet, then share them in the comments!

What do I mean by ‘Incredibly Useful™’?  I could do a full post just on the technology tools I’ve picked up – stuff like Dropbox, Xobni and Pandora that I use all the time.  But what I wanted to cover here were some of the ideas that I either didn’t know or didn’t appreciate when I started.  I’m trying to read a new business book every few weeks…and some of these ideas came out of those books, but they also came out of real world application…practical (and Incredibly Useful™) ways to grow your business now…

1. It’s all about Marketing Consistency

One of the secrets of marketing that most people don’t pay much attention to is consistency.  Way too many business owners will spend money to make a big splash, but it’s a one and done approach…and they get frustrated when that doesn’t work very well.  What does work is getting in front of your target market on a very regular basis…in fact I’ve found that consistency is even more important than having a perfect message.  It’s your consistent presence over the long run that opens the doors…without consistency, you’re just floundering.

Incredibly Useful™ Tip:  Try this – Find at least 1 (preferably 2 or 3) marketing tactics that you can apply consistently every single month.  Newsletters, blog posts, post card campaigns, ads, events, meetings…if you’re not doing anything on a regular, repeatable basis now for marketing…you have to start…this month!

2. Use a Calendar not a list

One of the biggest challenges facing business owners (or anyone else for that matter) is the ability to consistently get things done.  Where most of us fall short is having too much to do and not enough time to do it.  We start with a list of really important things to do…start working the list and life happens and more stuff gets added to the list.  We reprioritize, work on some other stuff and more life happens!  Bottom line – not much gets done, which is why putting the important stuff on the calendar will help you actually get it done.  There was a study done a couple of years ago that showed that critical things that needed to get done where 75% more likely to actually get done if they were scheduled on a calendar!

Incredibly Useful™ Tip:  Try this – take a look at your to-do list and transfer the most important items to your calendar.  This will require you to estimate how long it will take and to find an open block of time to actually do it…which is why it works so much better.  There’s only so many hours in the day and this calendar approach will force you to honor that law of nature so you don’t kid yourself into thinking you can do more than you actually can.

3. It’s all about (well placed) Confidence

Picture this – you’re having a bad day and you are totally unprepared as you go into a sales meeting with a prospective client who would be a great fit for what you do.  You approach the meeting  with a real lack of confidence…saying things like “I don’t know” or “I wish I knew the answer to that…”.  How well do you think that meeting is going to go?  It’s going to poorly – people are looking for answers they can trust and if you don’t display real confidence, you’ll get eaten alive.  That lack of confidence comes shining through and you become extremely unattractive!

Incredibly Useful™ Tip:  Try this – Focus on building confidence going into sales meetings.  Confidence is the secret to success, but it has to be confidence that’s earned.  Here are some things to keep in mind to build up your confidence:  Let yourself take pride in what you do, make sure you’re overly prepared for the meetings and spend time visualizing a successful outcome.  Finally – when you head into that meeting, pretend like you are independently wealthy and don’t need the business.

4. You’ve got to have Focus

At any given time, you and your employees should all be very clear on what’s the MOST important thing you need to get done right now.  Outside of the day to day business operations, you should all be on the same page of what needs to get accomplished next.  Without that shared focus, the odds are very high that different people are working on different things or that things will change from day to day.  Either way, you’re not getting things done that way!

Incredibly Useful™ Tip:  Try this – take an hour or two of time and write down the 5 most important things you need to do this quarter – be specific and measurable.  Now out of those 5, pick which one is the most important thing.  Write the top 5 (and top 1) down, put it on your wall and give a copy to each employee and have them post it as well.  Rinse and repeat at the end of 90 days!

5. Be Really Visible

People will buy when they’re ready to buy (sadly not when you’re ready for them to buy).  So that means if you want to sell to people you either have to get really lucky and call them on the day that they’re thinking about buying…or you have to be top of mind when they’re ready to start looking.  The way to stay top of mind is to consistently keep your visibility up, make sure people know who you are and what you do and do it in a memorable way…consistently.

Incredibly Useful™ Tip:  This is where a tool like Social Media comes in.  My preference is LinkedIn, but Facebook can be effective for the right kind of business as well.  Make sure you are continually building up your connections with people you Know, Like and Trust…and that you are updating your status with useful and interesting information – if you blog (and you should consider doing that, link back to a blog update).  You could also answer questions online or reach out to people you know…bottom line, spend 30 to 60 minutes a week, be active and stay visible.

6. It’s not about you…it’s about your clients

This can be a hard lesson for some business owners.  It’s easy to get wrapped up in all of the cool things you can do and to want to share that endlessly with whoever will listen (we’ve all been trapped in that conversation at some point).  Don’t take it personally…but your prospective clients don’t care about what you do.  They ONLY care if you can solve their problems…how can you really help them?  Focus your efforts on what’s in it for them.

Incredibly Useful™ Tip:  Try this – Next time you meet a potential client, do everything in your power not to talk about yourself.  You don’t have to be weird about it, just ask a lot of questions on what they are struggling with, what the implications are and really (really) listen to what they have to say.  If you do this the right way and you can help them, then it’s no longer selling, it’s just educating them on how you can make their lives / situation better, but it starts with their problems, not your stuff!

7. Project your Profits

If your like most business owners, you probably have a good idea of how much money you’d like to make this year.  Unfortunately if you’re like most business owners, that’s about all you know…you don’t really know when that money will come in (i.e. what month), where it will come from and how all of that works with your expenses, cash flow and profitability.  In essence you are flying blind…and eventually that will get you in a LOT of trouble.

Incredibly Useful™ Tip:  Try this – create a Profit Plan for your business.  Keep it simple, but lay out a month by month projection of your planned revenues and costs for the year.  That alone is a worthwhile exercise, but where it really gets fun is when you start figuring out how you’re going to generate the planned revenue…what marketing needs to happen, when, is it reasonable?  There’s a lot you can learn from this kind of projection – if you want a template to start with Contact Me and let me know what you want.

Any of these resonate with you?  What did I miss?  What incredibly useful things have you learned in the last few years?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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Sometimes the hardest part of this whole business thing is getting them to move!  Have you ever had the situation where you’ve had good meetings with potential prospective clients…and then you wait?

They know who you are.  They know what you do.  They need what you do, but for some reason they don’t move and you end up waiting for something to happen!

I’ve got a couple of clients facing this very situation – they’ve put a lot of time and effort into marketing, they’re getting initial meetings with what looks to be the right kind of people (qualified and in need) but things are moving slowly…or really not moving at all!

So what’s the problem?  Well it could be several things…there are times when things just slow down, so it may be just a matter of waiting and things will pick up.  The product might not be a fit (too expensive, not enough value, too general, etc.).  It could be that they’re not talking to the right people…if you’re selling tickets to a Royals game, then a baseball fan seems like the right target, but what you probably need is a Royals fan!

However it’s more likely that they aren’t giving their prospects the emotional ammunition to take action.  Decisions are made emotionally, logic comes into play to rationalize that decision.

Are you too logical?

One of the traps in sales is to put together an airtight case for why someone should buy your stuff.  You’ve got the coolest features, a list of benefits the length of your arm and it comes in 15 different colors.  You have all the bases covered.

All of that’s great stuff and it’s certainly important to think through, but it’s not going to get someone to move unless you also tap into what it means to them on an emotional basis.

A great example of what I mean comes from Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling – his book has been around for quite a while and it’s a powerful approach for anyone who’s selling something more complicated than a consumer widget.  I think it’s something you should absolutely read.

SPIN is an acronym that stands for:

Situation, Problem, Implication, Needs/Payoff

Through extensive research, Mr. Rackham determined that the most effective way to sell more complex products or services was to follow a process and a line of questioning that covers the SPIN components:

Situation – Ask questions that help you place where your potential buyer is coming from.  You need to understand the context and what’s going on.

Problem – Ask questions that identify the problems your buyer is experiencing, typically that becomes digging deeper on something that comes up during the Situation questions.

Implication – Here’s where you start to get into the emotions.  Ask questions that will uncover what this problem really means to the buyer.  This is where you can really quantify the impact.

Needs /Payoff – Finally the Needs / Payoff questions help the prospective buyer feel the emotions of what it would feel like to solve their problem…”If this problem was fixed, what would that mean to you?”

Questions and Emotions

Part of the reason that SPIN selling is effective is because it focuses on the power of Questions.  Questions, especially open ended questions, make sure the focus stays on the potential buyer…and not on you!

The other reason it works is because it gives you a repeatable way to tap into emotions, even if those are as simple as frustration with a problem and relief at a potential solution.  Without that emotion, they will NOT take action!

If your potential buyers aren’t moving, are you asking the right questions?  Are you getting them involved emotionally?

I’ve got a pretty cool worksheet that leverages the SPIN model – especially for Business to Business sales.  Contact me if you’d like a copy of it for free!

Do you have potential buyers who aren’t moving?  What are you doing to try to break that logjam?  What have you identified that might be holding things up?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

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