This week we are going to pull together a few articles from previous weeks to provide some tips on increasing your sales without compromising your profits by selling your value rather than your price – especially your discounted price. (To review the articles that are referenced below, visit our Archive Page.)

When it comes to sales, one of the biggest challenges business owners and sales reps deal with is selling to price-oriented customers. These customers look at purchasing products and services through green colored glasses and are always looking for the discount. If handled correctly, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing!

As price conscious as these customers are, they typically also have a greater sense of value for the dollar they spend, or the dime that they actually want to spend. This gives you a great opportunity to earn their business – their long-term, loyal business – with a profit, rather than turn a quick sale with a slim margin and move on to the next one. Let’s take a look at a few tips that will get you there:

Tip #1 – Ditch the Pitch: In article #12, we talked about conversational selling. In a nutshell, it talks about the importance and value in having conversation with your customers and prospects to uncover what their real needs are. It is very rare that you will begin any meeting with a pitch about the features and benefits of your product or service.

There are many times that you may not even present the benefits of your product or service during that initial meeting. The prospect may not really need what you have to offer. This is the time to find out what their problem is and if you have a solution for them. If you can provide a solution, it’s now time for tip #2.

Tip #2 – Turn the Tables: Once you’ve had your good rapport building conversation and earned the opportunity to continue with the solution you can provide, telling them the benefits of your product or service can still be met with skepticism and a pair of arms folded across their chest. The key here is to ask strategic questions that, with the answers they give, will sell the value that you know you can provide. With their answers, you can now speak freely about your product or service’s benefits without any resistance from them.

If you’ve had a good conversation and uncovered their dilemmas, these questions should easily be pulled out of your quiver. (See article #25) The difference here is these questions will now be designed to elicit an answer that describes the specific benefit and value you provide while reinforcing the need they have for it that you discovered earlier in your conversation.

Tip #3 – Super Size It: Once they have “sold” you on their need for your product or service, sprinkle in a few more benefits that they may not have thought about. It’s best if you keep them relevant to their basic concerns, unless they have not mentioned anything about a major point of value you can provide. (See Killer #4 in article         #26) Doing this solidifies your value stance and elevates you to the trusted advisor they are looking for that will solve their problem and continue to look out for their needs.

BONUS Tip #4 – Higher Education: This is where and when you see their light bulb go on. Often, your prospect has researched other product or service providers and is still searching for the right or best solution. They’ve talked to other companies and sales reps, but had nothing close to the experience they’ve had with you. They talked and you listened. You took their comments and answers and enhanced them with your input and insight. They feel important (as they should and are!) and you can see the excitement in their eyes and hear it in their voice. If you need to meet again, they will look forward to your return. Not only that, they understand the value you bring to their table and will be willing and pay you for it.

Now Go Get ‘Em!!

Cadillac. Burger King. Staples.

What do these companies have in common? They are each very well known for something. What they are known for may not be unique to them, nonetheless, they each have a calling card that precedes them in the minds of most consumers. While some of it may be due to a focused marketing effort, they all back it up with the quality and service they provide.

Cadillac. They are known for being the best. For the longest time, when you were going to buy a new car and you wanted to buy the best, you bought a Cadillac. Even though new players like Lexus, BMW and Mercedes have entered the game and have their loyal following, the Cadillac is still the gold standard when it comes to quality and luxury.

In fact, Cadillac has become so ingrained as the epitome of greatness that it has almost become adjective-esque in our vocabulary. Whenever you want to describe something as being the best, it is always said to be “the Cadillac of all widgets!”

Burger King. BK is known for providing your hamburger exactly the way you want it. For example, you can simply order a Whopper and you’ll get a burger with all the fixin’s. BUT WAIT! You’re on your way to a presentation and your stomach is growling louder than the radio. You’re crunched for time so you’ll have to hit a drive-thru. You can’t water the eyes of your prospect with funky breath so you have to eat something without onions. Well, luckily Burger King allows you to order it without the onions!! Phew! Saved by the King!

(Pssst! You can also order sans-onion at McDonalds with the Quarter-Pounders and at Wendy’s with their hamburgers as well. But it is Burger King that is synonymous with catering your specific hamburger needs.)

Staples. “That Was Easy!” When you need office supplies and need them without any complications, you go to Staples. When you need something printed or copied on the fly, you go to Staples. When you need assistance with purchasing a piece of technology (e.g. computer, printer, camera, software) you go to Staples. Why? Because they make it easy.

Could you also get excellent products, service and technical assistance at your local downtown office shop? Sure you can! Are they “known” for it? Maybe. But in our hectic day-to-day schedules, when we need something for the office, Staples has made it EASY for us to decide where to go.

So what are YOU known for? Is your answer based on what you think you’re known for, or is it based on what your customers have told you? If you’re not sure, ask some of your best and loyal customers what it is about you that they continue to choose to do business with you. It’s possible their answers may surprise you.

For example, there is a company I work with whose product is the “Cadillac” in their industry. It carries a great warranty and is installed by a crew with incredible work ethic and attention to detail. For the longest time, the benefits of the product, the warranty and the hard working crew were believed to be the major selling points. Although these things were important, when their customers were asked what they valued most about working with them, it was the professionalism and communication from everyone in the organization that resonated throughout every response. It was those two qualities that really separated them from any other company their customers had ever worked with.

So, again I ask you, what are you known for? Here is your homework assignment. First, either call or ask just ten of your best customers the next time you call on them what it is about you or your company that drives them to continue to loyally do business with you. Second, ask them to take a couple minutes to put it in writing.

Now that your calling card is identified, utilize it with new prospects when giving your presentation and by providing them with copies of those customer testimonials.

Now Go Get ‘Em!!

Have you ever received a phone call that started something like this? “Hello, my name is Chris. I am from ABC Company and don’t worry, this isn’t a sales call.” Instead, they want to give – yes, GIVE! – you a free trial (that turns into a purchase if not canceled after thirty days) or are looking for a donation of your time or cash. Either way, there is an effort to part you from your dollars – aka: a sales call.

For most everyone using a phone that no longer requires your finger to travel in a clockwise direction to dial it, most any call from anyone other than a friend, family member or doctor’s office calling to remind you of an appointment is probably a sales call. And to preface it with a statement like that above borderlines on insulting our intelligence.

The same holds true whether you work at a retail sales store, call on businesses to provide a product or service or hustle your rump in any number of other arenas where sales take place. For the most part, people are too savvy anymore to be “sold.” They will buy from you if they trust you and you provide a level of quality and value above that of your competition. Lay a corny sales technique on them and you might as well escort them or yourself to the door because everything you say thereafter is “muh-nah-muh-nah!”

Instead, try a little transparency. The customer wants to buy. They know you are the person that is going to conduct the transaction of their purchase. And they are ok with that. Certain purchases are understood to provide a commission and they are ok with that, too.

Rather than focusing on a sales technique or which of the top five closes you’ll use to make the sale, focus your efforts on what you can do to provide them with value (way beyond that of the product, service or your competition), gain their confidence and earn their trust. Do this, and do it well, and watch them pull out their paper or plastic.

An excellent example of transparency is me sharing with you part of my motivation for writing these articles. I have no delusions that readers think I am putting time and effort into these weekly newsletters just because I’m a swell guy. I really do enjoy writing and providing nuggets of good information. I also know that by providing something of high value on a regular basis will help position me at the forefront when the time comes that someone is in need of sales training or help with developing and communicating their image brand with a new logo, website or e-newsletter just like this one.

Transparency is not merely being open about your intentions, but backing it up with your commitment and sincere willingness to help others. Not everyone has the time or desire to publish a newsletter. There are several ways you can transparently provide value. Find twenty-one minutes today to identify what you can do in your business that will help you become transparent and bring down the “sales” wall between you and your customers and prospects. Work on that idea each day until you are ready to implement it.

Being transparent is not being presumptuous. It is not being arrogant. It is being truthful with yourself, your customers and your prospects. Being transparent in a world of high-pressure sales and stiff competition is a breath of fresh air and greatly appreciated.

Now Go Get ‘Em!!

One of the biggest frustrations business owners face is converting more leads at a higher rate, with better efficiency and results. Time is money and so is temperature. Hot leads bring immediate dollars. Cold leads are dismissed to the land of misfit toys.

To better understand why, let’s hop into the way-back machine and head back to the beginning of mankind. When cavemen discovered how to use sticks and stones to make weapons and tools, it made their lives easier when hunting and gathering food. When the wheel was discovered, it made life even that more efficient.

These items allowed them to hunt better and quicker. It allowed them to gather more food in shorter amounts of time. And it lit the fuse that ignited the need for bigger, better and quicker.

Flash forward a few million years, and we are exponentially bigger, better and quicker. Not necessarily as people or society (although there are several National Geographic specials that would probably confirm that notion) but with the technology we use to improve efficiencies and reduce the amount of time we need to access pretty much anything we want or need.

A byproduct of the improved efficiencies and reduced lead times is an incredible need for immediate gratification. It wasn’t enough to cook your own meal, so restaurants sprung up to do that for us. Then, it wasn’t enough to sit down and place your order so they opened up the drive-thru. Still not fast enough? Well here’s a box that will zap your food hot in mere seconds.

So how does this relate to sales and working with leads? Immediate gratification.

Businesses spend valuable dollars and invest incredible time and effort to generate leads to drive people to their cash registers – and credit card swipers. Typically, the leads go into the sales funnel are pre-qualified to determine which ones will lead to immediate sales. Guess what leads are given immediate attention. You got it. The hot leads!

As these hot leads are being worked, additional leads continue to come in. These new leads are then pre-qualified and dealt with in the same manner. Meanwhile, the other leads are sitting in the funnel where the warm leads are becoming cold leads and the cold leads are becoming dead leads.

But warm and cold are only temporary. If all your efforts are poured into converting only the hot leads, you are going backwards on the evolutionary efficiency curve. You’re investing time into building systems to generate leads; do the same to convert more and more of all of those leads – not just the hot ones.

There are several types of systems you can implement to convert these tepid leads. However, one of the fastest growing, widely accepted, and highly effective methods is right in front of your eyes. The e-mailed newsletter.

These people have told you they have some level of interest in your product or service; otherwise they wouldn’t have ended up in your sales funnel. Just because they aren’t ready to ring your register today, doesn’t mean they won’t want to tomorrow, next month or next year. Don’t waste that initial effort. Follow up with these folks on a regular basis with product, service or industry news that is of value to your prospects and keeps you in front of them until they are ready to give you their nickel.

It is very important though to deliver timely and valuable information without choking them with your sales pitch. When they are ready to buy, they will. Until then, be a resource for them. Be someone they will automatically turn to without hesitation when they are ready to pull out their checkbook.

Stop being Cro-Magnon with your lead management. Find a system that works for you, and more importantly for your prospects, turn up the heat and watch those warm and cold leads slowly cook from a simmer to a raging cauldron of increased sales!

Now, Go Get ‘Em!!

Referral generation is a two-way street. With the right questions, it can be a two-way super-highway!

“Good” questions are open ended that require more than a one or two word response. “Better” questions inspire others to respond by painting a picture you can use to further a conversation. When it comes to referral generation, the “best” questions open roads to drive prospects to your door and to the doors of your customers and prospects.

The east-bound lane of your referral super-highway is full of random people that you have not yet met that are your potential customers. They are driving all different types of cars, trucks, vans and SUV’s. There are as many types, sizes and colors of vehicles as there are products and services that you may offer.

You don’t know the drivers of these vehicles yet, but you may bump into someone they know. When you do, you need to be able to get them to introduce you to these drivers. How do you do that? By asking specific questions that will lead to those introductions.

Let’s say that a red Chevy Camaro represents the product that you sell in particular. When you ask someone for a referral, rather than be vague and ask if they know someone that drives a car, be specific and ask the first great question – “Who do you know that drives a red Chevy Camaro?”

Now, instead of shrugging their shoulders and blowing you off, that very specific, turbo-charged question triggers a person to scour their mental rolodex searching for everyone they know that drives a red Chevy Camaro. Now you can get an introduction to them where you may never have had that opportunity.

Next, let’s take a look at the west-bound lane of the referral super-highway. This lane is bumper-to-bumper with people you know or may come in contact with. This is traffic that may be the perfect referrals you can direct to your customers and potential customers.

When you are meeting with your customers helping them buy from you, there is another great question that you can ask. And when you are meeting with a prospect, you can also ask this same great question. Additionally, this same great question is versatile enough that you can ask it when simply networking with others.

The second great question is “How will I know if someone I meet would be a good referral you?” Tell me, wouldn’t you love to be asked that question from everyone you meet!? How would you feel if you were asked that question by someone that was networking or prospecting you? The trust level just shift into overdrive!

If someone was taking an active role in my sales and my success while also trying to provide me with their product or service, that transcends the buyer/seller relationship to that of success partners. If someone was driving sales to me, how much more motivated would I be to return the favor? 10-fold? No. 1000-fold? Absolutely!!

So there you have two great questions that individually drive referrals in both directions. Together, they help elevate you to that of a trusted advisor that people will be confident doing business with.

Now, Go Get ‘Em!!

If you read through enough websites, blogs, business journals, newsletters, etc., you will find that one of the fastest growing business sectors is that of the entrepreneur. I would agree with that to a certain extent.

More specifically, I would say that one of the fastest growing sectors is the technician with an entrepreneurial spirit. By definition, an entrepreneur is one who “organizes and manages an enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.”

By contrast, the Technipreneur is someone that is an expert at their trade or with their product or service, that has a desire – that entrepreneurial spirit – to go out on their own and start a business rather than lend their technical expertise to someone else’s business.

Another way to look at the difference is the Technipreneur wears many, if not all of the hats in the company including, management, production, implementation, sales, marketing and administration. Conversely, the entrepreneur organizes others to wear each one of those hats.

There is a fundamental difference in paradigms between the entrepreneur and the Technipreneur, with each having their own unique benefits and challenges. The entrepreneur sets out with the mindset to organize people and develop a business system around a product or service that is needed by society. She doesn’t necessarily have an in-depth working knowledge of the product or service they provide. But she doesn’t need to as she will find people that do have the knowledge and assemble them into the business team.

On the other hand, the Technipreneur is typically an expert at the product or service they provide. He may have gone to school to learn it and spent many years perfecting the knowledge of the product or crafting the skills of the service. Then, one day he gets an itch to venture off on his own with the entrepreneurial spirit to start a business and provide the product or service on his own terms.

Examples of Technipreneurs range from mechanics and contractors to lawyers, accountants and financial advisors and many of them will tell you that starting out isn’t done with a simple “if you build it, they will come” model. This is where the successful Technipreneur becomes resourceful. He seeks out others that help him where he may lack expertise such as business plan development, marketing and sales. With training and experience, the Technipreneur becomes a jack of all trades and actually a master of SOME!

In this information age in which we live, it is becoming more and more viable for the small business owner/technician to flourish with all of the resources available to them. Typically smaller in size, they can be more flexible than the larger companies as well as more responsive. As such they can compete on a field where they can position themselves as the trusted advisor in their industry.

That will do it for this week’s overview of the Technipreneur. We will look closer at the dynamics of the Technipreneur off and on over the next several weeks and how you can apply the concept and ideas into your own activities. Until then…

Now, Go Get ‘Em!!

If you’ve ever been at a closing to buy a new house, you’ve probably left with carpel tunnel in your signature hand from all of the forms you had to sign. Some of those sheets seem pretty ridiculous – I recently had to sign one acknowledging that I had signed the previous document! Although that may seem pretty ridiculous, the amazing thing is an instance or a series of instances precipitated the requirement for these seemingly frivolous documents.

Likewise, have you read the directions on some of the most basic products that are use every day? For example, on a kids Halloween Superman costume, the label reads “Warning: Wearing this garment does not enable you to fly.” Seriously!? Then there is the one on a Nytol sleep aid that reads, “Warning: May cause drowsiness.”

So what does this have to do with anything sales related? Well it lays the foundation for why I am writing about this week’s topic. For all of the ridiculous things we see and read, there is a reason why we are reading it. Much of the time it is because of repeated and total disregard for the obvious. We also live in an increasingly litigious society so these “C.Y.A.” documents are unfortunately needed. Not coincidentally, there is something that needs to be addressed in sales that you wouldn’t think should be.

There’s a saying in sales that goes something like this: “Half of the sale is just showing up.” It seems preposterous, especially in today’s business environment, to not show up for an appointment or a sale. But it is happening. A lot. Just this week I made two sales and heard from two other people with similar experiences where the other people that were called to quote a job never showed up. Or they did, but never submitted the quote or didn’t return a call.

But this isn’t an article to remind you to show up for your appointments. Rather, it is to look at the opportunities you have when you do, and others don’t. These are observations through my experiences and those of the others I mentioned.

1. Establish Credibility. When you show up and others don’t, you immediately establish a heightened perception of credibility and dependability that you may not have received if your competition also happened to show.

2. Become the Hero. By just doing what you are expected to do, you almost become a hero in your prospect’s eyes. They have a need and everyone else they turned to let them down except for you. (Time to put on that Superman cape!)

3. Get the Order. When you are the only one that shows up, you don’t automatically get the job. They always could try calling a few others. But when you deliver your excellent service and value, most of the time you earn that sale without “burdening” your prospect with having to look for others. Also, when they are ready to re-order, do you think they will call around? Or will they just call the one person that they know will take care of them? (Hint: it’s the second one there!)

4. Get the Referrals. This is probably the biggest byproduct of your competition not showing up! After you’ve delivered your exceptional product or service and gained a loyal customer, you now become the dependable hero to everyone your customer tells the story to. And believe me, they are telling the story!

Now, Go Get ‘Em!!

They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, in business, your village is everyone in your organization, and your child is each and every sale, customer or prospect that you serve.

Consider how companies are downsizing, either by lay-offs or attrition, and it is becoming more and more crucial that everyone in the company has at least a basic level of sales mindset. This includes everyone in every department. Everyone from the office assistant to the folks in production and service need to have a sales mindset.

What about the accounting department? Yep. The maintenance department? Yep. Ok, but what about the nurses in an urgent care facility!? Absolutely! Every single person in every single business or organization needs to wear a sales hat to some degree. Why? Simple. Competition.

Consumers and businesses are holding their dollars tighter and they have exponentially more options of businesses to spend it with. Factor in your on-line competition and the arena you’re playing in makes the Coliseum look like your backyard kickball field.

So with all of this competition what are you supposed to do? Take your ball and go home!? Heck no! Far from it. You get creative and use all of the resources you have available to you. As a result, more and more businesses are ensuring that everyone in their company from top to bottom have the sales mentality needed to wow their customers regardless the department they work in.

Typically, the only people in an organization that receive any kind of sales training whatsoever is the sales department. They are the frontline out in the sales battlefield fighting for every lead, every prospect, and every sale. Let’s take a look at two perspectives on why similar sales training should be expanded throughout the company at all levels.

The first perspective is that from the prospect when dealing with any department they may come in contact with. Some may view this as “customer service” which does have its place. However, it is the mindset of the person delivering the service that makes or breaks their efforts. Without the correct mindset, customer service can become very methodical and cliché.

When people have a sales mindset, delivering customer service has reason, passion and a sense of commitment and urgency. I believe we’ve all experienced it before when the person on the other end of the line or other side of the desk is telling us what we want to hear, but do we really believe there is conviction behind the words, or merely a training manual with a script. Conversely, how do you feel when you deal with someone that walks the talk!? They deliver above and beyond what you not only expected, but would even dream of.

The second perspective on the need of everyone having a sales mindset is the power in numbers. If all you’re relying on is your sales staff to generate leads, provide the value, serve the prospect and close the sale, you are missing out on all kinds of potential activity.

In a previous article, we looked at the power of tapping into other’s personal networks where we each know on average 250 people. If you have 20 people in your company in addition to your sales staff, that is 5,000 potential prospects that are not even being tapped into. Heck, if you only have six people, that’s an additional 1,500 people that could be introduced to your business, product or service.

You may not be able, nor want, to put everyone into a commissionable position, but having a referral reward system in place to thank your “non-sales” staff further cements the sales mindset throughout the organization. Make it worthwhile for everyone to actively “sell” for you and bring you back good, quality referrals. Maybe it’s an individual incentive, or it could be a company-wide incentive with non-sales staff goals in place to works towards.

(Here’s an idea…if “X” number of referrals are generated by your non-sales staff over a four week period, the sales staff holds a pot-luck luncheon and serves everyone else. They will gladly serve everyone for the hot referrals they get to work!)

Finally, by providing Sales Mindset training to your entire organization, it proactively puts everyone in a position to drive more and more people through your door. It gives everyone a sense of ownership in the success of the company. It gives people a greater sense of value and a better appreciation of everyone they work with.

Now, Go Get ‘Em!