EASY SELLING

I think that the selling process needs to be understood and hope that the following ideas will help you.

They have been distilled from about 25 years at the sharp end of professional selling when I read many books and attended many sales courses sponsored by major UK companies. Not all of that was good but some was brilliant and as you learn you will develop your own ability to sort out the best.

It takes time to become a good salesperson because you have to develop an instinctive reaction to what your customer is telling you. You need to learn from your mistakes as well as your successes. Make notes of good and bad so that your success rate can improve.

Selling is easy but it's not simple. You must be prepared to put in the study time to fully understand you and your competitors offerings. If you're part of a team split this job up and it will be a lot easier. Come together as a group to pool and refine your findings. Develop strategies for dealing with your competition offerings.

Don't worry about the stress experienced in your early selling attempts. The adrenalin that kicked in during my very first sale made it impossible for me to drive my car for about an hour. Now I have the adrenalin under control and I love it.

If you don't feel confident with selling your products after about six months then you need to consider one of two things. Either you are selling the wrong products or are having difficulty handling the adrenalin surge experienced during the selling process. If this is you then review your careerer path

If you feel you are getting the hang of it then you have a great life ahead of you. Selling will reward you with great job satisfaction. You will meet many people, make new friends, and have great fun while you work. It's like getting paid to play games!

Read on and love your life.

1. Buyers only buy one thing! That is the benefit the product or service bestows upon them. You influence someone to buy something by selling benefits. A benefit would be something like comfortable, fashionable, or possibly your bum looks good in that but only if you are in the best friend category.

2. Understanding the benefits of your products relies on product knowledge. Product knowledge is knowledge of the features of your products. You need to know if your product has any unique features. These will endow your product with unique benefits and give you a competitive advantage.

Things like wide screen are features. They need to be converted to benefits such as watch in comfort; or reduced eye strain. Alternatively the smaller screen feature would have the benefit of ideal if space is at a premium.

3. Product knowledge will make you a confident salesperson able to create

trust in the mind of a buyer. You can enhance this trust by using eye contact

and body language to show that you know what you are talking about.

4. To convert features to benefits in the mind of the buyer you need to

understand what benefits the buyer is seeking. You can do this by asking

questions and listening carefully to the answers. Try to avoid interruptions but

you can offer gentle prompting if the customer is having difficulty defining

their needs. The answers are likely to be in the form of features but they will

tell you which benefits to sell to the customer.

5. Do not give a list of features and assume that your customer can translate

these into a list of potential benefits. You need to take the features and explain

to the customer how they provide the benefits they seek. To make this

explanation you take a benefit and explain the mechanism by which it is

beneficial.

Suppose we have a feature of a car such as cruise control. If you simply tell the

customer that fact they will be mentally saying to themselves so what. To sell

you must not only say it has cruise control but explain the benefits of cruise

control to the driver. You might say something like:

It's got great cruise control which is very simple to use (here you might want to

demonstrate or say ‘with just the touch of a button on the steering wheel’). It's

amazingly restful on a long journey because you don't have to keep your foot

on the accelerator all the time. The precision electronic control of the

accelerator also improves fuel consumption to an extraordinary degree. It's a

feature which can pay for itself many times over. It's so safe to use because you

only have to use the clutch, brake pedal or a touch of a button on the steering

wheel and it immediately puts you back in manual control.

In this example the first sentence tells the customer what the feature is and

reassures them that it is not difficult to use. The second sentence explains how

the mechanism of not using the accelerator results in the benefit of not being

exhausted by a long journey. The third and fourth sentences explain how the

mechanism of precision accelerator control can save money on fuel bills. The

last sentence defines the mechanisms which make cruise control safe to use.

Cruise control is now in the customers mind as simple, relaxing, economical

and safe. In the customers mind it should be saying I want it now!

Of course you haven't have sold your car with cruise control to a boy racer as

he probably has other priorities in mind. You should have determined his needs

before you started.

6. Experience will teach you when to stop talking about the benefits of the

product. If you confuse the customer with information overload they will walk

away – probably saying that they need to think about it. They will go to another

potential supplier and buy from the one who makes their choice a simple one.

7. To determine when the customer is ready to buy you simply ask a

leading question. This is a soft sell. The answer to an inoffensive question such

as “Would you like the red one?” makes it easy. Responses such as “Yes” or

“No, the blue one” tell you that the customer has mentally made up their mind

to buy from you and is ready to move to the purchase formalities.

8. “I'm not sure” invites you to ask about the nature of the uncertainty.

They may need a benefit that they are deliberately withholding from you

because you are not yet in their best friend category. You have the opportunity

to assure them that your product seems to offer all the benefits they seek and

this may prompt them to reveal a hidden agenda.

9. You also have to know when to let the customer walk away because if

you don't they won't come back to seek your advice on another occasion. Loose

a sale gracefully by reminding them of any unique benefits which you know

your competitors won't be able to match and planting the thought in their mind

that you can be of assistance to them on another occasion.

10. Regular face-to-face group sales meetings are a must. They give you the

opportunity to share ideas and learn from each other. This is so much more

effective than a one sided, do as I say, video presentation. You need to support

each other in the learning process. It is also vital to communicate lack of a

benefit to the person who defined the product. They should then make sure that

specific benefit requirements of customers are being addressed with future

products and your sales will be increased.

11. There's more, but hone your skills with the above ideas as they represent

the basis of good selling. Now take one of your products and for each feature

write down the mechanism/s which lead to the benefit/s. Do this for the rest of

your products and have fun selling.

12. Ready to move on? Then study empathy, character analysis and

motivational skills and you'll be unstoppable.

I wish you well in your endeavours. If I have failed to make myself clear I'll try and

answer your email questions at spedanista@shipton-exeter.com.

If inundated I'll put up a FAQ page on www.shipton-exeter.com. You might want to

check that out for a quick answer.

John Shipton, 9 November 2014