Author name: Noah Weber

Selling Success is not only determined by your knowledge of the sales cycle, selling strategies, sales secrets or even conversational skills. As important as all of these things are, your personal emotions will often determine your level of attainment and financial success in your selling career and in other areas of your life. Regrettably, many sales training books and courses ignore this area completely and leave the reader out to dry. To begin with, we will give you this powerful piece of advice. “Make the deliberate choice to conscientiously become fully aware of your feelings and corresponding emotions along with how those feelings and emotions affect your personal behaviors, either positively or negativity.” Without this awareness, you will be totally powerless to modify, enhance or control these emotions and their effects on you. Without complete awareness, we find ourselves without personal control over our lives and all aspects of our careers. Look around and observe those you see around you. Who do you know that has major mood swings based on what is happening in the world, in their community, or in their immediate environment at home, or in the workplace? Do these people also engage in behaviors that do not serve their overall best interests much of the time? These are people who are being controlled by their feelings and emotions rather than being people who are in control of them. These individuals can have their emotional buttons pushed by outside sources, events or other people without their consent, or even their knowledge. Most are simply not consciously aware that this is even happening to them. This fact means that they surrender much of their personal power to others. If, as you were ‘looking around’, you happened to glance in the mirror and realize that group included you, chances are your feeling and corresponding emotions are holding you back from achieving the success you desire and deserve in your selling career and perhaps in your life in general. Fortunately, most people do realize that they perform at a much higher level when they are happy and feel good. Doesn’t it then make good sense to work towards feeling good and happy each day? Coping with the challenges of life doesn’t make this an easy task all the time, but it is possible. Millions choose this as a way of life every single day, and it pays off. Consider this. When you experience an event or see something that either disturbs or brings joy to you, you will have feelings. These feelings then will trigger emotional energy within you which you will discharge in either a positive or negative way through your action or, in most cases, a reaction. The exciting thing about this is that, by and large, you get to choose which reaction it will be. Will it be positive or negative based on the consequences, through your actions? This is where the problem lays for most people. Their actions are triggered by their feeling and emotions rather than rational conscious thought. Therefore, if they have felt something less than joyful they will then tend to be reactive and negative which will then cause additional feelings of sadness or anger. The alternative is to be proactive and positive which will produce joy and calmness which will create much better outcomes for you. Your feelings should guide you but not totally control you since they can be influenced by outside sources.

I guarantee you that one of your worst feared objections in sales is “I want to think about it,” isn’t it? Why does it seem like all sales people fear hearing the “I want to think about it” objection from their potential prospect? Because it isn’t really an objection is it? Or is it? They haven’t really said “No,” have they? But they haven’t really said “Yes” either, have they? So the weak sales rep can breathe a sigh of relief and believe that the client will definitely get back to them with a yes tomorrow and the so called experienced rep will make the excuse that it wasn’t really an objection so there was nothing they could have done to overcome it. While the Professional Closer goes to work and starts to find out exactly what it is the clients want to think about. Which ever one you are, let’s look at this “objection” in the latter tense, as Professional Closers; after all if you didn’t want to become a Professional Closer in sales, you wouldn’t be reading this, would you? So what can you do in this situation to be better prepared for it? Firstly we have to look at the reasons why people say “We want to think about it.” The first and most common reason you will get about the: “I want to think about it” objection is that you gave them too much information to think about right away. An old sales saying that is extremely relatable is “If the cow doesn’t moo, don’t feed it.” What this is saying is that you should only give them the information that they ask for. There is no point in telling them how efficient the air conditioning is on this particular model of car if they live somewhere where it snows for six months out of the year. They will be more sold on the amazing traction the electronic 4X4 system gives them when driving on snow and the fact that by pointing the key through the kitchen window and pressing a button while they’re finishing their morning coffee, the seats heat up and the all windows defrost automatically. Do you get the idea? You can always add the air conditioning in as an additional benefit for when they drive down south for their summer holidays while they’re signing the purchase agreement. The other main and obvious reason you will get “I want to think about it” is you haven’t sold them yet. So to recap: “I want to think about it” really means, you’ve given me too much information and I’m confused. Or, I don’t have enough of the relevant information so I’m not sold yet. By keeping it simple and only feeding the cow when it moos, you will always be dealing with: “I don’t have enough information yet” It’s always easier to add the benefits of your product bit by bit than take something away once you’ve given them everything up front. The lesson this week is: “Don’t feed the cow till it moos!”

Recently, I received a prospecting voicemail message from a salesperson who was cold-calling for their company. The salesperson explained his company was “the leader in Microsoft hosted Exchange solutions” and they encouraged me to visit their company’s website for more information. That was it. If you received that salesperson’s voicemail, what would go through your head? Do you think it might it be a question like, “What in the world is a Microsoft hosted Exchange solution?” Do you think the message would inspire you to call the salesperson back at all? Why did the salesperson’s voicemail fail to accomplish the desired goal? The easy answer to that is because it focused on a solution rather than a problem. If your prospecting calls and related follow-up voicemails talk about a solution, in effect you are assuming that your prospects are already aware of the problems that your solution can solve for them. If your prospects are not able to relate your solution back to their own specific problems, your message probably won’t hit home. If you use industry-specific jargon to describe your solution, you are making the additional assumption that your prospects are familiar with the terms that you are using. If they aren’t, it further reduces your chances of attracting their attention. How could this salesperson restructure his voicemail to be more effective? Instead of talking about their solution, they should have talked about one or more of the problems that can be solved by using a hosted Exchange service. A revised voice mail message might sound something like this: “We help small companies look like big companies to their prospects and customers; plus, we help companies of all sizes focus more of their time and resources on their core businesses, which accelerates growth and profitability. If you’d like learn how we do this, please give me a call back.” This salesperson could further enhance his message by including a specific quantified impact that their company’s services have produced for customers in the past. Here is what it might sound like if we add a quantified impact to the previously revised voice mail message: “We help small companies look like big companies to their prospects and customers; plus, we help companies of all sizes focus more of their time and resources on their core businesses. This has helped some of our customers reduce their operating costs by as much as 30 percent in just six months. If you’d like learn how they were able to achieve these results, please give me a call.” Do you see the difference between the revised messages and, “We are the leader in Microsoft hosted Exchange solutions; please visit our website”? Do you agree that the revised messages are likely to capture more prospects’ attention and produce more returned phone calls? There are other advantages to focusing your prospecting messages on problems rather than solutions. If you talk about a solution, your message will have the most appeal for prospects that are already actively looking for that specific solution. But, do you think those (few) prospects are just sitting around waiting for you to call? Or, do you think they might be doing some proactive research? In fact, isn’t it possible they might already have some price quotes in hand? If they are that far along in the buying process, how does it impact your chances of winning their business? If you do manage to win their business, how profitable is it likely to be? Wouldn’t you agree that in this situation your solution is more likely to be perceived as a commodity, and the business is likely to go to a low bidder? Contrast this scenario to a properly managed, problem-based prospecting approach. If you are successful in attracting a prospect’s interest by talking about the business problems that you can solve and the quantified impacts that your company has delivered to customers, the natural next step is to ask the prospect to identify which specific problems pertain to their business. Once the prospect prioritizes their problems, you can ask more questions to help them quantify the impact of these problems on their business. If the quantified impacts are substantial enough, it becomes quite easy to justify a very profitable price for your solution. If you want to improve your prospecting effectiveness, stop leading with solutions in your prospecting calls and voicemails. Instead, lead with the problems you can help the prospects solve, and (ideally) one or more of the quantified impacts your company has already produced for customers. This type of problem-focused prospecting approach will attract the interest of a larger percentage of your prospects, produce higher close rates, and generate more profitable sales.