18. How do you get people to care about what you are selling?
Sometimes you have to take a negative approach to get a positive response, sometimes you have to be creative to get someone's attention in the first place, and sometimes you have to really think outside the box to make people take notice.
I am going to give you an example that is going to blow your mind. But first, let me show you a couple of things I have in my files that really seem to work, and some that don't.
Whenever I am on an airplane or in a crowd of strangers I am asked what I do. According to the experts you should have an "elevator speech" for these occasions. You should be able to tell people what you do by the time the elevator makes it from one floor to the next.
I designed a clever 30 second speech and it really seemed to turn people off. As soon as I said I was a "sales trainer" I could see the expression on their face turn to panic. They immediately said they don't use sales trainers, or they have a company employee who does their sales training. They had a ready made objection. So by following the advice of the experts, I was turning people off in less than 30 seconds.
Back to the drawing board. I took a different approach by thinking outside the box.
I created a "shock" effect and I am now able to get people's interest and have some fun at the same time. Now, when they ask me what I do, here is what I say:
"I show people how to stay 4 steps ahead of the sheriff, would you like to know what those 4 steps are?" And they always say YES?
I give them four quick steps that would be applicable to them and ask which step would be most helpful. If they say "step 3" I give them a really good sound bite of information on step 3. I then get their business card and follow up with some more helpful information.
I am getting ready to do a 5,000 piece mailing and guess what will be on the envelope? You got it: "How to stay 4 steps ahead of the sheriff, would you like to know what the 4 steps are?"
When you are approaching a new account think of your first few words as the sales copy on the envelope. The job of the sales copy is NOT to make the sale, but to get them OPEN UP!
Here are some of the standard openers and my translation. If you are guilty you might spend a little time creating something that works for you. Be easy on yourself, everyone has used them.
"I am sorry for interrupting."
Translation: I really don't amount to much - you are much more important than I am - you see I am just a doormat waiting for someone to wipe their feet on me.
"I know you are busy."
Translation: I really don't have any respect for you or your time - you are a busy and important person and I am intruding in you day.
"I was in the neighborhood."
Translation: I am not very organized - I simply drift through my day from neighborhood to neighborhood making random calls on people and waste their time.
"Do you need anything?"
Translation. I am really not much of a sales person and I was wondering if there are any crumbs left over from a real sales person who has been here.
"I wanted to stop by and introduce myself."
Translation. I am really not ambitious enough to have done some homework about you so I guess I will tell you all about ME.
I think you get the point. Things are different out there today, so you have to be different or they eat you alive.
Today’s customers are being bombarded with an estimated 3,000 sales and marketing messages every day. How do you stand out and set yourself apart from the crowd? You have to hit them with a HUGE BENEFIT. A benefit that will have the same power as if you hit them between the eyes with a baseball bat!
How should you make your entrance into an account?
First: Attitude. You should always assume an attitude of confidence and purpose. Never apologize for making the call. Never feel like you are interrupting. Never say, "I was in the neighborhood" as if your call was not important. Never say, “I wanted to stop by and introduce myself.” Who cares?
There is a psychological law that makes the prospect react and respond to the attitude and action expressed by you the sales person. There is nothing complicated about it, except the results that come when you put this psychological law into effect. Make the call with confidence.
Second. A huge SPECIFIC BENEFIT. For example.: “I am here to show you how you can lower your operating expenses by $5,323 dollars per quarter -or- I am here to show you how increase your invoice size by 25 cents, which equates to $813 per week, let me show you how I figured it based on your current volume -or- I have a product that will cut your cleaning time by 23% resulting in a labor cost savings of $103 per week or $5,356 per year.”
I can hear you now. “But Bob, I have to call on my accounts every week!” How could I possibly come up with a new money saving or money making idea for my customers EVERY WEEK?”
My answer. How many line items do you have? 2,000? 4,000? 8,000? 10,000? Every line item you have in your inventory represents an opportunity. How many services do you have? 27? 37? 47? Or how about 57?
I can still hear you. “But Bob, all my competitors are selling on price and I have to meet their prices or lose the business.”
What if your competitor was giving their product away FREE? What if there was very little quality difference between your product and the “free” product? What if their method of distribution was much more efficient than yours? Could you sell against that kind of competition? No?
Well someone was given a sales challenge to sell against that kind of market condition. And they are very successful. The product is bottled water. How do they do it? Do they lower their price and try to compete with tap water? Do they badmouth the water company and tell their customers “yea, it may be free, but look at what you get!”
Is bottled water really any better? I gave it the ultimate taste test. I put two bowls of water in front of my dog – one from a bottle that I paid over a dollar for – the other from the sink faucet. My dog tried both of them. Which one do you think she preferred? The tap water! Did I switch to tap water? No. I still pay an outrageous price for a bottle of water.
Why? Somehow the perceived value of water in a bottle is a strong enough benefit for me to fork over my hard earned cash.
Every item in your warehouse has within it a huge benefit to the customer or it wouldn’t be in the warehouse. All you have to do is find ONE BENEFIT PER WEEK and present it to all your customers.
Lets do the math. Thirty-five accounts x one benefit per week x 52 weeks = 1,820 benefit presentations per year.
Even a blind hog can find an acorn once in a while. If you make ONE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWENTY benefit presentations per year – you will sell something – even if by accident.
The bottom line. You walk into your account. There have been 2,999 people trying to sell this person today and you are number 3,000.
Do you say – “I'm sorry for interrupting?”
Do you say – “I know you are busy?”
Do you say – “I was in the neighborhood?”
Do you say – “Do you need anything?”
Do you say – “I wanted to stop by and introduce myself?”
Only if you want the customer to say – “Who cares?”
Comments:
I like the idea of presenting a bold idea to a prospect on the first call. I am going to sit down today and come up with a list of ideas on how to gain attention of my prospects on the first call. I don't want the person I am calling on to forget me as soon as I leave, I want to make a lasting impression.
Jim Chill
The most difficult part of the equation is me, the sales rep. I love the prop idea. Though I can’t “vent” I can have some sort of hand out that, when given at the appropriate time, will help me tell my story. This works particularly well early on when you are not quite secure in your own skin. The key is to practice your opening at home. Write it out and give it to the mirror, your dog(biscuits work really well on them and will build your confidence-they can’t resist) and your wife. The more you do it the better you will be. The thing to remember is that in a cold call situation your goal is to get permission to come back.
James Ruth
There is usually never a “good” time when calling on a potential customer for the first time…second…or third time. You suggest our approach should be specific and we should have done our homework before we make our grand entrance. However, sometimes we may not have been able to obtain a lot of information about that account that will allow us to be as specific as you state.
It is that first conversation with the potential customer that usually paints the whole picture or at least most of it. In my short term experiences, so far, I have found that it is easy to get the first conversation; it’s the second one that seems a little tougher to come by. The second meeting is the one when you have to really put it out there and tell them what you have to offer and be specific in what you can do for them.
Liz Vaughan
I have finally come up with an introduction that I love. I like to ask “did I catch you at a bad time?”. The contact person is programmed to answer “NO”. This shows the prospective clients that you care about their time and don’t want to be too pushy. I think they appreciate the fact that you know they have schedules and deadlines to meet too. It’s just another way I look to differentiate myself and the company I represent.
Becky Akins
I loved this lesson. I have been guilty of saying, “let me introduce myself” and I feel this lesson demonstrates how that can backfire on my ability to get to know my prospect. One thing I would like to say is that, the reason I buy bottled water, in not for the taste of it. There is a benefit to drinking it. We all should probably drink more water and having it at our finger tips to take on the run allows us to do something good for ourselves in the mist of a very busy day. If you point out to your prospects how you my benefit them in a busy day, you cant go wrong. The prospect will not want to do business with you because you are just like all the other companies, but because you bring something to the table to make their day easier.
Tonya Sauer
I especially love this lesson because reemphasizes that we should not apologize for doing our job. We are very busy as well. I get especially irritated when people miss our pre scheduled appointment because it says that their time is somehow more important than mine. I am not a big fan of the 'drop in' appointment because I feel it is an imposition of someone's time. It's different than an information gathering cold call. You need to always present yourself like an organized BUSY, respectful business person.
Marquesa Ortega
This is a great lesson. So many times we all have walked in and said I just wanted to come by and introduce myself. In theory it sounds good and I have done it more times than I would like to admit. It makes sense that we shouldn’t do this. We should go into a company and show them who we are and what we do. We need to do our homework on them so we can be better prepared when we walk through the door. At that point we aren’t “intruding” or “just stopping by”. We are there with a purpose, we are there to be the resource that they need, even if they don’t know it yet.
Brandon Sanchez
Sometimes I feel as if most of my cold call customers are graduates of the ‘How To Defeat A Sales Person Before They Get Past The First Sentence” correspondence course. A few of them have actually started walking backwards after I introduce myself. The winner was when I asked the General Manager of a mid-size company if I could have his card and he said “No!”.
You can’t force someone to listen to you or buy from you so you have to learn a different way to get your message across without aggravating them. And everyone is different so it takes a lot of ingenuity.
Crocker Smith
"You have to hit them with a HUGE BENEFIT. A benefit that will have the same power as if you hit them between the eyes with a baseball bat!"