Knowledge2process’s Blog

Entrepreneurs can learn to target “high probability” prospective clients instead of wasting time and money selling to the ones who won’t commit

The Art of Sales Communication

Too many entrepreneurs waste time and energy chasing sales prospects that have no potential. To increase your sales, you must learn to disqualify sales leads. Though it might seem like a skill better suited for your sales team, you, as an entrepreneur, should master it to get and stay financed.

Sales communication is different from advertising and marketing—it’s more personal. Too many salespeople make the mistake of spewing off hype-driven sales talk. But no one likes to feel manipulated, so this approach doesn’t work. Some sales people don’t even bother to explain the benefits of what they’re selling.

Key Points for Entrepreneurs

1. Be a shrink. We all bring our emotional baggage to every aspect of our lives. We all need to be loved and respected, and to trust others. In selling situations, many of these psychological buttons are pushed. Your sole job as a salesperson is to build rapport. Rapport leads to trust. Trust leads to lasting relationships and sales.

2. Set your objective for prospecting. Shifting your objective from getting the appointment to determining whether the prospect qualifies for an appointment is key. Next, you need to eliminate your fear of rejection. It’s easier to do this when you aren’t begging for sales meetings and you won’t be begging for meetings. Instead, you’ll identify your target prospects using specifics such as price-points, budgets, decision-making ability, and schedules. You’ll only make appointments with prospects who need, want, and can afford what you are selling and are willing to buy from you now if you meet their requirements. You’ll also learn to embrace the fact that disqualifying a prospect is just as valuable and important as qualifying one—whether you disqualify/qualify him or he disqualifies/qualifies himself.

3. Start separating real leads from unlikely ones. This type of prospecting is essentially a practice of sorting and identifying by talking to as many people as you can in the shortest amount of time. You’ll need to avoid the temptation of trying to create prospects—they simple cannot be created. This process involves learning how to disqualify a low-probability prospect and maintain control of the interaction. Remember, whoever asks the questions are in control.

Print out these reminders and tape them by your phone to help you when you call:

• I work with high probability prospects only. I disqualify everyone else.

• Pr • I don’t waste my resources on low-probability prospects.

• No is just as good as yes.

• A low-probability prospect is worse than no prospect at all. Remember the opportunity cost.

• I end the conversation if the prospect is unwilling to make a suitable commitment.

• When in doubt, I disqualify.

• I go into each call with no expectation of a result.

• True high-probability prospects will not allow themselves to be disqualified.

• You can call the same list over and over again and you will get a higher and higher percentage of prospects who say yes as long as you do the following:

Keep changing the offer.

Disqualify.

Don’t waste prospects’ time.

Don’t educate.

Stop spending precious months educating the prospect, who do buy in expectation of goods for free. Forget the concept of consultative selling. If they want consultations, they have to buy first.

4. Stay focused. Fear is what keeps most of us chasing sales leads that we know aren’t high probability. Here’s how to stay on track and further cement this learning into your sales process:

• You are training prospects when you disqualify them.

• Don’t make the same offer twice in a row—you’ll jeopardize your credibility.

• Deal with discomfort by acknowledging it and pushing through it anyway.

• Remind yourself this is the disqualification game.

• You have no power to make a high probability prospect. You do have the power to disqualify.

• Prospecting deserves 50% of your time. It is just as important as meeting in person.

• Twenty percent of the market doesn’t like its current supplier and would be receptive to switching.

5. Get to the decision maker when prospecting.

• Always try to get to the business owner or decision maker.

• When you cold-call the decision maker but get the gatekeeper, treat the person as if he or she is the decision maker.

• If the gatekeeper cannot answer your disqualifying questions, ask if he can put you in touch with someone who can, or bring the questions directly to the decision maker.

Remember prospecting is a disqualification process.

IF YOU don’t know how to do it properly, outsource. This should be the mantra of all small businesses, according to experts, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Outsourcing has been part of the culture of small to medium enterprises for at least 15 years. In the current economic climate it will become a much more important tool if companies want to try to compete in a very tough global market. Business owners should concentrate on their core strengths and anything that takes their focus from those should be outsourced. If something is not a core activity and it can be outsourced. Things like payroll and keeping up to compliance can be time consuming and most SME operators do it after hours.

However, outsourcing isn’t just a matter of looking in the phone book and finding someone to do the job for you. You really have to know the job you want to outsource. You have to have a clear understanding of the service you want to buy so you can then measure its performance. But there are also things that can’t be measured, like quality of customer service. Company must also have a sufficiently skilled staff member to be able to manage the outsourcing. There must be someone who can manage booking the freight, ensuring deliveries are made and who can manage the contract with the freight forwarding company. It’s a bit like you steering the ship while they do the rowing.

Deciding to outsource certain activities in a business is the easy part; telling your staff that you are doing it is the more difficult aspect, even that can be done with proper preparation. Right now a lot of companies are overstaffed and they are thinking of cutting back on manpower. There is a downside to outsourcing in that you can lose control of that part of the business. In regards to ensuring that your staff doesn’t feel let down by your decision, it is paramount that management is honest with them and keeps them informed of all decisions. Management should be transparent with staff about the direction the business is taking and the pressures it may be under.

When talking to staff use inclusive language such as we and us rather than I, That way staff feel as if they are part of the process. Staff needs to know what is happening and how the decisions will affect them. SMEs are like families so there should be an element of collaboration when it comes to the business. Staff should be encouraged to be part of the decision-making process but at the end of the day it is the business owner that has to show leadership and make the hard decisions. You have to remember that you can’t make everyone happy all the time, but it is best to ensure there is continuous communication with staff.

▲MAKING IT WORK

■ Know everything about the part of the business you want to outsource.

■ Know how you are going to measure the performance of the outsourcing partner.

■ Know how outsourcing that component of the business will affect customers and staff.

■ Manage the relationship with your customers and outsourcer.

■ Ensure there is a continuous process of communication with you and your outsourcer — it’s not set and forget.

Companies always need to get the most out of their outsourcing partnerships, but the focus is never as intense as during tough economic times. The financial squeeze has set in and it has affected every organization, big and small, across the country. Outsource partnerships are not exempt and partners must work on their relationships to get the most from them. Two killer factors in outsourcing knowledge process is Relationship and Trust, Here are some tips to build outsource relationships that create value:

1.      Fix or fire: Penalty clauses help nobody and should be excluded from outsourcing agreements. Penalties detract from the partnership because they dole out blame, and the relationship breaks down as one party becomes defensive. However, customers need to ensure that vendors are in some way accountable. The only way that penalty clauses are going to work is if they apply equally to the outsource vendor and the customer CIO or IT manager, with both parties working toward the same view established up-front. Better than punitive monetary clauses is simply fixing any problems, with flexibility in the contract to terminate should that not be possible. The termination clause is valuable too, if the customer’s business changes and the vendor cannot cope with the change. It allows a graceful exit for both parties without being held to ransom by a piece of paper unable to reflect changes in the real world.

2.      Do your homework: Finding the right outsource partner can be a daunting task. There are many to choose from, and, while they seem to offer the same or similar services, there are in fact some key, if subtle, differences that can make or break a relationship. Researching via the Internet is the obvious launch point for an investigation into the market. The next is seeking referrals. Be careful not just to accept all referrals. Only accept those which refer to the same service your company seeks. If your business needs to outsource its call centre, then look at case studies and referrals of call centre outsourcing arrangements. Another key aspect of referrals is to ensure that they come from organizations with a similar culture to yours. A referral from an organization with a free and easy culture is no use to an organization that is heavily process-driven, with strict business rules. It is important to understand those parameters from day one, and to determine whether or not your business is a suitable partner for the outsourcing vendor and vice versa. Outsourcing is a long-term, strategic relationship that can be handled according to many of the tenets of good merger or acquisition practice. The need to conduct due diligence cannot be overstated, delving as deep as ascertaining how vendors train and develop employees, retention histories, contingency plans and experience in your industry, with your size of business and your business culture.

3.      Take stock for the future: One of the most important prerequisites to a successful outsource relationship is to make an accurate assessment of the current state of the customer’s business. That includes the existing infrastructure, the current service levels, pricing and more. Only based on that can both parties define the goals, the situation they want to create, service level improvements they are after and any cost savings, and ensure that they are measurable.

4.      Get beyond the rocky road: The decision to outsource is not an easy one to make, and once made the transition process may be challenging. It is imperative that the customer and the vendor relationship are able to extend beyond that period. One of the methods for achieving that is to ensure that senior management is truly behind the project.

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