It helps to understand that people express anger differently. Three common profiles:

Blamers typically start off with, “You should’ve…” or “I thought you…”, suggesting you’re in the wrong. They focus on others instead of admitting “I’m angry,”or “I’m upset.”

Exploders shout, scream, or holler when something doesn’t go their way. This behavior is most common among authority figures – they may use anger to intimidate or manipulate. It may also be a defense mechanism.

Saboteurs give you “the silent treatment” by avoiding communication. Included: ambiguous or vague e-mail replies, skipping scheduled meetings or calls and other passive-aggressive moves.

What to do? First, don’t try to threaten or control a blamer or exploder. Let them vent without asking them to calm down or trying to explain.

Second, show you understand. Say “I understand how you feel, and I’d be angry, too.” That’s simple and doesn’t imply you agree with any criticisms lodged against you.

If someone is engaged in sabotage or passive-aggressive behavior, draw them out. Ask something like, “Do you have any concerns that would get in the way of us moving forward together?”

Source:www.sellingpower.com

Free Training Video - "Angry Customers: The Three R's for Dealing with Hostility"

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Getting that coveted invitation is about gaining your customer’s full participation toward a shared objective, says consultant and sales coach
Ronald Karr.

Sounds easy but isn’t. For most decent salespeople it happens occasionally. But the very best somehow manage to get “invited” over and over again. How do they do it?

Our research reveals four strategies that winning salespeople employ instinctively. You can learn them, too:

1. They’re not put off by No
“No” answers come early and often in your discussions with potential customers, even in situations where you eventually get the business.

That’s just because “no” is the lowest risk answer. When people are not yet convinced to make the commitment to buy from you, they’ll say “no” – but that doesn’t mean you can’t make the sale.

What it means is that the customer perceives that something is missing. You overcome this by making a value-adding proposition in one or more of these areas:

• Improving top-line revenue or profitability.
• Improving productivity and saving time.
• Reducing internal or supply chain costs.
• Gaining a competitive edge overall, or in specific market segments.

2. They ask issue-based questions
What kind of issues is your customer facing in any or all of these four areas?

Issue-based questions garner time and attention and almost always evoke answers that tell you where customers want to go.

They focus the discussion on the customer rather than the sale.

Here’s a good example: “You’re having a reject rate as high as 4%? That really runs up your costs, not just in materials but in production time. The customers I work with generally keep rejects below 1%. They couldn’t compete otherwise.”

You’ve displayed your in-depth knowledge of the product, the process and the industry. And you’ve demonstrated that you’re a potential resource – someone who’s more interested in meeting their objectives than in overcoming their objections.

3. They ask clarification questions
Make sure you understand exactly what your customer has told you about major areas of concern.

If you’re at all uncertain of what to correct or address, probe further into this area. Coming up with a great solution to the wrong problem isn’t going to move the sales process along.

Clarification questions also give you the opportunity to further demonstrate your expertise.

Example: “You say you want to reduce time-to-market. So how exactly do you measure time-to-market?”

4. They ask consequence questions
What would be the consequences of saying “no”? Would the cost of making the change you are recommending be higher or lower than the cost of not making the change?

If you can convince your customer that it would be lower, you’ve managed to establish the perceived value you’ve been striving for.

Get Free Training Videos - "The Top 5 Sales Skills Your Salespeople Must Master"

Moving ahead
When you’ve effectively asked issue-based questions, followed up with clarification questions and concluded with consequence questions, you’ve made customers realize that it’s in their best interest to move ahead with your proposal.

Now it’s time to close the sale. Some customers will need you to start the ball rolling.

But you’ll find many take the initiative, inviting you to close. They’ll also be inviting you to embark on something else – a mutually beneficial partnership and a long-term relationship.

Source: Ron Karr is a professional speaker, sales trainer and consultant. To learn more visit www.ronkarr.com.

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• Nancy Nardin has 4 reasons why dumbing down your sales process is the smartest way to sell.
• Alen Mayer wants to show you how to use persuasion techniques in sales.
• Leanne Hoagland-Smith can help you with 5 Tips on how to lose the sale before you realized you lost it.
• Finally, Michelle Davidson wants to know how strong your client relationships are.

The post Sales Recap: May 17 appeared first on Rapid Learning Institute.

Remember that customer who loved you loved you loved you six months ago? Since then, someone else has been whispering in her ear. They’re telling her that your product quality isn’t what it used to be. That there’s been a lot of turnover in your management. That other customers have complained.

Now your buyer has some doubts about you. Even worse, she tells herself that she always had these doubts. “I was afraid something like this would happen all along,” she thinks. And suddenly that customer who was crazy about you and your product is telling you, “The truth is, I never really loved you.”

Ouch.

She’s not lying. That’s really how she remembers it, according to one research study.

The study examined a group of moviegoers who’d given high marks to a movie they’d just watched. Later, these same people were shown a negative review of the same film. Then they were asked to recall their initial opinion.

After reading the negative review, the moviegoers were more likely to say they hadn’t liked the film when they saw it. Think about that for a moment. They weren’t saying they now liked the movie less. They were saying they’d never liked it.

What this finding means for salespeople: Memories do more than fade. They get rearranged to fit the buyer’s current frame of mind. So you have to constantly refresh the buyer’s enthusiasm. [Tweet This Quote]

There is an upside: The study found that this effect goes both ways. When moviegoers who had a negative first impression were later shown a positive review, they were more likely to remember that they liked the movie all along. So if your customer relationship got off to a rocky start, you can change how the buyer remembers it.

The bottom line is that customer loyalty and satisfaction aren’t set in stone. You earn it every day.

Free Training Video - "Account Retention: Little Signs of Big Trouble"

Source: Braun, K. A., Zaltman G. (1998) Backward framing: A theory of memory reconstruction. MSI’s Working Paper Series, # 98-109.

The post I never really loved you appeared first on Rapid Learning Institute.

• You tried to sell me something that I didn’t want. You didn’t care enough to learn about my preferences, my needs and my constraints.
• What you offered me was style, while my concern was substance.
• I wanted something that would do a little more, or something that was made a little better, with just a little better workmanship.
• What you offered me was just a little too expensive, and budget was my primary concern.
• The terms and conditions you offered were designed mainly as a solution to your problems. They didn’t address mine.

It was all about you
In short, I am not your customer today because I sensed that this sale was all about you – what you wanted to sell and when you wanted it sold, for the benefit of your sales quota or commission or whatever.

I was really looking for someone who would listen – truly listen and respond to me. Someone who’d care enough to take the time to find out what I really wanted. Someone who’d find a way to satisfy my true concerns and preferences within my means.

Instead of making it your business to ensure that I would drive away with what you offered, your obvious lack of concern just wound up driving me away.

I should have been your loyal customer. But you didn’t care enough.

So I became somebody else’s loyal customer.

Adapted from “Throw Away the Textbook and Be a Better Manager,” by Fred Jordan, ISBN 1575240114.

Free Training Video - "Customer Engagement: Why YOU Need to Drive It"

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For those unfamiliar, The Selling Essentials Minute is a series of videos that offers one sales idea in about sixty seconds. You can use the Minute to kick off a sales meeting, push an idea out to your team, start a discussion or reinforce your training.

On today’s episode: When selling, the value equation seems simple; benefits create value, which lead to sales. But that doesn’t mean more benefits will necessarily mean more sales. Why not? Watch this episode of The Selling Essentials Minute to find out.

Don’t forget: The Selling Essentials Minute is also available on our YouTube page and on iTunes. While you’re there, don’t forget to like and subscribe to them as well!

The post The Selling Essentials Minute, Ep. 24: The Value Equation: Less Is More appeared first on Rapid Learning Institute.

Go ahead and make your jokes. I’ll wait.

All done? Let’s continue.

A neuroscientist at Cambridge University ran an experiment in which he squirted apple juice into monkey’s mouths and studied how it affected dopamine levels in their brain. Dopamine is a chemical that’s involved with pleasure and rewards. Monkeys like apple juice, so it’s not surprising that levels increased.

But here’s the odd thing. After a few rounds, the dopamine levels increased just before the juice hit the monkey’s tongue. In other words, the pleasure no longer came from the reward itself, but from the expectation of the reward.

According to David Brooks, author of The Social Animal, the reason it happens is because the brain constantly creates “predictive models” of how the world works. When things work out the way we expect them to – when the model is validated – we get a little rush of pleasure.

It’s easy to think of examples from daily life. “I knew that was going to happen!” we say with excitement. It’s why we like to guess the ending to the movie. And why we keep going back to our favorite restaurant. When things work out the way we expect them to, we get a jolt of dopamine – just like the monkeys.

And when things don’t work out, we suffer twice. We don’t get the reward. And we don’t get the dopamine. As a result, we feel bad out of all proportion to what was lost. We feel betrayed. Gullible. Maybe even ashamed: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

"Managing Expectations with Unrealistic Customers"

By now, you can probably see what this has to do with buyers. Everyone talks about “exceeding customers’ expectations,” and that’s great if you can do it. But what’s really important is not to disappoint their expectations. Your buyers have a “predictive model” about the future, based in part on what you told them. If the model fails, the buyer’s going to feel punished. And guess who else is going to get punished?

Photo Credit: MarkGrundland

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But forget old-school techniques like noticing photos in a prospect’s office or talking about the weather, says sales training guru Dave Stein of ES Research.

It turns out that storytelling is a much more powerful way to get a prospect’s attention, connect with them emotionally, and get them to drop their natural defenses.

Stories connect emotionally
Researchers at the University of North Carolina found that as soon as listeners heard the phrases, “once upon a time” or “let me tell you a story,” they paid close attention and their defenses went down.

Why? Something chemical happens in the brain. Once the storyteller begins, the listener’s analytic left brain disengages, and the emotional right brain takes over.

That makes sense when you consider that for thousands of years of human existence there was no written language, only an oral tradition.

A narrative structure – where facts and even ideas are embedded in a timeline – are more easily grasped and remembered.

Key point: The right brain is the path to an emotional connection with the listener. (And the science behind what we know intuitively: that people buy with their emotional right brain, and justify doing so with their left.)

"Connecting with Buyers: Sell More by Selling Less"

The ‘aha’ moment
UNC scientists found that “story structure” is an information powerhouse, evolutionally hardwired into human brains.

Hollywood knows this, of course, and has developed a classic “story structure” with five key elements:

• A hero or heroine with whom the audience can identify.
• A setting or situation the hero finds him or herself in, typically where things are going well.
• A complication that comes up and makes the outcome uncertain.
• A turning point or “aha” moment in which the solution becomes clear.
• A final resolution that’s satisfying, often including a lesson learned.

To be sure, Hollywood and your B2B territory are worlds apart. But the principles of making an emotional connection with an audience remain the same. The difference is that you are often dealing with an audience of one – and you have different kinds of stories to tell.

Build your own inventory
You have a wealth of information available to build an inventory of stories that help you personally or professionally connect to your prospects.

It may be an example of how you helped a customer. Or how you once held a position like the one the prospect holds now, allowing you to understand the
pressures they face.

Either way, quick access to stories like that will make it easier for you to connect. ES Research has found that:

• Some people process information better in story form.
• Stories are powerful and have been with us for millennia; we understand them at a level deeper than we realize.
• The format of a good story is easy to follow, and lets you set the direction for a conversation with a customer.

Stories you can use in B2B Sales coach Mike Bosworth teaches storytelling and breaks B2B sales stories down into four different categories:

Play like a jazz musician
Your objective in an initial contact with a prospect is to get to “tell me more” in about 30 seconds or so.

In that case you need a story that is more like a sound bite. When you are deeper into a sales call, a longer story can build rapport.

In either event, you need to develop the ability to improvise, read the situation and adapt to it on the fly. Example: If you are new on an account, you probably want to lead with a personal story rather than an organizational story.

Whether it’s direct face-to-face sales or the latest in social media, we are trying to get prospects to connect with us on a deeper level. Storytelling in a meaningful way will help you do that.

Source: Adapted from a podcast by Dave Stein and Mike Bosworth at www.esresearch.com

Photo Credit: lowjumpingfrog

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First, some self-promotion. I wrote a piece for business2community.com about sales prospecting and “green leads”.

Ryan Tognazzini has advice for how to do a good reference check for sales leaders.

At SellingPower, Gerhard Gschwandtner shares Six Quick-Tips for Jump Starting Sales.

Finally, some advice for sales reps who need help staying on task, courtesy of Babette Ten Haken.

The post Sales Recap: May 3 appeared first on Rapid Learning Institute.

Of course, in complex sales, nobody expects buyers to make an on-the-spot decision. At some point, buyers are going to go away and think about it. That’s a nerve-wracking period for most salespeople. To increase the odds of getting a yes, many use that time to shower the prospect with information about their product or service.

And THAT could be a mistake. Research suggests that calling attention to your product while the buyer is “mulling it over” could actually make it LESS likely you’ll get the sale, according to researchers at Cornell and a Dutch university.

In a series of experiments, the researchers asked students to choose between two articles for a reading assignment. The first was a classic piece that the students had seen before. The other article was brand new. When the students were told to choose immediately, 72% picked the classic article — the one they
were used to.

But among those students given the option to delay — basically, to “sleep on it” — only 42% picked the familiar option. That’s a 30-point difference.

A similar experiment by the same researchers — this time, involving political incumbents — bore out those results. When asked to choose immediately, 82% of respondents said they’d vote for the incumbent. But when people were given a chance to mull over the decision, the incumbent got only 56% of the votes. That’s a change of 26 percentage points – a landslide in politics.

When the researchers interviewed the subjects about their decision-making process, they found that their doubts grew as they mulled over their decision. But what’s really startling was WHERE the subjects PLACED their doubts.

The doubt didn’t land on the NEW choice. They landed on the FAMILIAR option: that well-thumbed article or the incumbent politician.

Stay out of the spotlight
So when buyers are mulling it over, you don’t want buyers focused on your solution. You want them focused on what brought them to the table in the first place: why they’re not 100 percent happy with the solution they have now. Their question is less likely to be “Why don’t I feel comfortable about this new product?” and more likely to be “Why don’t I feel more comfortable with the product I’ve had all this time?”

You can encourage that thought process with a little prompting. When the buyer says she “needs to think about it,” you might say something like: “Of course — this is a big decision. All I would ask is that you give some thought to whether your current system can meet your needs going forward.”

That’s it. Simply plant the suggestion and let it take root. Then let time work in your favor. And if you want to follow up, reinforce these doubts with gentle questions in the same direction — for example: “So what are your thoughts about your current system?”

Of course, there WILL be times when you want to keep your visibility high. If you’re getting strong buying signals and the buyer just needs a little encouragement to say yes, by all means offer that encouragement. If the buyer doesn’t truly understand your product or your value proposition, give them the information they need to make a good decision. And if you’re selling against a competitor – NOT just against the status quo – you’ll probably want to take a more active approach.

‘How to Unseat an Entrenched Competitor: Selling Techniques That Work’

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