Sales Demons
How to overcome twenty seven common sales hank ups
Book Clive Miller to demolish sales demons in a lively interactive seminar.
- High Hill
Task is too difficult? Territory empty? You might be in the clutches of the high hill demon. There are many solutions for a challenging sales target. Have Clive share his experience and tested techniques. Toss the high hill demon off the hill.
- Green Field
So your predecessor has stripped out every worthwhile business opportunity or badly neglected them. This is the normal situation. Have Clive provide tactics for stomping on the green field demon.
- Famine
No leads? Not enough inquiries? Marketing ineffective? Lead generation not your responsibility? Promises are not being met? If you answered yes to a few of these questions you may have the ‘too few enquiries’ demon on your back. Shrug it off with a new set of principles, methods, and habits.
- Reluctance
Do you think that cold calling doesn't work? Have you noticed how everything else becomes so much more important when you should be prospecting? Perhaps you have the 'Reluctance' demon. This demon leaches away your potential like no other. Strangle it by learning how to make cold calling effective. Clive has the answers.
- Wall Flower
Satisfied customers, business partners, suppliers, and close contacts are a rich source for sales leads, introductions, and referrals yet sales people shy away from asking. If you pass up chances to mine your network for new opportunities, you may have the 'Wall Flower' demon siphoning off your opportunities. Develop your own referral prospecting system and cast this demon into the nearest hole. Book Clive to speak about referral systems that work
- Tail Wagging
When results consistently fall short of forecasted business, you may have the ‘Tail Wagging’ demon draped across your eyes. PMA – positive mental attitude is not the same thing. Get a large dose of realism. Turn a spotlight on the dark corners and rip away the unwarranted optimism. Clive will pose critical questions that must be answered to illuminate reality.
- Altitude Sickness
There is no point in calling higher than we are because those in more senior positions won't discuss our products. If you have thought this thought, spoken these words or anything similar, you are absolutely right. If you consider this a valid excuse, then you are probably carrying the altitude sickness demon. Clive can help you to drop it in the dust and crush it underfoot.
- Don’t go around me
If you find it difficult to speak with all of the important decision influencer's, then you may be harboring the ‘don’t go around me’ demon. If you don’t mind being treated like a mushroom – kept in the dark and fed manure - carry on. I'm not suggesting that most customer lie, they don't, yet sales people are so often misled by listening to only one point of view. Clive can turn on the light and give you a hose to rinse away the muck and reveal reality.
- Murphy’s First Impression
Have you ever made a poor first impression that cost you a sale? Could it happen again? This demon has a knack of lying dormant until its host gets complacent about a first impression. Clive offers a simple set of rules that can help you put this demon to sleep permanently.
- Obscurity
Easily dismissed as a weak demon, it uses subtlety to trap the inexperienced into a fundamental blunder. Use a specific set of habits and skills to suck out its power and watch it wafting away on the breeze.
- Small Talk
Some people have a knack of finding the right words to keep conversation flowing. They are ready with a question or a few encouraging words when a bleak silence threatens to scupper rapport. If you experience difficulty with this then you are a haven for the small talk demon. Drown it with a few of Clive's easily learnable techniques.
- Babbling Rabbit
You know that you should let the customer do the talking. You have heard it a thousand times. Why then does the babbling rabbit grab you every time the customer mentions something you know a bit about? Turn your listening ratio up with persuasive listening skills and consign the babbling rabbit demon to it’s burrow forever.
- Absent Mind
Have customers tell you what you need to know and a lot of additional confidential information by simply asking better questions. Never have to make another excuse for failing to ask. Clive offers a set of reliable techniques that help forget the ‘I forgot to ask about that’ demon. Let it turn to mist and waft away on the breeze.
- Bravado
Over confidence is gives air to this demon. When you catch yourself skipping the preparation and relying only on your abundance of talent, you are flying the bravado kite. Sooner or later, it will catch you out and cause a crash or worse - damage your career. Clive offers frameworks, check lists, and and planners to help you carry out the necessary forethought, planning, and preparation.
- Faint Heart
If the customer doesn't have the money and hasn't made adequate provision to pay, you may be in trouble. It is easy to accept customer platitudes like, “don’t worry about the money” and “it wont be a problem”. Companies abhor spending money. They hire people to make it more difficult to spend company cash. If you need a sure way to find out if sufficient funding will be made available, when people don’t want to tell you, Clive can explain some methods that work. You can leave this demon fluttering in your wake when you know how.
- Prevaricating Customer
If you tend to accept what a customer contact says at face value, even when it isn’t clear or it isn't rational, you are likely to experience the feeling of uncertainty that this demon awakens. There are many ways to press a customer for more clarity without causing tension or resistance.Hammer this demon and with a few simple techniques and help the customer learn something new.
- Gullibility
Even when what a customer says makes sense, If you accept it without verifying the information you risk falling prey to the gullibility demon. There is a general belief amongst people that it is not a sin to lie if you are lying to a sales person. Your contact may be genuine in their intent to communicate accurately, despite having an incorrect perception or the wrong data. Flush your gullibility demon down the gutter with simple habits.
- Tyre Kicker
If you work on sales opportunities that keep dragging on, you may have given life to the tyre kicking demon. Clive offers a set of tools and frameworks to help focus on the right issues, those that will tell you if a sale will ever happen, before you waste months of work. Kick your tyre kickers out early using a set of critical questions.
- Scrooge
Ashamed of your price? Does it frighten your prospects away? Maybe you have the scrooge demon clutching your shoulder. Clive offers the means to rip this demon from its perch and trash it under the wheels of a retreating competitor.
- Penny Pincher
This demon strikes when a customer says, "It's cheaper elsewhere". If you feel your confidence falter when you hear this line, you have been ambushed by the penny pincher demon.Use Clive's practical step-by-step method to rob it of air and suffocate it before it gains a grip.
- Form filling
The management need to capture the knowledge stored in the heads of successful sales people to ensure continuity. They need to monitor the activities of sales people so that they get an early warning if things are going wrong. They need information to help them provide better help and support. Some amount of administration is essential to ensure that customers get what they bought. Clive offers some unique short cut tools and keep this demon firmly in its box.
- Complacency
“If you know yourself and not your enemy, for every victory you will suffer a defeat. If you know yourself and your enemy then you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy then you do not deserve to win a single battle”, wrote Sun Tzu. To put it in modern parlance, if you don’t even know who your competitors are, you can’t know whether you have an acceptable chance of winning. Clive offers solutions that help you discover who you are competing with, who they are talking to, and what they plan to do. Demolish competitors by using these tools to out think and out sell those who oppose you.
- Propaganda
Every product or service has a business justification. Marketing people write them up and teach them to sales people so that they can feed their babbling rabbits (see above). If you catch yourself reciting canned business justifications or believing your own companies half truths, you are wearing the propaganda demon as a belt. Use Clive's three rules to dispense with it and have the customer make the business case for you. Then you won’t need belt or braces.
- Scribe
Sales people are usually good at face-to-face communication. It is hard to be successful in sales without being someone who inspires confidence, one way or another. At the same time, sales people need to be more action orientated than average. For many otherwise great sales people, the proposal-writing element is a type of communication better left to others. The need for attention to detail makes this task irksome at best and loathsome at worst. Clive offers a set of guidelines to help reduce the pain and weaken the dread thrown up by the scribe demon.
- Black hole
As soon as you submit a proposal or quotation, customers often stop taking your calls. This does may not mean that you are out of the running. It may only mean that the customer wants to avoid your self-centred attempts to speed things up. The lack of contact is unsettling because things could be going wrong and without access, there is little that you can do about it. Clive offers a solution to this common difficulty. You can prevent the black hole form sucking you in.
- Empty bottle
You know that you are supposed to ask for the order. You know that sales people are supposed to be able to bring a sale to an early conclusion. In business-to-business situations and especially complex sales that involve many people in the decision making process, it seems as if closing has a neutral or even negative affect. There seems little opportunity to hurry the process or make a sale happen, except by buying the business forward. This thinking is a sign of a lurking ‘empty bottle’ demon. Shaking it off is one of the most challenging business-to-business sales tasks.Clive teaches closing techniques that work in high value, complex sales. You have to supply the bottle.
- Dueling
Sometimes the duel takes place before you know you have won. Sometimes it takes place afterwards. Most customers will attempt to improve their side of a deal through negotiation. The duelling demon can be the most destructive of them all. It demands that you win when the imperative is for both you and the customer to win. It is easier to achieve when customers are as equally interested in your win as they are in their own. Often this is not the case. When the customer plays win-don’t care or even win-lose, you still have to play win-win. Clive teaches the skills that banish the duelling demon.
Call 0118 933 1357 or use the contact form here to book Clive Miller to speak about the sales demons and the means to eliminate them.