There are five
marketing reasons why more prospects don't buy from you. These are not sales objections,
mind you. Objections are more numerous. Your prospects can come up with almost as many
objections at any one sitting as President Clinton can eat cheeseburgers...That many.
Objections are not the real reasons they don't buy, just reasons why your salespeople need
to clarify matters.
But as for true, basic, marketing reasons for
many prospects not plunking down hard-earned cash on the barrel head and scooping up your
solution, there are five. If you knew why they all don't buy, do you think you could
modify your marketing strategy in order to improve your sales closing ratio? Let's see.
The first reason you don't
get a higher percentage of orders is that you haven't qualified those buyers who can afford you
or you don't arrive at user-acceptable price points.
It isn't enough to be cheaper than the
competition, nor is it enough to be able to show cost-justification and relative value;
you must be able to meet real and emotional pricing constraints in order to get the buyer
to sign the contract. In other words, they have to know that they can afford it even if
the worst-case scenario occurs.The prospect's financial comfortability factor sometimes
has less to do with your markup and profit than it has to do with the prospect's internal
budgeting demands. The question may not be "Should I buy from vendor A or vendor
B" but "Should I buy a new software-driven inventory control system or a new
delivery truck?" Like it or not, if that's the question, the Ford dealer wins.
Pricing is not a science, but it is a
marketing discipline. I have found that it is critical to determine early in the selling
effort just what the prospect's financial limitations are. Then, when it is time for the
proposal, you can tailor a cash purchase, lease purchase, or other funding method to the
path of least resistance...but only if you understand the buyer's financial limitations
and have a strategy to deal with them.
The second reason that all of your
prospects don't buy from you is because, believe it or not, you are not presenting to the
prospects who can use what you sell.
No matter how much you pride yourself at being
able to sell "ice to the Eskimos" in today's business world, if your product or
service doesn't fill a void, it's a real tough, time-wasting sell. Prospects tell
your salespeople this, but, in the greater wisdom of some sales training course you took
years ago, you folks believe that the prospects are lying to you.
On any given day I will receive catalogs
and/or telephone sales calls from people who sell esoteric magazine subscriptions, hallway
lighting, even telephone pole climbing gear...stuff I don't buy at all. For every one of
these telemarketing calls, I receive about forty direct mail pieces.
In some cases, field salespeople visit me and
pitch me on new office furniture, or something else I am not in the market for. Then, they
call me back several times to see if I am ready to order something. I believe that I am
pretty articulate, but, by my not being verbally abusive to the salesmen, they read it as
a positive sign and continue to follow up. Even though I tell them I am not in the market
for what they sell, they refuse to believe me.
A long time ago, somebody wrote a book, I
think it was Zig Zigler, that said that the sale begins when the customer says no. Now,
everybody in the selling game seems to take it as a personal challenge to turn every
"no" into a "yes". If you have something that I need, this may be
admirable.
If you have nothing I need, this is not only
dumb salesmanship, but dumb sales management. Hasn't anybody ever heard of qualifying a
prospect? If you want to make more money than ever before, you must manage your time and
the time of your sales force and only spend time with true prospects instead of people who
are simply too polite to throw you out.
The third most common reason that
people don't buy from you is that you don't establish enough confidence
with them so that they will trust you.
I know you don't believe me, and they're often
too embarrassed to tell you straight out, but it's true.Maybe it isn't that they think
you're a bunch of shameless, lying slimeballs who will say or do anything for a sale
(although many prospects have just that opinion of salespeople); perhaps it is just that
they don't have confidence in your company's recommendation...your professionalism. This
is possible even in the medical profession. Let me illustrate.
Once, during a ski club trip to Park City,
Utah, I was run down by another skier on the morning of the first day of my vacation. For
the first time in thirty years of skiing, I found myself on the ski patrol toboggan headed
for the medical shack. A doctor of the age and pre-shaving demeanor of Doogie Howser
examined me. If you remember, Doogie Howser, MD was a TV show about a child prodigy
who became a practicing MD coincident with his reaching puberty. The young physician
examined me with the routine thoroughness that you would expect at a ski facility.
He then told me that I had torn a knee
ligament and immediate re-constructive surgery was a sensible way to go. If I waited, I
might find that I did not need surgery. On the other hand, I might do even greater damage
to a knee in a weakened condition.
The implication was that the surgery was the
better way and the ski area surgeon was the most competent one to perform the task. To
satisfy my fear, Dr. Doogie suggested I get a "second opinion" from his boss in
Salt Lake City (an interesting sales strategy for a subsequent lesson, no?).
I told the doctor that I liked to buy my ski
equipment near home, so I can bring it back if things don't work right. In my opinion,
that formula works for surgical purchases as well. In spite of Doogie's best consultative
sales effort, I took the next plane home to see the knee specialist at my local HMO. The
bad news, according to my local surgeon, was that the young Park City doctor had correctly
diagnosed that my anterior cruciate ligament indeed was gone. The good news, however, was
that it was probably lost in a sporting mishap some two decades ago and I have functioned
well without it all these years. My local specialist, also a skier, advised rest, mild
physical therapy and no need for slicing and dicing.
I tell you this story because most of our
prospects, yours and mine, view us with more skepticism than I viewed this young doctor.
We sales types are viewed with skepticism because, more times than not, the advice given
to buyers by sellers is just wrong.
Don't get on your high horse. This has nothing to do with your own recommendations, but, rather, with
the perception of buyers in general. Think about it. Do you always believe what
highly-credentialed salesmen tell you? If I did, I would be walking now on a new plastic
knee.
If you want to make more sales, you must
recognize this unwillingness of many buyers to accept what your salespeople have offered
based only on your own testimony. If you are to bridge this credibility chasm, you must
arm your salespeople with ample references, third-party evidence to the competence of your
recommendations. Do this and your closing ratio will climb significantly.
The fourth reason that you
fail to make the sale is that you don't create the relationship that gets your
prospects to really like you or your company.
I mentioned that I receive a lot of sales
calls. One cold call telemarketer actually said,
"HI! I SELL ACCOUNTING SERVICES. HAVE YOU FILED THIS YEAR'S TAX
RETURN YET?"
"NO!"
I GUSHED, "I WAS WAITING FOR A TOTAL
STRANGER TO CALL. COME
RIGHT OVER!"
Oh, brother! Does this guy actually expect to
make a living this way? He might make a few sales, but he will not have a successful
career no matter how friendly he sounds over the phone.
It is a mistaken belief by many in sales that
likability and trust are solely the sales person's job. Image is a marketing function that
includes sales training, collateral materials, and support for your local Little League
team. That's why big companies give prospects copies of internal company newsletters that
gush with wedding and birth announcements, and include photos of individual employees
doing personal stuff.
The most successful selling mission meets the
need to create an emotional bond between buyer and seller. The buyer has to care about you
and he has to believe that you are nice enough to want to care about him.
The fifth reason you don't
get the order is because you fail to understand the internal politics of the prospect firm
and create a true working rapport with all of the forces for change.
Some people think that it is enough to train
salespeople to target somebody called the "key decision maker", but this may not
always be the top dog.
I recently heard of a case where the owner of
a successful company told his CFO to give certain business to the owner's friend. Instead,
the CFO gave the owner's friend's bid to the competition, along with the subsequent
order. When a salesman makes a deal with the number one decision-maker in a company,
but the number one has a very egocentric, number two decision-maker at his side, you lose.
Your deal is with number one, but your results are number two.
In fact, it can be documented that the company
we are discussing consistently makes poor purchasing decisions, but the owner is unwilling
to take a critical look at his CFO's performance. So, by not appealing to the CFO's ego,
the seller and the owner have ended up in a true lose-lose situation.
In summary, the five areas
that marketing can strengthen in order to improve your sales closing ratio are:
1) Uncover prospects who can afford what you sell,
2) Don't waste time on prospects unless they have uncovered true needs for
what you sell,
3) Build a company image of trust with references and other third party evidence,
4) Establish an image of corporate friendship and warmth, and
5) Train yourself to understand the workings of corporate ego-politics.
Work on these points and watch your sales productivity improve without the need for a
bigger marketing budget…
Now that you know why people don't buy from
you, you are ready to learn, and prosper, from why they do. Get the rest of this course with absolutely no risk
and start making more sales and more money.
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