the nine point sales strategy for more sales

‘Most people have 2 or 3 ... top sellers have 9.’

The Nine Point Sales Strategy for More Sales

But even with sales skills you need a

clear go to market sales strategy to

leverage your skills further.

In this SPECIAL REPORT

award winning business coach

Andrew Priestley walks you through a

nine-point sales strategy for more sales.

The award winning Sales Profilemeasures how you rate in 13 skills

linked to high performance in a high

value, multi-step sale. It shows you

exactly what’s working and what isn’t.

It gives you incredibly useful feedback

about your sales skills.

H H H H H“In a word - ‘Brilliant!’”

www.thesalesprofile.com

© TCE 2015 Information Only 1

The Nine-Point Sales Strategy for More Sales By Andrew Priestley “Good selling always feels good for everyone concerned. If you want to excel in sales genuinely sell the way you’d like to be sold to.” At a glance There is a lot of wisdom in the above remark. Success in sales is based on the principle that both parties in a transaction see and experience mutual value. I am writing as a business coach and someone who has enjoyed a certain degree of success in selling multi-step, high-value products and services over the past 25 years. I want to share with other professionals some of the guiding principles I have found benefitted both me and my clients. Who is this report for? This report was written for anyone in frontline sales and especially for anyone who employs sales people. This material was designed to give you a useful sales context and enable you and your team to dramatically improve your performance, skills and sales results. The Key Principle: Context is everything Most sales books and sales training programs aim to improve your sales skills. And they should because selling is a profession and success relies on a high degree of skills



competency. So understanding your strengths and weaknesses in sales skills is a key recommendation of this report. This report is intended to help you form a more complete picture of:

1. Your overall sales environment – buying process, sales process, sales style etc

2. The selling skills of your sales people; and

3. If there’s a good match between your sales skills and your overall sales environment. You do not want a mismatch.

The Sales Profile You can assess your strengths and weaknesses in selling via an award-winning tool called the Sales Profile.

www.thesalesprofile.com Traditional vs Modern Selling But somewhere in there you run into this whole traditional vs. modern selling skills debate. The truth is both traditional and modern selling techniques work just fine in the right type of sale. And traditional and modern selling techniques are woefully out of place in the wrong type of sale. So it will help you to decide what is the right type of sale for your business and what is most appropriate way for you to sell to your typical customer.



What do I do when I’m helping a client improve their sales performance? In addition to profiling sales skills I have included a series of questions that will help you to better understand what you are selling, the way you sell, who your customers are and how they like to buy. When I meet with a new client, and the focus of the coaching is sales, I usually ask the following nine questions to get a sense of where you need the most help in improving sales results. The nine questions are:

1. What do you sell? 2. Who do you sell to - exactly? 3. What type of sale is it? 4. How do people buy what you sell? 5. What is your sales process? 6. What selling skills are needed in your sales process? 7. Do your selling skills match the buying and sales

process? 8. How is sales success measured in your business? 9. What sales environment do you operate in?

This report covers nine of the most frequently asked questions. So let’s jump straight into those questions.



#1 What do you sell? Take a few moments and make a list of everything you sell. You might need to organise what you sell by category or by price point or by whatever makes the most sense to you and your customers. Seems straightforward enough right? Try and go a bit deeper than your bog standard Yellow Pages or Google search category. • I sell accounting services.

• I sell plumbing.

• I sell home technology.

Most businesses offer a range of products and services that vary in price. For example, an accounting firm I worked with recently has 142 accounting services that range from £90-£3000. Those services need to be arranged into some logical format that makes it easy to market and sell … and easy for customers to buy. As an example, most accountants can sort their services into four logical segments: compliance, business support, business advice and strategic services. The plumber can sort services into: domestic, commercial and industrial. Or gas and hot water. Or bathrooms and kitchens and toilets. Or standard and emergency.



The home technology made it a lot easier for clients by segmenting their products and services into audio, cinema, lighting, climate and security and a straightforward ballpark pricing scale that ranged from £10K-£250K. You might also rank your products and services by worst and best sellers. Your turn What do you sell? Is it easy for customers to understand? What degree of product or service knowledge is required to professionally sell what you sell?



#2 Who do you sell to? Exactly? Right now you need to identify and focus on your target customer. If you don’t know whom your target customers are then most likely you leaving money on the table. If you are trying to be all things to everyone you are most probably losing money. Most businesses have a range of customers that live on a spectrum of highly profitable (make you money) to highly unprofitable (lose you money). Performing even the most basic of customer analysis will give you a good idea of what segments make up your customer base. And therefore, who to focus on most. For example, our accountant has 350 clients. He discovered that most of his clients only require a £90 end-of-year tax personal return that generate 16% of total sales revenues. But a small percentage of clients are husband and wife family run service business owners (plumbers, electricians etc) that account for 68% of all revenues. But the tax returns - the thing that makes the least amount of money – takes the most time. You might also rank your customers as A, B, C or D Class. An A Class customer is your best and a D Class is your worst. So who are you’re A Class clients? And your D Class? The point is now more than ever you should be totally clear about who your target customer is.



My clients typically get a tremendous uplift in sales simply by focusing on their target customer or niche market. Your turn Who makes up your customer base? Who are your most profitable clients?



#3 What type of sale is it? There are about four main types of sale:

1. Generic 2. Influencing 3. Consulting 4. Strategic

Generic A generic sale is usually really a straightforward even if it has a high price tag. It basically means your customer can make a buying decision right here and now, on the spot. In any case it’s usually fast. For example, if you shop online or in-store … and you are basically picking and paying … then it’s pretty much a straightforward generic sale. In this case, customers want some support in reaching a buying decision but nothing too sophisticated. Traditional selling skills work really well in a generic sale whereas a consultative approach would probably confuse the customer and waste your time. A lot of people operate generically so a proficiency in basic sales skills is useful. Does this sound like you? Influencing An influencing sale relies much more on persuading, convincing or influencing selling skills. Appropriately, this requires more skill in questioning and qualifying to close the sale.



Irrespective of price, there may be more steps in the sales process. Importantly, the customer wants to interact and engage with a salesperson to help them make a buying decision. They may need help to determine if their needs will be met. In an influencing sale you may have multi-steps. You may need to warm or cold call a prospect, book an appointment and sell a product or service usually still in a short amount of time. The influencing type sale is often thought of as traditional selling where the sales person is relying on well-honed qualifying, closing and objection handling skills. And you can assume a sale will take place during a client appointment. Importantly, a customer can make a buying decision on the spot or soon after, or they have the power to authorise a purchase sometime after the sale. In an influencing sale is it vitally important to understand your strengths and weaknesses in frontline selling. Does this sound like you? Consulting A consulting sale is most like consultative selling and is often referred to as modern selling. The strong focus here is ensuring that you totally understand the explicit needs of the client - as expressed by the client. Determining needs may not be as simple as ‘Do you want it or not?’ Often you need to carefully assess the customers needs and implications of



misunderstanding their needs. The difference here is a poor buying experience can carry more serious consequences than a customer complaint or a sales reversal (refund) if you fail to help the customer reach the right buying decision. A consulting sale may follow a definite process with strict protocols that must be observed. In this scenario you may not even have access to the final decision makers. You may be part of a quoting, proposal or formal tendering process and your ‘bid’ might even be independently assessed as part of a documented and formal procurement process. If you assume a sale or even suggest that you are guessing or assuming the clients needs you will most likely run into obstacles, penalties or disqualification from the process. You may also need to be a registered, accredited or licensed seller or a registered preferred buyer to even participate in the consultative process. A consulting sale as you can see is more complex and involves more time and you may even incur costs just to submit a proposal with no guarantee of even being able to ‘consult’. In any case, once you qualify to consult you will need a high level of sales skills so the Sales Profile is highly recommended. You do not want to put a rank amateur or a sales cowboy into a consulting process. Does this sound like your typical sale?



Strategic The strategic sale is like a consulting sale on steroids! The time frames are much longer, the stakes are a lot higher and in fact you typically will partner with your customer short and long term in making a far reaching long term decision and you will be linked to that client for the after-life of that sale. In the first three, you typically stop engaging with client once the purchase is made unless you are making a repeat purchase, selling an upgrade or commencing a maintenance relationship. In a strategic sale you are part of the sale and implementation. Invariably, you will spend a lot of time and money tendering for the sale with no guarantees of even making a sale. The process will usually involve a sales, project management and implementation skills. This type of sale is very sophisticated. Typically your client is making a long-term strategic commitment and you are part of that long-term solution. Think selling a fleet of Boeing A380s or constructing a major public works like a dam or a bridge or building a tenant lead shopping centre with 25 year leases or taking a historically offline national business online i.e., banking and you’ve got the idea. Does this sound like you? Selling skills need to be of a very high order with a clear focus on qualifying and presenting. But a service agreement will only be awarded provided you can demonstrate your ability to service that contract long-term.



#4. How do customers typically buy your products and services? There are two alternatives here. Your client can make a discretionary spend or they must follow a process such as a tender or procurement process. If you can make an appointment with a decision maker, have a sales conversation, ask for a sales and that person can agree to the sale then and there or soon after it’s a discretionary sale. Note: some clients can make a discretionary purchase if what you are selling fits inside their discretionary budget. For example, I have a client that has learned to chop up his services into £19,999 parcels because his clients cannot authorize a purchase once it exceeds £20,000. But they can purchase phases 2 and 3 etc as long as each phase is less than £20,000. If your client loves your products and services but cannot authorize a purchase of any amount because it has to go to tender or three quotes or via a procurement process then it’s a process sale. Many people want to deal with larger corporate and C-suite clients and they have a brilliant product … but they run headlong into a strident purchasing policy that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. I recently coached an interim recruitment specialist and he consistently runs into draconian ‘head count’ issues and ‘body shop’ based procurement policies that retard making sensible choices. If you have to work with these issues then traditional selling



skills will only take you as far as earning you the right to submit a proposal at best. In this case you customer’s buying process will shape how a sale is made. Your turn Which sounds like you?



#5. What is your sales process? Every business has a sales process. Every business. A lot of businesses do not have a documented sales process. And some don’t even know now what their sales process is. But you have one. It might be really simple and straight forward – one or two steps – as in a generic sale – you pick it and pay for it. Or it might be a multi-step process. Starbucks has a sales process. People enter the shop, select from a menu, line up, place and order, upsize their order possibly, pay, wait, collect the order, consume and leave. A client of mine sells financial advisory services to court appointed lawyers who represent clients with diminished mental capacity to manage their financial affairs. Those lawyers are often misadvised by fund managers and subsequently are at risk of being prosecuted by Public Guardians. The sales process is usually a lot of social media awareness campaigns, networking, advertising, public speaking etc. They invest in list building activities that turn into email or tele-prospecting to sell an appointment and then a sample reporting service and finally financial representation. In other words: a complex, multi-step sale. Every step in your sales process needs to be carefully identified and ensured that it fits into a logical and effective selling sequence. By the way, Starbucks used to let you order sit-down coffee and pay on leaving. They moved ONE step – the payment -



from the end to right up the front after you ordered and the rest as they say is history. Some clients of mine have really amazing sales processes that in them selves are part of a broader campaign and inspiring customer experience. Your turn Describe your sales process.



#6. What sales skills do you use most? Why? The Sales Profile measures your skill in ten key sales skills. There is a lot of research dating back to the 1860s into sales skills. Depending on whom you talk to there are four or 84 key sales skills but most people agree there are seven! Historically they are: • Rapport • Qualifying • Presenting a solution • Closing • Handling Objections

If you were trained in insurance in the 1920s you would have been trained in a sales cycle called ‘Back the Hearse up’. It consisted of four steps:

• Relax – put the client at ease • Disturb – tell them something really scary that might

happen to them i.e., heart attack, death, lose your job • Relieve – tell them there’s insurance to cover that • Close – sell them that insurance policy

I reviewed over 173 selling systems and 43 top sales training programmes. The model of the sales cycle we assess in the Sales Profile includes a more complete ten distinct skills; presented to you in a before, during and after sequence. These are commonly observed standard steps in the sale.



The Sales Profile assesses: Before • Knowledge • Readiness • Prospecting

During • Rapport • Qualifying • Presenting • Closing • Handling Objections

After • Administration • After sales

But what’s new is we also assess three traits that drive high performance in a sales role. They are: Sales Skills Drivers • Attitude • Drive • Communication/influencing skills

What we have noticed is two interesting outcomes. Firstly, often highly skilled sales person with poor attitude and a low sales drive are often outperformed by lower skilled people with great attitudes and a high sales drive. Poor attitude and low drive to succeed in a frontline sales role is typically the salesperson’s enemy.



So good attitude and sales drive is predictive of sales performance and well worth knowing. You can take the test right now at




#7. Do your selling skills match the typical style of sale, buying process and sales process? This is an all-important question because invariably when theirs a mismatch you are underperforming, missing opportunities, leaving money on the table or un-selling your potential customers. It goes without saying that if you employ sales people you should totally understand their selling skills. So the Sales Profile is a great tool for doing exactly that. But there is no point in assessing sales skills if you then omit to match skills to the sales process, for example. Here’s why. I worked with an engineering firm who received world class sales training … that failed to increase sales. At which point I was bought in as a last resort. I got the sales team to walk me through a typical sale and it immediately became apparent that most of the sales skills they were being taught were not permissible in the procurement/tendering process they had to follow. For example, they were not allowed to ask for the order, close or handle objections in any way shape or form. All they were allowed to do in the procurement process was question, qualify and present a proposal. The sales trainer had spent weeks on closing and objection handling techniques! He had not even considered the style and type of sales, the buying process or their sales process. Plus being engineers they HATED closing and objection handling techniques and rightfully all agreed that they were being given a personality by-pass! But being engineers they all loved questioning and explaining and problem solving and



hypothesizing. And presenting. When I profiled the engineers I discovered that almost ALL the engineers OVER-presented. In the spirit of ask a engineer the time and they will build you a watch and explain how it was done, my trainees were drowning prospective clients in a tsunami of information. Once they mastered questioning and qualifying and giving just enough relevant information their capture management results rocketed from £7M to £75M in the pipeline! Identifying their strengths, the type of sale and the buying process made a huge difference. Up until that point there was a mismatch. Notice that it wasn’t just old school vs modern selling techniques. What was missing was an appreciation of the broader sales context. So, is there a good match? How do you know?



#8. How do you measure success in your sales culture? There are many ways to assess sales performance such as old fashioned leader boards and hitting sales targets, to meeting key performance indicators (KPIs), and closely monitoring sales dashboards and tracking TAV and AMR statistics. There are some highly sophisticated metrics that monitor cost of acquisition and fulfillment and back costing. Importantly you should monitor quotes-in-tray to sales ratio and factor in uncompleted sales, warranty claims and sales reversals; and customer complaints. You need to know these numbers. And every business needs to identify exactly how success will be monitored and measured. So how exactly do you measure sales success in your business?



#9. What broader sales environment do you operate in? Finally, you do not and cannot sell in a bubble. You sell within two important contexts: a legal or ethical environment; and increasingly a digital reputation environment. This might sounds incredibly boring but trust me you cannot ignore this aspect (if ever you could). Legal/ethical Frankly, far too many businesses are not aware of their legal and ethical obligations. Whether you are aware or not your sales practices and behaviours are legal regulated by someone, somewhere. You need to understand your obligations and the consequences. What more can I say, but do your homework. Offline you might be governed by Consumer Affairs, Trade Practices Act, The Food Act, The Health Act, The Office of Consumers and even contract law. You might be restricted by national, regional and local laws and by-laws and local authority ordinances. Again, you need to check. You may need to be registered or accredited or licensed. For example, if you need an ISO rating or you need to be a preferred supplier and you aren’t, your business will stall. And worse you will incur fines and penalties.



Digital I sell information products online. For a long time I didn’t realize I am regulated by Doorstep Selling Regulations and the Distance Selling Act 2000. As of this writing, those ended in June 2014 in the UK but were replaced by Consumer Contracts Regulations. For example, a trader cannot charge for pre-ticked boxes online. You can cancel sales such as a gym membership, purchased online after 14 days and you should get a refund within 14 days of cancelling goods and services purchased online. This is just a sample of laws that are fully enforceable across borders. My customers have international rights under these Acts and they can be enforced here in the UK. You would be a fool to ignore your obligations. But people do. But what happens if you manage to stay inside the law but deliver a sub-par sales experience? People think that online is like the Wild West – there are no rules. It’s true enough that the internet is not a jurisdiction – yet - but there are some penalties more severe than fines like trial by social media brand damage. Sometime ago I sold an old laptop on EBay. Today I received a letter stating they wanted to return the item because it was not what had been described in the ads. (Apparently my laptop was 2007 not 2009 – and it was a genuine mistake).



But the letter says:

a) if I don’t comply they will create an EBay driven investigation

b) my rating will be affected.

I have a 100% rating on EBay that I’ve had since Day 1. There are no blemishes. So of course, I am issuing a full refund and accepting the return. That’s what I would want too, if it were me. The point is EBay customers READ the ratings and reviews to determine if you are a reputable dealer. I do too. I have a great EBay reputation and I want to keep it. Any change to my rating will impact any sales I want to conduct on EBay. Of course, EBay and customers have to matter to you. It’s the same with Amazon and YouTube. Poor ratings and reviews – which Google tell us ARE read - will sink your business. If you decide to be cowboy salesperson – shonky on or offline - you might find yourself the target of Tweets, Posts, Ratings, Reviews and Customer Feedback Surveys – and all searchable on line. A lot of people use Twitter and Facebook to complain online if they feel there was no justice from the company they have a dispute with. The bad news is reputation or brand damage is forever. Once its up and posted it’s there. You have created a digital footprint.



If you have any doubt whatsoever, read Google’s research document Zero Moment of Truth and you will be totally convinced that your sell with a very fluid and dynamic digital environment.



Next Steps This report is very much a snapshot of the issues I help my clients resolve. The typical result is a noticeable if not dramatic uplift in their sales. I hope you have got the idea that sales training is a lot broader than learning how to close and handle objections. I hope you can see that you sell within a context and once you understand that context you will typically improve your sales results. A big part of your sales context is your selling skills because they actually sit underneath most of the nine aspects even in consultative and strategic sales. Or impact them. It is therefore crucial to understand your selling skills. Easy to complete It takes about seven minutes to complete the Sales Profile online. Easy to understand The Sales Profile is really easy to understand. There’s a horizontal pink zone and some vertical bars. If those vertical bars are within that pink zone – good job. If they are outside the pink zone either too high or too low they are clearly flagging sales coaching or training targets. Great feedback You also get bespoke feedback to how you answered every question. That is unique.



Ten Sales Skills The Sales Profile rates your strengths in ten selling skills observed in high value, multi-step sales – both influencing a consultative sales. Attitude and Drive to Succeed in a frontline sales role Plus we show your attitude and your drive to succeed in a frontline sales role. That is new and unique to the award winning Sales Profile. Now you can better match your skills to your type of sale and sales process. I can’t emphasis that enough. Easy to interpret You can now better assess your approach to sales against what type of sale is considered normal and professional in your industry. That might better inform you of the sales training you actually need. For example, if you operate within a tendering process and therefore cannot Close a potential customer then don’t spend any money on learning how to Close . Clearly the best way to spend your training budget is in Presenting or Qualifying, for example. Easy to identify training or coaching targets The Sales profile makes it a LOT easier to identify training targets. You can SEE them! Your invitation Thank you for reading this report. I sincerely hope you did the workshop. And I sincerely hope you profile your sales people using the Sales Profile.



Ready to do the Sales Profile?

www.thesalesprofile.com Thanks. Andrew Priestley

Take the Test

“High performing salespeople are like rocket fuel for your business!”

The Sales Profile

The Sales Profile measures your drive to succeed and how you rate against 13 skills associated with high performance in frontline sales.

You get easy to understand graphs of your results, an appraisal of the 13 skills and bespoke feedback to how you answered key questions.

Use your Sales profile to understand exactly what is working and what needs fixing.

Importantly, your chart can be used to better match your skills to the sales processes used in your business.

If you are not completely satisfied you can ask for a full refund and receive one with only one question asked: How can we improve the Sales Profile and make it even better?

If you are in Sales Training or Sales RecruitmentThe Sales Profile is an excellent resource for your clients especially if you are an individual trainer, a sales training organisation, or coach or Recruitment Company.

Get your personalised detailed report of 13 high performance selling skills and the measure of your drive to succeed.

White-labellingIt is available as a private-label service that can be badged with your own corporate branding. For more info please email

[email protected]


If you manage a Sales TeamGet your team members to take ownership and responsibility by them highlighting their own profile. Quickly assess individuals sales skills and drive and identify appropriate training needs.

For large numbers of sales individuals and teams we offer a bespoke reporting service where training needs can be grouped and identified. For further info please email

[email protected]

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