The Expert Podcast

Okay, so you've spent thousands of dollars getting customers to call you up or visit your website. Maybe you're a brick-and--and-mortar business,business, and you've spent thousands of dollars getting people to come toto your door. This is marketing;; this is advertising, but none of that has any effect until you get the customer across the finish line. What we mean by that is that they buy something, and that's the sales side of it. There's marketing and advertising, and then there's sales. This is nothing new to a business owner, but it's important to remember: unless you get that sale closed and and that transaction done, you actually have no results or no benefit from all the work you've done from marketing,marketing, advertising, great products, greatmanagement, and management, and great fulfillment. The sale is where everything starts.

So how do you do that? Nobody wants to be a salesperson. Nobody likes to get into sales. It's kind of a cringe-worthycringe-worthy thing to do. But there's a process that you can use to not call it sales; it's just a conversation with a customer. In fact, the reason most people hate sales is because they think it's trying to pressure somebody,, do a sales pitch,, close a deal,deal, or talk a lot.Sales are Sales are actually successful when those three things are minimized. There are are four sections toto thethe sale process. First is the meet and greet;; second is what's called qualifying or fact--finding;; third is presenting the product;; and fourth and last is closing the sale. And we'll call it that,that, even though that may sound like something you want to avoid. Most peopledo, and do, and we're going to find out later that that's really not something you have to put any effort into; it happens by itself. So look at those four sections: meet and greet, qualify, present the product or service, and close the sale.

Most of you are comfortable with meet and greets. greets. You love to meet people, talk to customers that are comingin, and in, and talk to the customers on the phone that call you. Now,Now, I'm not talking about cold calling or or calling out. I'm talking about customers that call you,, go to your website,website, or email you. You love that,that, because that's an inquiry.You would You would also like to present the product. Here's what I got.. YouYou know, this pen is good quality;; it has this clip, whatever you're trying to sell. You love your product, you love yourservice, and service, and you want to talk about it. What about the other two? What about the fact--finding and qualifying? This is something that's actually very easy to do because it's the customer talking, not you. You're asking questions,questions, and you want to do that before you present the product.

So let me let you in on a little punchline. Here's the good news: you don't have to spend hardly any time on closing a deal; it'll happen by itself. What do we mean? Well, look at this chart. Here are those four steps,steps, and they're broken out into times. The amount of time is represented by the size of the block. The meet and greet only needs to take a minute ortwo, or two, or 10% of the total time. If you spend a total of 30 minutes on a sales process with a person, some products take longer, some take shorter, but let's just say 30 minutes. 10% of that time is 3 minutes. Do that first before you get into anything else. Make sure you establish some kind of report. Look, you don't have to get personal about what kind of dog you have or or what your family likeslikes, but just make it personal. Make sure you have their name;; make sure they know your name;; make it a greeting. It doesn't even have to be 3 minutes; it could be 30 seconds. But just make sure you're starting out with aa personable relationship, not just some random two strangers talking without any camaraderie.

Next is the most important part:: qualifying and and fact--finding. That's where you want to find out from the customer, from the client, as many things as you can about them. You want to ask them questions;; you want to start out with open-ended questions. You don't want to put them on the spot too much by saying,saying, "What do you want to buy? What size do you want? What color do you want?" Because the customer at that point is still taking it all in. If they're in your store, they're just seeing what you have. If they're on your website, they're seeing what you have. If they're calling you up, they're kind of sizing you out. So you want to start with thethe basics? basics? "How can we be of assistance today?" is an openis an open-ended question. It's like spinning up a top and letting it go; they will tell you their story. Let them tell you their story;; do not interrupt them. "How can we be of assistance today? How can we help you?" Don't even ask something like "What questions can we answer?" Think about it:: "What questions can we answer?" is very specific; you now have to come up with an exact question. "How can we help you today?" When they contacted you by phone,email, or email, or in person, whatever format they're visiting you inyou in, they came there for a reason. Unless they got lost and they're looking for directions to the pizza place or they dialed the wrong number and they meant to call, you know, the cell phone store, then they're there for a reason. Let them tell you the reason. And at first, they might be a little shy;; they may not want to put all their cards on the table like "I came here to buy something." They might be a little more likemore like, "Hey, well, I'm not sure, looking around, just getting info, great." You want to keep the questions open-ended at first;; make it easy for them to answer questions. Most people don't like to feel in terms of an FBI interrogation, like "What do you want? What size? What color? What are you doing here? How'd you find us?" Don't do rapid-fire machine gun--specific questions;; start very open-ended. "Yeah, how can we help today?" And let them talk.

If they start running out of steam, they might ask you a question. "How much doesdoes this cost?" or "How many of these do you have?" That's a question that'sthat's actually still them telling you things. If they ask you "How much does it cost?" don't hear it as a question to answer, hear it as "I'm telling you I'm interested in price." If they ask you "How many of these widgets do you have in stock?" don't think of it as a question to answer, think of it as the customer saying "I'm interested in availability." Or if they say, "Do you have this particular thing?" they're telling you "I'm interested in this particular thing." You can answer the question, but hear it as information first and use it as a way to ask more questions. Qualifying is the most important stage because if you do that right and you let them tell their story, you won't have to close a sale and and you won't have to high pressure a customer;; they will have already done that to themselves.

So let's use an example that everybody's familiar with:: looking at a car dealership and and shopping for a car. Somebody comes in and they say, "I want, do you have any blue trucks?" You can answer thequestion by saying,  question by saying,  "Yeah, I'm pretty sure we do." "Have you seen it before? Have you seen this type of truck before? Are you looking for two-door or four-door? What kind of car do you have now?" openopen-ended questions, maybe a little specific but open-ended. Even the specific question,, "What kind of car do you have now?" leads to an open-ended question. "What kind of car do you have now?" "I have a Jeep." "How do you like it?" Now you're back to open-ended. Anytime you get into a specific question, go open-ended.

Look, you're not going to do this all day long; you're not going to bore the customer with random questions. Not avoiding the specifics, but you want to open up the communication so that it's casual and you're starting to build a picture of what that customer is trying to do. At some point, the customer has told you some things, you've asked some questions, and at some point, you will land on the product or service the customer wants. That will happen just by having a conversation. You have to be a little bit intuitive about listening more than you're talking. A lot of salespeople, when they go into the field and you're not one of them, say, "I want to be a good salesperson because I love to talk." Well, that's a problem because, really, salespeople's role is not to talk; it's more to listen. It's cliché, but it's true. Listen to what the customer's saying; they will tell you exactly the roadmap for how to sell them that thing or how to let them buy it. You don't even want to sell it; let them buy it. They're there for a reason; everybody's busy; nobody has time to waste just randomly walking around stores or calling people up, especially if they called for no reason; they did it for a reason; they want to have some solution; they want you to be the solution because if you're not the solution now, they have to start all over again with somebody else. So enable them to get done what they want to get done; spend a lot of time on fact-finding, qualifying, needs analysis, whatever you want to call it; let them tell their story. At some point, you will find you've landed on a particular product or service; maybe they did it; maybe they asked you to pick something out; now that you've landed on a particular thing, you do your product presentation.

I'm sure that your product or service has dozens, maybe a hundred, things that are really good about it. Let's go back to that blue truck. The blue truck has all kinds of stuff: anti-lock brakes, UV windows, cruise control, and a hundred other things you can list that are great. There's probably only three that matter to that customer. If you do a product presentation to everybody, you're going to talk about those hundred things. Their eyes are going to glaze over, and they're going to be bored because they're not going to hear the things that are crucial to them. Even though you might be proud of it, and you might be really proud that you know all this about your product, that's good. The things that are important to them are really the only things that matter. Talk about those; maybe throw in a couple extra things that maybe they didn't mention, but your intuition tells them they are important to them. And if you land on the right product and they give you the roadmap of what they want to do, all you have to do is tell them a few things about it, and hopefully at that point, they want to buy it. In fact, the best way in many cases to ask somebody about a sale is, "So what do you think you want to do?" Use a little bit of reverse psychology and let them beg you into the sale. If you try to push them and prod them and say, "You should buy this; buy it today; buy it now," people are just going to back away because they're going to feel the pressure. You're nonchalant; hopefully you found the right product, and if you ask them, "What do you think you want to do?" "I'm not sure; I think I might like it." "I think you might like it too; I'd like you to have one; what do you think you want to do?" You want to put the information out there that yes, you are interested in selling it to them, but you're not forcing them to buy it. Very subtle difference.

And that's the last step: closing the sale. You don't want to look at it as a slam-dunk closing, pushing somebody. You want to look like you're enabling them to do it; you're giving them the green light and the okay, and you're telling them you're interested in doing this. "I'm interested in you having this product; what do you think you want to do?" Putting it on them, they have to be as interested in it as you are. If you're the only one interested, you're like that cliche on sitcoms where there's two people that go on a date, and at the end of the date, "What I'm saying, call me," they're begging. You want to be the person who is interested, but you also want them to be interested in you. So you're not trying to force something on a customer; they have to be invested in as well. So those are the four steps. I know I went over it quickly; it's only been about 10 minutes. There's a lot more to talk about. If you'd like to discuss any of these more in detail or get some customized training,