Seven New Realities for sales finishing in 2021
Specifically, there are seven new realities, or facts, that you must incorporate into your thinking and your actions to achieve the kind of sales results and income that is truly thinkable for you.
Today, more than ever before:
1#-More sellers than purchasers in every pitch.
2#-Selling is more intricate.
3#-Selling requires a bigger focus and simplicity.
4#-Selling requires bigger preparation.
- Clients are more challenging.
6#-Sales success requires numerous calls.
7#-Finishing the sale is harder.
More sellers than purchasers in every pitch.
The first new truth is that, in every pitch today, there are more sellers than the purchaser. The opposition is severer and more resolute than ever before. There are fewer client dollars accessible for an ever-expanding and wanted a collection of items and services. And whatever got you to where you are today is not sufficient to keep you there—or to get you any beyond.
SELLING IS MORE INTRICATE
Second, selling is more multifaceted than it was in the past. Item and service offerings, prices, and company capabilities are more multifaceted than ever. Client needs, wants, desires, and problems are more multifaceted. Numerous client contacts and meetings are required to make a sale today. And if anything, selling is going to become even more multifaceted and challenging in the future. You are going to have to run faster just to stay in the same place.
INTELEGIBILITY IS IMPORTANT
The third new realism is that selling requires a bigger focus and intelligibility than ever before. You must develop absolute intelligibility about your ideal client—that is, the person who can and will buy your item or service in the shortest period. You cannot afford to spend time speaking to people who cannot or will not buy what you are selling.
Once you have thought through and identified your ideal client, you must then ask, “Why would your ideal client buy from you rather than from your opponents?” What is your competitive advantage?
In 2020 alone, large and small companies spent more than a billion on market research in the variability of efforts to answer these questions. The bigger intelligibility you have about the perfect client for you and your item or service, the more of these flawless clients you will find, and the faster you will recognize them when you come across them.
Focus and concentration on your very best potential client is the key to your getting into the top 20 percent of money earners and moving up from there.
RELIABILITY MEANS BEING ORGANIZED
Fourth, it’s a fact that selling today requires bigger preparation. You must do your homework on clients before you call on them for the first time. Fortunately, with Google and other online search engines, you can do better and faster research on people and corporations than ever before in human history. With a few mouse clicks, you can have access to information that used to require hours of research at the home-grown library to uncover.
- What is the one factor that determines how much you sell,
- how fast you sell it,
- how much you earn,
- the size of your bank account,
- the home you live in,
- the quality of your life,
- and everything that happens to you personally and financially?
What is the one factor?”
And the answer is, “Reliability!” Your reliability with the client is more important than any other factor. The more the client trusts you and believes you, the lower the client’s fear of making a buying mistake. The more the client trusts you, the easier it is for that client to buy from you.
When your reliability level is high enough, the client will buy from you and not even ask the price. And the better organized you are, the bigger is your reliability from the first meeting. Do some “pre-call preparation.” Find out everything you possibly can about your clients before you meet with them for the first time.
When you meet with Visions and you explain how impressed you are with their accomplishments, and you can mention some background detail on the individual and the association, your reliability will soar. The client will be more open and interested in talking to you because you have done your homework. Also, before the call, think through and plan exactly what you are going to do and what you want to accomplish in the sales call.
The better organized you are in setting your pre-call objectives, the more focused and clear you will be when it comes to asking questions and having a conversation, and the more impressive you will look and sound to your Vision client. Finally, quickly write down everything that was discussed in the call immediately after you get out of the presence of the Vision.
When you walk into a second or third meeting fully organized because you have carefully reviewed your notes from the previous meetings, you look and sound like a professional. Your reliability goes straight up. The final benefit to preparation, aside from building your reliability quickly from the first call, is that it gives you a tremendous sense of self-confidence. And self-confidence is a vital psychological ingredient in successful selling.
CLIENTS ARE MORE CHALLENGING
A fifth reality is that clients are more challenging nowadays. Why? Because they can be! And if anything, they are going to be more challenging in the weeks and months ahead. Clients today are more skeptical and suspicious because of their previous buying experiences. They are afraid of buying the wrong item, paying too much, receiving too little, and being left in the lurch after the sale, as has happened to them in the past. Clients also receive numerous offers of items and services.
Your opponents are calling on them continuously. In their spare moments, your clients can go onto the Internet and find every variation of your item or service that is available in the world today, and at the lowest thinkable prices. It used to be that the salesclerk was the expert when he called on a Vision. He knew more about his item or service, and the opponents in the market than the client. Today, the roles are reversed.
Clients know as much or more than the salesperson, and what they don’t know, they can find out in a few seconds. Finally, clients are more challenging because they have limited resources. They do not have the kind of money that makes it thinkable for them to make a buying mistake.
As a result, they proceed more slowly. They question every claim you make. They compare your offer with those of your opponents. They postpone and delay making any buying decision.
NUMORIES-CALL SELLING
The sixth new reality is that it takes numerous calls to make a sale. When I started, calling from door to door, it was a single-call selling process. I would meet a Vision, ask qualifying questions, make my sales pitch, and ask for a buying decision. The size of my item was small and the risk of making a poor decision was low.
Today, however, because of the incredible multifaceted of the modern market and the level of competition in the marketplace, you have to make an average of four or five calls on a qualified Vision to make a sale, and at each one of these meetings, the sales process can stop because of a new piece of information. Your first call maybe just to start a relationship, and to discover if a need for your item or service exists.
The purpose of the first call is to separate Visions from suspects. The second and third calls may be to get more information, to make a presentation, or to present a proposal. The fourth and fifth meetings with the Vision may be to negotiate, finalize the purchase agreement, and close the sale. The best sales organizations and salespeople use what is called the “milestone method” of selling.
They carefully note the stage to which the sale has developed, knowing that for a certain number of Visions who begin the process, a specific percentage will become clients at the end of the process. The question is, where are you in the sales process? Is this your first meeting?
Is this your second or third meeting? How far along are you toward actually making the sale and collecting payment?
FINISHING THE SALE
Finishing the sale is harder today than it used to be, which is the seventh new reality of sales. Clients have fewer resources and are reluctant to change or try something new. Even if your item or service is attractive, the client has to move out of her comfort zone and “stretch” before she is willing to begin using something new or different. Besides, there are “switching costs,” which can be mental, physical, and financial. Sometimes, from the client’s point of view, it is just too much trouble to purchase your item or service. There are other reasons why finishing the sale is more difficult than ever before.
The most important rules related to the closing sale in 2021
Rule. NO#1:
“No authority? No sale!”
What this means is that if the person you are talking to does not have the authority to make the buying conclusion, he has no choice but to put you off by saying, “Let me think it over.”
Rule. NO#2:
“No money? No sale!”
If their financial condition is such that your diagnosis simply cannot have enough money for your item or service, then no matter how gorgeous it is, or how good it could be for the Vision, no sale can take place.
Rule. NO#3:
“No need? No sale!”
A major reason qualified Visions do not buy an item is because they do not fully understand or escalate how much better off their life and work could be if they had your item. Either you have not increased the intensity of their buying desire and made the item or service compelling enough, or the client feels that the increment in value is too small to justify the time and expense of buying
what you are selling.
Rule. NO#4:
“No urgency? No sale!”
Because clients are terrible about making a wrong buying decision, if they can delay the decision, they will. This is why you should always have an “extra reason” for the client to buy today rather than putting off the purchase until a later time. Sometimes we call this a “kicker.” You can offer
- free delivery,
- extra services,
- special discounts or
- rebates
- bigger speed of delivery.