The Sales Experiment

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Making Their Goals, Your Goals

Nothing will work every time in sales, not even winning on price.

One way to strengthen your chances of success is to become known, liked, and trusted by your future clients.

One way to become known, liked, and trusted by your future clients is to make their goals, your goals.

[Tweet “One way to become known, liked, and trusted by your future clients is to make their goals, your goals.”]

In other words, understand the way your product or service can help your client achieve their business, personal, or other goals. Where do you and your work dovetail with their journey?

Goals can be complicated, mind you. While you might assume the goal for your client is revenue, it could actually be reputation. Or the goal could be a smooth and easy experience with a certain product or service.

Goals aren’t easy to uncover, but make it your aim to do so. Ask good questions. Be bold. You’ll become more of a partner than a vendor. And you’ll enjoy your sales job much more than you ever thought possible.

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What Are You All About?

I just edited the About page on this website.

As I tweaked the page (something I should probably do every week), I thought about what potential clients understand about me when I go visit them.

  • What do they think I’m all about?
  • Am I about using them to support my family?
  • Am I about helping them build their business or protect their nonprofit?
  • Am I desperate to make a sale out of fear?
  • Am I about creating value?
  • Do I need their business or do I understand the world’s a pretty huge place and there’s plenty of business to go around?
  • Do I know my product and what change I can bring about in my client’s world?
  • Why am I selling them what I’m selling?

What is the one goal that you have with each client?

Where is your heart in the situation? What do you hope to accomplish?

One thing I’m sure of: If I’m not clear on what I’m about, then their assumptions are going to be correct regardless of what those assumptions are.

[Tweet “If you don’t determine your purpose, your clients will make their own assumptions”]

While the application of your products and services might be different for various clients, you still can develop one clear idea that defines what you are all about as a consultative, value-providing, salesperson.

Get clear on what you’re about and why you do what you do. Eventually, your clients will become clear on it to.

 

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How to be a ‘recommended resource’

You  must do business the way you want to be recommended.

—Paul Rand (paraphrased from Social Media Marketing Podcast with Michael Stelzner)

I’m almost done listening through about 5 months of Social Media Examiner’s podcast. Thankfully, I did not give up as I just came to this gem from mid-November 2014 where Michael Stelzner interviews Paul Rand, author of the book Highly Recommended.

There was about a Chuckwagon Platter full of meat in the show, but one idea sticks out: Do you do business in such a way that your clients would recommend you in the way you want to be recommended?

In other words, if you wrote out the perfect referral script for your clients, would it accurately reflect who you are and what you do?

That’s a tough one. It’s a tough one for me. Do I meet that litmus test every time?

It’s a powerful question and one that, according to Rand, needs to be asked not only of the sales and marketing team, but of the whole organization.

  • Does every layer of the organization – the service, operations, sales, marketing, and executive management teams – reflect the message we want our clients to send to our future clients?
  • Does every step of all of our processes, from initial prospect engagement to delivery of services to ongoing support, reflect the message we want our clients to send to our future clients?

Are we giving people what we want them to tell people that we give as a provider of goods and services?

How Can You Know If You Are a Resource Worthy of Being Recommended?

The first step is to define the standard. Would you be able to give your client a script for recommending you? Do you have a clear value proposition as an organization and as an individual sales professional?

The second step is to make sure that this value proposition – that it is something clients actually need (even if they don’t realize they need it).

The third step is to honestly evaluate whether you deliver the value you claim to deliver.

The fourth step is to coach your clients as firmly, yet gently as you can, how to recommend you (and to confirm that they’ve been receiving the value).

What do you think?

Are you building your business, your practice, your goods and services, in a way that you will be recommended for what you want to be recommended for?

How can you get there?

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(Links to amazon.com are always affiliate links).

 

 

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