iFS Selling Skills Feb 2012 v1 - iSpeak · SELLING SKILLS iSpeak, Inc. 2012© i Selling Skills iSpeakTM prepared this workbook for use in the area of Training and Development for

Foundation Series®

Selling Skills

inform – inspire – implement – improve

S E L L I N G S K I L L S

iSpeak, Inc. 2012© i

Selling Skills

iSpeakTM prepared this workbook for use in the area of Training and Development for continuing education. It is intended that these materials will be used to assist students in the learning process during the workshop, after the workshop for review, and continued learning as a reference guide.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Curriculum Developers: Russ D. Peterson, Jr. Kevin J. Karschnik

Copyr ight Noti ce Copyright © 2012 by iSpeak™. All Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States. iFS_Selling Skills_Feb 2012_v1.5 Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication, including additional handouts, reference guides, or any part thereof, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of iSpeak™.

Disc la imer While iSpeak™ makes a sincere effort to ensure the accuracy and quality of the materials described herein, all material is provided without warranty, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. iSpeak disclaims all liability for any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential, special or exemplary damages resulting from the use of this product or the products described in this workbook.

Trademark Noti ces iSpeakTM, ispeak.com, Communicating4Success, Presenting4Success, Selling4Success, Servicing4Success, Managing4Success, Communicating4Success and the iSpeak logo are registered trademarks of iSpeakTM. All other product names and services identified throughout this book are trademarks of their respective companies. No such use is intended to convey endorsement.

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Thank You Thank you for your purchase. We are committed to delivering a successful training program in a productive, efficient, and positive manner. Enjoy the workshop.

W E L C O M E

ii iSpeak, Inc. 2012© www.iSpeak.com

Welcome to Selling Skills

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” - Benjamin Franklin

Selling is the cornerstone of capitalism and the free market system. It has been around for years and is quite possibly one of the oldest professions. So, if that is the case, why is selling still much more difficult than what many may think? Selling may come easy to some people, but if you follow those people throughout their career, you will find out that, while it may appear to come easy to them, there is a substantial amount of preparation and work that takes place to position them at the top of their profession. What you will also discover is that the reason their success appears to come naturally is because they have learned how to work smarter - not harder.

Selling Skills is the iSpeak course that introduces you to the process of selling. Many may claim that with regard to selling skills “you are either born with it or you aren’t.” This claim is not true; selling is a skill that can be learned. Just as a sports skill like baseball can be learned, so can the skill of effective selling. Just as highly successful baseball athletes add their own style to the skill to create an art form, so do highly successful salespeople.

Research shows that participants who interact during this course will gain a superior understanding of the course content over those who passively read the workbook or listen to the facilitator.

You bring to the class the skills necessary to be a great sales professional. Research shows that participants who interact during this course will gain a superior understanding of the course content over those who passively read the workbook or just listen to the facilitator. Selling Skills will challenge you to step outside of your comfort zone to learn new techniques. To become a skilled communicator and sales professional, you need to challenge yourself to improve your skills. Participating in class exercises helps sharpen these new skills.

The information and inspiration will be provided by your facilitator, but the implementation is the single most important factor in your improvement. During the next class you will be asked to role-play with others and with your facilitators. Only through your implementation will you internalize the skills required for success. In Selling Skills, we will provide you with the foundation and tools that are required to reach your full sales potential.


iSpeak, Inc. 2012© iii

Exercise: Course Expectations

What do you want to gain from the Selling Skills course?

1.

2.

3.

4.

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

iv iSpeak, Inc. 2012© www.iSpeak.com

Table of Contents

Welcome to Selling Skills ii Unit One: Buying and Selling 1

What Do Customers Want? 2 Selling Value 3 Features, Advantages & Benefits 4 iSpeak Sales Process Model 5 Unit Summary 6

Unit Two: Prospecting 7 Where Do I Find Prospects? 8 Researching Prospects Online 10 Contacting Prospects 12 Voice Mails & Email 13 Creating a Phone Script 15 Tips for Effective Prospecting 18 Unit Summary 20

Unit Three: Understanding 21 Needs & Decision Criteria 22 Listening 24 Developing Active Listening Skills 26 Questioning to Diagnose 27 Types of Questions 30 Discovery Conversations 31 Important Questions to Ask 35 Unit Summary 38

Unit Four: Presenting & Completing 39 Responding to Tough Questions 40 Trial Closing 43 Final Closing 44 Unit Summary 48

Unit Five: Servicing 49 Levels of Customer Service 50 Responsive C.A.R.E. 51 Referrals 53 Unit Summary 54

Implement to Improve 55 iSpeak After the Class 56 Satori 57 Kaizen 58 21-Day Habit 59 Foundation Series Curriculum 60 Corporate Ovations 61


iSpeak, Inc. 2012© v

Table of Exercises

Exercise: Objections and Difficult Questions .................................................................................. 2 Exercise: Features, Advantages and Benefits ................................................................................. 4 Exercise: Define additional prospecting methods ........................................................................... 9 Exercise: Online sales support ....................................................................................................... 11 Exercise: Preparing to Create a Phone Script ............................................................................... 16 Exercise: Write the Cold Call Phone Script .................................................................................... 17 Exercise: Prospecting ISE .............................................................................................................. 19 Exercise: Potential Decision Criteria ............................................................................................. 23 Exercise: Costs of Poor Listening .................................................................................................. 25 Exercise: Active Listening .............................................................................................................. 25 Exercise: Developing Probing Questions ....................................................................................... 36 Exercise: Asking Good Questions .................................................................................................. 37 Exercise: Handling Objections and Tough Questions ................................................................... 42 Exercise: Interactive Situational Exercise .................................................................................... 45 Exercise: Your Ideas for Responsive C.A.R.E. ............................................................................... 52

iSpeak, Inc. 2012© 1

Unit One: Buying and Selling

“The outstanding leaders of every age are those who set up their own quotas and constantly exceed them.” - Thomas J. Watson (1874-1956), Chairman of IBM

n sales, there are those who are successful and those who are not. Some who are successful might just be in the right place at the right time, but that cannot be sustained or systematically replicated. The successful ones continue to be successful regardless of what product or service they are selling, who they are selling to, and when they are selling. These are the salespeople you

want to model. Their success is always rooted in “how” they are selling.

The successful sales professional understands the definition of selling - uncovering a prospect’s needs and then positioning their product or service as the best solution to fulfill that need. Why do people buy? People buy to:

1) ________________________________________________

2) ________________________________________________

Selling Skills is the iSpeak course developed to introduce you to the science of selling. Many may claim that “you are either born with it or you aren’t,” when it comes to selling skills, but that is a myth. Selling is a skill that can be learned. Just as a sports skill like baseball can be learned, so is the skill of selling.

In this unit, you will learn:

Why should you focus on selling value?

The importance of Features, Advantages and Benefits

Selling as a Process

Unit One

1

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U N I T O N E : B U Y I N G A N D S E L L I N G

2 iSpeak, Inc. 2012© www.iSpeak.com

What Do Customers Want?

“The more high tech the world becomes, the more people crave high touch service.” - John Naisbitt

When a sales professional studies the topic of sales, it is imperative to understand the view from the client’s perspective. In other words, a sale cannot occur unless a buyer makes a purchase. As a result, it becomes evident that our job as sales professionals is to persuade prospects to purchase from our company instead of a competitor.

That persuasion can be understood best by looking at every sales transaction as a buying transaction. As you backtrack through the process, you will come to the first and most important question, “In general, what do customers want?”

What Do You Want in a Salesperson?

We are all customers. Each one of us makes purchases for products and services. Think about that last significant purchase you made, and about what you wanted from your salesperson. Chances are that your list will include some of the following. You wanted a salesperson that was:

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

Exercise: Objections and Difficult Questions

Write down an objection and a difficult question on each of the index cards provided to you. These questions will be utilized later in the class as part of an interactive situational exercise.



Selling Value

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” – Warren Buffett

In a proper selling process, when a buyer’s perception is created around a specific product or service, they will automatically derive a ballpark figure in terms of the product’s pricing. When the pricing is well above that expectation, you are perceived as “expensive.” On the other hand, if the pricing comes in below their expectation, you will be perceived as a “good value.”

Selling success depends more on the work you do early in the sales process than on the final negotiation. Perceived value of your offering and the buying urgency you create with your prospect provide the fuel to complete the sale. The stronger the perceived value and urgency by your prospect, the better off you are in the negotiating process.

Great front work (asking open-ended questions, delivering key benefit statements, responding to objections appropriately, etc.) combined with the delivery of a strong value will further strengthen your negotiating position. The graphic below depicts how selling skills and a product or service that fills a need and matches the customer’s decision criteria will have a higher perceived value to the prospective client. This makes the price less of an issue.

The three keys to lowering risk and increasing value are:

1) _____________________________________________

2) _____________________________________________

3) _____________________________________________

U N I T O N E : B U Y I N G A N D S E L L I N G


Features, Advantages & Benefits

“Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman - not the attitude of the prospect.” – W. Clement Stone

Throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s, successful salespeople realized that selling products based solely on their features was no longer as effective as it once was. As a result, they began to focus more on how the customer would benefit from using their product. With that, Benefit Selling was born.

While Benefit Selling is no longer as prominent or effective in today’s marketplace, it still provides an effective means to guide a conversation. Conversations that include a technical discussion about the feature set may be educational, but are not an effective selling technique. There are three terms that will be utilized in Benefit Selling: Features, Advantages and Benefits. These are commonly referred to as “FABs.”

Feature is a physical characteristic of a product.

Advantage is the performance characteristic the feature provides.

Benefit is the favorable result the buyer will receive because of an advantage.

Exercise: Features, Advantages and Benefits

Complete the last row of the table with details of your own products and services.

Feature Advantage Benefit

This golf ball has a titanium core. It provides an extra 10 yards on your drives.

It can lower your overall score.

This Computer Server has a new dual power unit

It provides consistent electricity even if the first power unit dies.

Your web site will not be taken offline by a power failure.

This home has a high efficiency roof and insulation beyond what building code requires.

It takes less energy to keep your house cool in the summer.

You will save money on your electric bills.



iSpeak Sales Process Model

“He who asks a question may be a fool for five minutes, but he who never asks a question remains a fool forever.” – Tom Connelly

It is important to understand the buyer process so that you know what is going through the buyer’s mind as they review salespeople and the services they can deliver. This understanding of the buyer’s process helps the salesperson to navigate efficiently through the process in order to complete the sale. It also allows the sales professional to create an alignment between buyer and seller.

Selling is not an art form; selling is the management of a process. As a sales professional locates more opportunities, they will move through this selling process. This is not to say that all opportunities that enter this process will result in a closed sale; some will be lost, some will be canceled by the buyer, and some will not be worth pursuing any further.

Buyer Process Seller Process

Define the need

Search for a solution

Assess the available options to choose

Justify the purchase (any risk in proceeding?)

Evaluate the purchase for satisfaction

Prospect to find opportunities

Understand client needs & decision criteria

Present the proposed solution

Complete the sale (overcome any perceived risk)

Service the customer after the sale

U N I T T W O : P R O S P E C T I N G


Exercise: Preparing to Create a Phone Script

Answer the questions below to formulate an effective phone script.

What level of the organization are you calling on?

What are the most common needs and concerns for a person in this role?

How are people at this level graded on their work? What determines their success in their role?

What will most likely be the decision criteria for a person at this level of the organization?

What problems have you solved for individuals at this level with other companies?

U N I T T H R E E : U N D E R S T A N D I N G


Needs & Decision Criteria

“We need a hit, so here I go.” – Joe DiMaggio

Once you understand why and how a person makes a purchasing decision, you can better understand how to position and sell your product.

Why do people buy? Because they have needs

At a basic level, people buy for only two reasons, to avoid pain or to increase happiness. However, the reasons for making a purchase do not necessarily make the decision process any easier.

A customer’s need is defined as “the pain that the customer is trying to cure.” When a customer has a problem, they will seek a solution. The defined need must be fully understood before the sales professional can prescribe a solution. In the buyer process, a prospect will begin by defining their need based on a problem they are currently experiencing and what they see as the potential solution to that problem.

How do people decide? By ranking their decision criteria

Once a customer’s needs have been uncovered and fully defined, the successful sales professional will question to understand their decision criteria. What will the customer use to make their final decision? Are they strictly price driven? Will the quality of the product be important? Is service after the sale important? Every customer will place a different value on the criteria and, as a result, every customer may come to different conclusions for their product or service of choice.

As a sales professional, it is important for you to understand how your products or services can address each of your customers’ decision criteria. If you are not well positioned against your competition on a particular criterion, you may need to adjust your selling strategy. The following are examples of a customer’s decision criteria.

Quality Brand name, perceived quality based on higher price, place of purchase.

Price Is it within your budget? Is the price fair?

Support Does it have a warranty? Is support service local?

Features Does it have the features you require?

Delivery Does it have to be ordered and shipped?

Location Where will the purchase be made?



Exercise: Potential Decision Criteria

In your group, identify the top decision criteria you use for purchasing gasoline.

Identify the decision criteria your customers may use when selecting who they will purchase from.

Product or Service: Gasoline

Potential Decision Criteria:

Your Product or Service:

Potential Decision Criteria:



Questioning to Diagnose

“Questioning is the door of knowledge.” – Old Irish Saying

Have you ever walked into a doctor’s office and been handed a prescription after she has only taken your temperature by placing her hand on your forehead? What kind of diagnosis is that? Would you feel adequately diagnosed? Or, would you rather have the doctor take the time to ask you questions and run a series of tests before jumping to a conclusion? How much credibility would a doctor have with you if they diagnosed by touching your forehead as the examination?

Just as a doctor diagnoses and prescribes treatment for a patient, we as sales professionals must diagnose and prescribe solutions for our customers. This is our job as a professional; it is not our job to make assumptions or respond by taking orders. In today’s environment, we are expected to be experts in our industry and highly trained individuals capable of delivering solutions to problems.

The examination process for sales professionals consists of five steps. The first three of these steps are repeated as many times as necessary to obtain the appropriate information and understanding for prescribing a solution. The steps of the examination process are defined shown below in the process diagram.



Discovery Conversations

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.” – Albert Einstein

Once you understand the types of questions and the basic process for questioning, the next step is to synthesize all of these components into an actual conversation. What does a conversation using these elements actually look like? How does it sound when all of these pieces come together into a meaningful dialogue with a customer?

A conversation built around questioning can be structured into three key focus areas: Business, Needs and Decision Criteria.

Business Questions

After the cordial remarks have been made and the business portion of the conversation begins, a discovery conversation should begin with an understanding of the business. If this is a larger organization that can be found on many online information sites, the basic questions should already be answered for you (Where is headquarters? How many employees do you have? Etc.) More specific questions you will most likely not have answers to and must be asked.

How is your company structured by geography and function?

Which groups will be involved in this decision?

Who will be involved in the decision process for this?

Can you tell me about your current retail locations?

Needs Questions

Understanding what a customer needs is much more than asking a simple question like, “what do you need?” That would be like visiting the doctor and being asked, “What do you need?” as soon as he enters the room. How should we know? He’s the doctor! In addition, we don’t want a doctor to jump straight to the prescription either. We want a solid diagnosis prior to being prescribed anything. That is the role of the professional salesperson. Ask all the right “needs questions” to perform a proper diagnosis before prescribing. Focus these questions on the customer’s goals for the project and business. Do not just ask them what they’d like to order!

Can you tell me more about the direction you are moving in?

What are the goals of this project?

How do you see this helping your organization?

Can you describe for me the ideal “end state”?

Which of your locations will be affected by moving in this direction?


Unit Four: Presenting &

Completing

“The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.” - George Jessel, actor

orking a qualified lead down the field and towards the goal line is often the most time consuming and resource intensive segment of the entire sales process. Depending on the size of the sale, this segment can take mere minutes or many months. Regardless of the size

of your deals, the same phases will still exist in every sale. It becomes a question of how detailed you will need to be in this phase.

If you are working on a multi-million dollar project, you can expect to have more face-to-face customer meetings than if you were selling a $50 product. Completing or “closing” a sale is the phase where the prospect decides to move forward with the purchase of your product or service.

In this unit you will learn:

How to respond to tough questions

Sales closing questions

Practice your selling skills

Unit Four

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U N I T F O U R : P R E S E N T I N G A N D C O M P L E T I N G


Responding to Tough Questions

“I wish I had an answer to that because I’m tired of answering that question.” – Yogi Berra

The goal in responding to tough questions is to disarm the person asking the question by uncovering the true intent behind the question. Behind every tough question is a reason for it being asked. People do not ask questions to waste time; there is always an underlying reason.

If that reason can be uncovered, the response from the salesperson will be more effective because it can be targeted directly at the cause. When all questions are seen in this light, the tough questions no longer seem hostile or negative. Some reasons for a prospect to ask tough questions include the following:

The customer is testing the salesperson’s knowledge

The customer is questioning a differentiator between you and your competition

The area of concern is a major issue for the prospective customer

The explanation given thus far is confusing and should be clarified

Your presentation is too focused on the features of a product

When the salesperson views the tough question as a request for more information as opposed to a hostile attack, it can assist the salesperson in maintaining their composure when they respond. Responses to these tough questions will involve the salesperson asking the prospect for the answer. By following this process, the prospect may answer their own question.

Examples of tough questions and objections

“Why can’t you get my containers delivered faster than that?”

“Why is your pricing higher than the other hardwood tables I carry?”

“You’re not on our current vendor list and I’ve never heard of you.”

“Why can’t we use our preferred shipping company for the containers?”

“It’s more than what we’re looking for. Do you think I have an unlimited budget?”

Selling Tip

Address expected objections in your presentation before they are even brought up. This form of “beating the prospect to the punch” can defuse a situation before it ever arises.



Exercise: Interactive Situational Exercise

Define a typical sales situation below, work with a partner - one as the sales professional and one as the customer. Role-play a typical face-to-face customer interaction, moving toward your objective.

Typical selling situation:

Expected Customer needs:

Potential decision criteria of the customer:

Documents

iFS Selling Skills Feb 2012 v1 - iSpeak · SELLING SKILLS iSpeak, Inc. 2012© i Selling Skills iSpeakTM prepared this workbook for use in the area of Training and Development for