Wayne Berry

As I was saying…

A company which I eventually did some sales training for a few years ago decided to put this to the test. Their product (actually a service) was priced at $3,100 and the company authorised their entire sales team to go out and see all of their prospects who were procrastinating on their decision, or had said “no” and offer the same product for just $1,500. They were allowed to do this for a full month.

So what do you think happened?

Did their sales go through the roof as their sales people said they would because “price was the problem”?

Here’s what happened. Less than 10% of these procrastinating, price sensitive prospects actually decided to go ahead and buy or reverse their decision not to buy.

You see price was not the problem! These prospects were not going to buy at any price. The “promotion” (which incidentally I did not agree with) was a complete failure but it did show that price was not the real problem…

The real objection was “I don’t see the value”!

Over the weeks ahead we trained these sales people to sell on value and not on price. They sold at full price from that day on and this involved developing a range of skills including; .

• Rapport building

• Trust building

• Asking questions to understand their prospect’s real needs – both “logical” and “emotional”
• How to present the benefits of their products in a way that addressed their prospect’s real needs
• How to ask their prospects for a decision without pressure or “clever tricky closes”, and most importantly…

How to answer the price objection when it came up

So what happened? Over the first 30 day period sales rose by 43%. During the next 30 days they rose by a massive 80%, and in the next 30 days by more 100%.

That’s right, sales doubled!

So how do you sell the value?

Well a prospect determines whether your proposition is value for money or not by weighing up the benefits your proposition offers, versus the cost (or more correctly the “investment”).

Value is a perception and you can change this perceived value by explaining the benefits in detail (not the features) as they relate to your prospect’s needs (determined by your skillful use of questions before making yor presentation) and this can then tip the “value for money scale” in favour of good value for money.

If you do this well, then you will often eliminate the “It costs too much” objection entirely.

If however it does come up, this is how to answer it.

“Mr Prospect I understand how you feel, I’ve had other clients who also felt this way, but when they went ahead here’s what they found…”

At this point you go on to sell the benefits.

This technique is called the “Feel, felt, found technique”

This is just one of the strategies and techniques we trained those sales people to use and the increase in sales was dramatic.

And this is not an isolated case, over the last 12 months alone I’ve shown tens of thousands of sales people across Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia how to sell on value rather than on price and…

How to get past objections that stop 90% of sales people.

And while the price objection can be a tough one to handle, there is an even tougher objection to handle and get past to make the sale than the price objection.

So what is this toughest of all objections?

It’s the un-stated objection!

It’s often disguised as, “I’d like to think it over!”

Well this is not a real objection. It’s an excuse, a “smoke-screen” to hide the real objection. However there is a brilliant way that we have developed to handle the “smoke-screen objection” and to use it as a springboard to close more sales than you ever have before.

Why you’ve got to “disturb” your prospect before you offer a solution

The second purpose of asking questions is to disturb our prospect about their current situation and turn indifference into a desperate need to come up with a better way or a solution to their problem. I spoke about this in the last volume of TOP GUN® Sales Tips.

Such is the power of using carefully chosen questions.

They create a real desire in the client’s mind to take some action NOW to solve the problem. The sequence of the questions is important too. People buy for emotional reasons and “disturbing questions” will turn an indifferent prospect into a red hot buyer who is saying “SO WHAT SHOULD I DO?”

Why selling themselves is better than you selling them

You see if you ask the right questions, your prospect will start to tell you what they need, why they need it and what is important to them. They will begin to describe features and benefits of the solution you have in mind for them. When these benefits are coming from their mouth rather than yours, then they must be true. This is a much more persuasive way of selling, and it avoids any hint of “high-presssure” selling.

During these workshops I’ll be helping participants to develop their own customised set and sequence of disturbing / needs revealing questions, and showing how this system has worked for thousands of Top Gun Graduates who sell everything from investments, computers, cars, insurance, real estate, etc. It works regardless of what you sell.

Relationship / Consultative Selling strategies are the key to sustained success in selling

Questions are the hallmark of today’s true Consultative / Relationship Sales Person. What I call the “5th Generation” Sales Professional who builds a high level of trust and an on-going relationship with their clients, who then will NOT buy from a Generation 1, 2, 3 or 4 Sales Person and who will send their friends to you, their “Friend In The Business”.

If you’d like to be sure that you are in the top 10% of sales achievers in Australia today, who are 5th Generation Sales Professionals, you might like to consider attending this next TOP GUN® Sales Mastery Workshop where I’ll be explaining in detail about “5th Generation Selling” and teaching this vital skill of asking questions and using relationship selling strategies.

Have a great week. Make it a great week!

“If you ask the right questions, your prospects will become so dissatisfied with their current situation, they will want to buy from you more than you want to sell to them!”

Prospects will not buy if they are totally satisfied with their current situation.

The fact is that no matter how good a product or service is, a prospect generally will not buy if they are totally happy and comfortable with their current situation. They will only be motivated to buy if they become dissatisfied with their current situation or supplier.

Play a waiting game?

So should we wait around until our prospects become dissatisfied?

Or should we just keep knocking on doors and ringing telephones until we find dissatisfied prospects?

Well that’s one way, and yes I do recommend that you keep up your prospecting, but there is a better way. Its called…

Being a creative sales professional

Let me give you an example. A few years ago I was speaking at a seminar for insurance sales people. There were some good sales people there too, and as good sales people will, a few prospected me for insurance. However I told them that they were wasting their time.

I once believed in insurance, but I didn’t any more. A pretty good objection I thought and it worked too.

It stopped them dead in their tracks.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like to break the hearts of sales people, but I really wasn’t interested.

On day two however, a very creative sales person struck up a conversation with my business partner and instead of trying to sell insurance, he simply asked her a few harmless questions about our business. (Did I forget to mention that she didn’t believe in insurance either. She was even more adamant me!)

He was just being friendly and showing an interest in us I guess.

He began by asking my partner how busy was I making presentations and running training workshops all over the world? Her answer was of course, “very busy”! (Still smiling at this stage.)

Next he asked, “What happens if Wayne gets the flu and can’t present? How would that affect your business?”

She had to admit it was a disturbing thought and she didn’t really have a good answer.

“If you had to cancel a presentation due to illness what would that cost you?”

Well the answer was quite a few thousand dollars.

“How much exactly?” he asked and when she told him and he recoiled in horror - “How much!!” (We call that ‘Hollywooding” it!) “And that’s only for one day, if he missed just one day?”

“What would it cost the company (and you) if he missed a week of presentations?” Again he gasped in disbelief – “That much!!”

My partner had gone from having a nice morning to feeling down right sick at the thought of me being sick. (Ah concern for my good health – I like that!)

He then asked her, “What would happen if Wayne had an accident and couldn’t present for several months, or worse what if he died, how would that affect the business?”

“How would that in turn affect you and your security and lifestyle?”

After considering for about 10 seconds whether our clients might accept listening to tape of me presenting at their conference, she realised that such an event would be catastrophic.

Now the time was right.

Clearly she was disturbed, and it was then and only then, that he came to her rescue and said, ‘Well the reason I asked this is because I have been able to help many business people like you and Wayne to protect themselves against loss of income due to accident or sickness and I can help you too. Would you like to know how?”

At that point, do you think he had her full attention?

Let me tell you that at the next break, my business partner told me that she had decided to take out income protection, disability cover, life insurance – everything. Within a week I was now worth more dead than alive!

Here’s the point I’m making.

Your prospects will not really be interested in what you can do for them, until they are first disturbed about their current situation.

How can you achieve this?

Skilful use of well thought out questions.

Consider what questions you can ask your prospects to disturb them BEFORE you make your next sales presentation. Good questions are the real key to success in selling.
Have a great week. Make it a great week!

“If you do it right, you should be able to make 10 calls and get 5 appointments”

Most sales people hate prospecting.

Why is that? If prospecting is such an important skill, why do so few sales people enjoy doing it? I guess the reason is fairly obvious.

Fear of rejection

So why are so many sales people rejected when they get on the telephone and seek to make appointments with strangers? I think there are three main reasons. The first can be summed up with what most sales people tell me is the number one objection that they get from prospects on the telephone…

“I’m not interested!”

We’ve all heard it, haven’t we? And we’ve all used this line with a sales person or telephone canvasser who has called us too haven’t we? So why would a prospect say that they are not interested?

I believe it is because¦

1. What most sales people say is not interesting!

What you say within the first 30 seconds of a cold prospecting telephone call is critical to the successful outcome of the call. What you say has to “grab” the prospects attention and get a response (either spoken or unspoken).

“Tell me more!”

So my advice is spend some serious time developing a written script for what you are going to say in those first 30 seconds. Some sales people say, “I don’t want to use a script. I want to sound natural.” You will sound natural if you develop a good script and then practice it. The second reason I believe most sales people fail to gain appointments on the telephone is because…

2. Most sales people talk too much about their product or service on the phone

The purpose of your telephone call should not be to sell your company, your product or your services. It should be to sell the appointment. Nothing else!

The third reason I think most sales people do badly with telephone prospecting is because…

3. Most sales people have never learned how to prospect effectively

Prospecting is a skill and like all skills we are not born with them. Skills are developed. Yet so many sales people fail to understand this. They jump on the telephone with lots of enthusiasm and optimism but no real skills and strategies, and then wonder why they fail to make appointments.

Having experienced a lot of rejection, they then avoid prospecting, and if you don’t generate new leads or you wait for your company to provide them to you, then you’ll always be an average sales person, producing average results and living an average life. So how can you become a Top Gun sales person?

Develop this vital skill of prospecting

Learn them! Don’t leave it to chance with a hit and miss approach to prospecting.

I’ve seen sales people come to our TOP GUN® Mastery Workshop on prospecting with no confidence, and a dismal conversion ratio (eg. 1 in 45. That is, one appointment made for every 45 calls) and within 7 days they were able to confidently get on the telephone and convert 5 out of every 10 calls into appointments. Amazing? No – not really!

Brad’s story

About 2 years ago a young sales person came to our Sales Mastery Workshop on prospecting. His name was Brad and he worked for an IT company. Brad was struggling and his sales results placed him near the bottom of the list of 26 sales people in his company.

After attending this workshop, Brad’s ability to gain appointments and get in front of qualified buyers improved dramatically. Within 2 months Brad had moved up to near the top of the list of sales achievers in his company. Since then Brad has continued to produce exceptionally good results and Brad credits this dramatic turnaround with the development of his prospecting skills.

By the way, Brad is happy to tell you his story if you’d care to call him. His number is 0405 100 840.

When I last spoke to Brad his conversion ratio on the telephone was 6.3 /10. That is, on average for every 10 calls Brad makes, he gets 6.3 appointments.

So how does that compare to your conversion ratio on the telephone? Would you like to be in front of more prospective buyers? My advice to you if you are in sales or in business for yourself, is develop your prospecting skills.

A tip on prospecting if you are a Sales Manager

If you are in Management, don’t expect your sales people to be able to get appointments and gain new and extra business for you if you haven’t provided them with this vital skill training. Investing time and money into this vital skill will provide an enormous return on your investment and will go on paying you, year after year after year.

Have a great week. Make it a great week!

All successful people have vision. They have the ability the “see” clearly what they want before it exits.

I’d have to agree with Mr Gates on that one. All of the successful people I have known and studied have had that ability.

Ray Kroc, founder of McDonalds had a vision of what McDonalds could be. He saw McDonalds as an international franchise operation dominating the world of fast food. He had that vision when he first met the McDonald brothers in their little outlet in San Bernadino, in Southern California. The McDonald brothers knew he was crazy right away. They just couldn’t see it! They had actually tried franchising and failed. If Kroc was stupid enough to try again where they had failed, sure they would go along with him, and he could have a percentage of the new company. That percentage was eventually worth billions to Ray Kroc, who was not at all surprised when McDonalds succeeded on a scale that astounded the McDonald brothers.

Bill Gates could “see” that the future of computers was in the software, not in the hardware. Bear in mind that he “saw” this at a time when IBM dominated the world of computers with computers the size houses and where an apple was something that grew on a tree.

In the 1950′s Walt Disney “saw” a place called “Disneyland” where people would come from all over the world to play. He saw this in a world where amusement parks were tacky places staffed by scruffy carnival people. Even worse, he saw it being located out in the boon docks of Los Angeles in aplace called Anaheim where those apples I mentioned before grew in orchards. The bankers Walt approached just couldn’t see it!! At the time the project was laughingly referred to as “Disney’s folly”, but Walt did it anyway. I bet you’ve either been there, know someone who has been there, or intend to go there or to one of the other Disney Parks around the world.

So what’s your vision? Once you a clear on what you want you’re half way there.

2. Being in the right place at the right time

Bill Gates suggested that some of success is luck. Just being in the right place at the right time.

While I agree with Mr Gates that being in the right place at the right time is important, recognising that you are in the right place, and that the right time is NOW, comes from having a clear vision of what you really want in life. If you know what you want, then you’ll recognise every opportunity that comes along that fits with your vision, and you’ll be able to grab these opportunities with both hands.

Bill gates didn’t invent DOS, someone else did. However Bill Gates had the vision that the creator of DOS did not have. He recognised that he was in the right place at the right time with IBM and acquired DOS. The rest is history.

Is your vision so clear that you recognise when you are in the right place at the right time?

3. Take massive immediate action

During our lifetime, I suspect that we are all presented with thousands of good ideas and wonderful opportunities that could make us wealthy and allow us to fulfil our dreams. The problem is that most people even when they recognise that they have a good idea, do nothing with it.

As one of the founders of the National Speakers Association of Australia (NSAA) 15 years ago, I’m sometimes asked if I’m concerned that I’m actually helping create competitors for myself, every time I speak at an NSAA Conference or Seminar. On these occasions I willingly share my knowledge and experience with people new to the speaking and training profession. I tell them what I’ve learned over the last 27 years and share ideas on how they can become professional speakers.

Frankly I’m not concerned at all about creating competitors, and I say this for two reasons. Reason number one is that I know that very few people will actually take action on the ideas I share. Not because they don’t see the value in the ideas, but simply because that’s human nature. They’ll talk about doing something. They’ll plan to do something. But they won’t actually do anything. If they do, they’ll only try it a time or two and if they haven’t achieved overnight success then they’ll stop doing it.

The second reason I don’t mind sharing my knowledge, is that I know that the serious people, the ones with vision who will take action, will not be interested in becoming Wayne Berry clones. They already have their own vision on what they want to become and achieve, and they’ll do it too. They’ll add real value in their own right in the marketplace.

Every year I share ideas on selling and negotiating techniques with tens of thousands of sales people, but sadly only a small percentage will have the vision and the persistence to follow through and use these ideas on an on-going basis. Those who do, become enormously successful and send me emails which I really enjoy receiving.

The real key to success is to find a good idea and take IMMEDIATE and MASSIVE action. You’ll note that there are two factors here, IMMEDIATE and MASSIVE.

My experience is that if we don’t act on a good idea within 24 hours, we are less than 50% likely to ever act on it. If we haven’t acted on it inside of 7 days, then we are less than 2% likely to ever act on it.

My advice is when you find a good idea act on it right away.

That way you’ll find out quicker if it’s a good idea or not.

The other key is to take MASSIVE action. The average person will try a new idea once or twice and if they don’t get an immediate result. They give up.

When I was in Washington DC last, I visited the Smithsonian Institution and saw some of Edison’s failed experiments as he worked to perfect theincandescent light bulb. The problem was in the filament. They all burned out after a short time. Edison took massive action on the challenge and after thousands of failed attempts, he finally solved the problem. The solution made him a fortune.

How is your MASSIVE “persistence” factor when you are trying out a new idea?

There is no such thing as try. You either do it or you don’t! Edison simply decided to do it, no matter what it took. Do you?

So there you have it. Bill Gates three keys to success.

Have a great week. Make it a great week!

1. Being ‘perceptive’ means being able to spot the contradictions between someone’s words and their body language.

   And that overall women are far more perceptive than men. Research reveals that women read the situation accurately 87% of the time, while men only scored 42% accuracy. This has given rise to the term “women’s intuition”.

2. Modern humans are worse at reading body signals than their ancestors because we are now distracted by words.

   Try turning the volume down on the TV and see how well you do.

3. False smiles pull back only the mouth while real smiles pull back both mouth and eyes.

   Science has proven that the more you smile, the more positive reactions others will give you.

4. When you fold your arms your credibility dramatically reduces.

   You may feel that arm-crossing is simply comfortable but others will think you’re not approachable.

5. Skilful elbow-touching can give you up to three times the chance of getting what you want.

   A light 3 second elbow-touch creates a momentary bond between two people. Touching above or below the elbow does not produce the same result and touching for more than 3 seconds will receive a negative response.

6. Gestures can reveal if a person is lying.

   Seven of the most common ‘lying gestures’ are the, ‘Mouth Cover’, the ‘Nose Touch’, the ‘Eye Rub’, the ‘Ear Grab’, the ‘Neck Scratch’, the ‘Collar Pull’ and the ‘Fingers In The Mouth’.

7. Pupil dilation is a sign that the person likes what they see

   When the pupil of the eye dilates, the black section in the middle grows in size. This explains why we sometimes see a “twinkle in the eye” when a person is happy or excited. The larger black area reflects light differently.

8. The closer people feel emotionally to each other, the closer they will stand to each other.

   There are cultural reasons too, why people will stand a certain distance from another person.

9. Jiggling the feet is like the brain’s attempt to run away from what is being experienced.

   If you are not sure whether you’re being lied to or not, look under the table or desk. Glass topped tables cause us more stress than solid tables, as our legs are in full view and so we don’t feel as if we are in full control.

10. Open legs show male confidence; closed legs show male reticence

    Crossed legs not only reveals negative or defensive emotions, it makes a person appear insecure and causes others to react accordingly.

11. The size of a briefcase is linked to perceptions of the status of its owner.

    Those who carry a large, bulky briefcase are thought to do all the work and probably take work home with them because they are poor time managers. Slim briefcases say that the owner is only concerned with the bottom line and therefore has more status.

12. Where you sit in relation to other people in a meeting or even socially, is an effective way of obtaining co-operation from them.

    It makes a difference whether you sit at a round table, a square table, a rectangular table or no table at all. It also matters where you sit – across from the other person, left or right of the person, next to the person and so on.

It’s a fascinating subject and reading a person’s body language is a skill which can be developed. Allan cautions us though not to jump to conclusions when we see gestures and suggests three rules for accurate reading.

1. Read gestures in clusters and don’t interpret a solitary gesture on it’s own
2. Look for congruency between people’s words and their ‘body language’
3. Remember to read gestures in context with the environment and other things that are happening

Have a great week. Make it a great week!

Wayne Berry

For example…

If you’ve got around 50 happy clients using the particular product or service, don’t tell your prospect, “I have around 50 happy clients using this system”.

Instead give them a precise number.

“We have 53 clients currently using this system!”

The reasearch on this shows that your client is now far more likely to believe you, and your credibility will be much higher than if you than if you had simply said 50.

Similarly, if you are quoting a price.

A price of say $4,873 will “seem” more non-negotiable, than a price of $4,800 or $5,000. That is to say, you are less likely to be asked for a discount if you say the price is $4,873 rather than $4,800 or $5,000.

The reason for this is obvious enough. A price of $4,873 has obviously been calculated from a precise formula, using actual costs etc. (or so it will seem.) Hence it is less likely to be regarded by your cleint as a “flexible price”.

It’s important to always tell the truth.

When I offer my CD programmes from the platform at seminars, I tell my audience that we have a Money Back Guarantee, so they can return any programme that they purchase, if they are not totally happy with it.

I then ask them, “How many programmes do you think we’ve ever had returned?”.

Because people rarely expect a sales person to tell them the truth anyway, they give me the answer they think I want to hear. They always say the same thing. They always say “None”!

However, this is simply not true, so I tell them this is not true!

It is inconceivable that we’ve not had any returns in 14 years, so I always tell them the truth. I say, “No that’s not true, we’ve actually had 11 programmes returned over the last 14 years and we’ve made 11refunds”.

Notice that I use exact numbers again.

I used exact numbers for both the number of programmes returned and the number of years.

By the way, that’s 11 out of 12,658 audio programmes that we’ve produced and sold since October 22nd 1991. That’s a pretty good record and we are proud of it. By the way those figures are accurate because I’ve just looked them up on our computer system, so I can be precise.

Notice too the numbers I always use under my signature in this and every newsletter.

Go on, have a look.

Also notice that some of the most effective advertising you’ll ever see that quotes figures uses this technique.

In the USA one of the most popular brands of soap is Ivory Soap. Decades ago, Ivory set themselves apart from their competition and grabbed a large share of the market by claiming that “Ivory Soap is 99 and 44/100ths percent pure”.

They could just as easily claimed that “Ivory Soap is 100% pure”.

However they chose not to

The truth is, Ivory Soap isn’t 100% pure. Anything manufactured in bulk can’t be 100% pure or perfect and when we make a claim that something is 100%, people say to themselves;

“Oh really? I’m not that stupid. That can’t be entirely true and you know it too!”

And when a prospect feels this way, you lose points on your credibility scale with them.

Lose enough points, and as your credibility goes down, you become less believable even when you are telling the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!

From now on, be as precise as you can be and see what happens.
Have a great week, make it a great week!