Want Influence? Understand Their Needs!
Last week we talked about C.I.A. and how using these three letters are essential in growing influence. Today we are going to really grow our influence with those around us. Today we are going to find out the needs.
Whether it is a customer, a team we lead, or the nonprofit we are in charge of. We need to truly understand the needs of those around us. Deeper needs than just food, water, clothing, and a paycheck. People have many different levels of needs. Some of my therapist friends refer to the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs for personal needs. It is a great diagram to understand need levels.
There are also business needs that need be addressed. If we can help people with both of these needs, we are going to be generating high levels of influence. Now that is the influence I love to have. Not for the power aspect, but that I am helping people. That is why I wrote my book and write this blog every week. To help people understand sales and influence so they can be more effective with others around them. I want to help as many people as I can get better and serve those around them by helping them get to where they need to go.
So…how do we begin with that level of influence you are probably asking? We ask deep questions to really understand what people around us need. Most people do not think this deep that is why when we ask them how they are doing most people instantly say “good…” Going deeper with those people we want to address some of the deep-rooted needs they truly have.
For a salesperson they are trying to make sure their product truly answers the needs of the customer. For an employee that we are leading, they may need to feel a sense of belonging and that they are doing something meaningful. Without that impact most employees resort to a paycheck being the only differentiator for work. How is the turn-over in your organization?
We need to take time to understand the needs that our organization addresses to help society, the need our product addresses, the need that our team’s role addresses to help the organization grow stronger. We need to build list of needs that are addressed.
Let’s say we are an IT group, that is tasked with monitoring organization computers against cyber-attacks. The features are the software and team members in our group. The benefits our group provides the organization is protection from attacks and support if someone is cyber attacked.
I remember a phishing scam that had employees giving away their log in credentials and changed the location to where the employee checks were delivered. The IT team quickly closed the loop on this and saved dozens of employees from losing their paycheck in the matter of hours. Do you think that people were grateful for that help?
After we have understood the benefits, then we need to understand the needs that are answered by these benefits. Using the above example, the benefit creates a sense of security and peace of mind for the users of the computers which are powerful. The users of the computers typically do not understand all of the code used to create a virus and how to remedy. Our team is also enabling the rest of the organization to function efficiently and safe. The IT team is like ninjas jumping around saving those they serve.
Cascading what we are doing for others and how we are helping others is very motivating to our teams. We need to take time and think of some of the needs that our teams answer. The larger the need the more we can impact.
Now that we have the needs figured out, we need to structure questions to ask so that we can start finding out if we are answering the needs of those that we lead. If we are asking the individuals their needs and we are answering their needs our influence will skyrocket! Keep in mind that everyone is different, so being intentional and sitting down with individuals to make sure we are understanding their needs and if we are identifying them on a deep level, we will have deep rooted influence.
Have a great week everyone!
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
Why Leaders Need CIA For Building Influence
When Leaders set out to lead a group of individuals, some fall short. It’s not because these leaders are incompetent. It’s mainly because they don’t understand how to build influence.
John Maxwell who is the leadership guru of the 21st century has a quote that states “Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less...” If we want to lead others, we need to know how to build influence. That is where the sales process uncovered comes in. By applying the principals, people are able to grow influence with others.
When we are working with others, we need influence in order to move forward with them. We start by learning about them, their families, their hobbies, etc. This is the same as building rapport in the sales process. Unfortunately, rapport is only the beginning of building influence and not the end all.
Just having rapport gets us in the door to have a conversation, but Influence is a deeper relationship with that individual. Influence is building up relational collateral like a bank account. It takes time to high levels of influence in order to get the person jumping all in with us.
When we start taking a deep interest in other people, we will start gaining influence with them. That person will start to open up in areas that they feel they can share as well as ask for input.
I use the 3 letters when trying to learn more about others to build influence. The letters are C.I.A. No, not the government agency.
C-stands for being curious. Be curious like a child that never stops wanting to know more. Be curious to learn more about our relationships whether they are customers, teammates, family, friends, people we just met, etc. Be curious to learn about them as much as we can. People love to talk about themselves and are craving that connection.
I-stands for being intentional. Be intentional about our relationships. While we are asking questions do not stare at a phone while the other person responds. Look them in the eyes and pay attention to what they are saying and how they are saying it. We’ll learn a lot about a person when we pay attention to their posture, their tones, their words. Even when someone is saying they are fine… if their tone sounds like they are about to scream, they are not fine. Pay attention and see if there is a way we can help.
A-stands for asking questions. Ask a great deal of questions. This being paired up with curiosity and being intentional helps us really learn about the relationships. What is really going on with our teammates, our customers, our family members? Similar to the sales process where we do a needs analysis in my book “The Sales Process Uncovered”, we will ask questions to see if there is a way we can help the person get to where they want to go. People of great influence are not those that take from people, but are people that give as much as they can without expecting anything in return. That can be time, money, clothing, etc. Dale Carnegie, Mother Teresa, Jesus Christ are all people of great influence. These people started most of their conversations with questions. These individuals wanted to learn about the situation and where they could help. They stepped in.
For today, focus on using C.I.A. when you interact with people you come in contact with. Not for the sole purpose of gaining influence, but for connection and stronger relationships.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
If You Knew When You Would Die, Would Your Dash Change?
Just like the title asks, what would you do if you knew you only had a limited time left to live.
Recently someone very close to me was given a diagnosis with a very limited life expectancy and it started my mind into reflection. What would I do, if I only had a limited time left? Would I just quit doing this or that, create a bucket list, take up a new hobby, etc.?
The truth is all of us have a limited time left here on this planet. A limited number of days to wake up, a limited number of hours to spend with people we enjoy spending time with, and a limited time to live. Time is not something that we can add to or multiply. We can only subtract and divide.
When we a head stone in a cemetery, we can see a name, date born, and a date when someone has moved on. There is this thing in between the dates though. It’s a dash. The dash is their life. The dash is their experiences. The dash is their impact on this world. This dash is significant.
If we are to truly live, we need to make sure we live out the dash. We need to make sure we take time for the fun stuff and not get super stressed about work. Work is what we do, but it does not define us. I do this blog and help people understand the sales process, how it actually helps people build influence, but this is not who I am.
Who I am is a husband, father, son, friend, and someone who steps in to help whenever possible. Too often people think that their work is who they are. How many times when asked the following question, “tell me about yourself”, have we started with our profession to describe ourselves? We focus on this detail more than the other details of our lives.
Are we mainly defining ourselves because that is what society believes, or do we share that detail because that is what we think we should be defined as? Why do we lead with that detail?
Why don’t we lead with who we really are? Do we not really know who we are? Should we ask others to describe us? Typically, when we are at funeral services, we get to hear what others think about the person that has passed on, but I think that is a little too late for a reflection like that.
Shouldn’t we be asking what others see about us sooner? Are we too afraid to ask the question because we are worried about what we might hear? Are we just not thinking about it, because we don’t want to think about that time when we pass on?
When I am laid to rest, I want that dash to represent a person that loved to help, inspire, and enable people to flip the script for their dash. If I can do that I will have succeeded at life.
What would you like your dash to represent?
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
What’s your Coaching Style?
How are you at coaching your team and your family?
Are you like a coach on the sidelines constantly sending in orders hoping the team will execute?
Business leaders think being a coach means constantly sending in orders like a coach on the sideline. The leader believes they should tell the team what to do and how to do everything and then the team will just execute. The issue is that the employees do not learn to think for themselves. They constantly come to the leader for the answers for everything essentially slowing down the organization.
This style of coaching does not promote effective thought in individuals and does not allow them to grow. If there is no growth then the business, team, family will suffer.
What I learned in 2016 from John Maxwell’s Certification is that coaching is not about telling people what, or how to do everything. Coaching is instead asking questions for the individual to produce their best answer for the given situation. It’s encouraging them to look within for their best answer. Not telling people what and how to do things.
Most of the time in business, we are trying to answer questions and get to solutions fast. Because of the speed at which business is evolving we keep perpetuating the same cycle. When we arrive home at the end of the day, we are still dictating what needs to happen, how it needs to happen, and when it needs to happen to our families if we are not careful. Will that help our families thrive?
We may get things accomplished, but we need to grow others around us so that they can make decisions and still move forward. If we are not coaching these individuals correctly, we are actually hurting them. I also am learning to not have people do it the way I would do it. I need to let go of control and let them do it their way. By doing so they will grow confidence in themselves and their decisions which will make them more efficient their way.
As coaches, we can not be the sole source of answers. We need to help cultivate a culture in our organizations of aligning with the core mission and vision, and individual solutions that align with that direction. We have to give them trust and let them have some bumps and bruises at the beginning. Yes, it’s slower at first, but speed will pick up speed over time. We need to guide them and coach them before they are free to make those decisions.
We need to continually ask those thought provoking questions to help individuals come up with better decisions. Even if those decisions do not align with what we believe is best at the time, we still need to trust the process to help them grow. Over time we will gain that trust of the individual and their decision-making process. If not, then we will never be free for family, vacations, and our own growth.
Ultimately, we will expire and it is on us to grow those around us. If we expire and we leave those that looked up to us without this essential decision-making process, our legacy will be in jeopardy and they won’t be able to move forward. How do you think that will benefit them?
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
Do What Wealthy People Do
What do Wealthy individuals do? That is a question the majority of our population have.
I have sat with quite a few millionaires and learned this some interesting things. First thing I learned is that 99% of wealthy individuals did not inherit their wealth. Yep, that is right, they built it from the ground up. Almost all of them did not win the lottery either. So how did they do it?
The main reason these wealthy individuals did it is by using a Budget. Yep, I used the B-word! They use budgets financially, with their time, and when they decide to take on a new venture.
Hardworking individuals believe the B-word as a taboo discussion topic. I get it! I fought against using budgets until I took a class that helped me understand that if I tell my money what to do, it actually does what I want it to do.
When I learned how freeing budgets can be, I was left wondering why I did not do this sooner. I would have had so much more money at the end of the pay period and would have been able to invest more of my hard, earned money. Yes, budgeting can be freeing for you and your loved ones. My wife can use her money to buy whatever she wants with it.
My wife and I started out our marriage with the monthly budget meeting. We go through all of the line items including clothing, vacations, gifts, food, electric, etc. If she decides to buy a whole bunch of coffee, she is free to do so without me condemning her because it is her money to budget for whatever she wants! Have you ever had a fight over your significant other buying something that you haven’t agreed on?
The monthly budget has helped our communication greatly as a by-product. If you are in a relationship then you already know communication is huge in a relationship.
Budgeting has been one of the single most effective ways for my wife and I to prepare for emergencies, taking vacations, date nights, etc. We have had times where we had emergencies and by having a budget, we were able to overcome those emergencies quickly. We also need to buy a new roof for our house that we have been planning for. Roofs are pretty expensive and we will be able to afford it because we put it in the budget.
You know what else has been great? We actually give our kids a budget for clothing and after school activities that they can manage how they choose. They just need make sure they can afford it. If they don’t have enough money, then they don’t do the activity. Now the emotion is taken out of the discussion and the focus is on saving up so they can do that activity in the future. My hope is that they will keep budgeting for the rest of their life so they can retire with even more money that my wife and I.
Had we started earlier on investing into retirement we would have millions more when we retire. Not a million…Millions!
If you want to be successful and have a great retirement, you need to start with a budget. I do not make any money off of this, but I also highly recommend you take financial peace university from Ramsey Solutions! It is the class that started me on my financial journey over a decade ago and has helped our family with getting on track for a better future.
What is keeping you from sitting down and doing a budget?
Do you not have the time?
Does it seem like you don’t know where to start?
What if I told you that if you emailed me, I would send you a FREE excel file that you could use for your own budget? It does all of the calculations for you.
Would that be helpful?
If you want to become wealthy and have HOPE for your future, email me today and I will send you a copy of the budget file we use so that you can get on the road for a better future.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
Do You have My Back?
Chances are if you have direct reports, they are asking this question about you.
Has anyone ever asked you the following question…Do you have my back? Firefighters often have two men working on a hose line in a fire. There are multiple reasons for this like high pressure and volume of water going through the hose that is hard to handle, but more important, if something happens to one of the firefighters the other has the chance to help pull them out of danger. They have each other’s backs!
Chances are if you have direct reports, they are asking this question about you. Maybe not about life and death like fire fighters, but for their job safety. They were trying to figure this out the moment they start working for you.
Your direct reports want to know that when the chips are down that you will have their back as long as they are doing what is right and ethical. Far too often in business, employees feel they have to CYA because they do not trust their management. CYA stands for Cover Your Assets (Assets is sometimes shortened).
I have experienced in the issue of having to CYA myself in communications due to a lack of support from management. It agitated me greatly because I believed I was left to fight for myself. It is a lonely position to be in as a report. Here’s the thing, relationships do not thrive in this kind of environment.
Employees want to know that their management has their back when the chips are down and that they can reach out to their managers when they need help. Far too many managers are so busy themselves they forget to establish ground rules for trust and communication at the beginning of the relationship. There needs to be a set of ground rules of engagement set up from the beginning. Leaving it up to assumption is a recipe for a bad relationship. There are a few managers out there unfortunately that don’t really care about relationships with their reports and should look to either move on from their position or retire.
When trust and communication are not flowing it becomes like a body of water with no movement. It becomes toxic and everything in it dies. When trust and communication are absent anxiety also starts sets in. When Fear takes hold, trust and relationships die.
If reports don’t trust their manager, then where does the employee bounce ideas off of to move forward in the correct direction? Where do they expect to get mentorship? Where do these reports learn the correct way of operating for the organization?
Often employees have enough of this lack of trust and communication and elect to leave the department, or worse the organization. The intrinsic knowledge that the employee has is also following them right out the door. The cycle of interview, inboard, and hope this employee stays starts over.
The cost of onboarding is excessive, so why not work to make sure your reports know that you have their back, how to communicate, and trust.
The answer is setting up guard rails with your direct reports from the beginning to make sure they understand how the trust and communication can work together. Setting these guard rails up will keep everything moving better and work life to improve. Employees need to know that they can trust their managers and management. Having that trust and communication will allow the employees to excel and thrive with you long term. If not then be prepared for stagnation in your organization.
What is Rapport and Why Is It Necessary?
I actually had both the better product and the cheaper price, but still lost the sale when I was starting out.
I’ve heard sales people over the years say a sale is only dependent only on the price. The cheapest price will win the sale every time. I have heard others say that people will just want to buy the product and nothing else matters. If you have the better product then you will win the sale.
I actually had both the better product and the cheaper price, but still lost the sale when I was starting out. There was this sales representative from my competitor that had such a great relationship with the customers and the customer’s customers. He got all the deals. He had some much influence that people would almost flock to him like he was a celebrity.
This sales person had an inferior product from benefits and features stand point and had a higher price, but with his impact on people he just won. It blew my mind and I could not wrap my mind around it. I am engineer by nature so I tend to go black and white with details. It did not compute. I researched the competition and knew what I was up against. I had it nailed all of the aspects that people had told me. What I did not have down was the grey area where relationships reside.
I speak to this quite often when teaching sales professionals that there are three things that everyone asks themselves subconsciously as they walk up to you:
Do I like you?
Do I trust you?
How can you help me?
When I finally realized what this variable was that I was getting my butt kicked on. It was the relationships. When I started out in sales I was told to build rapport.
Rapport is defined as “A positive or close relationship between people that often involves mutual trust, understanding and attention. Those that develop rapport often have realized that they have similar interests, knowledge, or behaviors” – businessdictionary.com
Most sales trainings teach you to look around the room with your customer and find a way to connect on similar hobbies, activities, family, etc. This is a good beginning to building a relationship with your customer, but there is a great need to go deeper with the customer. Just merely having similar interests and viewpoints is a good start, but it is a superficial level. If you want to have relationships that a deep and fruitful, you need to go deeper.
Dale Carnegie training taught me how to build get deeper relationships. This is done mainly with a mindset of being truly focused on the customer to know them and help them. Having such a relationship will help you form relationships and build unmatched influence. You end up with a relationship that brings you more opportunities and also have the customer being an advocate with others to bring you more business. The best realtors are a great example of this. They gain new customers by word of mouth from previous customers. Word of mouth is still the best form of advertising. When someone is looking to buy or sell a home, everyone is speaking about the select few realtors that the person needs to work with.
To build deep relationships with customers you need rapport, focus on learning about them, and having trust. Use these three things and you will have strong relationships with your customers and have a solid future in sales.
I have created a quick and easy online training for you called trustworthy to help you build great levels of trust quickly.
By building deep relationships with customers, I was able to land a $20 million per year five-year contract. That is $100 million contract. I was able to obtain information needed to kick off my team and produce a proposal that put my organization in play for a program that we were not thought of as a possibility prior.
If you would like to carry the conversation deeper comment on this blog, reach out via email, or do the old-fashioned thing and give me a call so we can discuss deep relationships in sales.
Have a great weekend.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
So You Want To Lead...Better Know Sales!
I was not sure why I needed to know sales at the time to be a good manager, but I knew I would figure out why someday.
When I first started in sales it was on the premise that if I wanted to be a great manager, business owner, lawyer, president, I needed to know sales. That is what a successful business owner told me after I had told him that I wanted to be a manager in the next five years. He was a great leader and still has people working for him that were with him since he opened his company in the mid 1980’s. I was not sure why I needed to know sales at the time to be a good manager, but I knew I would figure out why someday.
At first, I was hesitant to change careers. Six months of hesitation and discussions to be exact. I did not want to be a salesperson because all life had taught me was that they were only out for their own gain. I did not want to actively be associated with that stigma?
When I did decide to try this sales thing out, I figured that sales would be easy. The first year of sales was a rude awakening. It literally looked like a heartbeat of someone that just took their last breath. I was fortunate to have a chance to keep going and learning from the successful business owner in what he called “hands on training.”
Hands on training meant that I was to help him with projects after hours, gain training from peers, and hours of trainings to perfect my craft. I did weekend deliveries, helped him with personal projects, etc. Basically, anything he needed extra help with I was there. This was valuable time with him mentoring me all he knew about sales and business.
I excelled from then on to become a great sales leader in my industry and even relocated to another part of the United States to help grow a new territory. We did very well there with great purpose. Customers started opening up fast to me and sales were increasing as the years went by. I was awarded the prize of top salesman for the United States and had taken the territory to where it had never been. I won’t give all those secrets away today on how we did this, but I can tell you it was not because we were the cheapest price or by doing anything unethical.
What I can tell you is that this success was because of Influence. As influence increases people trust us more and are willing to go deeper in relationships with us. These relationships open up the doors to long lasting and deep relationships. The more influence someone has the more they excel in whatever they are doing.
I had customers asking me about other aspects about their business as time went on. They were confiding in me as a trusted asset that could help them break through their ceiling to the next level. It was eye opening that I was able to help them with simple things up to the complex integrations of business solutions.
What I found is that the sales process that I keynote and perform trainings on helps people build amazing amounts of influence fast! That is right, selling correctly helps us build influence! Keep in mind that selling is not just a product or service. It can be selling a vision, mission, or idea that we need others to help us achieve. By building influence using the sales process, leaders gain more engagement their teams.
As you look around your organization look at those relationships of those that go out of their way to help you and those that don’t. See how much influence you have with each of these groupings of people. The more influence you have, the farther you and your organization will go.
Happy selling!
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
Do You Trust Me…?
We have to have trust in relationships, the products we use in our daily lives, our organizations we work for, basically we have to put some trust in everything we come in contact with.
Have you ever noticed in just about every action movie there is this one moment where the two last survivors are about to make some kind of daring jump to freedom with the phrase just prior, “Do you trust me?” Just once I would like to see one of them say, “nope I’ll take my chances…” and see how the director makes it work.
Movies play out this request all the time, but in actuality we are asking this question to just about everyone we come in contact with.
Trust is a huge mechanism for us to function with others. We need to trust that they will not hurt us, steal from us, or do anything to affect us negatively in our daily lives. Trust is a big deal! It is part of our survival mechanism, so we need to think about that when we are working with others especially in business.
I have studied the art of building rapport with people for over a decade and trying to understand how to build deep relationships with customers. One of the key ingredients to building rapport with people is trust. If we don’t have trust, we will not be able to function effectively in the sales process. Trust is crucial!
We have to have trust in relationships, the products we use in our daily lives, our organizations we work for, basically we have to put some trust in everything we come in contact with. We trust that the vehicle we drive will not just explode when we turn the key or push the start button. We trust that the engineers and the manufacturing individuals have assembled the product / service so that it will function properly.
I have had to work at being trustworthy and to show my trustworthiness to those I have come in contact with in all situations. Early in my sales career, I took over sales territory in Florida which our organization had never had distribution in. We had to work extremely hard to build trust with this new customer base.
I took a Dale Carnegie course on human relations, learned all I could about the new products as well as the competitive landscape, and did a great deal of leg work to build the trust that we were going to do what we said we were going to do for our new customers. This meant a great deal of studying the competitive landscape while on the road, going out to sell products for my customers to their customers, train my customer’s sales force, help them with marketing, etc. There was a great deal of effort on my part to build trust.
Amazing things happened as a result. Some of my customers asking my opinion on other aspects of their business, products they were looking to purchase, inviting me on fishing / hunting trips to their properties, etc. Our Sales were taking off as well! I have even received phone calls from past customers to catch up even though I have not called on them in over eight years. I am excited when I see my customers winning!
Trust is a huge factor in organizational success, teams, and relationships. Without trust we won’t get very far in life. We need to put forth great amounts of focus on building trust with those we come in contact each and every day. I do this when I am speaking with organizations on how to help them, writing blogs, and recording videos to help each and every one of you get some insight in hopes that you have more success. Trust is a huge moral obligation to me.
I have had the opportunity to speak on trust to organizations that builds axles, drive shafts, robotic solutions, sell real estate, and financial services. The one common theme that all took away is that if they wanted to move forward faster, they needed to have high levels of trust in their organizations. The world moves fast and with trust we will be able to keep up!
If you would like access to an online training at a fraction of the cost of having me come in to speak to you and your team check out my Trustworthy training that you can take where ever you have an internet connection and at your own pace.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
Having a Plan to Succeed in Sales
Is doing business with your organization that beneficial for the customer? If not, your product / service will be considered just another commodity with the only differentiator being price.
A few years back a friend and myself decided it would be a great idea to do a sprint triathlon. I figured I was in decent shape and could swim well. After all, once you finished the swim all you had to do was hop on a bike for a bit and then run a 5k. I have done 5k runs many times so I was not worried about the run and I bought a road bike so I could ride faster than a mountain bike. I did two swims in the water, road the bike a few times, and I didn’t need to run because, hey I could do it. I figured I had it all planned out to succeed and do well… figured I had it planned out enough…
The day came for the race and my friend and I were in the water ready to go. The starter sounded of the start of the race and we both jumped in with our awesome swim caps. About ten strokes into the swim I was out of energy. I looked up and saw that there were only two rescue boats and a long way to go. At that moment I knew I was in for a long day. I did every stroke I could and did the dead man’s float sometimes. Eventually I made it through the swim, did the bike, and then got into the run. I was so not prepared for that event.
The next year I trained and planned, and then trained some more. The results were very different because of a better training plan and executing that plan.
In sales, if we want to do well, we need to have a plan and work the plan. We can’t just show up and expect to for sales to just happen. We need to map out where we want the conversations to go and what areas will hit the customer’s needs. We need to review our notes about the customer and figure out what solutions we can address for them to help them. One image that still is in the back of my mind when I am visiting with customers and training is that of handing a bill to the customer when I am leaving.
Was the time spent with me worth the customer paying me?
Would your customer say the time spent with you worth $200, $250, or even $500 for that hour meeting?
What kind of solutions did the customer come away with that will equip them to function more profitably?
Is doing business with your organization that beneficial for the customer? If not, your product / service will be considered just another commodity with the only differentiator being price.
A plan is needed to make the sales call worth both parties investment of time and resources. This is a new age and because of technology customers are more informed and need sales professionals to help them create their unique solution.
What does your sales call plan look like?
What are your premeeting preparations?
Are you answering the three questions your customer is asking at each interaction?
Do I like you?
Do I trust you?
How can you help me?
Create the plan, execute the plan, and have a back-up plan if something happens that you didn’t expect. Be prepared. And if you do a triathlon, practice swimming, it could be the difference between life and death out there!
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
The Cold Call...
A cold call will take most people out of their comfort zone.
How many of you fear picking up the phone and calling a prospect that you have never talked to before?
How many of you visualize the person on the other end of the phone screaming to stop calling?
A cold call will take most people out of their comfort zone. It’s scary, we don’t want people hating us while we call at dinner time. They also will likely not believe us when we say our name is Tom, John, Sam when we have an accent from another country (with more interesting names). Many organizations these days have gone to the robo call which is really annoying.
I especially like when they start the message with “Don’t hang up…” They are literally telling me to hang up on them subconsciously by saying that opening line. A better opening would be “ Keep listening for some great information…” That would create more tension in me to want to hear more.
Cold calling is almost an art form. To get the person on the line and talk to us takes practice. I still to this day do cold calls to associations and businesses to drive more business. Prospecting is key in growing our business. Cold calling is not just dialing a phone either. We can walk into a business that we have reviewed and think would benefit from our expertise. Just watch for those no trespassing signs.
Cold calling is not natural for me as I am more of an introvert by nature. Pushing myself out of my comfort zone is a must if I want to grow my business. I have gotten voicemails and had to leave a message, people asking me to call them back later, people using a firm tone that they are not interested, and sometimes, sometimes I get great conversations with them and an appointment to visit to discuss more.
That is what the cold call really is. The opportunity for the further conversation. We are likely not going to make a sale on this call. Our focus should be to get that opportunity to come in and sit with the person to learn about them and their organization. How we can help them get to a better place. Our product possibly will enable them to take that next step in their growth. That is a good reason to talk to prospects? We need the opportunity to start the conversation.
Insurance sales professionals have lists of people they cold call every day. They have studied statics over the years and have a metric that out of ten calls three should result in “Fact Finding Opportunities” and then should result in one quotation of their product. That is a 10% success rate for sales. Very few professions have studied the results. I have met quite a few wealthy insurance sales professionals and they all have told me that they do this by making cold calls. If we are going to be successful selling, we need to do cold calls and prospect.
Keep in mind though that the person on the other line has three questions that they are asking themselves when we start talking.
1. Do I like this person?
2. Do I trust this person?
3. How can this person help me?
If you’ve read my book, “That Sales Process Uncovered”, been to a training, or been a reader of my blog for a while you should be able to answer these questions for them. Social media such as linked In, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc have made it even easier to research our prospects prior to the cold call. We just need to do the research.
For now, don’t fear the cold call. Accept it as an opportunity to help potential customers get to a better place. Who knows, you may strike up a great conversation and learn something new about someone that will help you at a later date. This is your opportunity to start helping people. Now pick up the phone and see how.
Have a great weekend!
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
Did You Know You Are In Customer Service?
People tend to tell everyone they know about how great an experience was as well as how awful an organization is to deal with.
I have had great customer service experiences at organizations and not so great experiences from other organizations. These experiences have ranged from great purchasing experiences to awful hold times with the worst elevator music ever composed. I have had IT people who walked me through the complete inner workings of their phones and helped me with my purchase, and I have been treated as if I was a burden on the representative that had to take another call during their shift.
People tend to tell everyone they know about how great an experience was as well as how awful an organization is to deal with. There is a lot riding on customer service and if our organizations are not careful, we will lose out on a great deal of opportunities in the future. Here’s the thing though…everyone in the organization is actually working in customer service. That’s right it does not matter the position. When we interact with customers, we are essentially working in customer service.
It does not matter if we are the CEO, a sales person, an engineer, a call center employee, or a janitor. We are ambassadors for the organizations we represent. We have the opportunity to build up or tear down the reputation of our organization by how we treat others. We need to keep that in mind when we are sporting our organization’s name, at events, and even what we post on social media.
It also does not matter if we are not a paid, or not. When people see us representing an organization, they are making the association no matter our affiliation. People will make their perceptions about the organization based on the people they interact with.
I have had people in organizations tell me they don’t care if a customer likes it or not because they don’t have to interact with the customer regularly. It’s frankly, not their job. Unfortunately, what these individuals don’t understand is that the customer is buying products / services that are in turn funding their paycheck. Make enough customers stop buying from our organization and then we are all looking for other employment.
When the customer has a bad experience, social media allows them to send their experience all over the world in a matter of seconds. Organizations do not have the ability to respond to every negative comment on all of the social media platforms. There is just too much area to cover, but we can make sure we do our part and give the customer a great experience each and every time we interact with them.
No one is above customer service. We are all serving customers. Whether we like it or not, our organizations are judged by our actions. Keep that in mind when you are wearing your organization’s logo, or at an event for your organization. Make the interaction a positive one. Be courteous, helpful, gracious, and humble. Go the extra mile to help someone even if they are not buying from you right then and there. Your organization’s reputation and your paycheck actually do depend on it.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
Why Emails Aren’t Necessarily Better
How many times have you said, “I’ll just send a quick email” and it took twenty back and forth emails to where you finally picked up the phone to clear something up?
Have you ever gotten really upset with someone over email only to find out that they did not mean any harm when they sent it?
How about this one? Have you ever been overwhelmed because you had so many emails to respond to?
How many times have you said, “I’ll just send a quick email” and it took twenty back and forth emails to where you finally picked up the phone to clear something up?
Have you ever gotten really upset with someone over email only to find out that they did not mean any harm when they sent it?
How about this one? Have you ever been overwhelmed because you had so many emails to respond to?
I am guilty of all three of these more times than I care to admit. Over 124 billion emails are sent each day all over the world in hopes of resolving questions fast. Email was created to make communication easier and efficient. The issue is most people think that email is the save all be all when it comes to communicating to others. They hide behind computer screens sending off their requests and responses in hopes that the issue will go away quickly, only to have the email come boomeranging back with more questions or requests for information. Then we send responses and more questions of our own to the other person to which they respond, and the conversation keeps going on and on very slowly.
A few things to remember on emails are that in great communication the majority of communication is non-verbal (or written word), people tend to take written word in a negative point of view, and the person reading the words does not always know the context. This makes it ever harder for you to communicate effectively through email. Text messaging is also one of these communication mediums that get people into trouble. People tend to use it also as a means to cya (look it up) in case something bad happens.
Emails can be used also in harassment cases. I have seen people twist words from emails into the ability to sue an organization for harassment. Keep that in mind when you are upset and wanting to respond to someone to make yourself feel better. The same can be said for text messages.
Back to the main topic with emails… Most questions are easily answered, but I bet the number of emails would greatly decrease if people used a phone call instead. I have found that reaching out to others via conference calls, quick phone calls, or video meetings obtain faster results in less time than the flurry of emails that depending on workloads take days or weeks to have the responses come back to close the discussion.
New software platforms such as Loom, Zoom, Teams, Meets are being presented into the marketplace for people to speed communication up greatly. Most smart phones have the ability to video call now as well. Let’s also not forget about walking up to the people we need to communicate in person if we are in the same office.
People crave community and relationships so being present is a best way to communicate in my opinion. The problem is that we as a society have focused so much on becoming efficient in communication that we tend to miss the mark when trying to communicate. Communicating with others is vital to get our goals accomplished. It is very rare for someone to complete a great task all on their own. They need others to help them move forward.
I have taken great pride in increasing my communication by helping others understand clearly what I am trying to accomplish. Most of the time I try to do that with conversation rather than email. Please be intentional when working through emails to be as clear as possible in communicating if you chose not to talk to the person and help them understand the complete setting.
If you must write an email below is a process I work through when sending out emails:
1. Write the email as though the person receiving the email has no idea what you are talking about and the scope of the situation. ( But keeps short of a thesis paper)
2. Focus on your audience and especially if they are in another country to not write your email in your slang as they may not understand it.
3. Read the email through prior to sending to make sure the topics are clear and concise.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
Do You Know The Most Important Variable In Trust?
We have seen politicians, CEO’s, and sales professionals all brag about how they did something great and how they deserve all the credit. Unfortunately, anything worth doing takes a great deal of effort and typically takes support of others.
Now that the elections are hopefully over and trust is very much a commodity that is lacking today, I figured I’d talk about one of the biggest factors in building trust. We need trust in others if we are going to go anywhere. Without trust not much is possible. Today let’s talk about one of the most important variables in building trust.
That variable is Selfishness. We have seen politicians, CEO’s, and sales professionals all brag about how they did something great and how they deserve all the credit. Unfortunately, anything worth doing takes a great deal of effort and typically takes support of others. We need to make sure we are not killing trust with self-promotion.
When I created the trust equation it was to make it easy for people to see the basics of building trust. You can be very creditable, reliable, and vulnerable, but if we are only doing this to help ourselves “WIN” we actually “LOSE.” We will not be able to gain trust and sustain it if we are only out for our own gain. If we are selfish and only doing things to be able to leverage in another instance, we will soon erode trust. People will see it especially if we are doing this over and over again. True we may be able to fake our selfishness for a little while to obtain short term gains, but trust is really a long-term play. People will figure us out, as selfishness is like a spotlight shining bright into the night sky.
Selfishness tells people that we do not value them and do not care about them. Who wants to trust someone like that? Have you ever been around someone that you tried to give more and more trust and it just seemed to blow up in your face each and every time? It is really hard to keep wanting to extend them the benefit of doubt. After a while, trust in that person is just not an option.
By being selfish we can quickly turn relationships sour. In sales or leadership if this happens, we really start losing our influence, which is the key ingredient to business success. Without trust there is no influence. We may think that if we have leverage over someone we can have influence them, but I challenge that thought because once that leverage is gone there is no more influence. Ever here about Julius Cesar? His good friend stabbed him in the back. Now typically an actual stabbing does not happen in business, but there have been stories in business where boards have thrown the CEO out of the organization overnight. Even Steve Jobs was asked to step down at one point at Apple.
I am constantly taking inventory in my life to gauge how selfish I am being. I’m sure I fail to live up to my standard, but my focus is on not being selfish and trying to help everyone that I can. I put my expertise out there to help others gain knowledge. I do not do it so I can say, see what I have done, but to share so that people can avoid mistakes that I have run into in the past. My goal is to help you become more efficient and successful especially with areas of sales and influence.
The key is to really take an inventory of our relationships and see if there are any areas where we are being selfish. Are there some relationships that we have been one sided on? Have we made any recent mistakes that an apology will help start the road back to building trust? Selfishness can be fixed when we take an honest look at how we have behaving with others.
If we want to have a greater trust level, then our selfishness must be put in check.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
Use The Three F’s To Achieve Our Goals
When thinking about 2020 on how it crushed many goals that we had, remember that making small adjustments and moving forward is what we truly need.
Growing up in my blue-collar family it was always pressed to do my best and do it perfectly. I am also a “one” on the Enneagram so I naturally trying to make things better and as close to perfect as possible. I was devastated when I got into college and my best would however only generate B’s and C’s. Highschool was easy to obtain A’s, but college was a whole different ball game.
I was failing to get A’s and I was pissed off and angry throughout college. I graduated with an electrical engineering degree and had a great job right out of college, but I always looked back that I was not perfect in college. It left a feeling that I was not good enough back then. When I jumped into a career of sales the same thing happened. I kept getting knocked down and was not perfect at it right out of the gate.
In reality no one is totally perfect. We all have flaws. No one can do everything perfect the first time either. What we do is Fail Forward Fast. Fail Forward Fast is a phrase that navy seal operators use quite often in training.
Navy seals as I was taught by my mentor are okay with set-backs. Fail Forward Fast works like this. Apply action -> review -> apply action for a constant loop for improvement of whatever the situation is. Failure is not about having set-backs, failure is totally giving up.
It’s okay to have a set back and learn from it so that when you are attacking the same activity the next time you move through it more efficiently. The cool part is that the action does not have to be a massive game changer. It is small incremental adjustments as you go through the loop.
Another benefit from this small action is that doubt is eliminated through action. Figuring out the next small step will keep doubt from tackling us from behind and stopping us from moving forward in our process. How awesome is that! A small step of action puts doubt on its butt and allows us to move forward.
Do you remember riding a bike without training wheels for the first time? Most of us as children would fall, get back on the bike and moved a little farther, fall again, get back on the bike and moved farther and farther each time until we were riding the bike without assistance from anyone. It took a progression and learning how to balance while pedaling and occasionally stopping before running into something. It is rare for someone to just jump on a bike for the first time and get it perfect.
I love the Fail Forward Fast because when I am working on a project and the “Have to be perfect” phase pops in my head, and I am able to remind myself that it is okay not to be perfect. Sometimes I also find out that the desired outcome that I had was not the one I needed to be shooting for. I am able to pivot towards the better desired outcome instead of coming to the end of the experience and learning that I am nowhere near where I truly need to be.
Fail Forward Fast is essential in all growth and I have applied it to my life so that I can keep going when tough times happen. Sometimes we just need to focus on one small step at a time to keep moving forward instead of looking at the long path that is ahead of us.
When thinking about 2020 on how it crushed many goals that we had, remember that making small adjustments and moving forward is what we truly need. 2021 has no guarantees that we will be successful, but if we keep moving forward with those small steps we will grow and hit our goals that we actually need, and possibly the goals that we didn’t know we actually should have been shooting for in the first place.
Have a great 2021 everyone!
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
How Do We Succeed In 2021?
Before you get all bitter and throw whatever you are using to read this post out the window please take a breath. Yes, 2020 and a pandemic were a lot to handle and most of our goals and aspirations for 2020 went out the window.
We are in the final stretch of 2020, so where do we go from here?
It’s time to sit down in some of our quiet time to think about 2021. Before you get all bitter and throw whatever you are using to read this post out the window please take a breath. Yes, 2020 and a pandemic were a lot to handle and most of our goals and aspirations for 2020 went out the window.
This does not mean that we give up on our futures. There are some areas that we can all grow in that are not deterred by a pandemic. Maybe it’s learning a new skill like woodworking, cooking, or origami with all of the excess toilet paper we decided to hoard. Well maybe not that last one. We never know if that will be the currency of the future if further lock downs are actioned.
Okay enough joking aside. There are areas we can grow and should be focused on that for 2021. I will be taking the next two weeks to plan out 2021 to make it a better than this year. The reason why, is if we are not growing, we are dying. That is right we need to constantly be growing. I choose growth and for that I need a plan for whatever I am shooting for. Even if I do not hit the bullseye ever time.
I will be sitting down to make a plan for 2021 by looking at where I want to be. It’s like shooting a long-range shot, we need to plan before we pull the trigger to hit the target accurately. To do this I start with the end in mind. When I was a child, I used to do mazes all the time. I loved them. I learned early on that to find the path through the maze, it was easier actually start at the finish and work my way back to the start. Try it if you don’t believe me.
With goal setting I am going to plan my year with the end in mind and then back my way up to the start to figure out how I will get there.
Example: I want to have more family time with the kids without electronics.
That will look like playing board games with my family once a week in the winter months.
Go for bike rides once a week during the warmer months.
I will put my target out there and then back my way into it to figure out what I need to do to accomplish that goal. Maybe it’s something else like making forts in the living room with the kids, or taking the kids in the summer out on a boat to teach them to water ski.
The key is to think about your values, then figure out goals to achieve those values, followed by actionable goals each quarter or month to achieve our values. The great part is that they don’t have to be dependent on stuff being open or not.
I will have quite a few stretch goals for myself and my business to grow in 2021 as well. I have decided that I will be bringing more videos to you in 2021 that will help you as it relates to sales, building trust, and leadership. I am actively working on that plan now, but will solidify that during the next few weeks.
I will also use the EOS system for planning goals. This is a fantastic system that anyone can use for work, or personal goals. I have adapted it to work for me in both areas of my life. We even did one for 2020 for our family. Now we will need to adjust it as the first year did not go as we had planned.
The key is to still plan because if we don’t aim at anything, we’ll hit it every time.
We need to make plans even if we do not hit them all. It’s okay not to hit all of our goals, but we need to try.
Check out the link to see my last video of 2020, enjoy!
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
What Percentage Is A Good Profit Margin?
The first thing that I ask them is what is the market bearing for a sales price for what they offer. Often, I am left with a blank stare saying our price.
Welcome back
I teach sales teams how to sell their products and services effectively and with a common language, but I am often asked what percentage is a good profit margin to make for my product / service. More importantly they want to know how much they should make with their product and service. Some even believe that their product / service is earth shattering brand new, and nothing like it anywhere on this planet so there is nothing to compare it against.
The first thing that I ask them is what is the market bearing for a sales price for what they offer. Often, I am left with a blank stare saying our price. This is because they really have not studied the market to understand. When we do some investigating, we find out that a market study to see what the competition is offering their eyes open. Old pricing strategies was to add profit to our costs. They called it cost plus for markup.
Different markets bear different profit margins so investigation is necessary. Grocery stores operate at much lower profit margins than say Apple selling an iphone. They have more turns of products such as chips, fruit, milk, etc that they do not need to charge $20 per banana. They also understand their costs well.
By understanding the market, we can now understand this data point. The real estate industry has done a great job understanding this topic and we can learn from them in other markets. They literally show comparable sales in the area “Comps.” It’s a really good gauge at where the market is for a product / service.
Unfortunately, some market pricing is established in markets by trying to simply add profit to costs. This is called a cost plus pricing model and is unfortunately not viable in most markets. We really need to know what our costs, but can not just simply say we deserve x profit.
Now we need to really understand our costs. There are many costs like material, labor costs, but fixed costs like the rent of our buildings, loan payments (if you don’t follow Dave Ramsey’s rules), etc. are also needed to be figured in. Once we understand our true costs, we need to know how much we need to make before we can brake even, and then how we can survive and have a decent living. That’s right we need to understand where we can be so that we can still eat and sleep in doors with possibly a vacation…I mean retreat for future planning ;)
Now here is a warning especially if we are launching a new product / service, or are new to any market. Trying to come in and be the cheapest price is not the answer to have instant success. Most will try to do this and believe that they will be able to increase price over time whether it is scope creek to add profit, or simply raising price over time. What organizations have found is that when they try to raise price for future business, it tends not to work because they have set a precedence with the customer. Focus on starting off right and not being the cheapest price.
Be the best value. This is where there is so much value that the customer has no reason not to do business with us and pay the investment to work with us. That is where top organizations that have high profits, large cash reserves, and can weather any storm are. They are financially set for success and their customers are happy to pay the investment to do business with them.
Use the sales process to understand what value you bring to the customer and you’ll be able to maintain good profits.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
What To Expect From A Sales Manager
They may challenge our assumptions, but to help us make sure we effectively thinking through the process.
Welcome back,
Today we are going to look at what we should expect from a sales manager. I’m sure anyone in sales has horror stories of bad sales managers. It’s okay if you are currently working for one, you don’t have to raise your hand if they are near J
I am asked what makes a good sales manager, and what should I expect from a sales manager. This blog is not going to say what a typical sales manager is, it is going to discuss what we should be expecting out of sales managers. That’s right when we interview with sales managers, we should be looking for a few things. These will be indicators about what we are about to get ourselves into in hopes of avoiding a bad situation.
I have had a couple Rockstar sales managers, a couple really bad sales managers, but mostly just okay sales managers. I know what to look for in a sales manager that I figured I should share with you so you can avoid some difficult relationships in the future.
I have had two really bad sales managers in the past. The first one should have been fired based off how sexist, manipulative, and degrading he was about others. He took his title to his head. The other was kind, but did not know how anything worked at the company even though he had been there for twenty plus years, and he could not offer help when asked. He was like a cockroach. He knew how to survive in the corporate world, but just didn’t add much value. It was unfortunate that this happens, but I’m sure this manager was not the only one.
With the bad out of the way let’s start with what we should be looking for in great sales managers. When we think of a sales manager, we should be thinking about someone who will invest in us and grow us. We need someone that will be a coach. Not like a coach on a football field that yells in plays and tells us to execute what they say, but someone that will ask us questions to pull out our own unique solutions to the problems at hand.
When I went to get certified by John Maxwell, my eyes were open to this new type of coach. A coach that has passion to grow those under them and help those they manage find their own true answers. Most managers want to manage people and processes to keep things moving smoothly, but a coach will encourage us to try for more than we think possible and to find the best answer within us. They want to invest in us as well.
These types of managers are also very transparent and knowledgeable about the products and processes of the organization. They know how to guide us around the pitfalls and educate us why we don’t want to go down a certain path, but still give us the option to choose our paths. They will ask us questions to make us think about why we are doing something and then ask us to provide why we believe this is the best path to take. They may challenge our assumptions, but to help us make sure we effectively thinking through the process. Not allowing us to just wing it.
Sales managers should also be looking for their replacement. Maybe the sales manager will be promoted someday, change corporations, or maybe they will expire. The sales manager should be functioning just like a leader that is looking to grow others around them so when the sales manager is gone, the organization will still thrive and move forward. They should be focused on leaving the organization better than they found it. Not because they want all of the applause, but because they value other individuals highly.
We need to stop looking at sales managers as people that just merely manage people and processes to keep things moving along, we need to expect more out of them to be coaches and leaders that want to grow people around them. They foster a culture of possibilities and adventure to personal and professional growth for their employees. Isn’t that someone you’d like to work for?
If you have a great manager that you’d like to mention in the comments below, please do so. I am always looking for people to interview and find out what makes them great and what values they focus on. It will also help all of you get better understanding as well.
Have a great week and I will see you next time!
Link to this week’s Youtube video
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
How To Create A Sales And Marketing Strategy
If a slogan will not cure all of our needs for marketing and sales, then what do we do?
Welcome back!
Today, I’d like to talk about how to create a sales and marketing strategy that will grow your customer base with a solid foundation. That’s right just like building a house, we need to have a solid foundation before we can build the rest of our strategy.
Most people think that its about a catchy slogan that is memorable and exciting. That is what will draw the customers in. The problem with this is that it takes time, a great deal of time to generate traction. Look at a few slogans that are known now, but when they were created.
Just Do It – Nike 1988,
America Runs On Dunkin – Dunkin Donuts 2006,
Breakfast of Champions – Wheaties 1973.
If we want to wait for our slogans to take off, we may be waiting for a while before they catch on. It’s not a bad idea to have one, but we need to focus on a foundation to build on. And yes, it all takes time. There is no instant success. All that believe in overnight success, should look at the data.
If a slogan will not cure all of our needs for marketing and sales, then what do we do?
We need to build on that foundation and the first thing we need to do is answer the three questions our customers are asking:
Do I like you?
Do I trust you?
How can you help me?
If we are not focusing on answering these three questions right away with our sales and marketing strategy, then we are going to fall into the commodity category. If that happens the only differentiating factor is price. No one wins in this category, especially the customer. Lower cost means less quality in 99% of cases.
We also have to understand that customers do not instantly like us. If we want to really have a mental picture to wrap our heads around, we should think of them like cats. Cats don’t just instantly love us. They are independent and take time to warm up to us. Once they have warmed up to us, they will finally allow us to pet them. That in itself does not mean they love us yet either. We need to cultivate the relationship.
To cultivate that relationship, we need to give things away. It is hard to receive anything with a closed fist. The only way to receive is with an open hand. We need to give things away for free. The easiest way to do that is by giving information. No, I am not saying giving away your secret sauce in totality, but I am saying you need to give pieces of the solution away. That is what I consistently do for all of you. I give you weekly blog posts, videos, etc to help you in your strategy creation.
This also take a while to generate, but if you do it in the correct order, you too can generate a great deal of interest in just a matter of months instead of years. Would you like to have customers coming to you in decades with a slogan, or in months with giving away content? How long do you have to wait?
The focus will need to be giving away as much as we can. Create content that will add value to the customers and they will appreciate us and look to us in the future for help. Heck they may even turn into sales people for us that we don’t even need to pay. Wouldn’t that be nice!?!
Focus on adding value every single day that we show up and how we can answer the three questions above. Make that the core to all of our sales and marketing strategies and we will gain traction.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
Trust Building Skills To Practice
Trust is a commodity these days that is in high demand. People need to trust others that they are working on tasks that will help the organization move forward.
Welcome back to this week’s blog post on trust building skills to practice. Most people overlook the aspect of building trust with others. Here’s the deal with that thought process…no one goes far without others being along side of them. That’s right we need people and if they don’t trust us, those people will not walk with us on the journey.
Trust is a commodity these days that is in high demand. People need to trust others that they are working on tasks that will help the organization move forward. With a great deal of people working remote during the pandemic it is difficult to connect with people and follow up with them without another dreadful online meeting. I think everyone has meeting fatigue at this point.
Trust is needed and what I have found is that using the sales process is a great way to build trust. Sales people are trained to gain trust and grow influence with customers quickly. This is a must if we want sales to grow. No, being a sales person is not just about making a sale. It’s about growing relationships with customers. Really good sales people are actually honest and well-liked individuals. Sales people for the most part are not sleezy, just hunting to make a sale, and they are not people that will sell their family members in order to grow profits.
I created my book and my training called “The Sales Process Uncovered,” to show people how we all need sales and how sales is actually supposed to function with growing relationships and influence. That’s right learning sales is not a bad thing. CEO’s need to know sales, people dating are actually selling themselves as the best solution to each other, pastors need to sell themselves as a shepard helping others learn more about God, etc.
Bottom line is that if we want to build trust, the sales process is actually a great roadmap.
Here are three areas in the sales process that will help you gain trust.
Build Rapport with people. Rapport is a fancy word for being likeable. That’s right, no one really wants to hang out with Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. People want to hang out with happy and likeable friends. Being likeable is crucial in building trust because it engages people to learn more about us. Now there are tons of aspects that affect likeability from the environment we are in, to the colors we wear, the scents, etc. If we are violating any of these aspects it will be very hard for us to be considered likeable.
Credibility is another area that builds trust. People are actually looking to interact with others in order to get to a better place. They seek out credible people to walk with. Being credible is mainly known as being educated in a certain subject, but there are other ways to build credibility. We can gain credibility by linking other people together. That’s right when we help people get to where they want to go, by introducing people to each other that builds credibility for us. I call this phenomenon being the bridge. We are bridging people together and in return we become a credible source for others.
Now the third area in building trust is one that I often fall short on. It is Empathy I grew up in a strict environment with only one parent that was focused on driving through to finish the task no matter how it gets done. Just keep moving don’t show emotion, rub some dirt on a broken ankle, and hobble along. Just figure out how to finish the task no matter how people feel. What I have learned is that people really want to feel known and empathy is the key to getting into people’s heart. People may not remember what we did for them, but they will always remember how we made them feel. People’s feelings will mark out the direction in which they engage with us.
I encourage you to pick up a sales book whether it is mine, or someone else’s to learn how to gain rapport with others. It will greatly impact the way you gain trust. No, you don’t need to go into sales if you don’t want to, but learning the sales process will allow you to learn how to gain trust and influence at a great level.
If you want to get something done quick, you may be able to do it, but if you want to go far, you need others with you to help you on the journey.
Have a great day!
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”