THE ART OF (KILLING) THE DEAL

Posted on October 26, 2006 by michaelweening

A must read for every salesperson, Ben Stein on The Art of (Killing) the Deal. I personally found the following deal killers top of mind with me:

· You are doing all the talking. I have done hundreds, if not thousands of presentations and to me, nothing is worse than a lack of interactivity. I will often stop and request comments, draw out discussion, get the customer speaking. Nothing is a bigger business killer than a one way conversation.

· You think you are more important than the customer. This one kills me and I will admit, there are times when I have groaned about the inconvenience of a meeting, but in the end, the customer always comes first. Just the other day, I was unhappy because I need to travel 45 minutes to the same spot, two days in a row and tried to force it into one day. But, in the end, I could not get frustrated with my assistant because I always say ‘Everything else can move, customer first’.

· Don’t sweat the details. This one kills me and I think that 90% of reps don’t take this seriously. The details are the thank you note, remember names, remembering details about people, birthdays, going that extra mile on holidays, etc. I will blog more on this one soon, but it is one that drives me crazy and I see very few sales reps do it well. Those who do, always have a higher chance of success. Every sales rep should adhere to the MacKay 66, or something like it.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Posted on February 28, 2006 by michaelweening

Every since I was a little boy, my mother drilled into me that my name is ‘Michael’, not ‘Mike’. When friends would call the house, she had been known for her response of ‘We do not have a Mike here, we do have a Michael’. Most people call me Michael, mission accomplished.

But, there are a few who call me Mike, even though my business cards uses Michael, my email says Michael and I introduce myself as Michael.

I really do not care, but it sends a negative message to me. That person does not really care about me as an individual. If they did, they would have picked up on my preference with regard to my name, which is a very personal thing.

And that creates a small doubt in my mind about that person. Do they pay attention to other details? If they do not care now, what spurs them to care?

For the person in sales, any doubt or dissonance is bad. For the manager, there are two messages that you can send people when you meet them. It is all about the details.

STRONG RELATIONSHIPS

Posted on October 11, 2005 by michaelweening

A true story: I was on a business trip at my company’s head office with clients. I had 2 people from my team with me and 4 clients. One of the clients was a rather cantankerous individual who kept throwing up road blocks for us, I will call him Bob (Although, he liked to spell his name backwards). The senior most person on my team made a valiant effort to get to know this client and break down that barrier. While enjoying the company of the others, I watched in amusement as he repeatedly crashed and burned:

“So, where did you go to University?”

Bob: “I went to Waterloo”

“Really, me too! I took …. (Insert long diatribe on his own personal story)”

Bob: “Well, that is interesting. I was there long before a young pup like that” (I wince, good one Bob. Shut down the conversation and insert a put down all at once)

Insert silence, followed by the sound of a big crash followed by a burning sound. So, why did this conversation fail? Why did he not get the opportunity to build a relationship?

Because he did not LISTEN. When Bob provided the PERFECT opportunity, he talked about himself. What did this accomplish? Bob got to learn all about him, whether he wanted to or not. Bob also got the message that he was not important. The sales person’s role is to build that bridge, to understand the client at a personal level. Only by understanding what makes someone tick, can you build trust on THEIR terms. The salesperson does not get to dictate the terms of the relationship (As he tried to do by talking about himself), the salesperson must conduct a reconnaissance and, as every single relationship is different, build the bridge of trust according to the terms that the client dictates.

So, how did this end? I stepped in, asked a few questions and LISTENED. Before I knew it, Bob was talking all about himself. Unlike my counterpart I was not listening to the conversation thinking ‘Gee that is nice, but let me tell you this about myself’. I SINCERELY remained interested and found the common threads upon which to build a relationship. To the amazement of my colleague, we spent the evening laughing and talking about some very diverse topics (I learned that he was a sci-fi nut, and I love sci-fi. I also learned that he has a cool hobby that I know nothing about and now know alot about). We started building a relationship while he sat on the outside.

Over time, that relationship strengthened. Bob began sharing his concerns about our company. We built a relationship and the barrier came down. We started doing business. An additional benefit was imparted, I learned from Bob (A side benefit that most people miss and a topic for another blog).

In summary, the key is sincerity and the ability to listen. Check the ego at the door, your opinions and views are not important, what you are about to learn is. So what do you do with that knowledge? With so many daily contacts – how do you keep track of it all when you can have a bad habit of forgetting names? (A topic for another blog)