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Articles on Sales Matters:

Seven Lessons To Learn From Great Salespeople

Chances are this article’s title gives you a strong opinion about whether or not to continue reading. You are either in sales and want to understand your work better and therefore very interested, or you are being kind and giving me until the end of this paragraph to convince you to continue, because you aren’t in sales, you don’t want to be in sales, and you don’t see a connection between your work and sales.

If you are in the second group, please give me just one more paragraph before you decide, ok?

If you think of the stereotypical high pressure used car salesperson when you think about sales, rest assured that isn’t what I’m referring to. Think about this. Do you ever need to persuade others to see your position or take a particular action? Do you ever need people to follow your recommendations? Do you ever benefit in a tangible way when you are able to be more successful in persuading others? If your answer is yes to any of these questions (and I’m sure it is for everyone), then you are in sales - regardless of your job title or how you feel about “salespeople.”

So regardless of your experience in or feelings about sales, there are likely things you can learn from the best in the sales field - because we are all in sales.

The Model in your Mind

With all due respect to the many truly outstanding used car salespeople, the “high-pressure, used-car-salesperson” stereotype is one held by many people. And while we may have experience with this type of salesperson, most of us also have experience with someone who was extremely helpful. Someone who helped us select the best possible product or service for our situation and really cared about the results we would receive from the products we were buying. In other words, when we stop to think about it we all have some very positive experiences with salespeople.

It is those positive experiences that I want you to reflect on as you read the seven lessons below. Chances are some - or all - will be consistent with your experiences, and by reflecting on your experiences as you read you will make these lessons even more valuable for you.

The Seven Lessons

Listen more talk less. How can a salesperson know what you need unless they listen? If they don’t listen they are making assumptions as to your needs, wants and desires. The same is true for us. We will get much further much faster when trying to persuade or influence others when we talk less and listen more.

Ask more and better questions. One of the ways to talk less is by asking more questions. Great salespeople are masters at asking questions. They collect and use questions intelligently to learn more about our needs. They use questions to understand us better and to strengthen their relationship with us. Questions are one of our greatest learning tools and one of the best ways to further relationships. Whatever your work, being more skilled at asking questions will make you more successful.

Focus on the longer-term, big picture. The best salespeople aren’t trying to sell one car today. They are trying to sell you your next 5 (or 10) cars. They know Rome wasn’t built in a day and that they won’t reach their goals - or best serve you - by pressuring you to buy now. So it is for you in your interactions. When we think about the longer term we will make better decisions and behave more appropriately.

Build relationships. Business success is about relationships, and great salespeople know that. One of the fastest ways to become more successful is by building more and stronger relationships. One of the fastest ways to lose your job is by neglecting relationships. Take it from the best salespeople - business is based on relationships.

Follow-up and follow through. One of the ways to build relationships is to follow-up and follow through. Ever had a service provider call you and check on your satisfaction? How did you feel about that provider and his/her organization after that? How do you feel about people who send you handwritten thank you notes? How do feel when people go above and beyond to stay in touch with you and make sure you are satisfied? You feel good about them and their services, right? Apply those approaches to your work. Send a note. Remember a birthday. Mention the article you read that they would be interested in. Do what you said you were going to do. Follow-up and follow through.

Lose the techniques - focus on the other person. There are many helpful techniques that we can learn from training, from watching others and reading. We look for a magical formula or approach. While it is important to learn the techniques, they will only help us if we integrate them into who we are and what we stand for. For example, there is a difference between practicing active listening techniques and actively listening. When the focus is on the result, we relax and use the techniques in support of the end goal. Great salespeople learn the skills, but focus on their Customer. In an almost paradoxical way, by focusing on the Customer (remember your colleagues and your boss are your Customers too) and being sincere and genuine, you will gain the advantage of the techniques you were trying to use to begin with.

Help them buy. People don’t want to be sold, but they do want to buy. Just like a master salesperson, help people be persuaded to your position. Help them see the value. Help them own the decision. Help them remove the roadblocks - real or perceived.

Some Final Thoughts

There are likely many areas of your life where you can apply the lessons above. Consider your work, but also your role as a neighbor, in a community group and as a parent as places where you can benefit from these lessons.

You may have never sold magazine subscriptions door to door for a school project. You may have never had a job selling furniture or other products. You may never want to be in “sales.” Even if this is true, I urge you to think about what you can learn from the true masters of sales - because they are lessons that can make you better at whatever you do. Because it is really true - we are all in sales.

Kevin Eikenberry
28 Jan 2007

Kevin Eikenberry is a leadership expert and the Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group, a learning consulting company that helps Clients reach their potential through a variety of training, consulting and speaking services. To receive your free special report on Unleashing Your Potential go to http://www.kevineikenberry.com/uypw/index.asp or call us at (317) 387-1424 or 888.LEARNER.

99 Can't Miss Sales Tips From The Pros (Part 1)

Distributors, independent manufacturers' reps and manufacturers in the electrical business come in many different stripes and sizes, but they all have one thing in common: They employ field salespeople who live to serve customers' needs and seal the deal.

For many of their co-workers, road warriors have a somewhat glamorous image. They see these salespeople as the sweet-talking men and women with the company cars and expense accounts who are unshackled by nine-to-five desk jobs and free to roam the open road. What these other employees don't always see is the pressure of a paycheck depending wholly or in part on hitting monthly quotas and the dawn-to-dusk demands of a job requiring salespeople to be assertive, upbeat, knowledgeable and helpful even on those days when they don't feel like pressuring a customer for an order or dealing with an irate customer going ballistic because someone in the warehouse forgot to pack a critical replacement part in an order.

You may be the “outside guy” for a recent start-up with a handful of employees or a cog in a national sales machine with hundreds of salespeople. Perhaps you are a new outside salesperson who just finished the traditional industry internship of working in the warehouse, making deliveries and working the counter. Even if you are a veteran salesperson who could sell a box of pink locknuts before you roll out of bed in the morning, you can still learn a few new tricks of the trade from the pros. This article is loaded with ideas for salespeople — rookies and veterans alike. Some of these sales tips have been previously published in Electrical Wholesaling over the past 15 years, but they have never appeared together in the same article. It's a massive resource.

Check out these 99 sales tips and see if we have missed anything. Send along your suggestions for the 100th sales tip. The magazine's editors will publish the best sales tip we receive along with a photo of the contributor. That person will also receive a $100 American Express gift certificate for the idea. E-mail your sales tips to Jim Lucy, Electrical Wholesaling's chief editor at jlucy@prismb2b.com.

The package of products that electrical distributors, independent manufacturers' reps and electrical manufacturers sell has changed over the years, with voice-data-video (VDV) products, a new generation of energy-efficient lighting products and ever-more-electronic industrial controls taking on more prominence. Sales-support tools such as the Web, personal data assistants (PDAs) such as Blackberries, two-way pagers, cell phones and other electronic devices have also certainly made an impact. But basic selling skills really haven't changed much over the years. The “Ten Commandments Of Electrical Sales,” did a nice job of summarizing the 10 most important sales basics.

1. Sell thyself. The basics of any customer-salesperson relationship is trust. If you lose a customer's confidence, it's very hard to regain.

2. Know thy stuff. Customers expect distributors to know more about products than ever before. Basic product information is just a few clicks away for any customer. It's no longer good enough for a salesperson to drop off a few product brochures with customers and expect them to find the information they need. What customers really want from today's salespeople is assistance in applying the product to their particular applications.

3. Know thy customer. Salespeople must know customers' buying influences, which brands they prefer, how they install them and in the case of an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), how they use them in the products they manufacture. In his book, “Thinking Outside the Bulb,” Mike Dandridge, a former Rexel salesperson who now runs HighVoltagePerfomance.com, a sales training and consulting firm based in Temple, Texas, urges distributor salespeople to research their customers' business challenges and problems. “Earn a reputation as a solution supplier, and not a product pusher,” he says. “Customize a solution for an individual client, and you could have a customer for life.”

4. Listen when thy customer speaks. You can learn more from customers by listening to what they have to say about applications or problems than by dominating a conversation on a sale call with a product's features and benefits. If you are doing more talking than listening on a sales call, you are not doing it right. “Leave yourself out of it, and don't try to mind read by anticipating what the customer is going to say,” says Dandridge. “Pretend as if your livelihood depends upon what your customer says. It does.”

5. Sell thy value. One strategy that helps when a customer asks you to beat or match a quote is to sell him or her on the concept of “least total cost.” To do this, you must be able to prove how the value-added services your company offers actually save the customer money in the long run. Examples of these services might include your company's credit and return policies, knowledgeable inside salespeople, a 24-hour hot line, emergency delivery, application assistance and expediting.

Jim Lucy
16 Feb 2007

Do you have the 100th Sales Tip? Did we forget any surefire sales strategies? Electrical Wholesaling is offering a $100 American Express check for the best 100th sales tip that's submitted. Send it by e-mail to Jim Lucy, Electrical Wholesaling's chief editor, at jlucy@prismb2b.com. We will publish that sales tip in a future issue. www.ewweb.com