I know I talked about the importance of mindset in my last video, and how much that plays a part in the selling journey.
Insight, in the context of sales, means understanding your own product. It also means understanding your own businesses strengths and weaknesses.
For example, London’s traditional black cab drivers rely on what they call “The Knowledge” to set them apart from other transportation services. Pay a visit to London and a black cab will probably be one the first things you will see. London taxi drivers are almost as famous as the black cabs they drive.
Their fame stems from their incredibly comprehensive knowledge of the city. Hail down a black cab in London and you can be assured that the driver will find the shortest route to your destination without the aid of any technology.
London taxi drivers go through stringent training to obtain their licenses. They need to pass “The Knowledge” test; and studying for it is often likened to having an atlas of London implanted into your brain.
To become an All-London taxi driver, you need to master no fewer than 320 basic routes, all of the 25,000 streets scattered within the basic routes, and approximately 20,000 landmarks and places of public interest within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross.
It takes the average person between two and four years to learn “The Knowledge”. This education is a big investment, but the training sets this service apart from the competition, whether they are taxi drivers or Uber drivers, utilising GPS gadgets.
In fact, on the ground, a black cab driver will always out-perform the Uber driver. Their extensive, specific knowledge actually offers an opportunity to re-position themselves as the ultimate experts.
Customers are willing to pay for a service this good, and the only way to make it this good is to have true insight into the product you offer.
Swot Analysis
The question for your business, then, is how do you know what you—and your salespeople—don’t know?
One way to develop insight into your own company is to use a swot analysis on your products and services.
The swot framework comes from Albert Humphrey, who tested the approach in the 1960s and 1970s at the Stanford Research Institute. Developed for business and based on data from Fortune 500 companies, the swot analysis has been adopted by organisations of all types as a decision-making tool. As its acronym implies, a swot analysis examines four elements:
Strengths: Internal attributes and resources that support a successful outcome.
Weaknesses: Internal attributes and resources that work against a successful outcome.
Opportunities: External factors the project can use to its advantage.
Threats: External factors that could jeopardise the project.
Questions to ask during a swot analysis of your sales process:
Strengths: What are you the best at? • Why do customers buy from you? • What are your competitors’ benefits?
Weaknesses: Where do you need to improve? • Are there any gaps in product lines? • should you add a guarantee? • What’s preventing you from making more sales?
Opportunities: How can you take advantage of your new knowledge? • Is there something unique you have to offer? • What do these facts tell you about the future?
Threats: Is this the right product or service for the current market? • What happens when the market changes? • Do you need to evaluate your clients? • Do you have a sales mindset? • Do you train well and consistently? • Does your team believe in your mission?
Evaluating your offerings this way helps you develop the insight necessary to sell them. Let’s look at one example of how insight, or lack of it, affects everyday sales interactions.
Imagine someone comes to your store, intending to buy. They already have an interest in the product. They quite reasonably make an inquiry with the salesperson. This is where the relationship between seller and buyer can quickly break down.
If the customer expresses interest in an item and the person who can sell it to them doesn’t demonstrate enough insight, the sale will drop dead right there.
The once-promising customer will walk right back out that door. For instance, suppose an appliance store supervisor has only trained the sales staff in the bare minimum product knowledge.
The salespeople on the floor know that a washing machine has a lid at the top, and it opens when you press a button, and that’s it. Chances are, your customers already know more than the salespeople.
The internet now allows people to research your product thoroughly. if you are not careful—if you don’t always have some sort of valuable knowledge to add—you will lose the sale.
Work out ahead of time what your strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities are, and try to match them up against your competition. You want to be able to convince the customer of the benefit of choosing your product over any other.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME!
In many of my blogs I talk about recognising steps needed to navigate the sales journey successfully. I am going to share in these upcoming blogs, the steps of that sales journey.
Before we get more deeply into those steps, let’s look in detail at how our perception of sales informs our understanding of that journey from the start. Sales is shaped more by how you think about it than by what you do.
We are talking about your mindset: your core beliefs about yourself as a salesperson and about selling itself.
All too often, these beliefs are negative and limiting. When you change your perspective, you also change your results.
People think selling is hard and assume that the ability to sell is an inborn trait.
They tell themselves, “I can’t sell. I tried it once and it didn’t work. I will look really stupid if I don’t close the deal.”
They think that in order to succeed in sales, they have to win every time. This leads many talented people to conclude, “I hate sales. I really hate it. I’m not interested. I will never be any good at it.”
People who have a more productive mindset around sales tend to instead think, “Sales is easy. Salespeople aren’t born with something I don’t have. I can actually do this stuff, if I have a great product and I provide excellent service, then I should be able to make a sale. After all, the customer gets a real solution to their problem from me.” A positive sales mindset always comes from understanding that the customer is a person with needs, wants, and desires that you can help them fulfill.
When you think about a sale that way, you will find it much easier to talk to that person about their problems and ask how you can make those problems disappear. The trick is to talk yourself out of the limited mindset and into the more expansive perspective.
When you don’t get a sale, do you think, “I knew it! I told you so, didn’t I? This is impossible.” Or, do you think, “Well, I tried one thing, and it didn’t work, but what did I learn? What could I do next time?” Here’s a story (author unknown, recounted by Jack Canfield and many others) that shows how important perspective is when you’re trying to make the seemingly impossible, possible. Here is a story about how mindset and looking at things differently plays a big part, when you go to sell a product or service.
The newspaper story
A man is busy working at home when his five-year-old son comes into his study. With the enthusiasm that children have in abundance, he asks his dad if they can go to the park.
Dad, in the middle of his work, tries to resist his son’s requests but the child persists. Frustrated, and hoping to buy some time, Dad looks around, lifts up a newspaper, and opens it to a double-page world map.
He pulls out the map, tears it up into small pieces, and gives them to his son. “After you put together this map of the world, then we will go to the park,” he says. The boy takes the pieces of the newspaper in both hands and scurries eagerly over to the other side of the room.
He sets to the task immediately. Dad knows that his son has no idea what a map of the world looks like; he thinks it will take ages to put it back together. Dad goes back to his work. Five minutes later, his son runs over. “I’m finished,” he says, “can we go to the park now?”
Dad thinks his son is making it up, but on the floor is the finished puzzle of the map of the world. “How did you finish this so quickly?” he asks his son. “It was easy, Daddy,” says the boy. Then he turns over the pieces of the jigsaw one at a time, and on the other side of the world map is a photograph of a man. “You see, when you put the man back together the whole world falls into place.”
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME!
“Sales is Easy” We are all in sales aren’t we? Sales often gets a bad rap. I believe that selling is an essential element in any business and, often, it’s your own beliefs around “sales” that prevent you from being successful.
I invite you to move into the mindset that “sales is easy”. Within my book, I will show you the importance of creating the right system and sustaining the right environment.
Every person involved in the selling process has to understand that it is actually a journey. The buyer and the seller are traveling on parallel paths.
You have to know that journey inside and out to get better at selling. It’s not a mysterious process. There are several common steps.
The first step is cultivating an open mindset.
Step two involves developing thorough product knowledge.
Then, you move on to learning how to ask the right questions.
A little further down the path, you and the client work at identifying the client’s needs. Further still, it is time for an offer, or a presentation.
You have nearly made it to the end of the path when you begin to negotiate terms, but, remember that the path never really ends.
You should continue looking after that client to ensure that you will meet again, down the road.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME!
If you’ve read my last few posts. you’ll see that I’ve been discussing the mistakes business owners make ( I have made every one of them- no kidding!) when it comes to getting the right salesperson on your team.
I want to give you as much value as I can, so here are three important hoops (as I call them) that you might want to think about when it comes to employing new salespeople.
Structure Not Gut
Hoop 1- Company Culture FitCompany Culture– While we believe that fitting in with the company culture is important, as demonstrated in the graph on our FREE report, it makes up only 10%.
Don’t get too caught up in making sure this is a major part of the recruiting process.
Create a good job description.
This is a critical factor in hiring good salespeople. When you advertise for a salesperson what do you ask?
How do you define the role? What are you looking for? What is the remuneration?
*Chet Holmes, one of my early mentors, always did this exercise when advertising for super salespeople.
Write down three initiatives that you would love to hire someone to do in your business.
Three only. Next to each one, do this:
What would it mean to your business?
How would it change your business?
Now list what you could afford to pay such people if they really performed.
Do the exercise. This forms the foundation of good a job description.
Hoop 2- Structuring an interview – History of Success.
Once you get the CV’s for the position, look for a history of success. Somewhere that you can see a challenge; a life experience that they overcame.
Structuring an interview- A structured interview process makes up 30% or a third of the process (FREE report). That’s a lot. In your structured interview, you should have some questions to ask, after reading the CV. Here are a few to start with.
How do you function as a team?
How do you feel about operating in a team environment?
Do you like working on your own outside of that team?
Can you tell me about a time when you were asked to do a project on your own? What was it?
These questions might just get the process moving.
Challenge the candidate– You are hiring salespeople to do a specific job. Human beings inherently will do anything to avoid pain. However, in the business of selling, rejection is part of what selling really is, and it can be painful.
If everyone got 100% of the business every time they presented a product, the salesperson would be out of business.
If you are hiring a salesperson to sell your product and prospecting is part of that, would you not at least ask them “What happens when you get a ‘ No!’ – How do you react?”
Ask them this, and see what happens: “ You know what, I’m not convinced that you are the right person for this job.” Observe their reaction. Do they just sit there? Or do they do something that indicates to you they might do the same with a client?
Hoop 3- Assessment Tools
This also makes up 30% of the job evaluation- We personally take a lot of guidance from these types of assessments and we go into more detail here: Download my FREE report We used to call these the B.S. detector.
We carried these assessments out in my company specifically for the roles we were looking for, in salary and performance-based positions.
Our salespeople had to work alone. We had salespeople sprinkled all over the world; usually unmanaged, working in an unstructured environment.
We had to be really clear on what we were looking for. That’s where traits/ behaviours come into play. We knew we had to hire for the task, not just the attitude.
In my next post, I explain what I look for in a salesperson, and how I came to that.
Download my FREE report to learn more, or email me… mike@mikebrunel.com
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME!
Throughout my recent posts, my message has been: hire the wrong person and it’s going to cost you money…Heaps! Simple really.
The old chestnut ‘Hire attitude and then train’, in this brave new world of data and measurements, is an old belief.
Don’t get me wrong, a good attitude makes a difference, but traits or behaviours are key, in my view.
These were our main trait preferences:
Able to work on their own
Good prospector
Motivated by the Challenge
Understood what we did and how to sell it- then got on with it
Good people person
Curious
And many more.
How did we know:
We put all our people through the hoops that we talked about in previous posts. Then, after searching high and low, discovered an assessment to find those traits. FREE REPORT
This product provided us with a comprehensive objective assessment of a potential salesperson’s core character traits, and how they relate to success in a competitive sales position.
Simply put, it assessed how natural a fit to a sales career would be for this person.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME!
Hire in your own likeness- A potential salesperson comes in to meet with you, and within a short time you have hit it off, you may have even shared some key rapport-building facts about each other.
Of all the applicants that you have spoken with, this one is the one that you like the most. Your gut feels great, you like him, he reminds you of a younger you. You hire you.
Now you might be the best salesperson in your business, but if you want to grow, you better make sure that you do more than just hire on your gut.
It’s a good feeling to have, but there are other factors that come into play.
Fill a hole, find a salesperson.
This is a big mistake that I see all the time. Hiring under stress. As the saying goes “Hire slowly Fire quickly.” As a business owner, we do feel the pressure of getting a position filled.
Maybe, as a sales manager, you may feel the pressure to fill the quota and get the sales back on track. It’s natural that you push them through quickly. I have been guilty of this myself until I learned that hiring to fill a hole is a recipe for failure. How do you learn? Watching that money flush down the “you know what”!
“No one can sell as well as you do”
This one is a beauty. You are afraid to hire because they might just not be as good as you. I remember taking on a position of Sales Manager in a company, to find that the amazing sales manager I replaced had all the top clients, held onto them, and starved the team of success.
No one could sell like him I was told. Well, guess what? When I gave some of his clients to the other members of the team, the business never looked back.
If your business is going well and you want to grow, this attitude will stop you in your tracks.
Growth only comes in a business if you are prepared to hire more ‘how’ people that can free you up to help you make better decisions around what you are good at.
I can pretty much guarantee my clients a foolproof way to multiply their business tenfold. Hire more people to do the how and you do what you get excited about.
Those are the big three mistakes that business owners make when it comes to hiring salespeople.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $350 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME!
