Every salesperson, you and your team, has made the mistake of prematurely getting involved in seemingly promising sales opportunities only to end up frustrated, confused and worst of all – losing the sale.  Possibly you may have even won the sale — at margins and commissions that would have paid more had you been working at McDonalds. We’ve all been there!

The truth is, not every sales opportunity is going to be an ideal fit for your business.

Therefore, to succeed in sales you need to know when to fish or cut bait.  In fact, top salespeople develop a keen sense of their situation and spend precious selling time on the deals with high probability closing odds.  They grasp whether the sale has potential for a timely win-win and allocate resources accordingly.

So, when you’re deciding the value of an existing or potential sales opportunity consider the following:

1. What kind of pain does your customer have?

Prospects must have business initiatives that result in challenges or gaps requiring a “fix” that you can jointly discover to increase your odds of winning the sale.  These latent “pains” are always the most deserving ones to pursue – those which you can help a prospect identify and quantify.

Many salespeople mistakenly prospect looking to find live deals. But often, engagement for already “active” pains comes too late in the client’s procurement process for you to successfully win.  You may end up spending a lot of cycles as column fodder in a bidding exercise for a solution created by a competitor.

2. Are you in contact with the right people?

If you can’t get direct access to decision makers, think again.  Spending valuable time with a prospect only to be denied a seat at the decision making table is foolhardy.  Be sure early on that you have or can negotiate access to the people who actually commit funding and have the ultimate authority to choose a vendor.

3. Do you offer a unique value proposition? 

If your client has commoditized the solution, or your competitor clearly has an edge, rethink your strategy and further engagement.  When vendor selection comes down strictly to price and the client sees no value in your offering, it may be better to opt out early in the selling cycle – or spend as little resources and time as possible with the deal.

Let your competitors play the price game and whittle their margins down to nothing in the process.  Understand your company’s sweet spot so you don’t waste selling time with those who don’t.

4. Are you in control of the sales process?

If your prospect is “getting” with no “give” it may be time for you to move on. Creating and engaging in opportunities where you clearly act versus react will greatly increase the odds of closing a sale.

Your time is money and resources are costly, so be sure you put your energy into deals that can be positioned favorably and ultimately closed.  Sometimes, it may be best to exit and find another opportunity where you can play a central role in joint discovery of the client solution, create distinct value, connect with decision makers and manage the sales cycle.

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Photo: Massimo Dutti

Ann Marie Heidingsfelder is a sales performance & leadership coach that helps companies that want engaged, high-impact sales teams to create outstanding revenue and profitability growth.   With 22 years of Fortune 100 and award winning sales success in the trenches of technology and healthcare finance, she now helps sales professionals at all levels turn more prospects into clients, increase deal velocity and improve sales activities and effectiveness.  Ann-Marie holds an MBA, is a certified coach and a member of the Northern California HR Association, Sales Management Association and International Coach Federation.  Take her free 5 Minute Sales Skills Assessment to discover if you are at the top of your selling game!

Don’t keep talking if the customer is ready to buy. Never talk more than the customer is willing to listen.

Many young entrepreneurs are very excited and passionate about their business, but this eagerness to sell can (paradoxically) cause them to lose sales.

No matter how passionate you are about your company and your products, make sure to keep your sales conversations in the realm of “controlled enthusiasm” to close more deals.

Here are four simple ways to keep sales conversations focused, and avoid “unbridled enthusiasm:”

1. Remember – It’s Not About You, It’s About the Customer

Don’t talk about your company; ask about your customer.

No matter how proud you might be of your company’s innovative solutions and exciting achievements, remember to focus on the customer’s needs first. Enthusiasm is great, but make sure you channel your passion for what you sell in the right direction – helping the customer.

2. Listen more than you talk

You can still show enthusiasm for your product by being an active listener.

Show interest in what your customers and prospects have to say. Ask follow-up questions. Draw out the customer’s deeper concerns and issues, and look for ways to help.

Success in sales is not just about who can rattle off the most clever sales pitch or convey the most charisma, but is often a matter of empathizing with customers and quietly reaching out to meet their needs.

3. Don’t ask for the sale too soon

One of the biggest mistakes that young business owners make is to try to constantly close sales with everyone they meet or ask for the sale too early into the conversation. Especially if your company is in the B2B market, you need to be prepared for a longer sales process.

Start slow. Build trust. Ask good questions to show the customer that you’re on their side. Get a detailed understanding of what the customer really needs and then look for ways to align your offerings in a way that can help.

1. How much does it cost?

2. Can I get a discount?

3. Why should I choose you and not your competitor?

4. Can you provide a guarantee?

While these customer questions can be intimidating and sometimes difficult to overcome, they all have one positive thing in common – your prospect is giving you a signal that he or she is interested in buying from you — but here’s the catch, they need you to help them overcome their objections.

They have already started to think about trying your product or service but they are just unsure about (at least) one aspect. For that reason you can can take those questions as a sign that a sale is (in fact) still possible.

In contrast, the question that should frighten you more than any other–because it is by far the worst one that you get from your audience–is “Can I have some time to think about it?”

Why Thinking is Counter-productive for Customer Acquisition

Thinking is counter-productive to deciding and moving customers along your purchase path.

Whenever you put your prospect into a position where they have to access the thinking part of their brain, you will not get a decision. Thinking takes place in one part of your brain — the neocortex. It is where your spatial reasoning and conscious thought (subjectivity and awareness) resides.

Let’s examine what went wrong once you hear a customer say, “I need some time to think about it.”

Thinking and your Customer’s Brain

The neocortex is the largest part of your brain. It is the last thing that forms in the womb. Your neocortex figuratively lights up when we listen to music, look at colors, speak, read and process numbers. If you ever hear people talking about right vs. left brain thinking, they are talking about the neocortex. In a nutshell – this part of your brain hosts your thinking capabilities.

So when your customer says “I need to think about it” this part of the brain is firing up and looking for data.

Neuromarketing research has revealed that thinking uses tons of brain energy and prolongs the decision making process. Therefore, if you want to drag out the process of getting your customer to decide or haggle on price, you want to make sure that your customer has to us this part of their brain. Make sure you give your customer lots of big words, numbers, graphs, lists of features and benefits, talk about your competitors and how you stack up next to them – and your customer will not decide!

Instead, your prospect will do a whole lot of thinking, thus take up more of your valuable time and energy in the sales process.

We asked twenty of the nation’s most successful young entrepreneurs to share their best tip for finding more customers and increasing sales, and here’s what they had to say:

1. Communicate value

“Remember to let your audience know “what’s in it for them?” It’s important in sales to show the value of your service or product to the user. No one has time or energy to hear about how great you think your product is unless they see value in it for themselves.”

Robert Niznik, Founder and CEO at Shpoonkle, @Shpoonkle

2. Never turn down PR

“Don’t ever turn down a PR opportunity because you think it is too small. Ninety-five percent of my biggest sales, came from what others would  have considered, small opportunities.”

Maryam Faresh, Founder and CEO at What about Daisy?, @whataboutdaisy

3. Get personal

“Get on the phone or in person with your client. Keep it personal and on a human level and you will create customer loyalty which will lead to repeat business.”

Jennifer Scully, President at ReDesign for a Dime, @jenniferscully1

4. Remember the big picture

“Don’t be afraid to step away from a particular sale for a little while and make sure you always have more in the pipeline to work on. You cannot rely on one sale to radically increase your business. And if the person you’re selling to isn’t being as responsive as you’d like or moving as quickly as you’d like, put them on the side, explore your other potential sales and come back to that sale in a month. More often than not, just waiting and not pushing things too far works.”

Stacey Ferreira, Co-Founder & VP at Social Cloud Inc., @staceyferreira

5. Keep it brief

“If you can’t intrigue someone in the first 10 seconds of talking to them, trying to sell them for another 10 minutes will do no good. If you had to sum up what you offer in a short, sweet sentence of no more than say 5-10 words, what would it be? Doing that helps focus your message and makes it easier for the customer to understand. It’ll also help you when explaining to potential customers.”

Shaun Walker (Creative Director) & Reid Stone (Brand Strategy Director) at HERO|farm, @herofarm

6. Pick up the phone

“If you want to actually sell your product you need to reach a wide audience while also having a high conversion rate.  And although social media and the internet are all the rage, actually speaking with potential buyers gives you the opportunity to connect on a personal level and find out what they need.”

Brendan Quigley and Christina Quigley, Co-Owners at Quigley Fine Wines, @quigleywines

7. Be patiently persistent

“Every salesperson knows to be persistent but as an entrepreneur, the key is to be patient while picking your times to be persistent.  Exercising the right amount of patience, as you determine when to follow up and when to lay low, is the difference between being annoying and being professional.  As an entrepreneur, inherently your product is new and probably not a priority for your customers – so being patient and biding your time for the right opportunity is key to success as an entrepreneur salesperson.”

Douglas Allan, Co-founder and VP, Sales at Stacked Wines, @STACKEDwines

8. Sell more by selling less.

“How do you do that? Personal branding and storytelling. With a genuine, attractive, and charismatic personal brand, you eliminate the need for traditional sales techniques. Strong personal brands are tied to a story. Approach each sales interaction with a story, whether it be yours or how your business changed the life of a previous client, and you’ll not only close the sale, you’ll acquire a new brand evangelist.”

Shauna Mackenzie, Owner at Mark’d – Personal Branding Studio, @msshaunamack

9. Ask questions and listen

“Too many salespeople talk and offer solutions without knowing  what problem they need to help solve.  In addition, the best people to sell your product or service is your current customer base.  Call them and ask for introductions and you will be amazed at how quickly you can grow.”

Jeff Ellman, Co-Founder at UrbanBound, @urbanbound

10. If you sell online, A/B test everything

“So many sales are left on the table when you don’t put into place a proper conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy. Now that there are a ton of different tools to help you with this, there’s no excuse to not be testing. Remember, even the smallest changes to things you wouldn’t normally notice can make a huge difference.”

Jon Cooper, Founder at Point Blank SEO, @pointblankseo

So naturally, I asked people what they thought about both presidential nominees — President Obama seeking re-election to a second term this year and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

“Oh I am definitely voting for Obama,” many people said. Others I talked to asserted that Romney, “was their man!”

On the surface, it seems simple. But, with all of the political positioning of this year’s elections touching the lives of all American’s including myself, I have become even more intrigued by how people make decisions.

In fact, I’ve come to believe that the majority of people make decisions differently than you and I would probably think.

Decisions aren’t as Complicated as Some Think

After asking people who they were voting for in this years’ presidential election, the next logical question was — “Why will you vote for Barack Obama” or “Why is Mitt Romney your man?”

The answers were telling.

Some responded by saying, “I really like Obama, he seems like he is a great guy. He’d be a good leader.” Others indicated they believe “Mitt Romney has experience and seems to love our country.” While some seemed fond of the Vice Presidential nominees — “I really love Congressman Paul Ryan, he is really down to earth, and smart.”

But what really floored me was the final follow-up question, “What about their platform do you support?”

I received a lot of blank stares.

No one that I had spoken with really knew what each presidential candidate actually stood for — and they didn’t seem too concerned with it either.

Here are two common questions I receive from small business owners and their teams — with very ‘uncommon’ answers.

Question 1: Should you share product information before qualifying potential sales prospects?

Industry: Software

“I have heard you say that you shouldn’t give out pricing unless you gather information first. Though I agree with you, sometimes you can‘t do that. We have several applications and packages that we sell and they are somewhat customized, but we do carry inexpensive, off-the-shelf packages as well.

How can I ask questions and find out more information if the person on the phone making the inquiry asks about our basic package and how much we charge upfront?”

Answer:

Okay, let me calm down a minute before I answer this because I might blow.

First of all, I didn’t realize that if you use a particular procedure to collect information and recommend a package, that what they ‘think they want‘ is automatically correct — and you’re obliged to answer.

I took a look at your company’s website (before I answered) and I don’t see an indication (anywhere) that you operate as a non-profit organization.

What we fail to remember is: When it comes to selling, if you give an answer too quickly without knowing (a) why they need your product (b) what other options they are considering (c) and what issues they expect your product to solve you could prematurely lose a sale.

If you don’t find out simple answers to the questions above there is a high probability that you could recommend the wrong product for their actual needs.  It isn’t necessarily your responsibility to react to the issues they are having and make a recommendation simply because they asked for it.

Take control of you sales process, or it will take control of you and turn you into an order taker instead of a sales organizations.

1. Ditch the sales script.

Reading from a script is a big mistake. People don’t want to be sold to, they want to connect with people and at the same time be given a solution to a possible obstacle. Relate to people and understand their needs before you pitch them something.

Alice Heiman, Owner of Alice Heiman, LLC

2. Tell us why you’re better.

Failing to convey a unique value proposition for your product or service. If your business cannot clearly define why your offering is different and/or better than the competition then you will be eclipsed by them. The most successful sales pitch will answer the following questions: “Our product and/or service is, for “whom,” so that … _______.”

John Ostman, VP of Sales and Marketing at Snap Agency

3. Understand who you’re selling to.

Pursuing the sale before defining your ideal customer.  Without a laser-focused understanding of who your target customer is, you might as well draw random names out of a hat when prospecting. Your best customers must want and need what you sell — and be willing to pay for it.

Stephanie Nivinskus, Principal at Impressions Marketing Studio

4. Share features and benefits later.

Don’t engage in a sales “bake-off” (i.e. discussing product features) too early in the buying cycle. Instead create “the buying vision” (i.e. how to help solve their business challenges). Share insights that address challenges the prospect might not even realize s/he has, then communicate “why they should buy. Traditional feature/benefit “why us” messaging is better suited for later in the buying cycle.

Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer at Corporate Visions