Talk the talk

Ever been listening intently on a person?

Most have not.

Since the verbal part of human communication is so small (between 10-20% of the information we send being face to face comes from our words (% varies depending who you ask)) most develop listening skills that uses the eyes and less so the ears.

This has a big impact on how you come across when you talk. You can prepare meticulously for your presentation or your pitch and most of us do. And then the recipient don’t even listen to our words but our body language and face expressions and eye movement.

Ouch.

Most of the people you meet in business uses this to read us without anything but experience to do it some are trained in this field so they are better than police interrogators in reading us.

So if you are poor in body language can you compensate for this with a better presentation?

Yes and no. A simple trick will be to seek eye contact and have a good written/visual presentation to take the heat. Try  to do as little movements as possible. (I will do a body language post later on.) REMEMBER TO SMILE!

So lets concentrate on the words coming out.

Talking in positive form only is the goal or for most a vision. Trying to say everything in positive form will make you more likeable and will enhance you and your product.

All negatives will be just that. Negatives will decrease your value as well as your product/company.

Being insecure (you will automatically use more negatives when insecure) will also be revealed when speaking with belittling / weak words like :

• not – it is better to say what is than what is not. Put your statements in the positive. Even words like “never” or “nothing” are better than “not”. “Not” is fine when stating the contrary: “I like Paris, not France.”

I’m sure you get the point and click the link on “not” to read a bit more on the subject.

So how to learn how to speak in positive form? Practice on every one you meet and I do mean every one!

Go in to discussions and try to win them by just saying positive things try with your partner and friends first and when you get better use it in presentations and pitching. You should after a bit of training be able to twist anything to your advantage regardless on the subject if you manage this then you’re a pro!

After a pitch / presentation you should rewind and press play to go trough it in your head and change the parts that you could differently. If you have the luxury of having colleagues you should let them ride along with you for 2-3 meetings and have them register negative and weak words so you can get an instant feedback on this. If you work alone this will take more time to get right. You will get there and you will see a clear difference between your presentation now and then but more importantly you will see a higher closing percentage.

Stay positive and practice on everyone!

Ps. Heres another link to weak words. Ds

Greetings and salutations!

How do you project the image of yourself?

Try this very easy test.

Put on your work clothes and go with your hand outstretched to greet a customer but do it in front of the mirror!

Now describe the person there and see what qualities and things you picked up about yourself. (remember to have an open mind about this and give it a serious try.)

You should create a professional image that you would like to meet yourself and also try to let your on personality shine trough to give the customer some idea of who you are.

Would you like to meet with you?

Anything that you should change or do differently?

Try out the mirror again!

After a couple of greetings and salutations its time to try it out on some real person if you work for a company try it out with a fellow sales person they will hopefully have a good positive approach to this, if working alone try to do it with your partner ( don’t do it if you feel they are not having the right spirit for it since this is to boost your confidence!) or some other adult that can help you out. If there is no one then after the mirror go out and practise with the customers .

How would your test subject describe you?

Is it the same description you had about yourself before?

How would you like to come across:

Firm handshake

Confident

Cheerful

Pleasant

Reassuring

Friendly

Interested  (and interesting)

Warm

Relaxed

Sympathetic

Polite

These are all positive descriptive words that the top seller would be described as and now you have a chance to get them said about you to.

Why are these words or traits important to exude?

Ask yourself if you would like to have a meeting with a person greeting you in the above manner. Most likely you would be very interested in knowing more about them and this you now can use to transfer the positivity to your product and get the contract.

 

Ps this works just as well when meeting people in a non professional capacity to Ds

 

The first business meeting

So let’s get onwards,

1. Be prepared, read up on the company you are to visit (homepage, news, articles products any and everything you can get your eyes on.)
2. You are a welcome person act like it. (you would not have a meeting otherwise).
3. You are expected so be on time or at the most 5 minutes early.
4. When booking you should have made it clear that the meeting should take somewhere up to 60 minutes.
5. Dress accordingly
6. No matter what be polite (even if they are far from it)
7. End the meeting with a thank you for the business or as you will make business in the future see you next time

Ok you are now in and the person /persons are potential costumers.

Good and keep this in mind until you walk out the door (unless you sign a contract then and there of course).

Ideally like we discussed on the last post you have now been introduced to the company and their products. The customer is not hostile and you have gotten past the niceties.

Your turn!

I suggest you use the same tactic as you did when booking the meeting:

Try and cut to the chase (time is money).

Use the words you used when booking  five to ten words that you think will be the best ones for your business and that will make the customer really interested in your product / service. These you now will use to build up your pitch with.

Now add some positive sounding words around these so it will be an understandable and preferably strong short catch phrase.

The catch phrases are excellent places in your pitch to get the customer involved. Ask them what benefit they themselves could see in your products /services. Get them talking once you have presented 1 or 2 key points to get them on the same train. Dont let them take charge of the meeting however then it could end very soon you should be in charge of the conversation but let them talk and guide them to where you want them (towards your closing pitch. and a signed contract.) This is the key to be succesful or unsuccessful as a salesperson. If you can control the conversation in a nice and relaxed manner and create rapport with the customer they will be likely to buy now and continue to do so in the future. If you lose grip on the conversation you will have a customer who don’t know how to present your product (and they should not) so they will try to end the meeting.

Rule: Guide / control the meeting towards your goal signing the contract.

Road 1 :If you go into the meeting with a firm mindset to walk out with the contract in hand then go for it.

Road 2:If you go into the meeting wanting to get a contract in a few months time you still will be needing to act in the meeting as if you want to sell now but not pushing the signing in the end but leaving it open for the coming meeting.

Walk,talk and act like you are 100 % sure that you will get the contract until you have walked out of the door.  This will make a stronger impression about you and your product and increase its value to the customer.

If you have the contract congrats!

If you don’t?

Make sure you end the meeting with booking a new one on the phone or in real life and make sure the customer understands that it is for the closing so they are prepared to sign or say no (usually they have some confirmation questions first).

Onwards and forwards! go out and try!

The meeting

Congratulations!

You booked your first meeting.

So today is the day your going to meet your potential costumer and hopefully make a good argument for your product / service.

What you do and say has more importance than if the stuff you sell are good or crap.

So first of:

1. Be prepared, read up on the company you are to visit (homepage, news, articles products any and everything you can get your eyes on.)
2. You are a welcome person act like it. (you would not have a meeting otherwise).
3. You are expected so be on time or at the most 5 minutes early.
4. When booking you should have made it clear that the meeting should take somewhere up to 60 minutes.
5. Dress accordingly
6. No matter what be polite (even if they are far from it)
7. End the meeting with a thank you for the business or as you will make business in the future

 

So first thing first. After greetings you should preferably let the customer talk and show you around his or hers company.

They are proud to show you around and you should take mental notes of what they do and how they do it since you will be using this in the sales pitch later in the meeting.

Sometimes however they do not wish to show you around or talk about their company first but will more or less force you to pitch first since this will give them a good advantage when negotiating later.

Try as best as you can to avoid this. If they don’t want to talk about their company go for the personal approach and try to find at least some common ground to stand on. You will get a (hopefully) picture about the other person by the pictures and things they have in their office hook on to some of these to make a topic to talk about. You have 60 min and the actual pitch will usually only take 5 – 10 min and the rest is the parley that you are doing now.

Big company s may stop you even here and send you and their buyer to a neutral meeting room to give you as little leverage as possible. Then you will just try to do the best of it if you can’t or they wont talk anything else than business do that but at every opportunity try to find out how they do things and what use they could have from your product /service.

You will most likely be nervous when doing this for the first time it will show so if its to oblivious then tell the customer that this is in fact your first meeting but that you have worked in this field / you are confident in you product etc. This can create rapport so that he /she feels sympathy for you, makes them go easier and help you land the deal.

They are also humans!

Ok more on this in the next post.

The art of booking a meeting part 3

Knocking down doors.

This is the old school approach that is just that old school.

How you go about it?

Try to wear a good shoe for one since you will be walking a lot. A lot.

If you have a meeting in the area and some spare time you should walk around and walk in to stores or offices and ask for the manager or the decision maker. They will come and most will have raised their guard already so be sure to quickly defuse the situation with i was here on another meeting and could not help but spot your business. I would like to book a meeting with you to know more about what you do and to present you with what i can do to help you and your business.  I don’t have time now would be the most given answer to this approach, be understanding and say that neither do you but you would like to book the meeting at next week or what ever suits you / his or hers convenance = sometime soon.

This approach gives some really interesting new contacts since they are not your normal type of costumer and there for can surprise you in the sales potential. some will be small but it will still be worth it and sometimes a small front can hide really big company’s so don’t judge the book by the covers .

It don’t matter if you have a meeting in the area or not the important thing is that the one you meet thinks so. Since then you are more attractive and wanted as a business partner.

Some are really aggressive and more or less kicks you out the door try to not take it personal they are the same ones that will hang up or shout something on the phone. they are the ones missing out the benefit of having you as a business partner.

Remember that you actually have something that can help them and why should you help people like that?

So pretty much knock on as many doors as you come across and you will soon work out if you got the aptitude for it or if you need to change to get meetings in some other way.

Since the knock on the door is an old school approach so will my advice be; stay positive and remember that the next customer havent meet you yet and it can be the one that says yes to the meeting.

The art of booking a meeting part 2

Network booking.

Yes you really should use your network to book meetings.

If your active in sports for example take some time to talk to the others there until you have talked to everyone about what they do for a living and what you do and exchange cards. Will this get you any business? yes given enough time.

Now apply this concept whenever you meet a new person where ever it maybe the bus,opera,sports event,birthday party and … well you get the idea.

Do you think that you don’t know or get in contact with enough people. You do know a vast majority of the planet if you extend your network far enough in only a few steps your contact network is huge and that applies to anyone.

You should also add this philosophy on social networks like Facebook and others that like it. If you are not signed up yet just do it, soon you will realise that your closest friends knows a lot of people who will be important to you business wise. Contact them and invite them to lunch or something of the sort.

The local business organization will have meetings weekly or at least monthly, join all of this that you are able to. They are usually built around the idea of network socializing pre internet and works rather well, you are expected to introduce yourself and present what you do for a living and i can assure you that this will lead to business.

To boost your network one suggestion can be to throw a small informal party/get together with the invites being people you know well and ask them to bring one more. making the event a doubling of your current network. If this is something that you have success with do it again with others and you will soon be the most well-connected person in your area since you will actually know a person in every business available.

The art of booking a meeting part 1

The first thing you need to do is choose:

1. Booking on the phone

2. Network booking

3. Knocking down the doors booking

4. Make someone do the booking for you

Lets concentrate on number 1 for now.

Who do you want to meet with?

Usually the decision maker so Ceo or head of X.

Why do you want to meet them?

To sell something.  A product or a service that will be beneficial to their business.

When can you meet them?

As soon as possible. With the higher ranks on the company that you are usually trying to get the meeting with there are a lot of meetings with someone just like you and maybe even with competitors to you.  Dont be surprised if you have to book the meeting 4-12 weeks from now its ok because they will be there and that’s whats important right now. usually the cancellation rate of a meeting is around 1-2% and rescheduled meetings 7-10% depending how good / smooth your skills are when booking the meeting.