Winning the price wars

In this rocky economy, more companies are selling on price. In turn, price expectations are being pushed downward. To become a sales superstar and succeed against the low-ballers, you’ll need to arm yourself with new and improved sales skills. Here are a few strategies that I guarantee will boost your sales success.

Build emotional bonds 
At the heart of it, people tend to make emotional decisions, even when they use facts to rationalize their choices. Your job is to help your prospective clients realize — from a deep emotional point of view — why they need your company and the solutions you provide. By selling on emotion, you can remove yourself from price competition. There are two ways to sell on emotion: uncover and explore the anticipated pleasure your prospect will gain by hiring you, and uncover and explore the problems your prospect will solve by hiring you.

This second way is generally more powerful than the first. However, as salespeople, we often focus on the wrong problems. Mistakenly, we focus on the “landscape” problem, instead of focusing on the “personal” problems that are being caused by the landscape problem. Once you uncover the personal problems, you can then explore the “pain” this is causing your prospective client. When you do this, you help your clients make emotionally motivated decisions.

Ask the right questions
A sales superstar is not someone with the gift of gab. Rather it’s someone with the gift of listening and asking the right questions. You need your clients to do most of the talking — between 75 and 80 percent of the time — but you don’t want to lose control of the conversation. You maintain control by being the person asking the right questions — think of it like a talk-show host interviewing an important guest. The guests are flattered, and yet the conversation is controlled by the effective questioning skills of the host.

Measure and manage success
It’s said that, “If you measure it, you can manage and improve it.” In sales, this means you can improve your success by measuring and holding yourself accountable to certain sales indicators. At a minimum, you should track your win(loss) ratio. Many people accept far too low of a win ratio. Identify your win ratio and compare your results with other high-achieving companies in the industry. There is a big difference between industry averages and those performing at above-average levels.

Don’t over-rely on your strengths
You’ve spent your life developing skills in growing, which have helped you make sales and win new clients. But they have also helped you lose sales and lose new clients. When people become highly trained, they tend to over-rely on their skill set — maybe even showing off those skills to new prospects. But a sales superstar understands how his/her own strengths can get in the way of building rapport — and get in the way of uncovering the core customer needs.

Ask for the sale
No matter how good you are at building rapport and showing value, you need to master the process of “asking for the sale.” This is difficult for many salespeople, and it is often done incorrectly. Salespeople will put off asking for the sale, and even put off talking about price, for fear of being rejected. But it is in hearing your prospective client’s objections that you learn what’s at the core of their assumptions and misunderstandings. You can’t close a sale until you learn about and address the doubts in your client’s mind.

Jeffrey Scott is a business consultant and author of “The Referral Advantage” and “The Leader’s Edge.” At age 34, he took over and built his landscape business into a $10 million enterprise. To learn more visit www.GetTheLeadersEdge.com. Have a question? You can write Jeffrey at Jeff@jeffreyscott.biz.