REVERSE ENGINEERING THE SALES PROCESS ~ 2/3

Part 1 of selling lessons series is here:

#10 Make customers for life time: It will help in recurring sales. Its not about first sale, its about the relationship you develop. The best businesses are those:

1. Where every sale brings a long term customer. Selling addons or cross selling to long term customers is easier. Amazon has an army of 110 million paid subscribers to Amazon prime. This is powerful. 
2. Where customers get personalized attention to their problems. We like to hear our name. Do you like when you get a happy birthday email from a website you once subscribed to? 
3. Where you often send gifts and compliments to your customers. People like to receive compliments and gifts. You don’t have to send large gifts, just keep sending small frequent gifts. 
4. Where you are co-creating with your customers. That gives ownership to customers and results in better product insights. Subway seeks our preferences and whatever comes out, We never complaint. 
5. Where you are sending emotional gifts to customers. It’s not about money always. Humans are product of emotions. We feel happy with little gestures. 

# 11 Are you meeting them first time? Build good rapport before you start making sale:

Building rapport doesn’t require you to be hilarious or highly charismatic. Here are few scientifically proven tips to build good rapport with prospects: 

1. Match vibes: Speak in the same vocal tone and volume as your prospect. If they are polite, be polite in your tone. If they are loud, You should match the tone. Everyone gives vibes. Are they soft and gentle? Are they strong and bold? You should match vibes with your prospect. Mirroring their hand movements can help. 
2. Find a common connection or similarity. If you went to the same college, hotel, place etc, it always helps to bring a common connection that binds you two. 
3. Break the pattern: Put yourself in prospects situation. They might be talking to other sales persons. They might expect you to behave in a certain cheesy manner. Your job is to break their expectations pattern and behave differently. Try to give them surprise by being less cheesy and not in haste to sell your product. 
4. Don’t focus on you, focus on prospect. Because everyone listens to only one radio station. WIN FM. Whats in it for me! The conversation must be all about the other person not you. 
5. Repeat and rephrase. You got to repeat what the next person is saying to give them the message that they are important for you. When we repeat and rephrase, the prospect thinks that this person understands my problem and he is getting me. 
6. Feedback Loops: Just keep giving them feedback and keep bringing them back into conversation. Ask a question, offer a solution and put a phrase at the end. “Does that make sense”, “Cool”? 

# 12 Target Low hanging fruits: Sales is all about putting buyer resistance level to 0. Imagine I graph resistance level on the scale of 1-10 with 10 being customers least likely to buy, You will need different effort with prospects who are at high resistance level as compared to those who are at lower resistance level. I suggest making a funnel. Plot all prospects on the resistance line and put efforts accordingly. 

Everyone is trying to sell to complete strangers by making big sales funnels. Here is a tip. Start selling to your family, friends, friends of friends, class mates and colleagues. They will show lesser resistance than complete strangers. You will notice that You will get more response from people you had met over last few days or weeks or months. You need to keep meeting people to get that advantage where they oblige. 

# 13. Life rewards results, not efforts: Believe in smart work, not hard work. No matter how much effort you put in, people reward you for your success not efforts. When players go to Olympics, very few say them goodbye at the airport. If they return successful, they will be welcomed by thousands. That is how life is. Stop feeling pity for yourself that it didn’t work out. Try to be with high achievers than whiners. Instead, think about how you could have done it better. How you could have worked smarter, not harder. Are you really solving customers problems? Are you eating low hanging fruits? Are you pitching to buyers with least resistance levels? 

# 14. Let prospects touch your product: If you are selling software, that can be freemium. If you are selling premium product, it can be physical touch. Let prospects touch and feel the product. That is tried and tested model. Despite nuisance of managing clothes in changing rooms, all apparel brands let you wear what you intend to buy. How do you feel when you touch your favorite car in showroom? 

#15. Have great sales conversations:

How are you starting a sales conversation? 

You start conversation with your product or service. Stop doing it. 

You start conversation with your detailed introduction. Stop doing it. 

Do your homework before every conversation. Its hard but you have to do it. Identify prospects with least expected resistance levels. Study them well. 

In first 20 seconds, talk about them. No talk about you or your product. Just tell them how much you know about them. 

Now here is the trick. Not everyone responds in same manner. There are people who really need it and they will give you some ears. There are some people who don’t need it at all but they can refer someone. You have to learn intelligent conversation where it does not sound like You are being cheesy and yet you are building rapport with prospect. 

The prospect must know 3 things in a conversation: 

• Who are you 
• Why are you having this conversation 
• WIN FM (Whats it it for me) 

How many times you have listened a call starting from: 

“Good morning, My name is Andy and I am calling from XYZ company” The purpose of your call is to sell but you wont put it this way. As soon as prospect realizes that you are making a sales, they will turn off their receiver.

Make a statement how you can help them. Focus your call around customers problem and how you can solve it. 

# 16. If you are running a website, here is how you should do sales: 

Subscription to newsletter > Valuable content > More Content > Sales Pitch > Valuable Content > Loop 

Once you build awesome content, use social media effectively. Content is fire and social media is gasoline. 

#17. Do not act desperate, sales process takes time! As I write this line, I remember my father would tell me “Clouds do not move to jungle if there is fire” Understand that selling is your problem and customers are already using something or they have found alternate ways to solve their problem. Sales process takes time. From building a good rapport to making a sale, there are many steps involved. Start selling way before the product is complete! That will give you more time and confidence to mature sales. If you delay selling until the end of product development, it is possible that you get a surprise from customers. 

Part 3 of selling lessons is here: