Mastering the Art of Asking For The Order

asking for the order

asking for the order - Top Question from Google

How do you ask customers for the sale? (The short answer)

You should always remember, people do not like being sold to, but they love buying.  With this in mind the best way to ask for the order, is not to ask for the order.  If you use a consultative sales approach the customer will realise for themselves that there is a good fit between what you are selling and their needs.  The best sales professionals never have to ask for the order.  They simply create the right conditions for the buyer to buy.  

If you are using a traditional sales approach in B2B sales, there are several ways to ask customers for sales, depending on the context and the relationship you have with them. Here are some examples:

  • If you are in a business setting and have already established a relationship with the customer, you can ask for a sale by stating the benefits of your product or service and explaining why it would be a good fit for their needs. For example, you could say, “Our product has been proven to improve efficiency and save time, which I think would be valuable for your business. Would you like to discuss a purchase?”
  • If you are cold-calling or contacting potential customers for the first time, it’s important to be polite and respectful. Start by introducing yourself and your company, and then explain how your product or service can help them. For example, you could say, “Hi, my name is [Name] and I’m with [Company]. We offer a [Product/Service] that can help [Benefit]. Can I schedule a call to discuss how it could benefit your business?”

Overall, the key to asking for the sale or indeed anything, is to be polite, respectful, and informative. Show the value of your product or service, and be prepared to answer any questions they may have.

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1. Why it's important for salespeople to ask for the sale?

Not everyone is familiar with, or uses a consultative sales approach.  Therefore, it’s very important for those using traditional sales methodologies to ask for the sale. Asking for the sale is the final step in the sales process, and it’s what ultimately determines whether the salesperson is successful in making a sale. 

By asking for the sale, the salesperson is taking the initiative and putting the decision in the hands of the customer. This can be a powerful way to persuade the customer to make a purchase, and it can also help the sales person to close the deal more efficiently.

In addition to winning more sales, asking for the sale is also a crucial part of building a successful sales career. Sales is a profession that requires persistence, confidence, and the ability to handle rejection. 

Asking for the sale helps sales professionals to develop these skills, and it can also help them to build a track record of success. The ability to ask for the sale has a direct impact on the sales performance of your sales team.

2. Why asking for the sale can lose sales professionals the deal

Asking for the sale is an important step in the sales process, and it’s essential for making a successful sale. However, if it’s not done in the right way, it’s possible that asking for the sale could lose the deal. Here are a few reasons why this might happen:

  1. The customer isn’t ready: If the customer isn’t ready to make a decision, asking for the sale can be premature and can push them away. It’s important to carefully gauge the customer’s level of interest and readiness before asking for the sale.

  2. The customer has objections: If the customer has objections or concerns, asking for the sale without addressing those issues can be counterproductive. It’s important to listen to the customer’s objections and to address them before asking for the sale.

  3. The sales person is pushy or aggressive: Asking for the sale in a pushy or aggressive manner can be off-putting to the customer. Salespeople should be direct and clear in their request, but they should also be respectful and professional.

  4. The customer is dissatisfied: If the customer is unhappy with the product or service, or with the salesperson’s performance, asking for the sale can be futile. In these cases, it may be better to address the customer’s dissatisfaction and try to resolve the issues before asking for the sale.

Overall, asking for the sale is a crucial part of the sales process, but it’s important to do it in a way that is appropriate for the specific situation and customer.

asking for the sale

3. How fear of rejection stops sales professionals asking for the sale

Fear of rejection can definitely stop salespeople from asking for the sale. Asking for the sale is an inherently vulnerable position, and it requires the salesperson to put themselves out there and potentially face rejection. This can be intimidating, and it’s natural for salespeople to be afraid of being rejected.

However, it’s important for salespeople to overcome this fear and to ask for the sale anyway. Rejection is a natural part of the sales process, and it’s something that every salesperson will experience at some point in their career. By accepting that rejection is a possibility and by developing the skills and strategies to handle it effectively, sales people can overcome their fear of rejection and become more successful in their careers.

Sales people can overcome their fear of rejection in a number of ways, including the following:

  1. Develop a positive attitude: A positive attitude can help salespeople to stay motivated and focused, even in the face of rejection. By believing in themselves and their abilities, salespeople can maintain a sense of confidence and resilience, which can help them to overcome their fear of rejection.

  2. Practice effective rejection management: Sales people can learn how to manage rejection effectively by using techniques such as reframing, refocusing, and redirecting. These techniques can help sales people to view rejection in a more positive light, and to move on from rejection quickly and confidently.

  3. Seek support: Sales people don’t have to face their fear of rejection alone. Seeking support from colleagues, mentors, and peers can provide valuable encouragement and advice, and can help sales people to feel more confident and capable.

  4. Learn from rejection: Instead of viewing rejection as a failure, sales  people can learn from it and use it as an opportunity to improve. By analyzing why a particular sale didn’t go through, salespeople can identify areas for improvement and develop strategies to overcome similar objections in the future.

By adopting these strategies, sales people can overcome their fear of rejection and become more successful in their careers.

4. How to build confidence in salespeople

Here are some tips for building confidence in a sales team:

  1. Provide training and development: A sales team who are well-trained and well-equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed are more likely to be confident in their abilities. Invest in sales training and development programs that provide sales professionals with the tools and resources they need to be successful.

  2. Encourage positive thinking: Positive thinking is a powerful tool that can help sales professionals to build confidence and overcome challenges. Encourage sales professionals to focus on their strengths and to believe in their ability to succeed.

  3. Set achievable goals: Setting challenging but achievable goals can help sales professionals to feel a sense of accomplishment and to build their confidence. Create a goal-setting framework that provides clear benchmarks and rewards for success.

  4. Provide support and encouragement: Sales can be a tough and demanding profession, and sales professionals often face rejection and disappointment. Provide support and encouragement to help salespeople stay motivated and focused, and to build their confidence over time.

  5. Celebrate success: Recognizing and celebrating the successes of salespeople can help to boost their confidence and to reinforce the behaviours and strategies that lead to success. Make sure to celebrate both individual and team successes, and to provide public recognition for outstanding achievements.

By implementing these strategies, sales managers and leaders can help sales teams to build confidence, improve sales performance and to become more successful in their careers.

asking for the sale

5. Why salespeople feel uncomfortable asking for the sale

Asking for the sale can be uncomfortable for a sales person because they may fear rejection or feel like they are being pushy or aggressive. Additionally, some people may be unsure of how to ask for the sale in a way that is polite and respectful, or they may not be confident in their product or service. Here are some reasons why a sales person may feel uncomfortable asking for the sale:

  • Fear of rejection: Asking for the sale means putting yourself out there and potentially facing rejection. This can be intimidating and uncomfortable, especially for people who are sensitive to criticism or who have low self-esteem.

  • Concern about being pushy or aggressive: Some people may worry that asking for the sale will make them appear pushy or aggressive, which can be off-putting to customers. This may be especially true for people who are naturally reserved or introverted.

  • Uncertainty about how to ask for the sale: Asking for the sale is a skill that requires practice and finesse. If a sales person does not know how to do it effectively, it can make them feel unsure and uncomfortable.

  • Lack of confidence in their product or service: If you don’t believe in your product or service, it can be difficult to persuade others to buy it. This lack of confidence can make it uncomfortable to ask for the sale.

Overall, asking for the sale can be uncomfortable for many people because it involves overcoming these fears and doubts. However, with practice and the right mindset, you can learn to ask for the sale in a way that is confident and persuasive.

6. What are sales closing techniques?

Sales closing techniques are strategies that salespeople use to persuade a potential customer to make a purchase. These techniques can take many forms, but they all aim to help the salesperson overcome any objections the customer may have and to move the conversation towards a successful sale. Some common sales closing techniques include using a trial close to gauge the customer’s level of interest, asking for the sale directly, offering a discount or special deal, and using scarcity or urgency to create a sense of need. Sales closing techniques can be effective, but it’s important for salespeople to use them in an ethical and transparent manner.

Examples of sales closing techniques:

  1. The trial close: This involves asking the customer a question that helps the salesperson gauge their level of interest in the product or service. For example, the salesperson might say, “Based on what you’ve told me, it sounds like this product could be a good fit for your needs. Am I correct?”

  2. Asking for the sale directly: This is a straightforward approach where the salesperson simply asks the customer if they would like to make a purchase. For example, the salesperson might say, “Do you want to go ahead and place your order today?”

  3. Offering a discount or special deal: This involves offering the customer a financial incentive to make a purchase. For example, the salesperson might say, “If you decide to order today, I can offer you a 10% discount on your purchase.”

  4. Using scarcity or urgency: This involves creating a sense of need or urgency to persuade the customer to make a decision quickly. For example, the salesperson might say, “This offer is only available for a limited time, so if you want to take advantage of it, you’ll need to act now.”

  5. In certain circumstances such as selling home products like kitchens and windows, it can help to introduce an order pad or order form to help capture the customers order details.  The visible introduction of the order pad can prompt the buyer into moving forward.  

It’s important to note that these are just examples, and every sales person should use the closing techniques that are most appropriate for their specific situation and customers.

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7. Handling objections in sales

Objections from prospects are common as they try to reach the best buying decision for themselves.  However, in most cases they are not objections, they are simply the buyers way of saying that they require more detail. Nonetheless, the inability to handle objections will cost both the sales person and the company in lost sales. Here are some tips for handling objections in sales:

  1. Listen carefully to the objection: It’s important to understand exactly what the customer is saying and why they are objecting. Ask clarifying questions and pay attention to their body language and tone of voice to get a better sense of their concerns.

  2. Acknowledge the objection: Show the customer that you understand their concerns and that you are taking their objections seriously. This can help to build trust and rapport with the customer.

  3. Address the objection: Once you understand the customer’s objection, provide a response that addresses their concerns. This might involve providing additional information, offering a solution, or addressing any misconceptions the customer may have.

  4. Ask for the sale: After you have addressed the customer’s objections, it’s time to ask for the sale. Be direct and clear in your request, and be prepared to overcome any additional objections that the customer may have.

  5. Follow up: If the customer still isn’t ready to make a purchase, follow up with them at a later date. This can help to keep the conversation going and can increase the chances of making a sale in the future.

It’s important to remember that handling objections is an ongoing process, and every sales person should be prepared to handle objections at every stage of the sales process.

8. What are sales transition statements and how do you use them?

Sales transition statements are phrases that help you smoothly move from one part of a sales conversation to another. They can be used to introduce a new topic, ask for a sale, or overcome objections. Here are some examples of how you can use sales transition statements:

  • Introducing a new topic: “In addition to [current topic], there is another aspect of our product that I think you might find interesting. It’s [new topic].”

  • Asking for a sale: “Based on what we’ve discussed, I think our product would be a great fit for your needs. Are you ready to move forward with a purchase?”

  • Overcoming objections: “I understand your concern about [objection]. Let me assure you that [reassurance/solution to objection].”

To use sales transition statements effectively, make sure they are smooth and natural-sounding. Avoid using language that sounds too salesy or pushy, and focus on addressing the customer’s needs and concerns. By using these phrases to move smoothly from one topic to another, you can help guide the conversation and ultimately persuade the customer to make a purchase.

9. What are the most popular sales closing phrases?

Sales closing phrases or sales closing questions are used to conclude a sales conversation and persuade the customer to make a purchase. Some of the most popular sales closing phrases include:

  • “Are you ready to move forward with a purchase?”

  • “Can I count on you to buy today?”

  • “If you’re happy with everything we’ve discussed, shall we go ahead and get started?”

  • “Based on what we’ve discussed, I think our product is a great fit for your needs. What do you think?”

  • “I’m confident that our product will help you [achieve goal/solve problem]. Are you ready to make a commitment?”

It’s important to remember that these phrases are just suggestions, and the best sales closing phrase will vary depending on the situation and the customer. The key is to find the right questions or phrase that feel natural and authentic, and that helps you conclude the conversation in a way that persuades the customer to make a purchase.

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10. Why a consultative sales approach is important in modern selling

A consultative sales approach is important in modern selling for several reasons. First, it allows the salesperson to better understand the customer’s needs, goals, and challenges, and to tailor their solutions to meet those needs. This can help to create a more personalized and effective sales pitch, and it can also help to build trust and rapport with the customer.

Second, a consultative sales approach is more focused on the customer’s needs than on the salesperson’s goals. This can help to create a more mutually beneficial and long-term relationship with the customer, rather than a transactional one-time sale.

Third, a consultative sales approach is more adaptable and flexible than traditional sales approaches. In today’s fast-paced and constantly changing business environment, salespeople need to be able to adapt quickly and to provide solutions that meet the customer’s evolving needs. A consultative sales approach allows salespeople to do this more effectively.

Overall, a consultative sales approach is important in modern selling because it allows salespeople to provide more effective solutions, to build stronger relationships with customers, and to be more adaptable to changing business conditions.

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How to Build an Outbound Sales Team

How to Build an Outbound Sales Team

How to Build an Outbound Sales Team – Top question from Google

What is outbound sales?

Outbound sales is the process of a sales team or salespeople initiating engagement with potential and existing customers. This could encapsulate trying to secure new customers, up selling to existing customers, or general account management. In contrast, inbound sales relies on a company’s marketing strategy to drive customer interest, and customers will contact the company to enquire about their services. This blog post will tell you how to build an outbound sales team.

Preparing to go Outbound

In the rush to go outbound many companies either overlook or pay little attention to the core foundation of every successful outbound sales campaign – their value proposition. Without this most campaigns will fail at best, at worst, they will fail you will lose market traction. you will lose your best sales people and you will also lose a lot of money.

A Proven Value Proposition

Many companies make the mistake of trying to scale their sales operations without a proven value proposition with disastrous effects.  Whether you chose to build your own outbound team or to subcontract to a specialist you need a proven value proposition.  The more time and money you invest on proving your value proposition will be returned ten fold in your results.  This does not just apply to Startups.  Those that believe they have already proven their value proposition can equally benefit by refining and fine tuning what they have. 

Words Sell

Whilst most of us would accept the importance of words in the world of Business to consumer few people in B2B dedicate sufficient time and energy to finding the right words to describe our products and services.  Ask and Pay per click specialist who is restricted to 30 characters for the headline and 90 for the description of the importance of word choice.  That’s characters not words.

Technology

We are blessed in the modern sales world with lots of great outbound technologies which makes the outbound process both easier and more productive. From intent data, to auto diallers, to call recording and artificial intelligence there are a plethora of great tools to choose from that will help your outbound team be successful. Be sure to invest the time and budget to arm your sales team with the technology they need.

Sales Leadership

An often overlooked area of business is sales management. Many sales managers have come from a sales background and were at some stage a top sales rep. Unfortunately the skills required for modern sales management are very different to just selling and the position of sales manager is a key hire for any business. Without a great sales manager your best sales reps will leave and the worst reps will stay which is the exact opposite of what you want to happen. Company culture is hugely important in any business and no more so than in an inbound and outbound sales team.

In short, without a proven value proposition and good sales management, you will spend more money and take much longer to get where you want to go. These three areas are an essential component for a scalable outbound process.

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Outbound Sales Strategies

Building an Inhouse Team or Outsourcing

When developing an outbound sales team, sales managers and company owners have two choices. They can build an in-house sales team or they can outsource the process to an external agency or group of salespeople.

Each option has its own positives and negatives, and sales managers and company owners should consider these carefully before making any changes.

Through outsourcing their outbound sales operations, companies can hire people with a proven track record of success that they might not otherwise be able to afford.

Outsourcing can be more economic for some companies, as they do not have to resource staff training or office space for them. It can also provide more cost flexibility, as the salespeople will not be tied down to long-scale contracts.

In-house sales teams are much more likely to develop excellent product knowledge over time, which they can convey to prospective clients. Outsourcing can also result in a lack of control of the sales process, and the company cannot guarantee that the leads generated are of a sufficient quality until much later.

There are also concerns that an outbound sales team may not be as “bought into” your product, company or company ethos, and this could be purveyed to prospective clients.

Remember, a poor outbound experience is the fastest way to destroy your brand. Badly executed outbound calls will have a negative impact on your brand and could lose you valuable market traction.

Outbound prospecting particularly cold calling, is very different to responding to inbound sales leads. Your sales team and lead generation strategy should be built with this in mind.

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Outbound Sales Strategies

What are outbound sales activities?

Outbound sales requires salespeople to go to the potential clients. In contrast, inbound sales where potential clients come to the company, either for more information or to buy their product/service.

Therefore, traditionally outbound sales does not include any marketing or product development tasks.

Outbound selling can be very labour intensive, and in the case of cold calling it needs a high volume of calls to have a meaningful impact on sales. This is because:

80% of cold calls go straight to voice mail – Sales Intel

It takes an average of 18 attempts to reach a technology buyer – Gartner

In addition to being labour intensive, outbound sales has a high churn rate in terms of staff. Many companies struggle to retain the people they have, let alone build a high performing team of SDR’s.

Lead generation is the starting point of an outbound sales process. Some company’s will have a dedicated in-house lead generation team, whilst others leave it for their general salespeople to handle.

In most cases when outbound sales is left to general salespeople it simply doesn’t happen. Sales people have a skill of always finding something “more important” to do than lead generation.

Outbound sales is a contact sport, pure and simple and requires salespeople to contact prospective customers. This could be by telephone, email, LinkedIn or face to face, however predominantly this is done via phone and email.

From our own experience SDR’s who use a multichannel approach are much more successful than those who are only using the telephone or email.

Often as part of the outbound sales role SDR’s will undertake what is known as sales qualification process. This involves a salesperson determining whether or not the lead is likely to become a customer or not.

Once the leads have been qualified, leads are typically then passed to a Business Development Rep whose responsible for any form of product demo and closing the deal.

In more traditional sales organisations this may include setting appointments for the companies field sales reps. The length of the sales process will depend on the target market, the industry and the customer.

As an outbound sales person you will be expected to do the following:

  • Research leads
  • Generate new sales leads
  • Qualifying inbound sales leads and build a sales pipeline
  • Setting appointments with potential or existing customers and follow the sales process
  • Follow up proposals
  • Cold and warm calling
  • Cold and warm emails
  • Social Selling
  • Customer service calls, with a view to upselling
  • Product demos
  • Account Management

Outbound prospecting is especially vital for companies with little or no marketing budget. This is this because in these circumstances, prospective customers are unlikely to come to the company in great numbers, and as such the company will have to go to the potential clients.

Outbound sales strategy

Having a great team of outbound sales reps important, but if they don’t have a good sales strategy to follow, they are unlikely to be successful. Creating a sales strategy should be one of your first tasks when establishing an outbound sales team.

A good outbound sales strategy requires the right sales playbook (script, methods etc.) and the right methods to measure success. Opinions on sales scripts vary, but if you develop a good sales script, it ensures a consistent approach and can help new sales reps get up to speed faster.

Our research here at Klozers, find that sales teams with playbooks are 33% more likely to be high performers. If a sales script is used, preparation should be used so the salesperson will appear to be talking as naturally as possible.

Different sales methods should be explored to see if they will result in more successful sales. For example, consultative selling could result in an increase in sales.

Preparation is key for a successful outbound sales strategy. Salespeople should have all of the data, scripts and tools they need before they start calling. They should also have an excellent knowledge of the products or services.

Whatever sales strategy is used, it is important that there are processes in place to monitor its success. If certain aspects of the strategy haven’t been successful, then either the sales strategy can be amended, or extra training and coaching should be organised.

Data can be used to monitor the most successful times to make outbound sales calls. For example, if the data shows that outbound calls are more successful on a Wednesday afternoon, then greater focus should be placed on this time, and team meetings should be avoided at that time.

Outbound and Inbound Sales Support

At Klozers the inbound and outbound sales process that we teach in our sales training is based on the success we have had in our own business. We will show you exactly the sales strategies and outbound methods that we use every day to target customers, qualifying leads, make a sales call, cold calling, cold emailing and drive customer engagement.

Furthermore, if you would like to optimise your inbound and outbound channels we can teach you how we use content marketing combined with search engine optimisation, to turn our website in to a lead generation machine.

We have a number of ways we support SaaS companies. From advice on recruitment and value proposition development, through to telesales, social selling training and strategy training, we can help you win more business, grow your business. and have more fun along the way.

Klozers has been selected among the Top Lead Generation Companies by Designrush

Consultative Sales Training | How Customers Want to Buy

consultative sales training course

Consultative Sales Training – Top question from Google

What is a Consultative Sales Approach?

Consultative selling is very different to more traditional forms of selling, as it doesn’t actually focus on selling. Instead, it focuses on building relationships with customers, listening to their problems and only then, offering them solutions to their problems.

Asking open-ended questions and active listening are key components of any consultative sales approach. This approach works because potential buyers are more motivated to buy products or services that meet their own needs, rather than the needs of the sales professional.

A consultative sales approach truly puts the buyer first. Instead of just selling any old product, or what happens to be on promotion that month, sales professionals using the consultative sales approach will look to sell products and services that match the exact needs of their buyers, which makes for more productive business development results and satisfied customers.

Instead of a scripted sales pitch, sales teams can use conversational skills and listen to their buyers personal and business needs. Only then do they provide advice and guidance, which includes being adaptable to the different challenges buyers may face.

The consultative sales approach is highly effective and can lead to far greater results for your business and better long term customer relations. Using other sales techniques typically results in salespeople chasing leads that are not a good match for the buyer. Whilst they may well win a first order, if the product isn’t right for the buyer and their customers, it is unlikely that they will build long term relationships.

However, using the consultative approach, the sales rep needs to listen to the customer needs and provide meaningful solutions, meaning your new customer can come back time and time again for your product or services.

It has become increasingly popular in recent years as sales reps and sales managers managers have realised that traditional sales techniques have become less effective, because buyers have become wary of sales pitches. Instead of being sold a product, people prefer their salespeople to take a genuine interest in them as a person and their business.

The key components of a consultative sales approach is as follows:

  • Direct route to market
  • Low volume of sales but high profit margins – less popular but still relevant with transactional sales
  • Requires high level of industry knowledge with experienced sales people
  • Higher cost to employers, with lots of training required
  • Medium to long length sales cycles

Consultative selling requires a change in mindset. Instead of going out to sell, salespeople will need to go and have a conversation with potential buyers, in a structured and reputable manner. Building trust first with any potential buyer is a big aspect of consultative selling.

Initially a lot of sales people struggle to adapt to the consultative sales method, as they are almost hard wired to sell products and services via the traditional features and benefits method. However, if you choose to adapt a consultative sales approach, it is important to stick with it, as modern buyers have become more resistant to being sold products.

Steps involved in Consultative Selling

1. Research potential buyers thoroughly before contacting them

Before engaging with potential buyers, it is important that the salesperson researches the potential customer, thoroughly and effectively. If the salesperson is used to a more traditional fast-paced sales environment, taking the time at the onset of the sales process to research may seem like an alien process.

However, first impressions matter, and considering the consultative selling method prides itself on expert knowledge, you need to make sure that you have done enough research. Similarly, consultative selling involves asking probing questions, and without enough research it can be difficult or almost impossible for salespeople to ask probing questions.

2. Define the Symptoms – What are the symptoms of the problem the potential customer is facing?

During this first step the salesperson will try to get an understanding of the issue at hand. Here the salesperson will play a role of expert consultant, where their expertise of the industry can be used to discuss the issues.

It is likely that the buyer may only have a surface-level knowledge of the symptoms, therefore the expertise of a consultative salesperson is vital.

At this stage, it is vitally important that the salesperson doesn’t revert to a more traditional techniques and try to sell products or services. This is because, it is very early in the process, and it is unlikely that the salesperson will have formed a fully rounded understanding of the issues at hand, and could recommend the wrong solution.

3. Root cause analysis – ask the buyer questions to understand and diagnose the underlying causes.

During this stage, the salesperson will need to dig deeper into the problem, and find out what is causing it.

By digging deeper into the problem, the salesperson can use their knowledge to generate powerful questions that will reassure the buyer that they are dealing with an expert in the field, and that they can use their expertise to offer solutions to their problem.

This step can be a really powerful tool to build the buyers confidence in the salesperson.

4. Business impact – Ask how the issue is impacting on the business. Does it impact on morale, performance, profitability or all three?

At this stage, the salesperson and the buyer have agreed on a diagnosis of the issue, and they will now begin to understand how this impacts on the business.

If the issue has very little impact on the business, in terms of profitability or revenue, then it is very unlikely that the buyer will look to make a significant contribution (either financially or with their time) to finding a solution.

If this is the case, or if the salesperson knows that their product or service isn’t the solution to the buyers problems, then the salesperson should cut their losses here.

5. Financial Impact – Find out how much the problem will cost the business if they do not fix it.

Identifying the financial impact of the issue is another major milestone in the consultative sales method. This can be easier to measure in objective measurements, such as monetary values, rather than subjective measurements such as staff morale or culture, which are far more difficult to monitor.

If the financial impact runs into the hundreds of thousands of pounds each year, and the solution only costs £10,000 then this could be a very attractive proposal for the buyer. Alternatively, if the solution costs £100,000, and it would only save the company £10,000 each year, it will be a much less attractive proposition to the buyer.

6. Personal Impact – Find out how the problem affects the buyer personally – how does it affect their day to day job?

Potential buyers are far more likely to be convinced by a solution, if the issue directly impacts upon them. This is why when using the consultative selling skills, it is vitally important to make sure that you are speaking to the right person.

If the salesperson and buyer are involved in a complex sales solution, it is likely that the 6 step process above may need to be repeated. It may also need to be repeated with different departments and stakeholders. Whilst this inevitably adds to the time taken to sell a product or service, patience is an important aspect of consultative sales.

consultative selling skills
Consultative Selling Approach

What do you need to be a good consultative salesperson?

Consultative selling requires some key selling skills which aren’t necessarily associated with more traditional selling methods. This includes:

  • Active Listening – traditionally salespeople aren’t renowned for their listening skills, but under the consultative selling method, using active listening is a key requirement. Not only does it help understand the buyers issues, it also helps you stand out from the crowd. As buyers are being turned off by hard sales pitches, if a buyer needs to choose between two similar products, they may choose for the one with the sales person that genuinely listened to their issues.
  • Emotional intelligence – This covers peoples ability to evaluate, perceive and control emotions. Buying and selling remains an emotional process, and it is important for salespeople to respond to the buyers emotions.
  • Expertise – Because consultative selling requires the salesperson to really delve deep into issues, it is important that sellers are experts in their field. However, no one wants to be overawed with information, so the salesperson will need to communicate their expertise efficiently.
  • Domain knowledge – Similar to expertise, salespeople will need to have a specialised knowledge of the whole domain. Not only do salespeople need to know what their customers want, they need to know what their customers’ customer want.
  • Self-awareness – Consultative salespeople will need to understand and manage our thoughts and the impact that can have on people.
Consultative Sales Training
Consultative Selling Approach

What questions to ask?

Asking the right questions is probably the most important part of consultative selling. Asking aimless questions or having an unstructured conversation with a potential buyer, is unlikely to either build rapport or project confidence. Whilst consultative selling doesn’t involve hard selling, salespeople can still funnel a conversation one way by using structured and well designed questions. Using specialised questioning techniques when combined with active listening and the required expertise can be a winning combination.

There are several types of consultative selling questions. They are:

  • Open ended questions – These are used to gather further information
  • Closed questions – Should be used for confirmation
  • Summary questions – Sales professionals should will summarise or paraphrase the prospective buyers statement and turn it into a question. These are used to confirm the correct understanding of issues.
  • Funnelling questions – These channel the conversation through a particular area.
  • Redirect questions – Sales Professionals should use these questions to control the conversation and move the sales process forward.
  • Opposing redirect – These questions is answering a question with a question back to the buyer.
  • Presumptive questions – Presumptive questions are questions when the salesperson knows or presume the prospective buyer does not know the answer.

Which Products and Services are best suited to Consultative Sales Techniques?

The great thing about Consultative sales techniques are that they can be used in almost any industry, or with any product or service. Our own clients sell a wide range of services from Waste Management through to Aircraft Manufacturing each using a consultative sales approach.

Furthermore, once you have mastered the system it can be as flexible as possible. We have clients using a consultative sales approach and closing deals on one inbound sales call, and we also have clients using the exact same consultative approach to close large enterprise deals through a six month sales cycle.

What is Consultative Sales Training?

Consultative selling requires a change in mindset and as such effective training is vitally important. As a specialist sales provider we offer training in consultative sales, and a range of courses from giving people a solid baseline understanding of the method through to those seeking to master the sales techniques.

As an international training provider we believe that sales teams learn better if they are doing the task, rather than reading text books or watching a presentation, and as such part of our training includes role place sessions. Consultative sales training also cover all aspects of the sales process, including social selling techniques.

It is also important to remember that consultative selling requires ongoing reinforcement training, so you should consider booking in several sessions, to ensure that your sales team do not revert to their natural selling habits.

Outside of training, under any sales technique it is important that sales professionals have enough support and encouragement. This is even more important under the consultative selling technique. Sales coaching from a sales manager between training sessions, can be a vitally important resource.

You can check out our course on consultative sales and book online here.

Selling Information Technology Services | Everything you need to Know

Selling Information Technology Services

Top question from Google - How to sell IT Services

How to sell IT services?

Selling it support services is very similar to selling other intangible services.

  1. Build your brand and make it as attractive as possible
  2. Develop a detailed ideal client profile and create a niche for yourself
  3. Link your intangible services to tangible deliverables that are important to your customer
  4. Lear as much about your products and services as possible and how they impact your customers
  5. Develop your relationship building skills and your emotional intelligence

As a business owner selling technology, managed services or custom development client satisfaction plays a key role in your long term success. Clients expect Rolls Royce service at competitive prices as competition in the technology industry is fierce.

1. Building your brand

As you would expect building a Brand in a competitive market like IT is not an overnight job.  There are however, many companies who have successfully entered the market and gained rapid market share by being more agile than existing brands. 

For example, the introduction of Microsoft Office 365 allowed new players to enter the Microsoft Channel while the existing partners continued to focus on Small Business Server sales. 

New companies specialising in Cloud services and SaaS have disrupted the market by starting off with very niche services and expanding out as they grew.

In our experience the best way to build a brand is to first focus on your Inbound Sales Channel which inevitably will raise your awareness in the market and start to generate inbound sales leads.

For more information on developing your Inbound Sales Channel or any of our other consulting services please get in touch with one of our coaches via the contact us page.

2. Ideal Client Profile – who are you selling to?

Success in selling technology will require in depth research and creating your ideal client profile. This is something that most companies either forget or fail to see the importance of.  The result is – if you’re trying to sell to everybody, you will end up selling to nobody”. 

Taking time to thoroughly research your target market and identify the business pains they have that you intent to help them solve is one of the most important parts when selling information technology services.

At Klozers we use both an Ideal Client Profile which is focussed on the types of companies we sell to and a Perfect Prospect Profile which is targeted at the individuals within the ideal client profile that we sell to.

You can access the template below and many more via the SaaS Sales Playbook contained within our Resources section.

Ideal Client Profile Template
Selling Information Technology Services

3. Your Value Proposition – what makes you different?

The reality is that many IT service companies appear the same – one Microsoft Partner can look the same as many others.  Yes, it’s possible to differentiate with the area within the Microsoft stack that you focus on, such as SharePoint or Teams, however, what makes you different to all the other Partners focussing on those same technologies.

How you differentiate your value proposition is key because, unless you get this right, you will be seen as a “me too” player which means that you will end up competing on price.  The best way to discover how you differentiate your business is to research both your target audience and your competition and find the gaps. 

Initially these gaps may seem too small to build an empire, however, they are there as starting points as your brand will evolve over the years.

In addition to your differentiation you should also ensure that you have a strategy to make your entire team Subject Matter Experts. 

Your company and your people should be seen as Thought Leaders and be the first to market talking about new products, services and trends.  You don’t even have to deliver these new services, just talking about them puts your personal and company brand out there.

4. The Complex Sale

It’s important when selling technology services to remember, in nearly every case there will be multiple people in your customers decision making unit. 

Studies show that most technology sales fall into the category of the Complex Sale meaning they will have anything between 14 and 23 potential people involved with 80% of them having senior roles.

The addition of extra decision makers elongate the sales cycle and further complicates the sales process.  Many of the decision makers will be in different departments and often have competing priorities. 

For example, when looking for Marketing Automation software the marketing department will typically want what they perceive to be the best marketing solution. 

The decision makers from sales may want an automation platform that integrates with their existing CRM system.

How to Master the Complex Sale
Selling Information Technology Services

5. Stages of the Sales Process

As with any complex sale it’s important to have a strong sales process that both your team can follow and works for your customers. 

Nearly every organisation has their own unique sales process, however, it’s worth noting, any process is only as good as those implementing it and detail and consistency are king. 

If you are selling to large enterprise organisations it’s important to understand these companies will not change their buying process to match your sales process.  The vendor needs to first understand what the Enterprise Buying process is and then align their internal process with this.   

Whilst having a sales process is important, what’s equally important in our experience is understanding:

  1. What “qualifies” a prospect to move from one stage to the next?
  2. What soft skills do I need to move a prospect from one stage to the next?

My first experience of this was with the 10 stage Microsoft Solution Selling Process (MSSP).  This was not necessarily a bad sales process but little thought had been given at the time as to how you could move prospects through the process. 

Microsoft have since invested heavily in their whole sales process and sales enablement and have some of the best training and support available.

6. Selling a product vs selling a service

Before the advent of the cloud and SaaS solutions, IT was predominantly a product sale.  “Shifting boxes” and “selling tin” were common phrases among IT Sales Professionals.  Selling servers and IT hardware were predominantly products, and the solutions were mostly the mixing and configuration of the different types of hardware with some custom development software thrown in for good measure.

SaaS has changed this forever as fewer and fewer companies have on premise hardware or software.  With everything now hosted in the cloud, many companies now only have Laptops, a printer and a modem on premise.

This move from what was largely a transactional and tangible sale of a product, to a more solution orientated, intangible sale, has proven difficult for many sales professionals as one is

Most people find selling a product much easier than selling a service because your prospects get to see, touch and experience a product.  Human beings communicate through our five senses and these are extremely important in selling.  Next time you’re walking past a coffee shop or your local bakers I’m sure the aromas will be trying to entice you in the door.

Car salespeople love getting potential buyers to sit inside a new car as the small of the new car, the feeling of the leather seats and comfort of sitting down creates a desirable experience for most of us.

Compare these scenarios with Insurance or Pensions or cloud based technology solutions where the five senses are rarely engaged by the “product”.

7. Technology Sales Models

When it comes to Technology Sales Models there are many different models to choose from:

SPIN Selling developed by Neil Rackham in the late 80’s focussed on S – situation, P – problem, I – implication and N – need or payoff.  This is still hugely popular, however, some people believe this SPIN is much better suited to simple transactional sales with few buyers, rather than the complex technology sales of todays market.

Solution Selling as the name says focusses on selling a solution rather than a product and is widely used among technology sales professionals. Solution Selling involves much more time in the early stages of the sales uncovering the prospects needs and pain points and uncovering the underlying problems that are causing the pain.  Furthermore, solution selling is better suited to selling technology services as it also helps uncover different decision makers and stakeholders within the business. 

Consultative Sales Methodology is very similar to Solution Selling, however, where Solution Selling is based around selling a technology Consultative Selling is more focussed on the pre-sales consulting stage and building relationships through empathy.

Whilst choosing the right sales methodology is important these are all things that can be learned.  What’s more important, are the values and work ethics of your team. 

How to Master the Complex Sale
Selling Information Technology Services

8. Selling Software as a Service (SaaS)

SaaS Sales Campaign in a BoxTraditionally software was sold as an on premise solution and was often customised to the individual company’s requirements.  The advent of SaaS has changed this dramatically and reduced the amount of custom software development undertaken in house.

The Custom Development of software was expensive, time consuming and in some cases took so long that the original requirement had either changed or was no longer required by the time the software had been built and deployed.

SaaS software is essentially a switch on and switch off service allowing greater flexibility with the added benefit of lower entry costs as the software or platform is being resold multiple times.  No more high up from capital costs with SaaS providing the perfect Op Ex solution.

Selling SaaS solutions are different to selling technology services.  Whereby most SaaS sales are focussed on the software, features and benefits and demos these things are sometimes never touched on when selling managed services.

SaaS companies also have a slightly different methodology with most using MEDDIC or even CHAMP.

MEDDIC is probably the best known SaaS sales process with M standing for Metrics, E standing for the economic buyer, D stands for Decision making criteria as in why choose you. The next D stand for Decision making process, I stands for Identification of the pains and lastly C stands for Champion, who will help you sell internally.

CHAMP – is a simpler version with CH representing Challenges, A standing for Authority, M standing for Money and P standing for Priority. 

9. Selling IT Managed Services

Managed Services or Managed IT Services are what we would describe as the Business as Usual IT services that a business needs to keep the doors open.

As a services business very large part of your market will be SME’s and you will be dealing with the Business Owner who may have little or no knowledge around technology.

As always when selling technology risk avoidance for these clients is key as they will need reassurance certain disaster scenarios are covered.

Whereas historically these would have included a lot of hardware sales the modern Managed Services contracts predominantly involve delivering services such as licensing, patch updates, remote monitoring, technical support and advice, deployment and possibly configuration of SaaS software. 

The outsourced managed services model is particularly popular with Small Medium Enterprise (SMEs) organisations who typically are not large enough to have their own in house IT Department and therefore outsource the IT function in their business via a Managed Services contract.

The alternative to outsourced managed services is sometimes referred to as a break-fix contract where the customer is simply charged on a form of pay as you go. 

Break-fix contracts now seem to be very rare as most services businesses prefer to sell the security of a Managed Services contract whereby the clients know the costs every month and can plan around this.

Many larger organisations will also outsource part of their IT function but often retain some specialist IT staff to manage the contracts and deal with specialist IT projects unique to their organisation.

Consultative Sales Process
Selling Information Technology Services

10. IT Professional Services

Selling information technology services may involve what’s called IT Professional Services.  These are typically intangible services based around:

  1. Fault Diagnosis and Problem Solving. Let’s pretend that you’re organisations IT system develops a fault and no one internally is capable of identifying the root cause of the problem an fixing it.  You may choose to approach an external contractor who provide IT Professional Services and they will supply a specialist to find and fix the problem. 
  2. Consulting.  With technology moving so rapidly it’s almost impossible to keep up with everything.  Your organisation may choose to hire an IT Professional Services firm to benchmark where you currently are from an IT perspective and then make recommendations based on your current and future requirements. Examples of this could be moving from On Premise to the Cloud or some form of Business Process Automation.
  3. Bespoke Solutions. Some organisations require completely bespoke solutions designed and built for them.  This may require business analysts, project managers in addition to the technologists in order to achieve the outcomes the client desires.

Both Professional Services and Managed Service contracts are classed as Business to Business (B2B) Sales.  Largely speaking, Professional Services sales tend to be to larger enterprise organisations, with Managed Services contracts more suited to SME and Mid Market companies who have a limited IT Department.

11. Turning your IT Product Knowledge into powerful sales questions

Product knowledge when selling technology services as you can imagine is hugely important, however, it’s not for the reasons you may be thinking. 

Everyone has heard the saying “when you’re telling you’re not selling”.  Modern selling regardless of which sales methodology you are using is based around intelligent questioning.  The value of any sales professional is not in the information they give, but in the information the gather. 

Technology sales people have previously earned a reputation of talking “bits and bytes” which left the non-technical buyers even more confused. 

The most successful Technology Services reps now focus on selling business solutions that solve business problems.  The technology in many cases is completely irrelevant to the user, its what the technology enables them to do that is important.  Those are the reasons people will buy.

Product knowledge in any sale has only two benefits as follows:

  1. The product knowledge should be turned into powerful sales questions that make the prospect stop and think: “wow what a great question”, “wow, why didn’t I think of that”, “wow this sales rep has done this before”, “wow this sales rep really is a subject matter expert”, “wow I wished my sales reps were as good as this one”.
  2. The product knowledge should provide the self confidence the sales rep needs to go into any board room and not be intimidated or fearful.  The product knowledge should allow the sales rep to say to themselves “this company may be great at abc but they need me because I am an expert in xyz.  Without confidence in the boardroom sales people will be outmanoeuvred by both their competitors and savvy buyers.
Selling Information Technology Services

12. CIO’s and other Buyers you need to target.

In many cases the CIO or Head of IT is at the very least involved in the decision making process when selling technology services if not the final decision maker.  This has however, changed for line of business applications over the years, with the advent of SaaS or cloud-based software. 

In some cases where companies have developed very specific SaaS solutions that will only be used within the one department the “Line of Business Head” would fulfil the role of the CIO. 

For example, purchases of a SaaS solution such as Digital Signature software that will be used to allow the companys sales people to get contracts signed digitally would typically not involve the CIO.

It’s also worth noting that studies show 93% of B2B buyers will require a business case before they can make a decision. In general a Business Case usually means that something is going to require board approval which takes us back to the complex sale.

CIO’s are highly valuable buyers and they know this. With many being introverts they often keep a low profile on social media and are difficult to start relationships with.

With this in mind it’s important to be armed with research, data, insights and case studies to demonstrate the value.

As previously mentioned these clients expect and require in depth research before approaching them, a track record of successfully delivering services in their niche with a high level of client satisfaction.

Sales Training and Consulting for B2B Companies

sales training and consulting

Why invest in Sales Training and Consulting?

There are normally two reasons companies invest in our Sales Training and Consulting services. Firstly, they are often in a hurry to find sales growth and are looking for a short cut, a growth hack. 

Often these companies would eventually find the right strategies and tactics themselves, but they may be keen to capitalise on their first mover advantage or satisfy the needs of external investors. 

For these companies we provide a shortcut, we help them avoid the pitfalls and roadblocks that every growing  business experiences. 

When you engage with Klozers your team has access to over 70 years experience in B2B sales and marketing. 

Our sales training can help you get the best out of your team, alongside our consultancy services that will help you deploy the changes identified by our consultancy

Let’s take a closer look at why it makes so much sense to use sales training and consulting services together.

1. Why sales consulting compliments your sales training?

Many companies make the mistake of rushing into training as the solution to improving sales performance. 

Indeed, training may be part of the solution, but it is never the whole solution.  Before any training takes place it’s important to understand the root causes of the challenges within the sales department and only when we truly understand the problems can we prescribe the best possible solution. 

By rushing into training we would be assuming that everything else that affects sales is 100% perfect, and that is simply never the case. 

As with anything, the greater the investment upfront in terms of the diagnosis, the more effective the training will be. 

This is because the training can then be customised to meet the exact needs of the business which makes it much more impactful.

Sales Training and consulting companies

2. Why is Sales Training so effective?

Sales training builds both skills and confidence, and those are simply unbeatable in front of a customer.   

The best salespeople are like athletes and they are hungry to learn more and stay at the top of their game. 

The reason they are so good is that they are constantly looking for an edge, an advantage, and this keeps driving them forward. 

These are small but important things that make the difference and gets more deals over the line.  Our training is designed to keep your team at the top of their game and help them benefit from the very latest insights and industry best practice.

Our sales trainers work hard to keep your team engaged and motivated during training sessions, using a range of mediums to maintain their attention and inspire them.

Your sales trainer will help your team sell more effectively whether that be over the phone, in-person or online.

They can help them improve their lead generation, closing and account management skills, and provide indispensable mentoring services.

3. What happens before training takes place?

Before your training sessions begin, it’s important to identify what you want to get from them. As a sales training provider we offer bespoke services that are based on your specific needs and challenges.

We can provide a full sales consultancy service in advance of any training.  This would typically include an evaluation of your current sales unit in relation to sales maturity and best practice.

We can also provide full training needs analysis so you can gain a better understanding of your requirements before staring any training course.

For sales training to be effective, they need to be delivered in a way that maintains your teams’ attention, which means your sessions will include a great deal of interactivity.

Our sales training sessions include a range of demonstrations, exercises, games and roleplay.

Sales Consulting Services
Sales Consulting Services

4. What is the aim of Sales Training

Our goal as a provider is not to deliver sales training, but to deliver results. 

Therefore we believe the goal of Sales training is to help you meet a range of sales goals faster than you would if you were to continue without any intervention.

Not every company’s needs are the same, but businesses often invest in sales training because they want to improve their staff’s sales skills, close more deals, create more conversions, make their staff feel more supported, improve morale and boost the average value of their sales.

However, ultimately all of these lead to one overall benefit – an improvement in results. Some companies invest in training because they have identified a particular problem that needs addressing which is being caused by a skills gaps within their businesses.

Training may also benefit your team if they seem to be lacking direction, or are feeling unmotivated. A lack of motivation can often occur because staff are unclear on what their roles are, or because the current strategies they are using are not working.

In many occasions this is why Sales consultancy is a perfect fit alongside sales training as it can also help you identify and deal with additional challenges.

5. How can a Sales Consultant help our business?

A sales consultant will help your business by taking a close look at your current situation, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and helping you make positive changes to drive revenue growth.

If you are not currently meeting your sales targets, our sales consultants can help you find out why this is happening and develop strategies to address the issues.

Our experienced consultants can help with optimising your sales processes and ensuring you get the maximum conversion ratios from the leads you are generating.

With our years of experience in B2B sales our sales consultants can introduce you to specific resources that will support your business.

These can include lead generation, marketing, sales tracking, and training programmes and software that will give you a better insight into how your sales team are performing.

Sales Consulting System
Sales Consulting System

6. Adding Sales Experience to your Leadership Team

When you are immersed in the day-to-day running of your company, it can be hard to assess your situation objectively.

It’s often impossible to find anyone around you who is not objective as your team all have a role which in some way will make them subjective. 

Our sales consultants aren’t just there to identify problems that you weren’t previously aware of, we are completely hands on and happy to work alongside your team to implement any solutions.

Where applicable we will highlight your strengths and help you make the most of the resources that you currently have. In most cases this revolves around the creation of a sales plan, which we work with you to develop and if required are happy to help with executing against the plan. 

Our consultants will work with you to help you improve relationships between departments and colleagues. For instance, we are often called upon for detailed advice on aligning sales and marketing departments so you’re delivering coherent messages to your customers.

Indeed aligning sales and marketing is one of our most popular services.

7. Which Companies benefit the most from Consulting Services

We typically have two types of customers of our consulting services.  The first are larger organisations who already have a Sales Plan in place. 

They need help executing and delivering against the plan as they simply lack the internal resources to do this themselves.

The second group are those looking for external and objective advice.  In some cases they have seen a substantial decline in sales recently or aren’t meeting their targets they need to reach and hence are reaching out for support.

These businesses hire us because we have a track record of turning companies around. Alternately you may need external support if you have experienced changes in your industry and you’re struggling to keep up with your competitors.

Companies also may hire us because they feel missed sales targets are starting to affect morale and staff retention rates.

By investing in training and consultancy services, you can show your team you’re determined to improve and start achieving more.

8. Build a Selling System

It’s also common for companies to invest in sales consultancy services because their sales processes are confused and unclear, with team members pulling in different directions.

We are a huge advocate of having a selling system. Finance has a system, operations have a system so why not sales. Building a repeatable scalable selling system is simply a must for any business.

By mapping this out we can help your salespeople to understand how and where they can influence buyers and sell to people on different parts of their journey, helping you secure more sales.

Our consultants can also help you gain a richer understanding of the data available to you, from both your marketing automation and CRM platforms

In many cases our clients either don’t have enough data or they are overwhelmed by data, and miss out on the most important parts.  Either way we can help.  

In Conclusion

Sales is an ever changing environment and more and more businesses are improving their performance, staff retention rates and workplace morale. 

For most of use this means competition is tough and by investing in our sales training and consultancy services we can give you that edge you need to not just compete, but win.  

Sales consultants and trainers can provide invaluable mentorship, help you identify and eradicate weaknesses, and help you make the changes that you need to not only survive but prosper.

Our team can breathe new life into your organisation and inspire people throughout your company. Whether you’ve been missing your targets or are simply ready to build upon recent success and take your business to the next level, there are many great reasons for hiring sales training and consultancy professionals.

If you are ready to hire a sales trainer, sales consultant or both, come and talk with us.

 

Sales and Service Training Courses

If your business is typical, up to 80% of next years revenues will come from this years customers.  Despite this many organisations give little or no thought to customer service, viewing it merely as a cost to the business. 

In many cases customer service is a cost to the business, however, survey after survey shows customer service as a core component of your brand.  In certain cases some brands who understand the commercial value of great customer service, use it as an opportunity to cross sell and upsell, thus driving additional revenue into the business.

There are so many great statistics for investing in sales and service training once you look into it, it’s difficult to ignore. As an example studies show that 82% of customers leave because of a poor experience and of those 73% leave because of a reaction to rude staff. 

Structured and well supported training can help your team meet your customers expectations and even exceed them. The right sales and service training can make your team more adept at winning customers’ trust, whilst boosting your teams confidence.

The best sales and service training programmes are designed to help companies move away from customer service and towards customer experiences.

 

How can Sales and Service Training help my team?

Often the biggest challenge in business is winning new customers.  Given that’s the case it surely makes sense to do everything possible to not only keep those customers, but to maximise the revenue from them. 

Most service issues have a simple root problem, for example, 55% of customers are leaving because of delays in resolving a dispute and 51% are leaving because of poor staff training.  What’s possibly most important to note, is that all these problems can be easily remedied.

Sales and service training can give your team a system to measure, track and consistently improve your customer service and sales.  This will help change the mindset of your team, enabling them to make a real impact by being able to identify what matters most and take action to improve. 

When done correctly training can enhance your workplace culture substantially and provide your sales team with additional skills that can benefit them personally throughout their careers.

 

Why Sales and Service Training is Important

 

Sales and Service Training

Close More Deals and Learn New Skills

Most companies are unaware of the potential sales opportunities they have with existing customers. With repeat customer spending up to 67% more, sales and service training is more than just handling complaints and returns. 

A big part of resolving customers problems should be finding new solutions to the problems customers encounter.   In most cases the problems that customers experience are actually the best opportunities for cross selling and upselling.

Training can introduce your team to new strategies and tactics that they may simply never come across before. In addition to external input, there are often great lessons that can be shared internally, and these should be captured and documented for the benefit of others. 

Training will help your team become more familiar with your own company’s best practices. In a well structured sales and service training programme, your staff will not only learn new techniques, but also find out why they are so effective and which situations they should be deployed in.

 

Benefit from External Sales Specialists

Often a key benefit of sales and service training is that it gives your team a chance to take onboard new ideas and strategies from outside the business.  In many cases they are more open to learning from external facilitators with an in-depth knowledge than from internal colleagues.

Sales and service specialists can give your team more than just the skills they need to engage potential customers in meaningful conversations.  They can help you explain on your customers terms why your products and service may be a good fit for them.

Sales and service training will help your team use the product knowledge and information that they have about your products and services, and turn this into powerful questions that make the buyer want to buy rather than them having to sell to them.    

 

Retain the Best Staff

Many companies are now switched on to the fact that it’s easier to retain quality staff when you invest in training courses for them.

If your team members feel you aren’t investing in them, there’s a high possibility that they will move to a company that will. Investing in training shows your employees that you are eager to help them improve.

When staff receive quality training, they tend to feel more supported, which in turn boosts their confidence. Recruitment costs to replace team members can be incredibly expensive and take up an inordinate amount of management time.  

It’s therefore important to try and keep hold of the employees that you have already invested in and continue to develop them.

benefits of sales and service training

 

Sales and Service Training

Should Managers attend Sales and Service Training?

Sales Managers are responsible for the day to day activities and performance of those activities for members in their team

Your Managers set the bar in terms of what is acceptable performance and what is not.  With this in mind, it’s important that sales managers attend every sales and service training along with their staff so they can hear the information first-hand.

When managers know exactly what’s covered and agreed during training, they can ensure their staff apply this knowledge to real-life scenarios and coach them if they are struggling.

Sales training often includes an element of goal-setting, which is yet another reason why it’s so important for managers to attend. It’s important for the managers to set realistic, yet achievable goals, rather than targets that are out of your team’s reach. 

Failure to do this will simply harm the confidence of the team and demotivate them.

 

Increase your Customer Satisfaction Ratings

Training like everything else in your business needs to deliver a return on your investment.  Whilst not everything should be judged by customer service scores, any service training should ultimately  improve your customer satisfaction ratings.

Customer expectations are arguably higher than they have ever been and today’s customers expect to receive high-quality service more than ever before.

If they have a bad experience with a member of your team, they’re likely to make their opinions public and Social Media can amplify bad news like never before. 

Customer Service training will not only teach your team to deliver the best customer experiences possible, but also turn your happy customers into advocates for your brand, thus generating new business referrals.

 

Omnichannel Customer Support

Modern customer service training often starts before your customers have even made a purchase.  In most cases your customers first interaction with your brand is either your website or social media pages. 

It’s important to include these as part of your wider customer experience strategy. This is supported by many statistics for example, using three channels instead of one for marketing campaigns results in a 287% higher purchase rate. 

Providing Omnichannel customer support helps your team keep your clients happy across a range of channels and mediums. It can help them communicate with your customers better not only over traditional channels like the phone, but also via live chat, email, social media, SMS and other platforms.

The most successful customer service teams around today adopt an omnichannel approach with research showing that companies with an omnichannel approach experience a 23 fold increase in customer satisfaction.

We believe it’s really  important to include these areas in your service programme. Many companies are failing to meet their customers’ expectations which makes it easier for you and your team to stand out from the crowd and win business from them.  

 

Sales and Service Training Course

 

Sales and Service Training

Build Expert Product Knowledge

No matter the industry customers want to deal with experts and not agents who are simply following a call centre script.

Sales and service training encourages your team to get to know your products inside out so they can answer any and every relevant question they might be faced with.

If sales reps don’t have the knowledge that they require, they are more likely to leave customers feeling frustrated, with the customer going on to air their feedback publicly.

The more your reps know about your products and services, the better they can address customer pain points and explain why your solutions are the answer to their problems. 

 

Enhance Customer Loyalty

Repeated studies show that customers tend to be much more loyal to companies that offer outstanding customer service. Many of today’s customers say that customer service is more important than price when they’re deciding who to do business with.

By investing in sales and service training, you can attract and retain more customers and gain a real edge over your competitors.  Part of your overall programme should include how you plan to collect and share customer reviews. 

With 70% of people taking action based on customer reviews this is an essential component of every sales and customer service training.

 

Resolve Disputes Quickly

Delays when resolving complaints can often be the straw that breaks the camels back with 55% of people leaving a brand because of delays in resolution.

Sales and service training can help your reps resolve complaints quickly which is important when dealing with angry and frustrated customers.

Training can help them show tactical empathy when they are dealing with an angry customer and enable them to steer the conversation in the right direction, no matter which medium they are communicating on.

Understanding active listening skills can turn your team into better, more helpful listeners that pay close attention to what your customers have to say and then use the skills and information they have to deliver the best outcome possible.

 

 

Customer Service Training

Unlike traditional customer service training courses, Klozers provides the latest in business simulation software, that allows your team to experience a 2 year customer experience transformation program in 1 day.  

Our state of the art business simulation goes way beyond basic communication skills and helps your sales team understand customer expectations, sales process, and what truly drives sales performance across the organisation. 

Designed specifically as a holistic cross departmental our customer service courses are designed to engage everyone from your front line sales team, product and services teams and company management.  

The customer service training includes two options as follows:

Enterprise Customer Service Training

SaaS Customer Success Training

Please contact us for further information.  

customer service training courses

In Summary

How important is retaining your existing customers? 

How valuable would the extra revenue be if your customer service team were actively cross selling and upselling throughout their day?  

Investing in sales and service training will make your staff and customers much happier. If you look after your staff they will in turn look after your customers. 

If you feel you need to make improvements in these areas, please give us a call. We would love to work with you and make the sales and service goals you have in mind a reality.

12 Critical Objectives of Sales Management

Objectives of Sales Management

The Objectives of Sales Management

There are many objectives and goals for sales management and the importance of each will vary from business to business. 

Business to business sales can be complex, with many variables and whilst the obvious objectives of revenue, profitability and growth are important it’s easy to argue a case for the plethora of other objectives such as customer satisfaction, team morale, employee retention. 

Effective sales management is the key to running every successful sales team. When sales management is executed correctly, the rest of your enterprise benefits.

Sales managers are responsible for inspiring teams, leading by example, maximising profits and providing customers with the best experience to make sure they return for more.

We’ve resisted the urge to include the all to common piece around smart goals, because we assume your past all that and looking for something more meaningful. 

So, we’ve listed below what we believe to be the main objectives of sales management, enjoy.

1. Sales Plan

We’ve listed sales plan at the very start because of it’s importance.  Without a plan it’s difficult to track progress, meet or exceed your goals and align your sales team around those goals. 

Quite simply, the sales plan ensures that not only is everyone on your company boat rowing in the same direction, it ensures that the boat itself is going in the right direction.

As with any objective or goal, the sales manager should be measured on the execution of the sales plan. 

For some reason the majority of companies do not have a sales plan and miss out on the many benefits they bring.

2. Sales Strategy

Strategy is listed in the dictionary as “an approach” and although it sounds simple coming up with the best approach or strategy to how you gain maximum market penetration with the budget available to you is never easy. 

At best if you nail your sales strategy sales will take off and at worst you will find that sales become like wading through treacle.  An eternal hardship that consumes any profits you dreamed of as it sucks the life from your business.  

Once you’ve agreed on a strategy you need to review this on a monthly basis and adjust as required. 

Beware however, of changing your strategy before it has had a chance to mature or you might just end up going round in circles.  

Once you’ve decided on your sales strategy the next challenge is aligning all your resources including the sales team and executing on that strategy. 

How to manage sales activity

3. Reporting and Metrics

Before you start to implement and share your strategy and sales plan you will need to give some thought as to how you are going to measure your progress. 

Data is the new oil and Sales reporting is an essential part of the modern sales managers day to day activities. 

Your reporting system should  tell you everything from how well your reps are performing on a daily basis, to the cost of customer acquisition on your latest sales campaign.

Reports will tell you which areas you are succeeding in and areas need your attention. You should draw up a list of baseline sales metrics and then from there you can measure progress towards your targets.

In almost every scenario, you will be asked to generate Management Reports for your board and these will include things like your current sales funnel/sales pipeline which will provide information such as how many live deals you currently have in your funnel, the average size of each deal and the average length of the journey through the funnel.

It’s critically important that you not only can generate the right reports, but that you can interpret the results in a meaningful way.

4. Sales Performance

There is no one individual who has as much influence over sales than the sales manager. 

Every day the Manager sets the bar between what is acceptable and what is not, in terms performance from their team. 

They are responsible for not just managing, but also the training, coaching and development of the sales team

Every salesperson wants to sell, every salesperson wants to be part of a winning team and the sales managers that succeed are those that focus on 2 things:

  1. They do everything they can to help salespeople sell more
  2. They do everything they can to develop their salespeople.

Unfortunately, as the manager has the power to make everything a success, they can also be architects of their own failure.

5. Key duties of the Sales Manager

Sales managers are tasked with developing sales teams, coordinating all operations within sales departments and identifying and implement the right sales techniques to deliver success.

Although the aim is to meet sales targets, it’s not uncommon for these aims to be surpassed.

The right sales management processes can give you a substantial edge over your competitors and ensure your company is thriving rather than simply surviving.

As a minimum the sales manager should address the following areas in their plan. Strategy, Process, People, Channels, Technology, Customers and Leadership

Sales Management Framework
Objectives of Sales Management

6. Team Morale

Morale is extremely important when it comes to building a winning sales team. The more inspired and confident your team are, the more they will achieve.

This is why it’s so important to ensure each member of your team feels listened to and respected. The easiest way to do this is by including them in the sales planning wherever possible. 

Provide real-time information on as much as possible including things like the exact costs to the business to employ them, the profitability of your sales and how many deals they need to close to breakeven in terms of their own cost to the company.

Transparency is essential, so make sure each member of your team knows how well you’re currently performing.  

What’s also important in terms of morale is being completely fair and not having any personal favourites in the team. 

It’s normally easy for managers not to have favourites, however, many find it more difficult to deal with disruptive sales reps and often ignore them rather than look to resolve the problem. 

Often times the most disruptive sales reps can be a top performer but you will still need to let them go if you feel they are damaging the overall morale and productivity of the team.

It’s incredibly important to foster a positive workplace culture where workplace friction is addressed as soon as it arises.

7. Setting realistic but ambitious targets

When it comes to setting your sales targets it’s vital to strike a balance between being ambitious and being realistic.

If your targets are unrealistically high, your sales team and your sales team fall so far behind that they don’t believe they can hit those targets, they will quickly become demotivated. 

We recommend that you include your sales team as part of the planning process to help you set your sales targets. 

By doing this you are much more likely to get buy in from the sales team and as the manager, you can still guide the team to create targets that are challenging.

Unrealistic targets will only serve to  damage morale substantially and in turn, this will lower the overall performance of the team.

Managers should guide and coach their team members through the entire period of the targets to help ensure they remain on track and re-motivate them if they begin to lose confidence.

Managers typically have lots of experiences and skills that they can draw on from when they were a salesperson that will support their sales reps.

8. Building a sales funnel

Creating a sales funnel that continually is topped up with new, high quality sales leads is one of the most important objectives of sales management.

A sales funnel, also known as a pipeline is used to outline each step a customer takes throughout their journey towards making a purchase.

In B2B sales the salespeople are responsible for moving the deals or opportunities through the sales funnel. 

There is nothing more demotivating to sales reps than the struggle to fill the sales funnel with new leads.  It’s therefore important that you work with your marketing team to ensure a continuous flow of good quality sales leads.

If you are using Sales Development Reps (SDRs) to generate their own sales leads then you must give them the strategies and tactics to generate those leads. 

Tactics like cold calling and cold email campaigns do work but they on their own it is a slow way to scale your business. As the sales manager it’s your responsibility to break the entire sales process down into easy, manageable stages.

Sales funnels enable salespeople to remain organised and in control, especially when used in conjunction with a good CRM system.

With the right CRM dashboards in place Sales reps can easily see the progress they have already made towards their sales targets. 

This in turn will inspire them to continue focussing on moving deals through the sales funnel.

9. When can I expect results?

In our experience every overnight success has taken years of hard work to get there. With that said, you should see early indications of success in months, not years.  

It’s important to manage expectations and collectively agree what success looks like in the initial phases. 

This is why we are such advocates of creating a sales plan that everyone can align themselves behind. 

Your sales plan should identify what we call the lead indicators rather than the lag indicators for success and you can start tracking them immediately.  

It’s unlikely your sales management will deliver exceptional results immediately but with planning, patience and persistence you will slowly turn the ship around.

Trial-and-error can play a big role in helping you create the right sales process for you.

Even when you start seeing the results that you’ve been aiming for, you should always be prepared to make amendments as customer behaviours and requirements, technology and markets change.

10. Motivating your Sales Team

As a sales manager, you will be tasked with overseeing things like data, technology, processes and sales pipelines which you may or may not find easy.

However, often the biggest challenge is people management and listening to your team is very important. 

It’s essential to ask your team what drives them and what their personal goals are and then tie them into your own business objectives.

Not every member of your sales team will be motivated by money alone, so try to find out what else drives them and why they were interested in a career in sales in the first place.

It’s also essential to deliver additional support for those members working remotely during any lockdown period.

Some team members will be comfortable working from home, whilst others will prefer to be out in the field visiting customers and working in a busy office environment.

11. Do great salespeople make great sales managers?

One problem many companies encounter is that not all great salespeople make a fantastic sales manager.

Being a sales manager requires a whole host of different skills not required by salespeople, and it may take time to start seeing success once you’ve moved from making sales to overseeing them.

Most of the key tasks assigned to sales managers are strategic versus the tactical skills required by salespeople. 

For example, data analysis is hugely important for every sales manager, as is planning, strategy and people management. 

In addition, identifying realistic goals, hiring the right salespeople, creating incentives, arranging ongoing training and learning and matching the right kind of guidance to specific individuals in your team are all important.

12. Learning & Development

It’s easy to overlook training as a Sales Manager because there never seems to be any free time for developing your team or indeed yourself. 

Training falls into the category of important/not urgent and because of this it often gets overlooked.  In nearly every case the salespeople who don’t want training are those that need it the most.

Learning and development starts by hiring the right salespeople and only recruiting those who are driven and determined with great people skills.

The team that you inherit may be very different from this and it’s your objective as the sales manager to improve the team that you’re working with over the coming months or years.

It’s also important to seek out coachable people as these people are great learners and will continuously improve given the right support.

You will encounter people that already have good sales skills but seem unwilling to continue learning or taking feedback and this can become a problem. 

These people not only don’t want to learn but they don’t want others to learn either and can sabotage and undermine your leadership. 

Under these circumstances, as long as you have done everything possible to try and support these people if they still refuse then you will have no alternative to letting them go.

If you’re able to offer real-time information that you can display in the workplace, you should certainly do this as this creates incentives and keeps your salespeople’s eyes on the ball.

Transparency is essential, so make sure each member of your team knows how well you’re currently performing.

In conclusion

Sales managers are arguably the single most important part of your sales team and the right manager will help you achieve outstanding results when they build an exceptional and focussed team that they take the time to support.

They will ensure the organisation has the right people, structures, technology and sales processes in place progress which can be tracked and clearly visible for all the stakeholders. 

By ensuring team members remain willing to learn and committing to learning more themselves, sales managers can deliver real success, even in the most competitive markets.

Sales Negotiation Training

Key Negotiation Skills – Introduction

There is a common misconception that sales negotiation skills are only required towards the end of the sales process.  The part in every sales process where costs and terms are agreed.  Whilst this is undoubtedly true, it’s also true that the best salespeople are negotiating all the way through the sales process.  In fact every Professional salesperson negotiates, every single day which is why it’s an important part of any training programme

From negotiating with their children on what to have for breakfast, to negotiating with a Partner on where to go for dinner.  In between times they will negotiate workloads with their line managers, negotiate meeting times with co-workers, negotiate dates & times for appointments with prospects and lastly negotiating sales contracts, project delivery and aftercare contracts.  In short, Negotiation is actually unavoidable, and the ability to Negotiate is a core skill for every Salesperson.

Planning for Sales Negotiations

Like most things in life when it comes to Negotiation knowledge is power.  The more information you have and better prepared you are then the more likely you will achieve a successful negotiation. Follow the information below to discover how to research and plan your next negotiation.

Sales Negotiation Goals

These are the needs, wants and desires of the parties involved in the negotiation.  In business this can be complicated as not only may both sides have differing goals, but parties within each side may have differing and even conflicting Goals.

Goals can be subjective for example “We need to increase the confidence of our people.” or they can be more objective like “We need to reduce our overheads by 10 this quarter”.  Either way it’s important to know both your own Goals and that of the other side.  Important questions you must ask are:

  • Have we identified all the Goals?
  • What are the Prioritised Goals?
  • What are the Business Goals?
  • What are the Personal Goals?
  • Are there conflicting Goals?
Business Goals Examples Personal Goals Examples
Strategic Security
Change Satisfaction
Growth Peer Pressure
Improvement Financial Gain

Please note Goals are NOT the same as outcomes.

Example:

Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal).  In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital.  Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest. 

The Outcome is the Negotiated agreement that they come to.

Negotiation Options

These are all the possible solutions that satisfy the goals of both parties.  They are all possibilities that both parties agree or say Yes to.

By investing time to explore all the Options then you are more likely to find:

  • Alternative solutions
  • Enable both parties to achieve their goals
  • Reach the Best Possible Agreement (BPA)

Example:

Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal).  In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital.  Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest. 

Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement. 

Criteria for Negotiation

Criteria are the “terms” of any possible Option

Example:

Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal).  In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital.  Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest. 

Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement. 

Criteria – George needs to guarantee a minimum payment every month regardless of the profitability of that month.  Mike needs to ensure ensure he will not be liable for any warranty, liability or compensations claims from the period before he take responsibility/ownership of the business.

Get expert Sales Negotiation Training from our Sales Coaches

CNA – Cost of No Agreement

Not all Negotiations end in an agreement, it is therefore vital before entering into any Negotiation that you first work out what the Cost of No Agreement is for both parties.  The costs of no agreement can be both Objective and Subjective.

Example:

Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal).  In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital.  Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest. 

Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement. 

Criteria – George needs to guarantee a minimum payment every month regardless of the profitability of that month.  Mike needs to ensure ensure he will not be liable for any warranty, liability or compensations claims from the period before he take responsibility/ownership of the business.

CNA – George does not have the financial resources to retire (Objective) however he has been trying unsuccessfully to sell his business for three years and is now desperate (Subjective) for a solution.  Mike is keen to buy a business (Objective) but knows there are hundreds of businesses for sale and he is pretty relaxed (Subjective) if this deal doesn’t go through another one will come along.

The Subjective Cost of No Agreement can be more powerful than the Objective ones as people make decisions emotionally and then justify their position intellectually afterwards. 

BATNA – Best Alternative to No Agreement

Not all Negotiations end in an Agreement, it is therefore vital before entering into any Negotiations that you first work out what the Best Alternative to No Agreement is.  In some cases you may well experience that the other party is so entrenched in their position that they have no desire to Negotiate.  BATNA is typically but not always, an alternative course of action that can be taken if no agreement is reached.

BATNA helps you prepare for a Negotiation by:

  • Helps prevent you from agreeing to something you will regret
  • Defining your Minimum Possible Agreement (MPA)
  • Provides you with a Plan B
  • Helps prevent you from over or underestimating the your own and the other party’s position
  • Helps you understand where the leverage is
  • Identifying alternative Options

Example:

Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal).  In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital.  Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest. 

Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement. 

Criteria – George needs to guarantee a minimum payment every month regardless of the profitability of that month.  Mike needs to ensure ensure he will not be liable for any warranty, liability or compensations claims from the period before he take responsibility/ownership of the business.

CNA – George does not have the financial resources to retire (CNA) and has been trying unsuccessfully to sell his business for three years and is now desperate for a solution.  Mike is keen to buy a business and has spent £3,000 with Solicitors and Accountants thus far completing his due diligence on the company. 

BATNA – George is in discussion with his Lawyers to explore the possibilities of a Management Buyout for the business.  Mike knows there are hundreds of businesses for sale and he is pretty relaxed if this deal doesn’t go through another one will come along.

Concessions for Negotiation

A concession is something given to the other party in furtherance of the agreement.  These concessions should be identified in advance and segmented for both parties in terms of:

High Value – High Cost

High Value – Low Cost

Remember – Never give anything away without receiving something of equal or greater value in return.

Example:

Goals – George is 65 years old and would like to retire (Goal).  In order to fund his retirement he needs to sell his business but no one wants to invest a large sum of capital.  Mike would like to buy a business (Goal) but does not have any capital to invest. 

Option – George can sell his business to Mike but rather than invest a lump sum he agrees to pay George on a Monthly basis from the profits for the next 5 years and hence fund his retirement. 

Criteria – George needs to guarantee a minimum payment every month regardless of the profitability of that month.  Mike needs to ensure ensure he will not be liable for any warranty, liability or compensations claims from the period before he take responsibility/ownership of the business.

CNA – George does not have the financial resources to retire (CNA) and has been trying unsuccessfully to sell his business for three years and is now desperate for a solution.  Mike is keen to buy a business and has spent £3,000 with Solicitors and Accountants thus far completing his due diligence on the company. 

BATNA – George is in discussion with his Lawyers to explore the possibilities of a Management Buyout for the business.  Mike knows there are hundreds of businesses for sale and he is pretty relaxed if this deal doesn’t go through another one will come along.

Concessions – George is prepared to spend 3 months of his time ensuring during the handover period which is Low Cost to him as he will be retired but High Value to Mike as he is new to the industry and recognises the benefit of George’s experience.

Mike is prepared to move quickly which has no cost to him however this is High Value to George as the last thing he wants is a long protracted sale.

Negotiation Strategies

Aggressive Tactics

  • Shoot the hostage
    • This strategy is extremely aggressive as it involves an immediate offer to walk away with no deal which is designed to throw and unsettle the other party.  This is often delivered in a reluctant tone “we don’t want to do this but…”,
  • Delaying tactics
    • When time is clearly on one parties side the process can often be deliberately slowed which is extremely effective when there are cost implications if talks over run.  This tactic also applies if the other party has another meeting or needs to leave.  The negotiator deliberately talks around the subject to delay the real conversation and then uses time to put pressure on the other party to come to an agreement.
  • Poor Me
    • This strategy is used to play the false victim that needs rescued by the other party.
  • Last Minute.com
    • As the name suggests this strategy involves the Negotiator agreeing to a solution right up until they are required to sign and then withdrawing.  The withdrawal is usually followed up quickly with a counter offer at dramatically reduced terms.
  • Misleading/lying
    • Often Negotiators will make exaggerated claims or even lie so without hard data to support them you should discount these.  They may also issue warnings and threats or make matters personal to unbalance you.
  • Missing People
    • Everyone knows the importance of having all the Decision Makers in the room but Negotiators may even turn up with complete strangers.  In sales some companies will remove Sales People from the final negotiations.  If the Sales People have a relationship with the other party they could be more empathetic and weaker negotiators.  Turning up without warning with complete strangers also unbalances the other party.

Co-operative Tactics

  • Agree on the Process
    • Spend time up front agreeing the process and format of the Negotiations including what’s in scope and what’s not.
  • Win Win Agreements
    • Most professional Negotiators accept that any final agreement must be fair and sustainable for the life of the time period.  In most business scenarios it should never be win at all costs as this destroys relationships.
  • Matching Rights
    • Offer the other party the right to match any solution that you receive.  For example if one of two business partners decides to sell their shares to another party they may have the agreement that the other party gets first refusal if they match the offer.
  • Contingent Agreements
    • These are simply agreements based on future events.  Financial Bonus may be tied to Performance.  Football transfer fees can be include Contingent Agreements that provides the selling club additional revenue if a player is sold on and or if a player is capped by their country or simply makes a certain number of appearances.
  • Multiple Offers
    • When multiple offers are placed on the table this allows both parties to indicate preferences and encourages creativity as a winning hybrid offer can be formed.  Placing one offer on the table often leads to a refusal and a stall in the process.

Sales Negotiation Checklist

1.  Be prepared to walk away.  Sales Negotiation is 70% Mindset and 30% Strategy and unless you are prepared to walk away, no strategy will help you.

2.  It’s not what you charge it’s what your worth.  Thoroughly research the market and discuss with the buyer the Value you bring to the table?

3. Take council from colleagues and external advisors and agree a pre-meeting strategy for the negotiations then PRACTICE.

4. Never give anything away without receiving something of equal or greater value in return.

5. Never enter a Negotiation without first providing your price and outline terms in advance, to anchor the prospect to a higher number and terms.

6. Where possible in high value deals do not include your sales people in Negotiations, as they will be emotionally involved in the sale and not objective.

7. Ensure everyone in your team have agreed in advance your trade-offs, your concessions, and your best alternative to a negotiated settlement.

8. You must be comfortable with silence and at most only talk 30% of the time, as the more you talk the more information you are giving away.

9. If it’s not Win Win then you run the danger of the prospect backing out or failing to implement your agreement, then the lawyers are the only winners.

10.  Negotiation is between human beings, you must therefore be familiar with Human Psychology, DiSC, Neuro Linguistic and Programming.

सास सेल्स फ़नल का निर्माण कैसे करें

सास बिक्री फ़नल

1. बिक्री फ़नल क्या है?

एक बिक्री फ़नल उन क्रियाओं, घटनाओं या चरणों का एक क्रम है, जिनसे उपयोगकर्ता किसी उत्पाद या सेवा को खरीदने से पहले गुजरता है। बिक्री फ़नल को विपणक को परिणामों को बेहतर बनाने के लिए बिक्री प्रक्रिया को ट्रैक, रिकॉर्ड और अनुकूलित करने की अनुमति देने के लिए डिज़ाइन किया गया है।

आप यहां हमारे सास बिक्री प्रशिक्षण के बारे में अधिक जान सकते हैं

2. सास सेल्स फ़नल कैसे बनाएं

आपका SaaS बिक्री फ़नल आपके ऐप्स की सफलता का एक अनिवार्य हिस्सा है। यदि आप SaaS ऐप्स की पेशकश कर रहे हैं तो एक दोहराने योग्य, स्केलेबल और ट्रैक करने योग्य बिक्री फ़नल बनाना महत्वपूर्ण कदमों में से एक है जिसे आपको लेने की आवश्यकता है।

आसान लगता है? तो फिर सोचो। बिक्री फ़नल वह जगह है जहाँ कई स्टार्ट-अप राजस्व सृजन संघर्ष में परिवर्तित होते हैं, और कई मामलों में विफल हो जाते हैं।

अपना फ़नल बनाना शुरू करने से पहले यह विचार करने लायक है कि आप अपनी ऐप यात्रा में कहां हैं।

3. सास विकास के तीन मुख्य चरण

दुर्भाग्य से, बिक्री में कभी भी एक आकार सभी समाधान फिट नहीं होता है, और सास बिक्री फ़नल बनाने के लिए शुरुआती बिंदु इस बात पर निर्भर करता है कि आप सास व्यवसाय के तीन मुख्य चरणों के संदर्भ में कहां हैं?

क्या आप पर हैं:
चरण 1 : यात्रा की शुरुआत जिससे संस्थापक और प्राथमिक टीम अभी भी उत्पाद/बाजार में फिट स्थापित करने की कोशिश कर रही है।

चरण 2 : जहां संस्थापक और प्राथमिक टीम के सदस्यों ने उत्पाद/बाजार में फिट साबित किया है और साबित कर रहे हैं कि वे सिस्टम और प्रक्रियाओं को लागू कर सकते हैं जिन्हें अन्य लोग बेचने के लिए उपयोग कर सकते हैं।

चरण 3 , अंतिम बाधा जहां आपके पास एक सिद्ध उत्पाद बाजार फिट है, आपने स्केलिंग के लिए सही प्रणालियों और प्रक्रियाओं की पहचान की है और साबित किया है और अब आप अपनी बिक्री को बढ़ाने, ग्राहक अधिग्रहण पर ध्यान केंद्रित करने और अपने एमआरआर का निर्माण करने के लिए तैयार हैं।

SaaS बिक्री फ़नल बनाने के लिए आपके द्वारा उपयोग की जाने वाली रणनीतियाँ ऊपर चरण 1 में आपने जो सीखा है, उसके आधार पर अलग-अलग होंगी।

तो इस अभ्यास के प्रयोजनों के लिए मैं मान लूंगा कि आप चरण 1 पर हैं। यदि आप अभी भी चरण 2 और 3 पर बिक्री फ़नल बनाने के लिए संघर्ष कर रहे हैं, तो या तो आप चरण 1 में कुछ चूक गए हैं या कुछ ऐसा बदल गया है जिससे आपने चरण 1 में जो कुछ भी सीखा है वह काम करना बंद कर दिया है।

4. अपनी बिक्री फ़नल से पहले एक मार्केटिंग फ़नल बनाएँ

किसी भी व्यवसाय के लिए यह महत्वपूर्ण है कि आप अपनी बिक्री टीम के सफल होने के लिए अनुकूलतम परिस्थितियाँ प्रदान करें। सास की दुनिया में एक अच्छी वेबसाइट का होना ही काफी नहीं है, आपको एक ऐसी वेबसाइट की जरूरत है जो:

ए) आपके उत्पादों और सेवाओं द्वारा प्रमुख खोज इंजनों में पाया जा सकता है – Google, बिंग, याहू और यूट्यूब
बी) प्रमुख खोज इंजनों – Google, बिंग, याहू और यूट्यूब में आपके द्वारा हल की जाने वाली समस्याओं से पाया जा सकता है
c) वेब ट्रैफ़िक को मार्केटिंग योग्य लीड में परिवर्तित कर सकता है

कई कंपनियां इसे अनदेखा करती हैं और एक आउटबाउंड बिक्री टीम बनाने के लिए दौड़ती हैं। तथ्य यह है कि हर संभावित संभावना है कि आपकी आउटबाउंड टीम दिलचस्पी लेती है, फिर आगे की शोध करने के लिए आपकी वेबसाइट पर जाएगी।

जब तक वेब अनुभव आपकी आउटबाउंड टीम के साथ संभावित अनुभव के बराबर या उससे अधिक न हो, वे तुरंत बंद हो जाएंगे।

मार्केटिंग फ़नल बनाने के लिए आपको “सम्मोहक उपयोगकर्ता पहली सामग्री” बनानी होगी। यह वह सामग्री है जिसे उपयोगकर्ता सक्रिय रूप से उस सामग्री के लिए खोज रहा है जिसे आपकी बिक्री और मार्केटिंग टीम आगे बढ़ाना चाहती है।

You SaaS मार्केटिंग फ़नल आपकी इनबाउंड बिक्री रणनीति का एक अनिवार्य हिस्सा है। इसे सफलतापूर्वक करने के लिए आपको खरीदार यात्रा के प्रत्येक चरण में उच्च गुणवत्ता वाली सामग्री बनाने की आवश्यकता होगी जैसा कि नीचे दिखाया गया है।

सामग्री को आपके ब्रांड की कहानी और अन्य उपयोगकर्ताओं को आपके द्वारा लाई गई सफलता को सूक्ष्मता से बताना चाहिए। अपने शुरुआती गोद लेने वालों को हीरोज में बदल दें, न कि आप।

TOFU – फ़नल का शीर्ष
आपकी बिक्री फ़नल का पहला भाग जिसे अन्यथा TOFU के रूप में जाना जाता है, फ़नल का जागरूकता चरण है। संभावना उनकी समस्याओं से अवगत है और समाधान की जांच कर रही है।

आपकी वेबसाइट में ऐसी सामग्री होनी चाहिए जो इन समस्याओं को बयां करे और आपकी कंपनी को विषय वस्तु विशेषज्ञों के रूप में स्थान दे। यहां सबसे लोकप्रिय सामग्री होगी:

गाइड कैसे करें
व्याख्यात्मक वीडियो
वेबदैनिकी डाक
लीड मैग्नेट

इस स्तर पर, संभावना अनुसंधान मोड में है, खरीद मोड में नहीं है और केवल जानकारी एकत्र कर रही है।

हो सकता है कि इस स्तर पर आपके संभावित समाधान में दिलचस्पी न हो क्योंकि वे अभी भी अपनी स्वयं की समस्याओं का सही-सही निदान करने का प्रयास कर रहे हैं। यह संभावना नहीं है कि आपकी संभावना इस स्तर पर बिक्री से बात करना चाहेगी।

हम अनुशंसा करते हैं कि आप मार्केटिंग ऑटोमेशन का उपयोग यह ट्रैक करने के लिए करें कि कौन से लेख / पृष्ठ आपकी संभावनाएं साइट पर प्रवेश करते हैं क्योंकि यह समस्या उनके लिए सबसे ऊपर है। यह जानने से बिक्री के लिए उनके साथ प्रासंगिक बातचीत करना आसान हो सकता है।

आपको अपनी साइट पर चैटबॉट के साथ संभावित लोगों को उलझाने में कुछ सफलता भी मिल सकती है, हालांकि कई लोग इस स्तर पर गुमनाम रहना चाहेंगे।

फ़नल का मध्य
आपकी बिक्री फ़नल का मध्य तब होता है जब संभावनाएं चरण 1 में सीखी गई बातों के आधार पर विशिष्ट समाधानों का मूल्यांकन करना शुरू करती हैं। फ़नल सामग्री के बीच में शामिल होंगे:

प्रस्तुतियों
प्रदर्शनों
मामले का अध्ययन

व्यावहारिक रूप से उन्होंने संभावित आपूर्तिकर्ताओं की शॉर्टलिस्ट के कुछ रूप बनाए होंगे, और फिर वे प्रत्येक संभावित समाधान के विवरण में गहराई से खुदाई करेंगे।

इस स्तर पर संभावना अभी भी आपके साथ नहीं जुड़ सकती है क्योंकि वे अक्सर अपने स्वयं के संगठन के भीतर अन्य लोगों की ओर से शोध कर रहे हैं और उनकी प्राथमिकता अभी भी जानकारी एकत्र करना है।

फ़नल के नीचे
जब तक आपकी संभावना आपके मार्केटिंग फ़नल की तह तक पहुँचती है, तब तक कई मामलों में वे पहले से ही एक विशेष आपूर्तिकर्ता या समाधान को “खरीद” चुके होते हैं।

उन्होंने बड़े पैमाने पर ब्रांड के अपने वेब अनुभव, आपकी बिक्री संदेश और खुद को एक नेता के रूप में नहीं बल्कि एक विचारशील नेता के रूप में अपनी समस्याओं को समझने की क्षमता पर अपना निर्णय लिया है।

फ़नल सामग्री के निचले भाग में निम्न चीज़ें शामिल होंगी:

मूल्य निर्धारण
तुलना तालिका
प्रशंसापत्र
समीक्षा

सरल कम कीमत वाले समाधानों के लिए आप पाएंगे कि वे अब परीक्षण करने के लिए तैयार हैं यदि आप एक मजबूत कॉल टू एक्शन (सीटीए) की पेशकश करते हैं, जबकि अधिक महंगे और जटिल समाधानों के लिए वे अब बिक्री के साथ संलग्न होंगे।

नीचे दी गई छवि से पता चलता है कि एक साधारण मार्केटिंग फ़नल एक शॉपिंग कार्ट में और अधिक जटिल बी 2 बी बिक्री बिक्री के लिए लीड में संक्रमण करता है।

सफलता सही मॉडल चुनने में नहीं है, बल्कि डेटा और परीक्षण और त्रुटि के आधार पर अपना खुद का मॉडल बनाने में है।

सरल सास मार्केटिंग फ़नल
सास बिक्री फ़नल

अधिकांश मार्केटिंग सॉफ़्टवेयर अब आपकी वेबसाइट पर उपयोगकर्ता के व्यवहार को ट्रैक करते हैं और संभावित लोगों तक सक्रिय रूप से पहुंचने का सबसे अच्छा समय होने पर बिक्री करने वालों को सचेत करने के लिए लीड स्कोरिंग का उपयोग कर सकते हैं।

हमारे अपने अनुभव से समय लगभग हमेशा जल्दी होता है और एक अच्छी तरह से परिभाषित नेतृत्व पोषण कार्यक्रम समान रूप से प्रभावी होता है।

ऐसा करने के लिए आपको अपनी मार्केटिंग में कम से कम तीन अलग-अलग लीड मैग्नेट बनाने चाहिए जो आपके वेब विज़िटर को एक ग्राहक में बदलने में आपकी मदद करेंगे ताकि आप संपर्क में रह सकें।

5. अपनी बिक्री फ़नल भरने के लिए विज्ञापन

कई कंपनियां विज्ञापन के माध्यम से अपनी बिक्री फ़नल को सफलतापूर्वक भरती हैं। डिजिटल विज्ञापन एक ऐसे स्तर पर परिपक्व हो गया है जो महत्वपूर्ण ट्रैकिंग और रिपोर्टिंग की अनुमति देता है जिससे आप कुछ ही हफ्तों में समझ सकते हैं कि आपका रूपांतरण अनुपात और सीएसी क्या होगा।

पहले उदाहरण में हम “अभियानों को फिर से लक्षित करने” की वकालत करेंगे। यह केवल उन लोगों के सामने ऐड डालने की प्रक्रिया है जो पहले ही आपकी वेबसाइट पर आ चुके हैं।

अध्ययनों से पता चलता है कि नए अभियानों की तुलना में पुन: लक्ष्यीकरण सात गुना अधिक प्रभावी है, यही वजह है कि हम इसे एक शुरुआती बिंदु के रूप में मानते हैं।

यह रणनीति एक मजबूत सामग्री विपणन अभियान के साथ बहुत अच्छी तरह से काम करती है। B2B के लिए सबसे लोकप्रिय ऐड चैनल लिंक्डइन होगा, हालांकि, कई कंपनियों ने फेसबुक और इंस्टाग्राम के साथ भी अच्छा प्रदर्शन किया है।

कहने की जरूरत नहीं है कि यह आपके दर्शकों द्वारा परिभाषित किया जाएगा। विज्ञापन का उपयोग बिक्री बढ़ाने के लिए सरल फ़नल में और बिक्री प्रतिनिधि के लिए नई पूछताछ करने के लिए अधिक जटिल फ़नल में किया जा सकता है।

अधिक जटिल बिक्री के लिए एक परिभाषित अनुक्रम की आवश्यकता हो सकती है जिससे उपयोगकर्ता $ 3 की लागत वाली प्रत्येक लीड के साथ एक लीड चुंबक प्राप्त करने के लिए क्लिक करें और विज्ञापन करें।

यदि आप बाद में इन नई लीडों में से 5% को परिवर्तित करने का प्रबंधन करते हैं, तो आप अपने सीएसी को विज्ञापन से प्रति बिक्री $60 का श्रेय दे सकते हैं।

आप केवल विज्ञापन ही नहीं किसी भी गतिविधि से ट्रैक करने योग्य अनुक्रम या मॉडल बना सकते हैं। उदाहरण के लिए, ईवेंट, वेबिनार और टेलीसेल्स आपको यह समझने की अनुमति देते हैं कि कौन सी गतिविधियां न केवल आपके फ़नल को भरने में, बल्कि वास्तव में ऑर्डर में परिवर्तित होने पर सबसे अधिक लागत प्रभावी हैं।

6. सास सेल्स फ़नल कैसे बनाएं

आपकी बिक्री रणनीति के आधार पर आपकी बिक्री फ़नल अलग-अलग होगी। क्या आप अपना ऐप सीधे बेच रहे हैं या आप भागीदारों के माध्यम से बेच रहे हैं? आपने शुरुआत में किन चैनलों पर ध्यान केंद्रित करने का फैसला किया है?

1. अपनी संपूर्ण संभावना प्रोफ़ाइल की पहचान करें। यह एक मार्केटिंग व्यक्तित्व का बिक्री प्रतिनिधि संस्करण है। इसमें वह सब कुछ शामिल है जो एक मार्केटिंग व्यक्तित्व में शामिल होगा, साथ ही कुछ अतिरिक्त जानकारी जो बिक्री को समझने और संभावना के साथ गहरे स्तर पर संवाद करने में मदद करती है।

सेल्स प्रॉस्पेक्ट प्रोफाइल टेम्प्लेट
सेल्स प्रॉस्पेक्ट प्रोफाइल टेम्प्लेट

2. अपनी बिक्री संदेश तैयार करें। उत्पाद/बाजार फिट का एक हिस्सा यह समझ रहा है कि आपका उत्पाद किस व्यवसाय और व्यक्तिगत समस्या का समाधान करता है।

हमारे अनुभव में सबसे सफल SaaS सेवाएं व्यावसायिक समाधान हैं जो व्यावसायिक समस्याओं का समाधान करती हैं।

एक बार जब आप समझ जाते हैं कि यह आपके अपने उत्पाद / सेवा से कैसे संबंधित है, तो आप अपनी बिक्री संदेश बनाना शुरू कर सकते हैं।

यह वह शब्द और बारीक भाषा है जिसे आपने साबित किया है कि संभावनाएं जुड़ती हैं। अपने स्वयं के व्यवसाय और समाधानों के बारे में जानना पर्याप्त नहीं है, आपको अपने ग्राहकों के बारे में पता होना चाहिए।

आपको ठीक से पता होना चाहिए कि आपका समाधान आपके ग्राहक को पैसे बचाने, पैसा बनाने और उनके जीवन को आसान बनाने में कैसे मदद करता है।

3. लीड जनरेशन अभियान।

एक बार जब आप अपनी लक्षित संभावनाओं की पहचान कर लेते हैं और अपनी बिक्री संदेश तैयार कर लेते हैं, तो आपको लीड जनरेशन अभियान पर काम शुरू करना होगा।

लीड जनरेशन के दो मुख्य दृष्टिकोण इस प्रकार हैं:

ए) इनबाउंड लीड जनरेशन। इनबाउंड लीड जनरेशन अभियान वे हैं जहां संभावना आपसे पहले संपर्क करती है। आपके वेब पेज पर एक फॉर्म भर सकता है, आपको फोन कर सकता है या आपको ईमेल कर सकता है। इनबाउंड बिक्री लीड उत्पन्न करने के लिए आपको कुछ प्रकार की सामग्री निर्माण, विज्ञापन अभियान, वेबिनार, रेफरल प्रोग्राम या एसईओ करने की आवश्यकता होगी।

बी) आउटबाउंड लीड पीढ़ी। आउटबाउंड लीड जनरेशन अभियान वे हैं जहां आप टेलीफोन, ईमेल, डायरेक्ट मेल, इवेंट्स या अकाउंट आधारित मार्केटिंग के माध्यम से संभावनाओं तक पहुंचते हैं। आउटबाउंड अभियानों का हमेशा मतलब होता है कि आपको एक आउटबाउंड टीम का निर्माण करना होगा जो महंगी हो सकती है।

अधिकांश सास कंपनियां इनबाउंड और आउटबाउंड के संयोजन का उपयोग करती हैं, हालांकि, वे लगभग हमेशा एक से अधिक पर जोर देते हैं।

एक बहुत ही रफ गाइड के रूप में सास सेवाएं जो कम लागत वाली हैं और एसएमई को लक्षित कर रही हैं, वे मार्केटिंग के नेतृत्व में हैं और मुख्य रूप से इनबाउंड फोकस हैं।

सास सेवाएं जो अधिक खर्चीला हैं और मिड मार्केट से एंटरप्राइज संगठनों को लक्षित कर रही हैं, उनके पास खाता आधारित मार्केटिंग के माध्यम से अधिक बिक्री आधारित दृष्टिकोण होगा।

7. SaaS बिक्री फ़नल के चरण क्या हैं?

सास बिक्री फ़नल
सास सेल्स फ़नल का निर्माण कैसे करें

आपकी बिक्री फ़नल के चरण केवल चरणों की एक श्रृंखला है जो आपके संभावित ग्राहकों को एक आदेश देने के लिए आगे बढ़ते हैं।

ये चरण बहुत भिन्न हो सकते हैं और कोई एक फ़नल नहीं है जिसे आप प्रत्येक ऐप पर लागू कर सकते हैं। भले ही चरण समान हों, जिस तरीके से आप फ़नल के माध्यम से संभावनाओं को स्थानांतरित करते हैं, वह भिन्न हो सकता है।

प्रदर्शन को मापने और समय के साथ सुधार करने के लिए डेटा एकत्र करना शुरू करने के लिए आपकी बिक्री फ़नल एक बेहतरीन जगह है।

सामान्य तौर पर, संभावनाओं को जितनी जल्दी हो सके बिक्री फ़नल के माध्यम से आगे बढ़ना चाहिए – इसे बिक्री चक्र या पाइप गति कहा जाता है।

गति को मापने के लिए कि संभावनाएं चक्र के माध्यम से आगे बढ़ती हैं, आपको अपने फ़नल और उन क्षेत्रों में रुकावटों की पहचान करने की अनुमति देता है जहां संभावनाएं धीमी होती हैं।

ये “चिपके हुए” बिंदु हैं जहां आपको सुधार करने के लिए देखना चाहिए।

8. मैं अपने SaaS उत्पाद को ग्राहकों को कब प्रदर्शित करूं?

बिक्री प्रक्रिया के भीतर SaaS ऐप डेमो का समय कई कंपनियों के लिए चर्चा का विषय रहा है।

दुर्भाग्य से प्रश्न का उत्तर “यह निर्भर करता है” है। कई कंपनियां बिक्री प्रक्रिया की शुरुआत में अपने ऐप को सफलतापूर्वक प्रदर्शित करती हैं, हालांकि, कई ऐसे भी हैं जो शुरुआत में डेमो करते हैं और फिर उनकी संभावनाएं वॉयस मेल और अनुत्तरित ईमेल के ब्लैक होल में गायब हो जाती हैं।

संक्षेप में, सस्ता और सरल समाधान, तो पहले की प्रक्रिया में आप डेमो कर सकते हैं और जितना अधिक महंगा और जटिल समाधान डेमो को बिक्री प्रक्रिया में जितना संभव हो उतना पीछे धकेल दिया जाना चाहिए।

सास ऐप डेमो
सास सेल्स फ़नल का निर्माण कैसे करें


वास्तविकता यह है कि उद्यमियों और सेल्सपर्सन के लिए अपने ऐप को डेमो करने के लिए जल्दी करने की प्रवृत्ति है, उम्मीद है कि डेमो साइन अप करने की संभावना को मना लेगा।

यहां तक कि अगर संभावना योग्य है और एक अच्छा फिट है, तो संभावनाओं के दर्द के निदान के किसी भी रूप के बिना एक डेमो संभावना खोने का खतरा है।

आपकी संभावना को यह जानने की जरूरत है कि आप जानते हैं और आप उनकी दुनिया को समझते हैं। यह केवल बुद्धिमान और लक्षित पूछताछ के माध्यम से प्राप्त किया जा सकता है। यदि आप बिक्री को गति देना चाहते हैं, तो बिक्री को धीमा कर दें।

डेमो आमतौर पर सेल्सपर्सन का लीवरेज का सबसे बड़ा बिंदु होता है और यदि आप इसे जल्द ही दे देते हैं तो आप लीवरेज खो देंगे और पूरी संभावना है।

अंगूठे के एक सामान्य नियम के रूप में – ऐप डेमो को अपनी बिक्री प्रक्रिया में जितना संभव हो उतना पीछे धकेलें।

डेमो में विशेष रूप से जटिल बिक्री के लिए समय और पैसा खर्च होता है जहां अधिक बार एक बीस्पोक डेमो की आवश्यकता नहीं होती है।

कोई भी बीस्पोक डेमो केवल संभावना खरीदने वाली टीम के वरिष्ठ निर्णय निर्माताओं को ही दिया जाना चाहिए। यदि उपयुक्त हो तो आप बिक्री प्रक्रिया के भीतर दो डेमो भी रख सकते हैं – अगर यह काम करता है तो इसके अलावा कोई नियम नहीं है।

अधिकांश बिक्री प्रतिनिधि उत्पाद के लाभों को अधिक विस्तार से समझाने के लिए बिक्री प्रक्रिया के इस भाग का उपयोग करने की गलती करते हैं।

जब आप कह रहे हैं कि आप नहीं बेच रहे हैं। संभावित संभावित प्रश्नों का उपयोग करने के लिए आपको यह बताने के लिए कि समाधान उनके व्यावसायिक दर्द को कैसे हल करेगा।

आपको उन विशेषताओं के बारे में बात करने से बचना चाहिए जिन्हें आप उनके लिए प्रासंगिक मानते हैं। यदि आपने बिक्री प्रक्रिया के खोज चरण में इसे उजागर नहीं किया है तो प्रक्रिया के नीचे कुछ भी नया पेश करना स्वाभाविक रूप से जोखिम भरा है।

सरल कम कीमत वाले समाधानों के लिए आप पाएंगे कि वे अब परीक्षण करने के लिए तैयार हैं, जबकि अधिक महंगे और जटिल समाधानों के लिए वे अब बिक्री प्रतिनिधि के साथ जुड़ेंगे।

यह प्रदर्शित करने के लिए कि उन्होंने उचित परिश्रम किया है, वे हमेशा दो या तीन संभावित आपूर्तिकर्ताओं से बात करेंगे।

यह जरूरी नहीं है कि आपूर्तिकर्ता को कीमत पर हरा दिया जाए, लेकिन कभी-कभी उन्हें अपने संगठन के भीतर व्यापक क्रय समूह को मान्य करने की आवश्यकता होती है कि उनकी प्राथमिकता क्यों है।

ऐप परीक्षण भी उपयोगकर्ताओं को साइन अप करने का एक अच्छा तरीका है, हालांकि, अधिकांश सास मामलों में परीक्षणों के बंद होने का रूपांतरण अनुपात आमतौर पर खराब होता है।

मूल्य निर्धारण के आधार पर आप एक प्रबंधित परीक्षण की पेशकश कर सकते हैं, ताकि वे आपके सॉफ़्टवेयर का मूल्यांकन कर सकें जबकि आप उन्हें बिक्री प्रक्रिया को और नीचे प्रबंधित करते हैं।

एक परीक्षण के दौरान, संभावना देख सकती है कि व्यवहार में उत्पाद उनके लिए कैसे काम करेगा। परीक्षण को बुद्धिमानी से समय देना और यह सुनिश्चित करना महत्वपूर्ण है कि आप पहले से सहमत हैं कि यदि परीक्षण सफल होता है तो क्या होगा।

हमने ऊपर ग्राफ़िक बनाया है ताकि यह स्पष्ट रूप से समझाने का प्रयास किया जा सके कि यह आपके संगठन के लिए कैसे काम कर सकता है।

उदाहरण में यह ध्यान देने योग्य है, आपके सीएसी का अधिकांश हिस्सा मार्केटिंग होगा, जबकि अधिक जटिल फ़नल में आपकी लागतों में मार्केटिंग, बिक्री + ग्राहक ऑनबोर्डिंग शामिल होगा।

9. सास सेल्स फ़नल उदाहरण

नीचे दिए गए बिक्री फ़नल उदाहरण हैं। आपको इन्हें तब तक नहीं दोहराना चाहिए जब तक कि वे आपकी बिक्री प्रक्रिया के अनुकूल न हों।

वे उन लोगों के लिए एक शुरुआती बिंदु के रूप में डिज़ाइन किए गए हैं जो बिक्री फ़नल विकसित करना चाहते हैं।

जैसा कि आप ग्राफिक से देख सकते हैं, आपके द्वारा बनाए जा रहे फ़नल के प्रकार के आधार पर आपकी बिक्री फ़नल बनाने के लिए चरणों के कई विकल्प हैं।

विशुद्ध रूप से डिजिटल फ़नल के लिए आपके पास हो सकता है:

लीड मैग्नेट लैंडिंग पृष्ठ – जहां संभावनाएं आपके विज्ञापन पर क्लिक करने के बाद आती हैं
पुष्टिकरण पृष्ठ – आपके मुफ़्त ऑफ़र, परीक्षण या खरीदारी की पुष्टि
अपसेल पेज – जहां संभावनाओं को अतिरिक्त सेवाओं को जोड़ने या अपग्रेड करने का अवसर मिलता है
चेकआउट पृष्ठ – जहां ग्राहक सेवा के लिए भुगतान करते हैं
बधाई या धन्यवाद पृष्ठ – जहां आप उपयुक्त अगले चरणों के साथ पोस्ट संभावनाओं पर हस्ताक्षर कर सकते हैं।

पाइपलाइन के साथ बिक्री फ़नल
सास सेल्स फ़नल का निर्माण कैसे करें

10. सास बिक्री फ़नल मेट्रिक्स

जब मेट्रिक्स की बात आती है तो हम मानते हैं कि ये सामान्य बिक्री संचालन मेट्रिक्स और KPI हैं जिनसे अधिकांश लोग परिचित हैं। कहने की जरूरत नहीं है कि ये मीट्रिक महत्वपूर्ण हैं और आपको उन पर रिकॉर्डिंग और रिपोर्टिंग करनी चाहिए।

एलटीटी – लीड टू ट्रायल कन्वर्ज़न
यह उन लीडों की संख्या है जो परीक्षण में परिवर्तित हो गए हैं।

डीसीआर – डेमो रूपांतरण अनुपात
बिक्री प्रक्रिया के अगले चरण में सफलतापूर्वक रूपांतरित होने वाले डेमो की संख्या.

टीटीएस – परीक्षण से बिक्री रूपांतरण
यह नि: शुल्क परीक्षण पर संभावनाओं की संख्या है जो भुगतान करने वाले ग्राहकों में परिवर्तित हो गए हैं।

एलटीवी – ग्राहक का आजीवन मूल्य
यह औसत कुल मूल्य है जो ग्राहक सेवा छोड़ने से पहले खर्च करेगा। विडंबना यह है कि आपके उत्पाद को बेहतर तरीके से मापना अधिक कठिन हो सकता है, क्योंकि ग्राहकों को छोड़ने के बिना आपको पता नहीं चलेगा कि वे कितने समय तक रहते हैं और व्यवसाय के लिए उनका कुल मूल्य क्या है।

मंथन – छोड़ने वाले ग्राहकों की संख्या
ग्राहक चले जाएंगे और यह हमेशा एक बुरी बात नहीं है। यदि आपके छोड़ने वाले ग्राहक आपके ICP (आदर्श ग्राहक प्रोफ़ाइल) में फिट होते हैं तो आपको एक समस्या है। जो ग्राहक इसे छोड़ते हैं जो आपके ICP के अनुकूल नहीं हैं, वे मूल्यवान संसाधन मुक्त कर सकते हैं जिसे आपके ICP पर खर्च किया जा सकता है।

एमआरआर – मासिक आवर्ती राजस्व
मासिक आवर्ती राजस्व आपको अपनी सफलता का एक सिंहावलोकन देता है, हालांकि, यह केवल एक सिंहावलोकन है और अधिक सटीक तस्वीर प्राप्त करने के लिए आपको डेटा के भीतर विवरण देखने की आवश्यकता है।

एआरआर – वार्षिक आवर्ती राजस्व
वार्षिक आवर्ती राजस्व व्यवसाय का एक अच्छा अवलोकन देता है, लेकिन एमआरआर की तरह आपको अपने उद्यम के स्वास्थ्य पर अधिक सटीक तस्वीर प्राप्त करने के लिए सभी डेटा का अध्ययन करना चाहिए।

बिक्री चक्र – प्रारंभिक संपर्क से बंद आदेश तक का समय
यह आमतौर पर कम मूल्य के सरल समाधानों के लिए छोटा होता है और जटिल एंटरप्राइज़ बिक्री के लिए लंबा होता है। उदाहरण के लिए, टियर 1 बैंक को बिक्री प्रारंभिक संपर्क से बंद होने तक 18 महीने लग सकती है।

सीएसी – ग्राहक अधिग्रहण लागत
यह समझना महत्वपूर्ण है कि एक ग्राहक प्राप्त करने में आपको कितना खर्च आता है। एक आदर्श दुनिया में आप इसे व्यवसाय के शुरुआती चरणों में खोज लेंगे जब आप मूल्य प्रस्ताव को साबित कर रहे होंगे। इस आंकड़े के बिना व्यवसाय को बढ़ाने के लिए सिस्टम और प्रक्रियाओं को लागू करना असंभव है क्योंकि आपको नहीं पता होगा कि आप फ्रंट एंड मार्केटिंग और बिक्री पर कितना खर्च कर सकते हैं।

नकारात्मक मंथन –
नकारात्मक मंथन एक शक्तिशाली विकास मीट्रिक है जो इंगित करता है कि मौजूदा ग्राहकों को अपसेलिंग और क्रॉस सेलिंग से होने वाला राजस्व ग्राहकों के जाने पर खोए हुए राजस्व को छीन लेता है।

11. सास प्रस्ताव प्रस्तुतियाँ

अंतिम डेमो के बाद, आपको कभी भी प्रस्ताव भेजने की पेशकश नहीं करनी चाहिए।

प्रस्तावों में समय और पैसा खर्च होता है और यदि आपकी संभावना इच्छुक है तो वे आपसे एक प्रस्ताव मांगेंगे

यदि आपकी संभावना आपसे प्रस्ताव नहीं मांगती है तो यह आपको बताता है कि वे आपके साथ काम करने में रुचि नहीं रखते हैं और आपको यह समझने के लिए बिक्री प्रक्रिया को वापस लेने की आवश्यकता है कि आप कहां गलत हो गए हैं।

जब बिक्री प्रक्रिया ठप हो जाती है, तो यह शायद ही कभी किसी ऐसी चीज के कारण होता है जिसे आपने उस समय गलत किया है – अधिक बार, यह कुछ ऐसा है जिसे आपने पहले बिक्री प्रक्रिया में याद किया था।

सुनिश्चित करें कि आप आश्वस्त हैं कि सॉफ़्टवेयर के सभी लाभों को उन्हें स्पष्ट रूप से समझाया गया है और उनकी बताई गई आवश्यकताओं के अनुसार मैप किया गया है।

जहां संभव हो, हमेशा अपने व्हाइट नाइट को प्रस्ताव के सह-निर्माण में मदद करने के लिए प्राप्त करें और आधिकारिक प्रति भेजने से पहले उनके साथ एक मसौदा संस्करण की जांच करें।

अपना प्रस्ताव भेजने से पहले आपको इस बात की स्पष्ट समझ होनी चाहिए कि यदि आप जीतते हैं या हारते हैं तो अगला कदम क्या होगा।

इसके बिना आपको अगले तीन महीने वॉयस मेल में भूतों का पीछा करते हुए बिताने की सबसे अधिक संभावना है।

12. अपने सास अनुबंधों का मूल्य निर्धारण

कई कंपनियां अपनी वेबसाइट पर सीमित या बिल्कुल भी मूल्य निर्धारण प्रदान नहीं करती हैं क्योंकि वे नहीं चाहती कि उनके प्रतिस्पर्धियों को उनकी कीमत दिखाई दे, या उन्हें लगता है कि यह संभावित ग्राहकों को डरा देगा।

आपको अपनी कीमत और आपके द्वारा लाए गए मूल्य पर गर्व होना चाहिए। प्रतियोगिता को आप पर हावी होने दें और अपने सभी संसाधनों को लाभहीन सौदों पर बाँध लें।

लोग शायद ही कभी सबसे सस्ता समाधान खरीदते हैं, इसलिए अपनी संभावनाओं को आप पर हावी होने दें।

यदि आप अभी भी अपनी वेबसाइट पर अपना मूल्य निर्धारण करने के बारे में चिंतित हैं, तो सोचें कि जब आप किसी ऐसे समाधान पर शोध कर रहे होते हैं, जिसमें केवल मूल्य निर्धारण पृष्ठ पीओए से भरा होता है, तो आप कैसा महसूस करते हैं।

यदि आप अधिकांश लोगों को पसंद करते हैं तो आपको यह वास्तव में कष्टप्रद लगता है और जल्दी से अगले संभावित आपूर्तिकर्ता की ओर बढ़ जाते हैं।

अंत में, अपने मूल्य निर्धारण को गर्व से प्रदर्शित करने का एक और लाभ यह है कि यह किसी ऐसे व्यक्ति को योग्य बनाता है जो उस स्तर पर निवेश करने के लिए तैयार नहीं है।

यह उन संभावनाओं के साथ आपका बहुत समय और संसाधन बचा सकता है जिनके पास बस एक अलग बजट स्तर है।

आपके लिए कई मूल्य निर्धारण रणनीतियाँ उपलब्ध हैं, हालाँकि, हमारे अनुभव से केवल एक चीज की गारंटी है, वह यह है कि आप अपने मूल्य निर्धारण को बदल देंगे।

अंगूठे के मूल नियम के रूप में यदि आपकी कीमतें अल्पकालिक अनुबंध या भुगतान परीक्षण के लिए बहुत अधिक निर्धारित की जाती हैं, तो अनुबंध समाप्त होने से पहले संभावना सॉफ्टवेयर के पूर्ण लाभों का अनुभव करने में विफल हो सकती है, और वे नवीनीकरण नहीं करने का निर्णय ले सकते हैं .

जहां संभव हो, आपको परीक्षण अवधि के दौरान जानकारी जोड़ने और सेवा का उपयोग करने के लिए संभावित लोगों को पुरस्कृत करना चाहिए।

उदाहरण के लिए, एक छोटा परीक्षण ऑफ़र करें और यदि उपयोगकर्ता अपना प्रोफ़ाइल/खाता सेट अप पूरा करते हैं तो उन्हें प्रोत्साहित करें।

एक और मुफ्त अवधि की पेशकश करें उन्हें उत्पाद का उपयोग करने के लिए प्रोत्साहित करें उदाहरण के लिए यदि वे सिस्टम में डेटा अपलोड करते हैं।

विचार यह है कि अपने नए उपयोगकर्ताओं को चरण दर चरण “ऑनबोर्ड” करें और अपने उत्पाद को यथासंभव चिपचिपा बनाएं।
यदि संभावना आगे बढ़ना चाहती है तो आपको बिक्री प्रक्रिया को गति देने के लिए डिजिटल हस्ताक्षर वाले अनुबंधों का उपयोग करना चाहिए।

ईमेल या डिजिटल अनुबंधों के लिंक में कभी भी अनुबंध न भेजें क्योंकि इन्हें आसानी से अनदेखा किया जा सकता है।

फोन पर संभावना प्राप्त करने और उनके साथ अनुबंध के माध्यम से बात करने की व्यवस्था करें। एक बार जब वे अनुबंध में सब कुछ के लिए सहमत हो जाते हैं तो बस उन्हें फोन पर हस्ताक्षर करने के लिए कहें।

इस तरह आप बिक्री प्रक्रिया पर नियंत्रण बनाए रखते हैं।

13. SaaS प्रदाताओं के लिए बिक्री फ़नल इतना महत्वपूर्ण क्यों है?

बिक्री फ़नल को लागू करने के लिए संघर्ष करने के बाद कई व्यवसाय विफल हो गए हैं। SaaS उत्पादों का विपणन और बिक्री अविश्वसनीय रूप से चुनौतीपूर्ण हो सकता है, और संभावना है कि आपके लक्षित ग्राहक पहले से ही प्रतिस्पर्धी सॉफ़्टवेयर विक्रेताओं के ऑफ़र से अभिभूत हैं।

इस बारे में सोचें कि मौजूदा बजट में खरीदारों के किस हिस्से से आप राजस्व प्राप्त करने जा रहे हैं। आप किस प्रत्यक्ष या अप्रत्यक्ष प्रतिस्पर्धियों से बजट छीन लेंगे?

आप दुनिया के कुछ सबसे बड़े और सबसे शक्तिशाली ब्रांडों के साथ प्रतिस्पर्धा कर सकते हैं जो आपके द्वारा हल की जाने वाली समान समस्याओं का सामान्य समाधान प्रदान कर रहे हैं।

इसका मतलब है कि आपको कुछ विशिष्ट पेशकश करने की ज़रूरत है जो आपके ग्राहकों को वास्तव में चाहिए।

सीबी इनसाइट्स के एक अध्ययन में कहा गया है कि सास के 42% स्टार्ट-अप विफल हो जाते हैं क्योंकि वे ऐसे उत्पाद पेश कर रहे हैं जिनकी उनके लक्षित ग्राहकों को आवश्यकता नहीं है।

संभावित ग्राहकों को आश्वस्त करना कि आपका सॉफ़्टवेयर वास्तविक मूल्य प्रदान करता है, आवश्यक है।

सास के स्टार्टअप क्यों विफल होते हैं

14. संभावनाओं की अपेक्षाओं का प्रबंधन

एक बिक्री फ़नल बनाना वेब विज़िटर से लेकर ग्राहक तक और डेमो और ट्रेल्स के माध्यम से और अनुबंध पर हस्ताक्षर किए जाने के साथ समाप्त होने के बारे में है।

आपकी बिक्री फ़नल को उन सभी प्रमुख चरणों पर ज़ोर देना चाहिए जो आपकी संभावनाओं को एक समझौते के रास्ते पर ले जाएंगे।

अपनी संभावनाओं के साथ पहले से खुले, आगे और प्रक्रिया के चरणों को साझा करें।
आपको घर्षण के किसी भी बिंदु पर पूरा ध्यान देना चाहिए जो तब हो सकता है जब आपकी संभावनाएं आपकी बिक्री पाइपलाइन के माध्यम से यात्रा करती हैं।

इससे आपको आगे बढ़ते हुए अपने फ़नल में सुधार करने का अवसर मिलेगा।
सबसे महत्वपूर्ण बात यह है कि आप अपने बिक्री फ़नल में सभी डेटा बिंदुओं को रिकॉर्ड करते हैं।

इससे आपको अपनी भावनाओं के बजाय तथ्यों पर निर्णय लेने में मदद मिलेगी। आपकी बिक्री फ़नल को पूरी तरह से प्रभावी होने में समय लग सकता है, और इससे पहले कि आपके पास वास्तव में अनुकूलित बिक्री फ़नल हो, आपको कई परिशोधन करने की आवश्यकता हो सकती है।

कई ग्राहकों को इस बात की गहरी समझ नहीं होती है कि जब वे पहली बार आपसे मिलते हैं तो उन्हें क्या चाहिए होता है। संभावनाओं को दोनों के बीच संबंध बनाने में मदद करके न केवल उत्पाद प्रदान करें।

यह भी सच है कि उपयोगकर्ता अक्सर वही खरीदते हैं जो वे चाहते हैं न कि वह जो उन्हें चाहिए।

यही कारण है कि लक्षित प्रश्न पूछना इतना महत्वपूर्ण है कि आप सटीक रूप से यह निर्धारित कर सकें कि उनकी ज़रूरतें क्या हैं ताकि आप अपने सॉफ़्टवेयर को सबसे अनुकूल तरीके से रख सकें।

ये प्रश्न आपको यह भी बताएंगे कि वे निर्णय लेने के कितने निकट या दूर हैं।

15. सास समाधानों का उदय

ऐसा लगता है कि दुनिया में सब कुछ अब SaaS एप्लिकेशन द्वारा ऑनलाइन संचालित है। नेटफ्लिक्स और अमेज़ॅन प्राइम से लिंक्डइन और माइक्रोसॉफ्ट एम 365 तक अब हम एक या दूसरे विवरण के सास समाधानों से घिरे हुए हैं।

वित्तीय रूप से SaaS समझ में आता है क्योंकि यह सामने वाले भारी पूंजीगत व्यय से बचता है और समाधान को जोखिम से मुक्त करता है।

आखिरकार, अगर यह काम नहीं करता है तो आप आमतौर पर केवल अधिकतम 12 महीनों में ही लॉक होते हैं। SaaS के अन्य लाभों में यह शामिल है कि यह सामान्य रूप से तैनात करने के लिए त्वरित है और क्लाइंट की ओर से किसी रखरखाव की आवश्यकता नहीं है।

अपग्रेड आमतौर पर स्वचालित रूप से वितरित किए जाते हैं, ग्राहकों को आमतौर पर सेवा के गारंटीकृत स्तर की पेशकश की जाती है।

बैकअप और डेटा रिकवरी आमतौर पर क्लाइंट की ओर से की जाती है, इसलिए वे इस बात पर ध्यान केंद्रित कर सकते हैं कि वे सबसे अच्छा क्या करते हैं, इस ज्ञान में सुरक्षित है कि सब कुछ सॉफ्टवेयर डेवलपर्स द्वारा स्वयं संभाला जा रहा है।

लॉकडाउन ने टर्बो चार्ज किया सास
महामारी से पहले भी दूरस्थ कार्य बढ़ रहा था, इसलिए यह तथ्य कि SaaS उत्पाद व्यक्तियों को कहीं से भी काम करने और सहयोग करने की अनुमति देते हैं, केवल SaaS को हमारे दैनिक जीवन में और भी गहरा करने का काम करते हैं।

दुनिया भर में हर देश में हजारों नए उत्पाद सास उत्पाद विकसित किए जा रहे हैं, इसलिए प्रतिस्पर्धा भयंकर है, हालांकि, उपभोक्ताओं की भूख और सास समाधानों के लिए व्यापार का कोई स्पष्ट अंत नहीं है।

एक सुसंगत बिक्री फ़नल आपके उत्पाद के वायरल होने और ड्रॉइंग बोर्ड पर लौटने के लिए मजबूर होने के बीच का अंतर हो सकता है।