Hello guys,
Here’s the time this morning…
And I had something really interesting happen to me yesterday.
I’ve got two new commission-only sales people starting with me today and it turns out their siblings – Josh and Allison from Alabama.
I interviewed them both separately over the last week (neither knew they’d applied for the same company) and they both got the role.
They’re at the initial stages of their sales career and certainly, Allison has just come out of taking a high-ticket closers course and Josh already has had some experience in sales in his last position
Regardless – both of them are looking to grow and develop within a sales orientated organisation which is exactly what Pearl Lemon is.
I’m fortunate in a small way that whilst I’ve never taken a ‘formal’ sales training course – having poured my way through books from Grant Cardone, Zig Ziglar, Jim Pancero and Jordan Belfort I’ve probably consumed around 40 hours of sales training.
Furthermore, running a digital marketing agency has got me to a place where I was sometimes pitching 6-7 people per day on calls – so I had plenty of time to practice.
WIth this in mind I’ve told Josh and Allison that we’ll be doing cold calling training 2x a week (something I’ve never formally given before) – but I’m seeing it as an awesome opportunity to hone my sales skills.
My head of inbound sales Ion is taking 80% of the calls coming in now which means that I’m doing a lot less pitching than I’m used to doing so I want to push myself into the deep end.
With all of this in mind – yesterday (in preparation for today – my first sales training session potentially) – I decided to get a book that directly relates to what I’m going to be working through today –
Table of Contents
A Look at Close That Sale!
What’s interesting about this process is that I downloaded it yesterday at around 8.30pm.
The time now is 7.40am the next day and I’ve actually finished the book and have made notes on the entire thing.
So my reading, and how I’m reading just developed a new edge (I recommend the same for you guys). I’m reading aggressively in mind with something I’m pressured to work upon right now – which is sales training.
So I’ve got another 20 minutes before I need to dive into something else –
So I want to run you through what I’ve learnt from listening to this Audible that I can share with you.
A couple of things overall:
I focussed upon a book that was only 1 hour 14 minutes of audio – so the learning wasn’t as ‘deep’ as some of the books that go 10 hours – so I’m curious to see if that means it will stick or not.
But I’m beginning to get more disciplined with taking notes per book I go through and am developing a system to cement learning and application from what I read:
Outside of this also I discovered the ‘important’ tab in Zenkit which I use to highlight the elements that were most useful to me:
Furthermore, I’ve become a lot more comfortable realising that my way of daily journaling is via this blog and I’ve let go of worrying about how many readers I ‘may/may not’ have – moreover I’m focussed upon using the blog as a platform to educate myself.
Key Takeaways
So now –
Let’s go through some of the key things that I learnt from Brian Tracy’s closing techniques:
(A quick note – the list style that his content is in, makes it for a short but dense read – and I fear this blog post will be much the same, and for whatever reason Tracy doesn’t have the compelling voice of Ziglar or Cardone so it makes his content a little tougher to get through – but the content is gold!
Enthusiasm is, fortunately, something that comes to me naturally and Tracy says it’s the biggest thing.
However, I’m weak in multiple, multiple other areas that I’m broadly aware of – but over time I’ve forgotten them/stopped working on them – and they are as follows:
- Communicate confident expectations that they will buy. You need to feel it and believe in it. (I don’t communicate this often enough when I sell I know it)
- Create sales training for my commission team to explain to them why Pearl Lemon have such amazing products so they too can believe in what they’re selling (to be honest I need to spend a couple of hard hours building out the entire programme for my sales people)
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Closing on appointments
Now this relates a lot more to cold calling – and it’s something I’ve done very little of unfortunately. I wish I spent some time in my career being a dedicated outbound cold caller with no leads and no nothing – it’s like the ultimate test!
Regardless – some of his insights here were really revealing for me –
Take a look at the list I made here –
The aim on the call is to set up an appointment for a demo. Any attempts to reveal ‘ what is it’, ‘how much is it’, and ‘why can’t you tell me’ – are things that I typically would answer.
Everything about what’s described above I’m fundamentally doing wrong.
Understanding this process then – that the goal of the FIRST call is to set the appointment and reveal nothing about your service is absolutely critical.
The response to objections thrown are brilliant –
How much is it?
Well mr prospect if it isn’t exactly what you’re looking for than there is no cost at all’
Could you tell me what it is?
Well mr prospect that’s exactly why I need 10 minutes of your time
‘Why can’t you tell me?’
I’d love to but there’s something I need to show you
‘Can you email me?’
I’d love to email you but it’s something I really need to demonstrate to you
And then moving from the appointment open into the ‘calendar close’ (I named this one haha but it’s from Tracy still) – by asking ‘do you happen to have your calendar in front of you’?
Which you know they will.
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For me there is a lot of magic here within the pages of this book and I’ll walk you through a couple more (besides me of course just recommending you go out and buy the book)
The Hot Button Close
As Tracy says – this is considered by many to be the best closing technique of all – whereby 80% of the decision is determined by 20% of the product’s features and benefits.
The key to any good close is to ascertain the actual hot button of the client and to keep pushing it again and again until they close!
Magic!
And if you listen carefully for the Freudian slip – they WILL reveal what is their hot button.
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So all – it’s actually 8.03 and I bring this book review to a close (but I’ll also be taking Allison and Josh through some of this later as well as telling them to buy the book).
I hope you’ve found this useful!
I’m also reading these books in parallel and will share my thoughts and learnings from them when I finish 🙂
