Best Sale is No Sale!
I would have never guessed that my takeaway from a Sales workshop would be that best sale is no sale. Or that one person could make me unlearn all that I learnt at college on how to sell. A Big Close is highly overrated. How will you benefit from prospects who don’t come out of the other side of the pipeline? Have them actively involved in all stages of the selling process, let them believe in you and grow organically!
And this is even more important for start-ups and SMBs as they are small and beginning at square one.
As a start-up, Direct sales and Inside sales are your strength. Direct sales usually eliminates the need for middlemen so you are in direct contact with the customers.
Inside sales are the dominant sales technique for B2B, tech and many B2C selling pricey items. Selling is conducted remotely making it a huge cost saver. Sales are handled over phones and emails, by inside sales managers that are highly professional leading to better coordination. Sales reps are offered tools to increase their productivity.
Here is the order of efficiency in sales:
Inside sales →Field sales →Channel sales
What we should aim towards is No Sales. According to Ankit Jain, Founder at MyOperator, Best Sale is No Sale.
Yes, I was as surprised. Now how do you sell without being obvious?
1. Start by Pushing
Initially no one knows about you. So make your existence known. You are basically “taking your product to the customer” using tactics like discounted price, attractive packaging, direct and face-to-face selling etc.
2. Lower your dependency on sales.
You cannot expect to be popular in a day. It takes time and perseverence. Just because buyers are less at present, doesn’t mean that your business is going down.
3. Gradually move from Field sales to Inside sales.
4. Don’t confuse Inside Sales with Cold Calling!
5. Don’t panic if conversions fall by half, the actual sales will still be high because the end prospects will purchase.
6. Don’t underestimate the importance of Customer Relationship Management.
7. Sales process is more important than the sales itself. Lay down a process with rules to follow, otherwise there will be too much confusion when Sales problems come up.
Mostly when businesses notice that many prospects are interested they think that the big number will convert into sales. But that’s usually never the case. In the pipeline, almost 50% leads get lost in first call!
The focus should never be to close sales but to verify the sale that is interested and doing it QUICKLY. Invest in Sales Development Reps! They result in increased efficiency in calls and reducing the sales cycle from 21 days to 10 days. They will quickly move more leads through the pipeline and get you long-term business with qualified leads.
Don’t Forget! —
1. Initially everything starts with a push sale.
2. If in the first 30 seconds you fail to make the prospect interested, you have lost the deal. Capture the prospect’s curiosity because a human mind is always preoccupied.
3. Don’t talk about features in the meeting, they don’t sell. Sell problems.
Don’t give the business another headache by telling them you have this and that. Sell ISSUES. When the customer can relate with the issue and you are claiming that you can solve it, your product is halfway sold vs. when you talk about the features and customer doesn’t know he needs your product.
5. Customize your pitch. Eg. While selling food items to adults and children, different marketing techniques are used. A cartoon animation can’t be used to advertise protein powder for adults. It won’t sell. A man working out intensely and having a protein shake WILL sell. Understand the psychology of customers.
6. Email. And email often. There is no marketing channel better than email. Even more than Facebook and LinkedIn.
7. Invest in proposal templates with suitable content and designing. That will work a long way.
8. Automate big tasks like Proposals. When a SMS should go, or when an email should be triggered, automation makes the process 40% easier.
9. Shift repetitive tasks from Manual-process to One-Click Process.
Use services like KiSSFLOW to reduce chaos and time spent on cognitive decision making and add it to process building.
10. Never allow bargain. Customers bargain and we can allow or disallow that as process.
11. Sales that is only about building relationships is not worth it because operational task increases a lot. The moment you get into a relationship the other person starts taking advantage. You won’t be able to scale too much if you entertain relationships.
12. Customer support team should not entertain calls for unrelated matters like request for discounts on products by a long-time customer. That should be reverted to Accounts Manager. Everyone should not do every job.
13. When customers see the same product with higher price they feel it’s better than the one with the lower price; use the human psychology to your benefit!
14. Customer will compare your product with many other products in the market. They can ask if they are getting the same product at a lower price, why should they buy your product?
You have an Apple and customer compares it with an Orange. Create an Orange for negotiation purpose.
Eg. Make an imaginary product. Ankit calls it the Apple-Micromax theory. When they tell you they found the similar product (Micromax) less than half the price of Apple, you listen to them. Tell them you have the product they are comparing with as well. You do have a Micromax for selling. But the Apple you are putting on the market has the xyz features that Micromax doesn’t. Can they trust the cheaper product for their business? I think not 😉
Result- Customer is yours without NEGOTIATING prices.
15. And finally, give statistics. Give a number that seems lucrative. Put them in a place where they will be begging for your product.
I wouldn’t have believed any of this if it wasn’t for the crazy statistics of MyOperator. Seems like Best sale is No sale after all!
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