Sales is a battle. Not a battle with the buyer, although sometimes it feels like that when they won’t purchase from us. The war is going on inside our own heads. We have imposter syndrome telling us we are not good enough to do the job, even when we have some modicum of success. We have the reverberation of negative self talk, telling us we are useless, when we fail to meet the sale’s quota. The clients are beating us up on price, the sales manager is beating us up on results. The vast majority of the time spent in sales sees us failing, being constantly rejected, losing revenues, losing clients, losing opportunities. This is the battleground for our thoughts. This year is my 51st year training in traditional karate and so let’s draw on four mindsets which are central to success in battle.
Shoshin – the beginner’s mind
Our mindset when learning new skills is incredibly open. We are keen, flexible, adaptable and hungry to improve. We were like this when we first started in sales or when we started selling a new range of products or services for the first time. As time progressed and our knowledge improved, our mindset shifted from how much can I learn, to how little can I do for the same result. We are now looking for corners to cut, time to be saved, energy to be conserved. We are busy people, so much of this makes sense, but as part of the package we also carry our bad habits around with us. Some of those corners should not be cut, some of that time and energy should be deployed not saved.
Each financial year we start again. Let’s reinvigorate our beginner’s mind and go back to the basics of sales. Let’s purge ourselves of the barnacle like bad habits which have attached themselves over the last year. The beginner’s mind helps us to go back to zero and look at the whole picture again, in a fresh way. “Knowing what I know now, how would I do things differently?”, is a genius level question, to help us get the success we seek. Using the shoshin mindset, let’s start again and re-set our sales skills, philosophy and actions.
Mushin – the mind of no mind
In karate training, my instep would land on the side of my opponent’s temple, before I knew it. This was the product of thousands of repetitions of that kick, so that the neuron grooving was so well accomplished, the action took place without conscious thought. That is a state of mushin, which in the West we call “flow”. In sales, we know our process so well, we can guide the buyer to the right decision, without having to think what to say and when to say it. What comes out of our mouth is effortless, confident, intelligent and perfect for that moment.
Clients have precise, internal radar for risk. Salespeople who stumble and fumble for words or are not articulate, trigger flashing red warning lights and piercing sirens to go off in the buyer’s mind. The sales conversation wanders all over the place, but the professional salesperson keeps shepherding the flow back to the next stage of the sales cycle to keep the deal on track. The outside appears calm and the inside is calm too, because the salesperson is in flow and doesn’t have to scramble for what to say next. Like those many roundhouse kicks, this is the product of thousands of repetitions in role play practice with colleagues and in actual buyer conversations, such that the words appear without conscious thought.
Zanshin – the remaining mind
In Karate, the blow is delivered and then we exercise supreme vigilance, with no relaxation in concentration, remaining completely focused on the opponent. In sales, we need to stay focused on the client after the sale. The temptation though is to move on to the next client. This makes sense from an efficiency point of view, but is it really effective? If we see the relationship in partnership terms, we want to stay close with that buyer. We want the reorder, the upsell, the cross sell, the referral. None of that happens by accident or good fortune. We have built the trust and we have to stay with the client, constantly keeping in touch, rather than just moving on to the next target.
We all know it is much cheaper and easier to sell more to an existing client, than it is to go out and acquire a completely new client. Keeping in close contact with an existing client, after they have purchased, takes time and energy and we can be tempted to move on. Keep the zanshin mindset at the forefront of how you deal with buyers and the rewards are long term and well worth it.
Fudoshin – the immovable mind
One of the toughest drills in karate training is to have your back heel against a wall and then face a continuous series of attacks, one after another, from your training partners. They get a break and don’t tire, but you don’t have that luxury, as wave upon wave of lightening fast blows are rained down on you. Rejections in sales are debilitating. Five tough rejections in a row, when cold calling, sees most salespeople giving up. Your lovely client buying from your competitors hurts. People you know well, who don’t contact you when they need your product or service, buying it from somewhere else is agonisingly painful. Sales can feel ferocious at times.
We need an immovable mindset, where we won’t crack, give up, wilt or surrender in sales. Harden up everyone and keep going, no matter what. Your back is against the wall and you have to keep going regardless.
Mindset decides everything in sales. The good part is we get to choose the mindset. Consider these four Japanese warrior mindsets as metaphors for sales success – no matter how hard it gets.
Sales is such a rollercoaster. You have a good month or a good quarter then you hit a wall. Clients change their mind, something happens to the supply chain beyond your control and the order get cancelled. You usually cannot control the quality of the solution being delivered and someone else in the organisation doesn’t do their job professionally enough and you suffer. We do have total control though over our time, talent and treasure. Are we making the most of this control?
Time is the most expensive asset for any salesperson. Where you spend your time determines everything. I deal with many different suppliers and potential suppliers as a client. I notice that very few firms are good at follow-up. We know that finding a new client is vastly more expensive and difficult that extending the purchase profile of an existing client. We also know that most salespeople give up after three rejections when cold calling. Given we know all of this, you would think that a good portion of a salesperson’s time would be allocated to keeping in touch with buyers. Trying to stay top of mind with a buyer takes a lot of effort and time, but if your competitor isn’t doing it, then you are more likely to win.
I am going to translate my book Japan Presentations Mastery into Japanese. The firm I have chosen is a good example of sustained follow-up. They met me at a networking event a couple of years ago, but have kept in touch. They are top of mind. I am busy, so it is an easy decision to use them, because I know them already and I don’t have to run around trying to drink from the firehose of all possible translation service providers. We know our clients are always time poor, so this is the type of mental equation they are applying too, so we need to make the decision as easy as possible for them. The time they have invested in me is going to mean a deal for them that others won’t get.
What are we doing with our time? Do we have good systems of follow-up, can we keep track of all of our potential clients, can we automate the process so that no matter how busy we become it gets done? It is no good putting them on the weekly email blast list and imagining that you are top of mind. Your weekly email is probably sitting in their junk mail or clutter list or they may have written to your marketing department to take their name off the distribution list and no one has told you that. We need to invest our time wisely and keep in in touch with potential buyers, lapsed buyers and existing buyers has to be a top priority.
Talent is time bound. If you are a master of selling via fax machines then you are not going to be selling much, because technology has moved on. Are you a master of content marketing and using social media to sell yourself? Are you laying a breadcrumb trail back you through business social media posts which highlight your knowledge and capability? Are you comfortable in front of the video camera as you create content for free which gets pushed out through all the channels to attract buyers or to build greater credibility? The flip side of all of this is getting known has never been easier. Okay, it is not easy, but it is easier than twenty years ago. We didn’t have these tools before to project ourselves globally and locally.
Having the skills required for the sale is a given, although so many salespeople don’t have the basics under control as yet. In this modern deluge of free information and availability of access to the best minds on any subject, how could that possible be? Back in 1939 Dale Carnegie opened up public classes for salespeople. At that time, if your company provided sales training then you got trained or you had to work it out by yourself. By providing open public classes any salesperson could access the highest level of sales training. All they had to do was spend a microscopic part of their treasure to pay for it. Fast forward to today and the same things apply. If your own company doesn’t provide sales training or very good sales training, then invest in yourself and go access it.
Do the top salespeople stop learning? Do they stop buying the videos, audio sets, podcasts and books? They are the top people because they never stop investing in themselves, so that they can stay current with whatever the market throws at them or whatever technological shifts upset the apple cart. The critical other piece of the puzzle is that they not only spend their treasure on educating themselves, they apply what they have learnt, then customise it and refine it further to suit their particular situation.
Time is our greatest asset as salespeople and we must maximise its power. We have talent but the world keeps changing so we need to keep re-inventing ourselves and adding to our talent bank. We have access to an immeasurable amount of free information on selling and we have the best of the best, providing their ideas and insights, if we pony up some treasure. It has never been a better time in history than to be in sales today. Let’s seize this opportunity and go for it.
Objections are good. That sounds a bit counterintuitive I know, because what we actually want is to land a deal and an objection seems to be an obstacle preventing that from happening. There is a process for dealing with objections and we need to be disciplined to follow it every time and not be derailed by our emotions. When we get an objection, our automatic response is to argue with the buyer and tell them why they are wrong. How has arguing with the buyer been going for you? Not too good I would reckon. Even if you win the argument, the battle, you won’t get the order and therefore can’t win the war, if I can use that metaphor. We need a better process than this.
Cushion.
Instead we need to go to our cushion - a statement that is neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the buyer. Placing a cushion between what they have just said and what we are going to say is critical. We are all the creatures of our habits and if our habit has been to jump right in and correct the client about how wrong they are, the chances are high we will keep doing that until the end of time. The cushion is a circuit breaker to tell our brain “hey genius, don’t argue with the client”. The cushion buys us valuable thinking time to come up with the right response to any objection and there is only one response needed, so if we can stop ourselves defending our solution for a minute, we can start to get somewhere regarding landing this deal.
Why.
What do I mean when I say there is only one response needed? This sounds a bit bolshie doesn't it. The first words out of our mouth after hearing the objection are critical. We should always ask ever so sweetly, “may I ask you why you say that?”. Now they have to justify the objection they came up with. Sometimes I use the metaphor of being thrown a porcupine, bristling with all of those sharp quills, when we get an objection. We have to throw that porcupine right back to the buyer by asking the question “why
An objection is like the headlines in the morning newspaper. They are a very short form of conveying a much longer and complex story. We have to train ourselves not to react to the headline. Before we say anything, we want to know the full story. We want much more information, so that we know which way we should answer the objection.
Clarify.
Once we have received more information, we need to double check what we have heard is the main problem. We ask clarifying questions by saying, “Thank you. So, as I understand it, your chief concern is…?”. It is still not that easy to understand the real problem, so that is why we need to keep checking what is the core issue.
Cross-Check.
Sadly buyers don’t always share the thing that is troubling them the most. They may tell us some minor point, just to get rid of us more easily and not get into a big discussion. We want that big discussion, because we want the sale. Visualize an iceberg and the tip of the iceberg is what they tell us, but hidden under the waterline lies the real problem, which they are not sharing with us. So, we need to say, “Thank you. So in addition to “X” are there any other things which are of concern to you?”. We just keep repeating this, until they have run out of concerns. Usually we can get there in three or four attempts.
We ask them, “You have mentioned X,Y and Z as areas of concern. May I ask you which of these is the highest priority for you?” We need to know which concern is the deal breaker, because if we can fix that problem for them, there is a strong possibility all the other concerns will just fall away.
Reply.
Now that we have established the main concern, we answer it and try and satisfy their concern. If it is an incorrect statement or fake news such as “I heard your company is going bankrupt”, then we will Deny it and offer proof that what we are saying is incorrect.
If it is true, we will Agree. Don’t try and justify the unjustifiable – you are just shredding your credibility. If you have had some quality issues then admit it and tell them what you have done to fix that problem. It may be a deal breaker that we cannot overcome, so fair enough and we should zip out of there and find someone we can help, wasting no more time pushing a piece of string around.
In some cases, we may Reverse the logic and use the concern as the reason to buy. For example, if we take a little longer than others to deliver the solution, we can reverse it and say that “the extra time is due to our quality control system ensuring that there is no rework needed and that this ultimately saves more time because rework is a totally disruptive pain, best avoided”.
Trial Commitment.
We need to check whether what we have explained gets rid of that objection or not? A trial close can be as simple as, “how does that sound so far?”. If we have answered the main objection, but there are still other major objections, then we need to repeat the process until we get to a stage where they can buy.
Welcome objections because if there are no objections, questions, or hesitations it could be because they have already eliminated us as a potential solution provider and are just waiting to get to their next meeting. Better to know that early and get on our bike and go find a real buyer.
Today, we are going to talk about the importance of listening for salespeople. That might sound ridiculous. You might be thinking, “Well, of course I listen to the buyer”. I can assure you my wife often complains that I am not listening to her, so we may be deluding ourselves as to what level of world champion listener we actually are. You might be thinking, “well listening to my partner may have a few flaws, but I am a legend when listening to people who can pay money and buy from me”. We think we are listening, but are we really listening? Are we listening for what is not being said. Are we listening with our eyes? If you have ever lived in a country where you don’t speak the language or don’t speak it well, your senses, especially your eyes, become so attuned to communication through body language and tone etc. When we are capable in the language we get lazy, especially if it is our native language. Let’s go deep on understanding if we are a good enough listener or not.
There are five levels of listening.
You might be saying to yourself, “wait a minute, I never ignore the client when they are speaking”. Is that true though? The client may say something that triggers a strong thought in our mind. We are now diverted from what they are saying, to what we are thinking. We are now seized on some vital point we need to make back to them, given what they have just said. In effect, we are no longer paying full attention to them because we are consumed by our own thoughts. Fundamentally, whatever they are now saying has drifted off into the mist and we are fixated on this key point we are bursting to make.
2. Pretend.
In this case we are nodding our head and looking like we are concentrating, but we may not be really taking in what we are being told. I am reminded of that Robert Palmer song lyric from his hit “Addicted to Love” about “the lights were on, but you’re not home”, meaning your eyes are open, but you are not listening to me. Again, our mind may be working on what we are going to say. We may have been given an indication from the client on something that interests them and we are getting ready to tell them all about it. Or if we hear something that sounds like buyer resistance. We are now mentally getting our evidence ready to go into battle with the client. We are playing out the conversation we are about to have in our mind and have left participating in the one happening right at this moment. Come on – admit it – you have done this during a sales call. I know I have.
3. Selective
Salespeople have a highly tuned ability to hear buying signals and key information. Our listening skills are directed only to hear a “yes” or a “no” and nothing else. There may be key information attached to that “yes” or “no” but we are not listening for that. We are filtering what we hear, according to our interests. Effectively we are only partially listening to the client. We do this because we have to be efficient. That is a good thing, efficiency, but are we being effective? Japanese is a good language for salespeople. It forces you to hear the client out because the verb comes right at the end of the sentence. You don’t know if it is a positive, negative, past tense, future tense or present tense statement until the very end of what they are saying. In English, the verb pops up in the middle of the sentence, so we can start blasting away with our reply manufacturing process while they are still talking.
We often hear a “yes” or a “no” and we just dump everything else waiting for a break in the traffic, so we can jump in. There may be vital information coming after that indication which we are ignorant of, because we have jumped the gun on our reply formation process.
4. Attentive
In this case we are giving the client our full attention. We are not filtering for buying signs or resistance. We are not interrupting the buyer. We are paraphrasing back to them what we heard. We are not thinking what we are going to say, because we are fully absorbed by what they are saying.
5. Empathetic
This is the highest form of listening, where we are listening with our eyes as well as our ears. We are reading what is going on behind the words. We are conscious of what is not being said and we are listening to the tone of how we are being told the information. We are trying to “meet the buyer in the conversation going on in their mind”.
So, how did you score your listening skills when talking to buyers? Could you do a better job of listening? I think I should do a lot more with my listening skills starting with my wife! It will be a good practice for listening to buyers during my sale’s calls.