Selling by Visualization

Hi Friends,

                 Today, we’re going to discuss another selling tip or technique, whatever which we will call “Selling by Visualization”. Now, Selling by Visualizing is a way of trying to sell by certain imaginative exercises to be carried out, prior to the actual call. As usual, I am talking about Industrial Selling. It should work to some extent in other sales processes too, but don’t quote me as I have never tried it out other than in Industrial Selling.

Things to know

1.      It’s a way of not letting nervousness rear its head, by increasing your confidence. Confidence is a property that any salesperson needs to possess as the more the confidence; the more are the chances of the sale.
2.              Confidence without basic product knowledge is useless. It is wastage of resources and can misfire badly.
3.       Selling by Vision is not something to be tried out at the very first sales call. A little experience should be acquired before you try it out.
4.          Besides selling, the process is useful in other situations too where confidence helps such as in a job interview.

 Methodology

            Let us suppose that the sales person which is you has got a sales call lined up with a potential customer. First you should do your homework as to how your product can help the customer, try to gather information about the purchasing methods of the customer, role of the competition in the customer’s plant, etc.

          Next step is to decide how to conduct the sales call. Here is where the experience is required. Let us assume that you will do a presentation, a simple power point slide presentation. 

         Now, the salesperson should close his eyes or if in public, keep them open but register nothing. The entire process from when he approaches the customer’s office to his departure at the conclusion of the call is visualized. Here, imaginative capabilities come in. Starting from the initial handshake, just visualize the call in your mind as if a movie is playing in front of you. Try to anticipate the questions which may come at different stages. There may be some which you cannot answer immediately. So, what answer will you give which does not give the customer wrong impressions. If done correctly, this will make you more prepared such as, say you are visualizing showing slides to a customer when there is a question about a connected matter, for which there is no slide in that particular presentation. You visualize yourself trying to find that slide and failing which says a great deal about how organized you are. Make a note to keep that slide ready. Go through the entire sales call and visualize a happy ending, say that the customer has asked you for a budgetary offer. Try to be realistic. The visualization can be in ordinary speed but what is vital is that you need to identify the turning points. Keep yourself ready for them. It is usually goof-ups in the turning points that prevents a sales presentation materialize into a sale.

        This may sound foolish as you are only imagining how the customer will react, you have no idea what will happen. That is of course true, but think about it and you will find that the customer’s possible reaction though a variable can be defined by limits. The second point is that this exercise is not a memorization technique but is aimed at enhancing your confidence, and increasing your positive energy-that feel-good-feeling. The final point is that it hardly takes a couple of minutes. So, what have you got to lose?

Stage II : The Most Important Stage

Hello Friends,

We now come to the middle 

portion, and the events that take 

place here, are going to make or 

break, all the hard work done. 

Here the main job is to

“Follow –Up”. Yes –I know that

follow ups can be a bit of a bore

sometimes.

But dude, there is just no help for it. You want to sell, you have to develop enthusiasm for follow-up

"Follow up has to be done if you want to sell."

There was once this Sales Guru called Pup

Whose favorite dish was fish-heads in Ketchup’

“The three basic rules" he'd say

“in the science of sales any day"

“Is follow-up, follow-up and FOLLOW-UP”

In Public Sector Tendering, what happens now is that Materials Dept. sends your file back to person who indented for it. This means the department and the officer who required it in the first place. I am assuming that you have built a relationship with the him/her by now. After that post in relationship selling, I am assuming that you-my readers-are using it to the extent possible.A few things have to be kept in mind when you are participating in Public Sector selling through Tenders, of capital equipment.

1.The "Indenter" is interested to know whether the equipment that you are trying to sell will give him the service he requires or not. Even if there is a single iota of doubt, he won’t proceed ahead on your proposal. Therefore, what you need to have in dollops is confidence. Because trust me, very few people can let their inner confusion not show outside. (The indenter will be an experienced person and he will barely need to ask two or three questions to know that you have no idea of what you are speaking about.). So try to get rid of all your confusion if you have any.

2.If you are representing a foreign OEM, then your product may have done fabulous work in Brazil and Peru. Do not make the mistake of glorifying these achievements. Their presence on your experience list is enough. Maybe you are new in India and have sold only one or two units so far. Glorify that achievement. That will serve you in better steed then the South American glorious stories.

Now, what about service? Do you have service people in your company who are competent as well as presentable? Or,  is your management only thinking about recruiting people? Or, maybe you have already hired experienced engineers and you've sent them overseas for training? Please note that you should not tell lies and untruths. If your product is slightly technically inferior, tell the truth. Even a person who is not the champion intellect is more likely to buy a slightly technically inferior product but with good service rather then a sophisticated gizmo which requires four(4) days for someone to come over from Koln.

Always remember that “ what the customer is interested in knowing: is how your product can help his organization in the subject application. He is definitely not interested in knowing about anything else before that..not the strict QA policy you have..not the prize for CRM your Paris Office won..no, nor even your recent order from Mars. This may appear to be obvious but we sometimes fall victim to our ego's. Talk to the point.

 It maybe so that your competitor's equipment had failed somewhere. Maybe your accessory life is higher. Do not criticize your competitor. Do not bring these up. Sometimes you have to be a little unethical!. But  do keep a professional looking paper which lists everything...on a plain white paper with you where your competitor's evil record is exposed and your advantages are monetized to the extent possible. Use it discreetly only when required. (say customer says”I heard that your equipment caused problems in… from… You can then say its funny, look at this..maybe I’ve got something here..Aaah here it is..I’ve never told you anything because I don’t believe in negative marketing)

That's the end of Part II and the file goes back to the Materials department.

Looking forward to the next time,we sign off now

Your friendly blogger

Bilbo

Confidence? Jus'what the heck is it?