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?

USING CREATIVITY TO BOOST YOUR SALES

 Two words which have been ruthlessly abused in the last ten to fifteen years are 'CREATIVITY' and "INNOVATION". If you are somewhat sceptical of that ststement, then listen to this. I was just going through the paper a few days back when I came to this line in an obituary I was just glancing through of an old codger who died of old age in his nineties. And there was the sentence" Mr So.-and-so did many innovative things in his lifetime. Really?? 

"Familiarity breeds Contempt" and today we are so familiar with the I-word and to a lesser extent the C-word, that they don't mean anything. The tragedy about this is the boy who is eaten up..
You: Which boy?
Me: You know the one who used to shout 'Wolf"
You. Was he eaten up?
Me:  Aaaah! He wasn't . I am just indulging in some creative innovation.
You go : Waaah! How do you do that? ....

That is the story of Innovation and Creativity, folks!. We have become so familiar with it today that we won't recognize the real I and C, even if they dance the "Lungi dance" in front of us stark naked. We will tackle the I-word in another post and in this post, we will just tackle with creativity.

Just what is Creativity

Creativity is " the ability to look at inputs from a different perspective /viewing angle so that the resultant output makes sense or enhances value"
Creativity is not jumping to conclusions.

Some people confuse creativity with " Creative Writing" , a phrase much bandied around these days, which is not correct. Creative writing is connected to the writer and the writer's work. Perhaps if I give an example of creativity, it will be more clear to you, dear reader, just what I am trying to tell you.

Let us imagine a hypothetical situation where a person travelling along a road comes to a fork on the road. One arm goes to the right and the other to the left. He is now at a loss as to which way to go. Actually both the fork arms first diverge and then converge again to form the road again. But our hero dosen't know this. He is flummoxed and unable to continue. But after a couple of hours,a light bulb shines on the top of his head.  Why don't I look at my road  from a higher elevation, he thinks?  He climbs a tree (growing conveniently nearby) and from the very top sees that the roads meet again . He climbs down and continues on his way, right or left now makes no difference.This is creativity

We must all have experienced the phenomenon that something written by you which looks perfect, appears flawed when you look at it the next morning. This is Creativity as I understand it and the credit for my comrehension (only if correct-if flawed, its mine) must go to Dr. Edward DeBono and his books.

Creativity and Selling

But as you may be wondering by now, how can creativity help in selling. Simple ! Take nothing for granted and try thinking of a tough problem in different ways. If you are just not able to sell