In the Little Red Book of Selling, Jeffrey Gitomer presents 13 principles of selling and numerous practical tips and techniques. But before you can learn to sell, he argues that you must first understand why people buy.
It’s a fact of human nature that everyone likes to buy, but no one likes being sold. Rather than selling (pushing the customer to buy what you have), your job as a salesperson is capitalizing on the desire to buy—that is, making the customer want to buy your product.
The top reasons people buy are:
The 13 principles in this book will help you build on customers’ buying reasons to create an atmosphere conducive to buying—for example, by building a strong relationship and addressing customers’ needs for profit and productivity. The principles fall into three categories: practicing success habits, preparing for success, and selling effectively.
The first three principles of selling involve adopting a mindset and habits that set you up for success.
You can’t sell if you don’t constantly push yourself—no one will do this for you because no one else is as invested as you are in whether you succeed. Here are some signs you lack motivation and need to push yourself:
In each case, you feel helpless and unmotivated to change your circumstances.
These are all common complaints and behaviors among salespeople—but you (not your circumstances) are the key to your success:
The second selling principle, minding your own business, is essential to successfully implementing the other selling principles.
It’s easy to get caught up in others’ drama at work, whether it involves bosses, colleagues, customers, or vendors. But besides wasting your finite time, by getting involved, you risk:
Worse, when you engage in drama, you rob time from creating your own success. Convert the time you spend on others’ problems to focusing on self-development and your career.
Avoiding other people’s dramas and focusing on self-development doesn’t mean being oblivious to everything going on around you. The third selling principle—being alert to sales opportunities—requires paying attention to your surroundings and to potential customers and networking contacts around you.
People often focus inwardly—for example, on how they look, what others are thinking about them, something they’re worried about, or something they need to do later. But when you’re focused inwardly, the world and its opportunities are out of focus to you.
Instead of focusing inwardly, imagine yourself wearing antennas that constantly scan your surroundings for opportunity. In every situation, activate your antennas—useful new contacts or sales leads can pop up while you’re waiting in line at airports, restaurants, lobbies, and elevators, or while you're attending a child’s school event.
The next four selling principles involve preparing for sales success by branding and networking and by learning to use humor and creativity in the sales process.
Branding is increasing people’s awareness of you and your strengths. It encompasses putting your name on everything you do, with the goals of establishing yourself as an expert and leader and creating demand indirectly for your product or service.
In selling, who knows you is as important as who you know. When you have a strong brand, customers are loyal to you, prospects call you, you get appointments with higher-ups more easily, and you get more “yeses” to meetings and sales than your competitors do. You attract sales success.
The author built his brand as a sales expert and resource in part through networking activities such as:
Besides networking, the author’s branding efforts included:
As previously noted, the fifth principle of selling—networking—works hand in hand with branding. Both are about becoming known. Networking (building relationships and making new connections) is an essential business function for salespeople and entrepreneurs that takes place outside of regular business hours. With networking, you can strengthen your relationships with your customers, and they can introduce you to prospects like themselves, who are likely to be interested in what you offer.
The first rule of networking is to go to events and places where your customers and prospects are likely to be. Tried-and-true networking venues include:
Be ready to network when you arrive at the event. Preparation is 90% of success, so be willing to put in the time to first do your homework.
Making people laugh relaxes them and creates an atmosphere conducive to buying. Laughing together is a form of agreement or approval, and agreement is a step toward selling. Besides helping you make the sale, humor builds customer relationships by facilitating friendship and respect.
To improve your humor, study humor, especially if you aren’t naturally funny. Here are some ways to learn to be funnier:
Safe topics to joke about include things kids say and do, traffic, and lines from television shows. In general, pick something that’s:
Along with humor, creativity will make you and your sales pitch stand out and be remembered. Here are four ways in which creativity can get a client’s attention:
1) At the start of a sales call, ask a smart, unexpected question instead of blathering on about your company and product. For example, ask: “How much does a lost hour of productivity cost your company?” or “How would you know whether you were overpaying for printing?”
2) Identify your customer contact points and change them so they’re distinctive—including the voicemails you leave, your cover letter, your phone greeting or voicemail message, your business cards, and so on. Fixing your voicemail message is the most important task because it can help you get new customers and act as word-of-mouth advertising (if you have a unique message, people tell others about it). Here are some ways to create a memorable message:
3) Use creative follow-up methods to stay in front of the customer after a meeting—for instance, email a weekly tip, share useful information and testimonials, or send a newsletter.
4) Respond creatively to buyer objections. For example, when a prospect tells you she’s satisfied with her current supplier or product, you might respond: “Prospective clients often claim they’re satisfied with what they have—however, our customers tell us they’re thrilled with our product. Wouldn’t you rather be thrilled than just satisfied?”
You can develop creativity by studying and practicing it. Here are some ways to do this:
The next three principles focus on selling effectively by getting the customer’s attention, so she’ll be willing to listen to your pitch.
Too many salespeople walk into sales calls without having researched the prospect’s business. Then they ask the prospect, “Tell me about your business,” which irritates her and wastes her time. They follow up with, “Let me tell you about my business,” which the client couldn’t care less about. Then, when they fail to sell their product or service, salespeople complain about the challenges of selling.
Instead of complaining, do your research on the prospect’s business by:
Serious preparation takes time and effort but impresses the client by demonstrating your diligence and interest in her company.
After you’ve prepared, the next selling principle is getting a high-level meeting. You need a face-to-face appointment with the real decision-maker. Most salespeople deal with lower-level people. But underlings, who need to get additional approvals, won’t prioritize your case or present it as effectively as you do, so any time you spend with them is wasted.
As explained in principles 4-5, branding and networking can help you get past gatekeepers—if the CEO has met or heard of you, she’s more likely to take your call. But when your call goes through, you still need to sell the prospect on agreeing to a face-to-face meeting with you.
The first thing you must do is engage with the prospect—that is, get her attention by piquing her interest. Statements everyone uses that don’t engage include:
Prospects don’t want to hear about you or be educated by you. Instead, address your prospect’s greatest interests: profit and productivity. Tell the prospect you want to discuss how you can increase her profitability, and she’ll see value in meeting with you.
After getting in front of the person who can say “yes,” the next principle of selling is twofold: Be valuable and give value.
Most salespeople have the wrong idea about value. They think of value as a small extra that’s added to the product—for example, a discount or something free. But your competitors can match these things, so they don’t increase your chances of making a sale. They’re promotions, not value. Value is something you give that’s meaningful to the customer.
First, give value personally—it generates goodwill that can translate later into sales. The author gives value through the business-building tips he provides through public speaking and writing a newspaper column, by connecting people who can help each other, and so on.
Second, in the selling process, address the customer’s chief interest, which is the value of your product to them. Value that’s meaningful to customers includes increased productivity, profit, and sales; more customers; a better image; and so on. Have a strong value proposition and present it in a compelling way. Instead of price, focus on the use and value of the product over its lifetime. Get the prospect to think about how much better her life will be after buying the product.
The remaining three selling principles address techniques and responses that will help you close the deal.
The 11th selling principle—helping the buyer convince herself to buy—requires a key sales skill: asking the right questions.
Most salespeople ask the wrong questions and therefore don’t get the answer they want (a “yes” to the sale). Usually, they’re questions aimed at getting the buyer to switch from a current supplier to your company. They encourage a focus on price rather than value. For example:
In contrast, the right questions help the buyer think about your product or service in terms of how it solves her problems or achieves her goals. They’re specific questions that uncover her frustrations, concerns, and needs, so you can show how your product will make her life easier—and she’ll conclude that she needs it.
Develop a dozen basic questions that you can adapt to uncover each customer’s needs, concerns, and frustrations. Some useful introductory phrases include:
You’ll differentiate yourself by getting your prospect to think in new ways. A sign of success is when the customer remarks that no one ever asked her that question before—and her answer convinces her to buy.
The biggest hurdle to a sale is the risk the customer believes he’d take in buying your product. You must eliminate the risk to get the customer to buy.
A risk is anything that makes a customer hesitate to buy. It can be difficult to identify the risk standing in the way of a sale because what seems risky to the customer may seem trivial to the salesperson. Common concerns or risks to the customer are:
These concerns indicate the customer lacks confidence in the product, company, salesperson, or their own judgment. Here are some ways to effectively counter customer concerns:
1) Prepare for risk hurdles by identifying the customer’s potential risks—for example, by considering how the customer has reacted to your sales pitch in the past or how other customers have reacted. Prepare responses or preemptive statements that eliminate these risks. Practice the responses until you master them.
2) Determine the customer’s risk tolerance—ask about previous purchases they’ve made and how those turned out. What were their concerns prior to those purchases and how did they overcome them? Then, address those risks.
3) Ask the customer, “What’s the risk of buying?” Then ask, “What’s the reward?” Then help her see how the reward outweighs the concern and the value more than meets the need. When the risk is low and the reward is high, customers will buy. When the risk is price, counter it with the reward of value.
4) Suggest a few concerns that might be bothering the customer and answer them—for example: “If you’re concerned that it might not work for you, remember that you can always return it.”
The final selling principle—use customer testimonials to help you sell—is powerful but underused. Customer testimonials are effective because:
To be effective, whether in written or video form, a testimonial should:
Video testimonials, when shown at the end of a sales call, are an effective way to dispel doubts, reduce risk, and confirm the value of your product. However, while the video reinforces the sales message, the salesperson still must close the deal.
In the Little Red Book of Selling, Jeffrey Gitomer presents 13 principles of selling and numerous practical tips and techniques from his sales experience. The principles incorporate several themes of Gitomer’s philosophy:
Gitomer, a sales trainer and the author of numerous best-selling books on sales, argues that to become a successful salesperson, first, love what you do and put your heart into it. Then, take a long-term view of sales rather than focusing on making quick sales to meet your end-of-month goals. Build your sales process on relationships and referrals based on giving customers ongoing value, so you can keep selling over the long term, not just make one sale.
Salespeople are always looking for the “secret” to selling. Companies spend countless dollars and hours training their sales teams in how to sell. But while Gitomer offers key selling principles, he argues that before you can sell, you need to understand why people buy. It’s a fact of human nature that everyone likes to buy, but no one likes being sold.
Therefore, instead of selling (pushing the customer to buy what you have), your job as a salesperson is capitalizing on the desire to buy by creating an atmosphere in which the customer wants to buy your product. This requires understanding why people buy.
Few companies know or ask their customers why they buy. You may think you already understand why customers buy, but you don’t if you’re experiencing any of the following in your sales process:
All of these experiences indicate you haven’t created an atmosphere conducive to buying by focusing on the reasons people buy. For example, if you’re wrangling over price, you’ve failed to convince the customer of your product’s value and fit for her, which are among the reasons people buy.
Here are the top reasons why people buy:
To find out specifically why your customers buy from you, ask them. The sales principles in this summary will help you build on customers’ existing buying reasons to create an atmosphere conducive to buying—for example, by building a strong relationship and addressing their needs for profit and productivity.
Before delving into the sales principles, set yourself up for success by adopting the following mindset and behaviors:
If there’s a “secret” to selling, it’s that you are your own biggest secret—and biggest hurdle—to success.
The rest of the summary will examine 13 principles of successful selling, which address habits that aid selling success, preparation for selling, and how to sell effectively. Each principle will be explored in detail in subsequent chapters.
Practice Success Habits
Read this book slowly, going over each page twice—first, to grasp the ideas and second, to truly absorb them. Most importantly, as you read, don’t say to yourself, “I knew that.” Instead, ask yourself, “How good am I at that? How can I improve?”
If you practice the sales principles and practical tips at a rate of one per day for a year, you’ll become a sales expert in that time, and you’ll be richer too from making more sales. Carry the book with you and use the principles in your sales process. The more you do this, the more sales you’ll win.
If the tips or principles don’t work the first few times you try them, don’t complain. Work harder and put your heart into applying them. The Little Red Book of Selling is red to underscore that as a salesperson, you must be passionate, love what you’re selling, and be on fire. If you aren’t, you’ll lose sales to someone who is.
(Shortform note: Material in this book has been condensed and reorganized to eliminate repetition and improve clarity. The principles of selling have been grouped by theme and reordered.)
The first three principles of selling involve adopting habits that create success: Motivate yourself, mind your own business, and be alert to opportunities.
You can’t sell if you don’t constantly push yourself—no one will do this for you because no one else is as invested as you are in whether you succeed. Here are some signs you lack motivation and need to push yourself:
In each case, you feel helpless and unmotivated to change your circumstances.
These are all common complaints and behaviors among salespeople—but you (not your circumstances) are the key to your success:
It’s your duty to set high goals for yourself (beyond your company’s sales quotas) and motivate yourself so that you achieve them. You should hit your monthly quotas in the first two weeks and pull in new revenue in the last two weeks, so that your colleagues and bosses are impressed and ask you how you do it. In other words, work your butt off.
In addition to working hard, do these things to stay motivated:
The second selling principle, minding your own business, is essential to successfully implementing the other selling principles.
It’s easy to get caught up in others’ drama at work, whether it involves bosses, colleagues, customers, or vendors. Everyone does it—you’re probably distracted by someone’s issues right now. But besides wasting your finite time, by getting involved, you risk:
When people come to you for personal advice, remember that you’re not a psychologist or marriage counselor; instead of wasting time trying to solve their issues, tell them to get professional help. The only career or job advice you should give anyone is to do something they enjoy and believe in, and give it their all.
Instead of advising, convert the time you used to spend on others’ problems to focusing on self-development and your career. It’s one of the best ways of reclaiming time that’s going to waste and using it to achieve at a higher level.
Avoiding other people’s dramas and focusing on self-development doesn’t mean being oblivious to everything going on around you. The third selling principle—being alert to sales opportunities—requires paying attention to your surroundings and to potential customers and networking contacts around you. In fact, paying attention in this way is part of a salesperson’s job.
People often focus inwardly—for example, on how they look, what others are thinking about them, something they’re worried about, or something they need to do later. But when you’re focused inwardly, the world and its opportunities are out of focus to you.
For instance, conferences and events are obvious opportunities to network. But even then, few people are fully alert to the possibilities for meeting key people. Instead of keeping a lookout for and ensuring they meet key players, many attendees focus on drinking, spending time with friends, looking for food, and so on.
Instead of focusing inwardly, imagine yourself wearing antennas that constantly scan your surroundings for opportunity. In every situation, activate your antennas—useful new contacts or sales leads can pop up while you’re waiting in airports, restaurants, lobbies, and elevators, or while you're attending a child’s school event.
For example, the author met actor Hal Linden in the men’s room at La Guardia Airport. He made a joke that made Linden laugh and the two then caught a cab together into the city. While the author didn’t win any business from Linden, Linden did pay for the cab. The point of this example is to be ready to seize the opportunity wherever you are.
The first three principles of selling involve developing success habits. They are: Motivate yourself, mind your own business (don’t get caught up in others’ drama), and be alert to potential sales and networking opportunities everywhere.
Of the first three principles of selling, which one do you struggle with or neglect the most, and why? For instance, do you have a tendency to complain about customers not returning your calls, or do you often feel you’re in a slump (indications you lack motivation)?
How has neglecting this principle undercut your success? Conversely, how could practicing it increase your future sales opportunities or success?
How can you practice the principle this week? How can you remind yourself to practice it?
The next four selling principles involve preparing for sales success. Principles 4 and 5, branding and networking, are closely related in that they overlap and complement each other.
Potential customers “buy” the salesperson first, then buy what you’re selling. They buy your knowledge and expertise, the value you provide, your character, integrity, trustworthiness, and so on. To establish your knowledge and value and make them widely known, you need to develop a strong personal brand.
When you have a strong brand, customers are loyal to you, prospects call you, you get appointments with higher-ups more easily, and you get more “yeses” to meetings and sales than your competitors do. You attract sales success.
Personal branding isn’t difficult, although training classes often make it seem that way—it just takes hard work. Branding is increasing people’s awareness of you and your strengths. It encompasses putting your name on everything you do, with the goals of:
The author built his brand as a sales expert and resource over the years, in part through networking activities such as:
The next chapter goes into networking in more detail.
Besides networking, the author’s branding efforts included:
In addition, the author recommends doing the following to develop your personal brand and impress potential customers:
Ultimately, having a strong personal brand is the difference between having to sell and having people seek out what you’re selling (you and your product).
As previously noted, the fifth principle of selling—networking—works hand in hand with branding. Both are about becoming known. Networking (building relationships and meeting new people) is an essential business function for salespeople that usually takes place outside of regular business hours. Those unwilling to devote additional time to business after hours lose out to those who do.
The benefits of networking include:
The first rule of networking is to go to events and places where your customers and prospects are likely to be. When you run into customers at an event, they can introduce you to prospects like themselves, who are likely to be interested in what you offer.
Tried-and-true networking venues include:
Be ready to network when you arrive at the event. Preparation is 90% of success, so be willing to put in the time to first do your homework.
(Shortform note: To learn more about how to network, read our summary of Never Eat Alone.)
Networking is the best way to start a business relationship. Connecting face-to-face with a prospect is more likely to get you a meeting with them than cold calling (calling people you’ve never met to ask for a meeting).
In fact, networking eliminates the need for cold calling, which is ineffective and therefore wastes time. Cold calling interrupts the prospect, putting them in a negative frame of mind. Further, because salespeople hate doing it, cold calling leads to job turnover. In contrast, networking at a trade show allows you to meet more good prospects than you could reach in a year of cold calling. If you make a good face-to-face impression on someone, they’ll probably take your phone call later and agree to a meeting.
(Shortform note: For an opposite view of cold calling and tips for success, read our summary of New Sales. Simplified.)
The fourth and fifth selling principles, branding and networking, are closely related—both involve making yourself known, which opens doors to future sales opportunities.
Branding is increasing people’s awareness of you and your strengths. How would you describe your brand? (For example, what are you an expert in?) How well-known are you?
What activities do you currently engage in to build your brand (for example, writing a blog, public speaking, or creating a distinctive business card)? What else can you do to build your brand?
Networking, which is related to branding, requires being in places where your customers and potential customers are likely to be. Describe your current networking efforts. How effective are they? (How have they benefited you?)
What are some additional ways you can meet customers and potential customers? (For instance, what three networking events can you create or attend in the next two weeks?)
The sixth and seventh selling principles—use humor and creativity—are differentiating, that is, they set you apart from your competition. Some people are naturally better than others at using them, but both humor and creativity are learnable, so you can use them successfully with study and practice.
Making people laugh relaxes them and creates an atmosphere conducive to buying. Laughing together is a form of agreement or approval, and agreement is a step toward selling. Put another way, get people to laugh and you can get them to buy—all things being equal, customers will choose to buy from you over a humorless competitor. Besides helping you make the sale, humor also builds customer relationships by facilitating friendship and respect.
To improve your humor, study humor, especially if you aren’t naturally funny. Here are some ways to learn to be funnier:
Safe topics to joke about include things kids say and do, traffic, lines from television shows, and things you see. In general, pick something that’s:
In addition to jokes, tell funny stories about yourself. Stories are authentic because they’re about real experiences, in contrast to jokes that sometimes sound contrived. They’re also self-effacing, engaging, and memorable. If a story prompts your conversational partner to tell a story in return, it’s helped you build rapport. Stories incorporated into a sales presentation may also help a prospect relate to your product.
Humor should be the last element you incorporate into your selling process (the icing on the cake)—after you’ve developed sales skills, become an expert in your product, and know your customer and her business. With the other factors in place, it can seal the deal.
Along with humor, creativity will make you and your sales pitch stand out and be remembered. Here are four ways to use it:
1) At the start of a sales call, ask a smart, unexpected opening question instead of blathering on about your company and product. For example, ask: “How much does a lost hour of productivity cost your company?” or “How would you know if you were overpaying for printing?”
2) Identify every customer contact point, and change it so it’s distinctive—including the voicemails you leave, your cover letter, your phone greeting or voicemail message, your business cards, and so on.
Fixing your voicemail message is the most important step because it can help you get new customers and act as word-of-mouth advertising (if you have a unique message, people will tell others about it). Virtually everyone’s message starts the same way, by intoning, “I’m either on the phone or away from my desk…” Some messages tell callers what day it is and what you’re doing (“I’ll be in meetings this morning…”), although the caller doesn’t care or need to know.
If you claim to be different from your competitors, your voicemail message should reflect that. Here are some ways to create a memorable message:
Keep your message short—35 words or less. Write it out, practice it until you can record it perfectly, then change it often (preferably weekly).
3) Use creative follow-up contacts to keep in touch with a customer after a meeting—for instance, email a weekly tip about your area of expertise, share useful information and testimonials, or send a newsletter.
4) Respond creatively to buyer objections. For example, when a prospect tells you she’s satisfied with her current supplier or product, you might respond: “Prospective clients often claim they’re satisfied with what they have—however, our customers tell us they’re thrilled. Wouldn’t you rather be thrilled than just satisfied?”
You can develop creativity by studying and practicing it. Here are some attributes and practices that facilitate creativity:
The sixth and seventh selling principles—use humor and creativity—set you apart from your competition. Some people are funnier or more creative than others, but with study and practice you can use both successfully.
Think about a recent sales call. Did you use humor? If so, how did it affect the conversation? If not, how could you have used humor?
How could you regularly incorporate humor into your interactions? For example, what personal quality or experience could you poke fun at (for instance, missing out on the last parking space right before the big meeting)?
Write down your current voicemail message. How would you (or your callers) describe it (for example, standard, humorous, or creative)?
What’s a more memorable message you could create instead?
The rest of the principles in this book focus on selling techniques that create an atmosphere conducive to buying and thus seal the deal: Prepare to sell, meet with the top decision-maker, and give value.
Too many salespeople walk into sales calls without having done any research on the prospect’s business. Then they ask the prospect, “Tell me about your business,” which irritates her and wastes her time. They follow up with, “Let me tell you about my business,” which the client couldn’t care less about. Then, when they fail to sell their product or service, they complain about the challenges of selling.
Instead of complaining that sales is hard, work harder to prepare. Start your workday the night before by planning what you’ll focus on, then get to work early each day so you can start selling immediately rather than spending half your day getting ready to sell.
As part of your planning, do your homework on the prospect’s business by:
While you’re at it, Google your own name to see what the prospect will see if she looks you up.
Serious preparation takes time and effort but impresses the client by demonstrating your diligence and interest in her company—and you can spend your time with them asking useful questions rather than questions you should already know the answers to. Further, if you don’t prepare, you’ll lose sales to competitors who do prepare.
After you’ve prepared by doing your research, the next selling principle is getting a high-level meeting. You need a face-to-face appointment with the real decision-maker, not an underling—or you won’t sell anything. Underlings, who need to get additional approvals before agreeing to a sale, won’t prioritize your case or present it as well as you do, so any time you spend with them is wasted.
If you’re stuck at first with a middle manager, try to get an additional meeting with the boss. If the middle manager says, “Everything looks good, I just need the CEO’s approval,” your response should be, “Fine, when can we meet with her?” If the underling doesn’t agree:
To avoid having to circumvent a lower-level manager in the first place, ensure that you’re talking to the real decision-maker by asking:
Once you’ve determined who the top-decision maker is, you’ll have to get past the gatekeeper or ensure you get a callback from your voicemail message. If you get stuck at one of those points, you need to:
As explained in Part 2, branding and networking can help you get past gatekeepers—if the CEO has met or heard of you, she’s more likely to take your call. But you still need to sell the prospect on agreeing to a face-to-face meeting with you.
When your call is put through, the first thing you must do is engage with the prospect—that is, get his attention by piquing his interest. Statements everyone uses that don’t engage include:
Prospects don’t want to hear about you or be educated by you. Instead, address your prospect’s greatest interests: profit and productivity. Tell the prospect you want to discuss how you can increase his profitability, and he’ll see value in meeting with you.
After getting in front of the person who can say “yes” to a sale, the next principle of selling is to give value.
Most salespeople have the wrong idea about value. They think of value as a small extra that’s added to the product—for example, a discount or something free. But your competitors can match these things, so they don’t increase your chances of making a sale. They’re promotions, not value. Value is something you give that’s meaningful to the customer—for instance, increased productivity, profit, and sales; more customers; a better image; and so on.
Giving value is twofold: You give value to people personally, and your product provides value. Giving value personally might take the form of sharing your expertise or offering business-building tips in a free emailed newsletter, and using your network to connect people who can help each other.
In the selling process, you must focus on the value of your product to the customer, which is their chief interest. (Remember from the introduction to this book that perceived value is one of the key reasons why customers buy.) In addition to increased productivity and profit, focus on the use and value of the product over its lifetime. Get the prospect to think about what her life will be like after buying the product.
The more compelling your value proposition, the less important price becomes. If the customer is focused on price, it means you haven’t adequately addressed value.
Instead of focusing on making your sales quota, focus on articulating and delivering value—and you’ll make each sale and earn a commission. You’ll also build valuable relationships, which over the long term, will earn you a fortune, both in friendship and ongoing sales.
Salespeople must focus on giving value in two ways: 1) By giving value personally (for example, by sharing connections or expertise), and 2) by articulating how their product delivers what the customer values most.
What are some ways that you personally give, or could give, value to people in your network?
Thinking about the product or service you sell, what specific value does it provide for customers (for instance, increased sales, productivity, profit, a better image, and so on), and how?
How can you focus your next sales call on this value?
If a potential customer questions or complains about your price, how can you redirect the conversation to your product’s value? Write down a script for what you can say.
The remaining three selling principles address techniques and responses that will help you close the deal: Help the buyer convince herself to buy, eliminate the buyer’s risk, and use customer testimonials.
The 11th selling principle—helping the buyer convince herself to buy—requires a key sales skill: asking the right questions.
Most salespeople ask the wrong questions and therefore don’t get the answer they want (a “yes” to the sale). Usually, they’re questions aimed at getting the buyer to switch from a current supplier to your company. They often fail because they’re price-driven. For example:
In contrast, the right questions help the buyer think about your product or service in terms of how it solves her problems or achieves her goals. They’re specific questions that uncover her frustrations, concerns, and needs so you can show how your product will make her life easier—and she’ll conclude that she needs it. When the customer thinks in terms of why she needs the product, she’s thinking on your terms as the seller; you’ve created a buying atmosphere.
Here’s an example of a wrong and a right question, for selling a messaging system:
To ensure you’re always prepared to ask the right questions, develop a list of questions that you can adapt to uncover each customer’s needs, concerns, and frustrations. Some useful introductory phrases include:
You’ll differentiate yourself by getting your prospect to think in new ways. A sign of success is when the customer remarks that no one ever asked her that question before—and her answer convinces her to buy.
The biggest hurdle to a sale is the risk the customer believes he’d take in buying your product. If you eliminate the risk, the customer will buy.
A risk is anything that makes a customer hesitate to buy. It can be difficult to identify the risk standing in the way because what seems risky to the customer may seem trivial to the salesperson. Common concerns or risks to the customer are:
These concerns indicate the customer lacks confidence in the product, company, salesperson, or their own judgment. When the customer says, “I’ll think about it and get back to you” or “Let me discuss it with so-and-so,” the sale is off unless you identify the risk and eliminate it.
Here are some ways to counter customer concerns:
1) Prepare for risk obstacles by identifying the customer’s potential risks and preparing responses or preemptive statements that eliminate the risks. Practice the responses until you master them.
2) Determine the customer’s risk tolerance—ask about previous purchases they’ve made and how those turned out. Ask what their concerns were prior to those purchases and how they overcame them. Then address those risks.
3) Suggest a few concerns that might be bothering the customer and answer them—for example:
4) Ask the customer to compare risks and rewards. This process takes practice, but it’s highly effective:
As an alternative risk-reward comparison, just ask the customer, “What’s the risk versus the reward?” and “What’s the need versus the value?” Then help her see how the reward outweighs the concern, and the value more than meets the need.
The final selling principle—use customer testimonials to help you sell—is powerful but underused. Customer testimonials are powerful for two reasons:
1) They’re believable. When you talk about your offerings, it’s bragging, but when customers give testimonials, it’s proof of your product’s value.
2) Done correctly, testimonials prompt people to buy. To prompt action, testimonials must make specific, not general statements, for example:
Testimonials can be written or on video. An effective written testimonial:
Video testimonials, when shown at the end of a sales call, are an effective way to dispel doubts, reduce risk, and confirm the value of your product. However, while the video reinforces the sales message, the salesperson still must close the deal.
To produce an effective video testimonial:
To get people to provide testimonials, simply ask them. It’s even OK to tell the customer what to say, as long as it’s the truth.
Helping the buyer convince herself to buy requires asking specific questions that uncover her frustrations, concerns, and needs so you can show how your product will make her life easier—and she’ll conclude that she needs it.
What are some of the typical questions you ask a potential buyer? Write them down.
How closely do your questions resemble these typical (and ineffective) questions: “How much are you currently paying?” “Are you satisfied with your service?” “What would it take for you to switch suppliers?”
For your next sales call, write down a list of questions you can ask to uncover customer needs and problems that your product can solve. (For example, write questions starting with: What do you look for in choosing a…? How do you determine…? What’s been your experience with…? What would you change…? What’s your biggest hurdle to…? What frustrates you the most about…?)
A risk is anything that makes a customer hesitate to buy. Common risks are: Am I making a mistake and not getting my money’s worth? Will I look bad or get into trouble for making a poor decision? Can I get it cheaper elsewhere, or get something better? Will it work? What if it doesn’t?
Think about an upcoming sales call. What are the customer’s top three potential risks?
What questions can you ask to get the customer to talk about these risks?
For each top risk, write a short script detailing what you could say to counter or eliminate the risk (for instance, stressing your money-back guarantee).