Category: Phil Bernstein

The First Sale You Make to a Customer: Are You Blowing It?

The first time you contact a new prospect,  that customer has a buying decision to make. The decision doesn’t involve money… it involves time.

For salespeople and customers, time is money
Photo by raduga21

Are We Delivering ROI On Our Customers’ Time?
A Sales Attempt That Failed

Not long ago I was supposed to accompany a television station salesperson to see the owner of a roofing company. The AE had met with the owner several times, had made a presentation that seemed to go well, but hadn’t been able to get a commitment.

The meeting was supposed to be Monday at 10am.

Monday morning the client called to say that something had come up, and asked to reschedule. We rescheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday morning the AE called to confirm, and the client said he couldn’t meet that day. We rescheduled for Wednesday at 11:30.

Wednesday morning the client sent an email that 11:30 wouldn’t work. The AE tried to return the call, got voice mail, and never heard back.

That’s where the story ended.

The AE and Sales Manager were both frustrated. They felt it was rude and unprofessional of the client to keep bailing out like that.

They were right. But there’s another side to the story.

The client had a finite amount of time each day — and each day he decided that he’d get a better return on his investment by doing something else.

Andy Paul, author of Amp Up Your Sales: Powerful Strategies That Move Customers to Make Fast, Favorable Decisions, puts it this way: “The first thing a customer ever buys from you is time.”

Before you can even sell your product, the customer must purchase your selling time, which is comprised of your own time as well as the information you can provide to help the customer move closer to making a decision.

The currency the customer will use to purchase your selling time is her time… For her investment of time, she has to receive something of value from you in return that is equal to or exceeds her perception of the value of her time. That means that in each instance a customer invests in your selling time, you have to provide value in the form of information that will help move the customer at least one step forward in her buying process…

…If you provide something of value in exchange for the time the customer invests with you, then the customer will reward you with additional time to continue to sell to her.

The roofer we attempted to meet with had met with the AE before. He had an idea in his head of how much return he had previously received on his time investment.

He decided he could get a better return somewhere else.

When you ask a client to spend time with you — for a first meeting, for a presentation, or for anything else — your customer has to decide if the return they’ll get is going to exceed the value of their time.

It starts with the very first call you make. If your opening isn’t compelling enough to separate you from all the peddlers they hear from, you’re not getting the meeting. You can read about creating a more effective call opening here.

If you’re having trouble getting appointments, or getting your calls returned, ask yourself:

If the customer buys your time, how much value will they get?

 

Don’t Hide Your Bias

If you work in media sales, the advice you give should benefit your clients. But it will also benefit your employer, and you.

A new study indicates that there’s a good reason to display your bias proudly.

Salespeople should display their bias proudly
Photo by Julien Tromeur/Adobe Stock

In my day job, television station sales departments present me to their clients as an outside advertising consultant. My business card doesn’t have the station call letters — it has the name of my consulting company.

Early in the process, some advertisers ask me how “independent” I am. They want to know if the advice I give is going to be biased in any way.

Yes, I tell them, it will definitely be biased.

I point to the station sales manager and say, “That’s the person who bought my airline ticket to come here. If the plan I recommend doesn’t involve television and digital advertising, I have to go home on Greyhound.”

The line usually gets a laugh, and the clients relax a bit. Everybody now knows the rules of the game.

I’ve always done this out of instinct — my gut feeling has been that disclosing my bias increases the level of trust.

A recent New York Times column indicates that this disclosure has real benefits. In the article Dr. Sunita Sah, a professor at Cornell University, discussed “specialty bias” found in some medical advice.

Perhaps in an attempt to be transparent, some doctors spontaneously disclose their specialty bias. That is, surgeons may inform their patients that as surgeons, they are biased toward recommending surgery.

My latest research, published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals that patients with localized prostate cancer (a condition that has multiple effective treatment options) who heard their surgeon disclose his or her specialty bias were nearly three times more likely to have surgery than those patients who did not hear their surgeon reveal such a bias. Rather than discounting the surgeon’s recommendation, patients reported increased trust in physicians who disclosed their specialty bias.

There are some caveats to this — elsewhere in the article, Sah discusses situations in which disclosure decreases trust, although it may paradoxically increase the chances that the advice will be followed.

The bottom line is this: if you work in sales, you are going to be biased toward the products and services you sell.

Sharing this openly is not only the right thing to do — it will increase your chances of making a sale.

10 Things I’ve Learned From 1,300 Sales Presentations

You’ve got a full-blown presentation scheduled — laptop, projector, PowerPoint… the works. Here’s what to remember.

sales presentations must be rehearsed
Photo by imageegami/Adobe stock

I do about 200 formal presentations a year. Nearly seven years into this gig, I’ve done over 1,300 of them — all on unfamiliar turf. I’m always in someone else’s conference room, using someone else’s monitor or projector.

What I’ve learned:

  1. PowerPoints don’t like to be emailed. A presentation that worked beautifully when you built it will go kerflooey when sent to someone else. Slides go out of order. Animations stop animating. Links unlink.
    .
    If someone changes one slide in a 21-slide deck and sends it back to you, test all 21 slides again.
  2. Rehearse the presentation. In full. Out loud. It sounds different coming out of your mouth than it does in your head. You need to hear how it sounds before the client does.
  3. Don’t read your slides word-for-word. Your audience can read the copy — tell them what it means.
  4. BUT… read your slides word-for-word, out loud, as part of rehearsal. Doing this in advance is the single best way to catch typos and mistakes in the written version. This is especially helpful if you’ve got a script.
  5. Get there early. It will take longer to set up than you think, and you don’t want to be frantically sorting through cables while the client looks at his watch.
  6. Trust, but verify. The people responsible for setting up the room mean well, but there’s a wide variation of skill level and sophistication.
    .
    If someone assures you that they have an HDMI-compatible monitor and cable, it might mean that they have an HDMI-compatible monitor and cable. It might also mean that there are a whole bunch of ports on their monitor and a pile of cords, and they hope one of ’em might be what you’re looking for.
  7. Test everything before the client enters the room. Run through the slides, make sure your remote works. Play a couple of videos to ensure the sound is on and the volume is set properly.
  8. Must Haves:

    A power strip and extension cord. The outlet’s never where you want it to be.
    .
    Your own remote laser presenter. This is the one I use.
    .
    Fresh AAA batteries. You’ll need ’em for something.
  9. Insist on using your own computer. If you built it on your machine, run it on your machine. “Showtime” is no time to be struggling with unfamiliar equipment.
  10. BUT… you should have the entire presentation, with all videos embedded, with you on a thumb drive. If your computer crashes, you may have to use someone else’s.

Following the steps outlined above reduces — but does not eliminate — the chance of something going wrong.

And if something goes wrong anyway, roll with it. When a lung surgeon has a bad day, people may die. No matter how badly your presentation goes, everyone will still be alive when it’s over.

[reminder]What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen happen at a presentation?[/reminder]

 

The Worst Advice I Ever Heard On Making New Business Calls

About eight years ago, a car dealer in my home town of Portland decided to open up on Christmas Day.

sales advice: don't sit by the laptop. make calls
Photo by pathdoc/Adobe Stock

THREE SALES ON THE
“WORST SALES DAY OF THE YEAR”

The dealer was on pace to hit his December number, but it was going to be close. So he came into the store on Christmas Day with his finance manager and one salesperson.

If my memory serves me correctly, the finance manager was estranged from his family, and the salesperson was Jewish.

The store didn’t advertise this anywhere — the dealer and his employees just showed up to see what would happen.

They spent most of the day watching movies in the dealership conference room. But the phone rang seven times — customers wondering if the store was open.

Five of them came in for test drives. On Christmas Day.

Two of them bought cars that day. This, for the salesperson, was the single best day of the month.

Another came back and bought a car a few days later.

I was reminded of this car dealer last year, when I was preparing to work with a TV station in the Midwest. Our week for CNA’s was the week leading into a major holiday weekend.

When he realized that he’d scheduled my arrival for the week before a holiday, the Sales Manager suggested that perhaps I should go home early, because he wasn’t sure there’d be any clients willing to meet with me on Friday.

I suggested that we have the AE’s try to make appointments for Friday, just to see what would happen.

It turned out that the staff scheduled three meetings for me that day, and one of those turned out to be the biggest-dollar sale of our project.

The Worst Sales Advice I’ve Ever Heard
Variations On a Theme

Don’t bother to make new business calls …

  • Monday morning
  • Friday afternoon
  • At lunchtime
  • After 5p,
  • Before 8am
  • The Friday before a holiday weekend
  • The last two weeks of December

It’s possible that there are fewer people at their desks at those times… but there are also fewer of your competitors making calls at those times.

If you’re willing to make the calls, you’ve got a better chance of turning those calls into meetings, and turning those meetings into sales.

The best time to make new business calls is whenever you make the calls.

[reminder]What’s the most unusual time you’ve ever had a sales call?[/reminder]

How “No” Can Make Your Customers Happy

Seth Godin recently cleared up a years-old mystery for me.

Photo by Innovated Captures
Photo by Innovated Captures

Greg, The Relentless Nibbler

Greg was an advertising agency client when I sold radio. Two or three times a year, he would send me an RFP, I’d respond, and we’d work out a deal. He was a tough negotiator, but he was fair — until the end of the process.

After we agreed to terms, I’d send him the paperwork. A few hours later he’d call and ask me for one more thing. Usually it was some bonus commercials or news sponsorship mentions.

In negotiation, this is called “The Nibble”. Negotiation Trainer Bob Gibson describes the classic version of the tactic this way:

The same way a mouse might nibble at a piece of cheese with small bites until it’s completely gone, ‘nibbling’ is asking for small items, one at a time, and getting agreement on each until you’ve gotten a lot… Nibbling can be particularly effective near the end of the negotiation, when a salesperson is eager to reach a final agreement, and at the beginning when it can set the tone not only for the negotiation – but the relationship as well.

In Greg’s case, the request always came after we’d made the deal. I always said no.  It was a matter of principle for me. As far as I was concerned the negotiation had ended.

He’d push a little and then accept my “no”.

It drove me crazy,  because it never mattered how many times we’d already gone through the dance with the same result. He never actually got anything extra from me, but he was going to ask again the next time regardless.

I could never figure out why he continued to do this with me when it never worked. What did he get out of the exercise?

Years after I left radio, Seth Godin has finally given me the answer.

What’s really happening here is that people are seeking the edges, trying to find something that gets a reaction, a point of failure, proof that your patience, your largesse or your menu isn’t infinite…

They’re not looking for one more thing, they’re looking for a ‘no’, for acknowledgment that they reached the edge. That’s precisely what they’re seeking, and you’re quite able to offer them that edge of finiteness.

I’ve written before about the power of “No” — there are times when it’s necessary to refuse a demand simply to maintain, or regain, control of an interaction.

But Godin has pointed out something that seems counterintuitive: sometimes that “No” can actually make a customer happy by convincing them that they’ve nibbled everything there is to nibble.

In sales, sometimes “No” can really mean “Yes.”