12 Golden Rules to Effectively Handling Enquiries

The more I show clients how to handle enquiries from new prospects over the phone, the more I find myself coming back to the same dozen 'sobering' truths … truths that help you understand the mindset of the caller.

These truths may at first appear negative.  They’re not.  They are simply a realisation that everybody – including your prospect - sees life through their own ‘eyes’.  And having an insight into how they ‘see’ (and feel) can help us to better relate to their needs.  So let’s consider the following:

1. The enquirer, regardless of what they say, isn’t just after ‘information’.  They HAVE a problem or a need.  Often a problem/s so complex they don’t fully understand it themselves. They crave to have it solved, and they’re looking for a solution.

2. Just making the phone call can sometimes be a big thing for them, because they have their own uncertainties and insecurities to contend with.  You need to be empathetic and make the process painless.

3. They’ve probably been disappointed by past efforts to find a solution.  So expect them to be distrusting until they know you are ‘real’.

4. They ARE going to buy.  Whether it’s from you, or a competitor, whether it’s today or in six months’ time, they WILL ‘buy’ something. Your task is to educate them to why your solution is best for them  (That is of course, IF your solution is indeed the best one for their particular circumstances.  Otherwise, you should guide them ethically to an alternative.)

5. They will have pre-conceived ideas of what’s ‘expensive’.  BUT on the other hand, when they find their ‘answer’, they will pay whatever it takes.  So it’s your ‘duty of care’ to ensure you ethically educate them to your solution, AND to show that your solution isn’t expensive, but is good VALUE.

6. They will initially have little or no concept of what your business does, and will tend to pigeonhole you with other firms who appear to deliver what you do.

7. They may nod in agreement at things you say in the initial discussion, but in truth, they’ll understand and absorb only a tiny fraction of what you have said.  Which means you need to go slowly, never assume.  And most importantly, through questions, do a regular ‘temperature check’ on their understanding.  CRITICALLY important.

8. When it comes to the Information Pack, brochure, or perhaps even DVD you send them, remember they have no basis for appreciating the VALUE, or of the decades of research and development behind this information. So unless positioned correctly, there is a very real risk it will simply sit unopened for weeks, until they’ve lost interest.   And when you try to follow up after their interest has waned, you become a ‘pushy’ salesperson, not a professional with the answers to their perhaps years of frustration.  What’s the solution?  You must position the value of the pack correctly UP FRONT before you send it.  Again, they won’t give any priority to the pack unless you position it correctly on the phone.

9. Remember that the person who has the information IS IN CONTROL of the transaction.  If you give it (the Pack) over to the prospect prematurely, without first gaining a firm commitment that they’ll review it, you lose the control.

10. Getting that firm commitment means getting their undertaking that they will go through it in a pre-agreed timeframe, in preparation for a follow up discussion.

11. Even after all the above, they’ll often say ‘yes’, but then nothing will happen.  In 95% of cases, you WILL have to follow up.  When you follow up, even after all the great positioning, there’s a chance they’ll say they can’t go ahead ‘just now’, for any number of reasons.  Often these reasons are NOT the real reasons.  You need to get as many of these potential issues on the table and out of the way as possible, before you hand over the information.

12. Remember that none of this is ‘manipulative’ or unethical.  It is simply acknowledging the foibles of human nature, and helping (ethically leading) people to come to an informed outcome.
 
Some of these 'golden rules' may not apply to your transactions with new prospects.  However, that said, I’d be very surprised if you didn’t get some real distinctions out of these 12 points for you and your own frontline people.

Let me know your thoughts …
Chris Newton

If you know anyone who would find value in reading this article, please forward (or tweet) this link on to them.

4 things to do immediately when sales start drying up

FOUR things to do immediately when sales start drying up (and a personal invitation from Chris Newton at the end of this email) ...

The current economic conditions are a fact of life.  But it’s no time to curl up in a corner in the foetal position.  

Now is the perfect time to be actively looking at new (or old) ways to turn things around.  Smart players boom in these times.

Let me give you four basic action steps to get sales pumping through your business again.

1. Tighten up your sales processes.

OK, I rant about this regularly.  But I get to look inside lots of businesses, and I have to tell you ... SALES are being lost every day for the want of some simple changes. 

• What about when the phone rings with a request for information?  Realise it’s NOT a request for information!!  It’s someone wanting to BUY.  Organisations are so laid back, they accept sending of a brochure and bland form-letter as handling the ‘sale’.  It’s NOT.  You need an elite team of trained ‘green berets’ hungry for sales, who make sure every possible (ethical) avenue has been covered, systematically and consistently, to get the sale.  And you need to track what’s happening ...

• What’s going on in the business?  In the ‘good times’, it’s so damn easy to ignore things that make you cringe, and be too busy to do anything about it.  Times aren’t ‘good’ right now.  FIX these things internally that eat away at your market share.  What sort of things?  Customer enquiries sitting for days unattended to.  Poorly worded letters going out, often with grammatical or spelling errors.  That square peg in a round hole person who should never be handling sales enquiries, who is still there.  I could go on.

• Sales skills.  Presenting at a conference recently, I invited a gentleman up on the stage.  Like most of the people in the room, he thought he was pretty good at selling.  But about 45 seconds into our role play (with me as the customer), he was stumbling, uncomfortable and disoriented as to how to handle my basic questions on price and why I should buy from him and not his competitor.  To relieve him of his discomfort, I switched roles.  With limited knowledge of his products, I showed him and several hundred other business owners how easy it is to keep control of the sale.  The whole room agreed this change in approach would work for them.  But up until then, almost NONE of them did these things.  Bottom line, if your ‘green berets’ aren’t seriously honed in the skills to handle a prospect’s enquiries, you are losing market share.  And with the “shrinking pie”, that’s a luxury you simply can’t afford.

2. Mass Marketing vs Boutique. 

I’ve talked a great deal in the past about ‘mass marketing’ strategies.  It’s time to think about ‘Boutique Marketing’.  This is awesomely powerful. 

There’s a wonderful story about how David Ogilvy arrived in New York, from the UK as an unknown, and went on to build one of the largest and most successful ad agencies on the planet.  How?  He focused in on exactly which companies he WANTED on his client list. 

He wrote a list of the FIVE ‘blue chip’ companies he wanted to get.  We’re talking Shell, Lever & Kitchen, Rolls Royce.  The big guys. 

He stuck his list of these five giant corporations on his bathroom mirror.  And every day, would not leave that bathroom until he had at least one initiative to get one of those companies one step closer to being a client.  The rest is history.  

He ultimately got all five. 

You see, when you break your market down into small ‘boutique’ numbers of prospects, you can bring enormous focus and energy to bear, just on them!   You can ‘afford’ to stand out and be noticed.

Fed Ex a package to the 5 decision makers, find ways to add value to them, create a dialog with them.

In tough times and in the ‘good times’, almost no one goes to this effort.  If you can be a bright star on the horizon for your prospect list, odds are you will ultimately win the prize.

3. How many ‘dead leads’ do you have? 

Just like some ancient reptile in Jurassic Park waiting to be reawakened, many of your dead leads may not be dead at all.  Chances are, they’re just waiting for someone to come along and poke them into action. 

One business owner said to me the other day that he has 50,000 unconverted leads in his database!  It’s taken the tight times for him to think about re-approaching these people. 

What if he can stir even 2% of them into life and they buy from him?  For his business, the recession would be over!  Do you have leads and past client names that are really just dormant, waiting to get a great offer from you?

4. Remember ‘Shoe Leather’? 

I love this story.  One of our clients is a very successful chiropractor. 
We’ve been writing his ads, supporting collateral and client referral and reactivation pieces on and off for years.  But he has just pulled off a coup of his own.  With ‘shoe leather’ marketing. 

No, he didn’t go door to door in desperation.  He leveraged himself.  He secured an invitation to go to the local gym, and for a nominal fee, offered to give the members a spinal check. 

The result?  Out of ONE visit, he’s gained 25 new clients.  A good morning’s work?  You bet!  His ‘lifetime value’ of a client is worth some $4,000 to him over the next four years. 

That’s $100K in new future business in a morning.  Now that’s inspiring.

What’s the bottom line on all of this?

Tough times are not for sitting in an ivory tower and worrying.  They’re times when different strategies, including well thought through ‘shoe leather’ marketing, can pay massive dividends.  May you boom in the ‘tight times’.  

Personal Invitation from Chris Newton:

Okay, this next bit is an invitation to work with us on your marketing ... if it's appropriate for you right now.  Go to the link below to hear:

www.resultscorporation.com.au/offer.mp3

(If you have trouble with the link above, you can also listen to the offer on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2agQgmvuGiM&feature=channel_video_title)

Chris Newton

How to own your market...

Here is a classic example of the power of creating a ‘reason for being’.  This case study is from our archives.  The concepts are as relevant today as then.  The client, of all things, was a grave headstone mason.

He'd approached us with a problem.  His Yellow Pages ad, he felt, did not do justice to his business and his life mission.  His ad was just like all the others ... page after page of sameness in the classification ...  Big logo up the top, the same bullet points as everybody else and a big phone number at the bottom.

It didn’t tell the full story ... his special story.

And when people called, what do you think they focused on?  Not surprisingly they tended to focus on PRICE.  Obvious when you think about it because all the ads were fundamentally the same, so price was the only thing they could focus on ... John Smith (not his real name) was convinced we could help him tell his story so he could break away from the 'price trap'.  And to be honest, the more we probed him about his business, the more fascinating the story became.  Our resulting headline read:

‘When you want a monument to your loved one that’s as special as they were ... speak with John Smith’

This ad created a very special personality around his business.

• It spoke of the fact that his monuments ‘are cut from stone, rather than pre-made blocks’ ...
• That ‘you must be 100% delighted with the finished work or you don’t pay’
• That you get to approve the layout BEFORE work begins ...

Compelling reasons to commission him.

But here’s the interesting part.  Do you think the OTHER stone masons listed in the Yellow Pages cut from stone as opposed to pre-made blocks?  They might …

Do they guarantee their work or does the client take the risk?  Do they let you see the drawings before work begins?  They might …

The point is, their ads DON’T SAY if they do or they don’t!

And what that means ... the one who DOES say these things, ‘owns’ those ‘reasons for being’.  The unique selling proposition of cutting from stone ... and the unique selling proposition of having a 100% delight guarantee.

This ad superbly pre-empted the market ... and positioned this company perfectly in that niche in the market that HE wants to serve.  (Below is a reproduction of the ad.)

 

Two things happened after this ad appeared ... first, the number of calls from the Yellow Pages increased.  Not dramatically, but they did increase.

Second, and FAR more importantly, the people who rang as a result were a different type of person ... they didn’t focus on price.  They simply asked, “When can you start?”.  They had been educated to what this remarkable stonemason is about ... creating beautiful monuments.

Want to 'close' more sales? Try 'opening' with more questions...

Here's an easy test for you to try next time you're in a one-on-one sales situation.  Consciously observe how much you’re TELLING … and how much you’re ASKING.  You may find the results of this experiment very interesting.
 

Unquestionably THE most powerful approach in selling is by asking questions: questions about your prospect, their situation, their needs, and what they're looking for.

The temptation however is to revert to TELL MODE.

A salesperson needs to be like an investigative doctor, asking about the symptoms of a patient to diagnose the problem before prescribing the treatment.  In the case of the doctor, doing it any other way would be professional malpractice.  Not asking questions in selling is malpractice too.

The great thing about asking questions and listening to the prospects answers is that you can then ‘prescribe’ the solution exactly for their needs, and use their language. 

Remember this phrase: “Based on what you've told me, 'X' would be the most appropriate service/product for you.  Remember how you said you are looking for …”

Easy.  Powerful.  And so few salespeople do it effectively.