SELLING YOUR WAY TO THE TOP

7am is an ungodly hour to wake up on a Saturday, especially when you’ve only had a few hours of sleep, however I was slotted to attend the Blair Singer seminar on Sales and Leadership and I felt sure that If I skipped it, that I would be missing out on some very valuable information about how to take my business to the next level.

For any of you have been to other American-style NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) self-improvement seminars such as Tony Robbins, you will recognize immediately that the formula used is the same one. Just like at the Tony Robbins seminar, loud Top 40 music was blasting in the auditorium as we walked in. The music is meant to wake you up and create energy in the room and I tell you- at that time hungover on a Saturday morning-you need it!

The trainer at the seminar, Blair Singer, is a charming American sales coach with a good sense of humor and fantastic presentation skills. He has helped coach both individuals and big business organizations on sales and leadership. The methods he teaches have been proven to increase sales time and again. Though Blair uses American references and an American approach, he seems really tune with the cultural differences and was humble enough to be able to communicate with a room full of people who were mostly local Hong Kongers. His methods were logical and simple. Sales require ENERGY and Sales equal INCOME.
 

THE SIX STEPS TO THE SALES PROCESS

FIND PEOPLE WITH MONEY -
That’s so obvious but not always an apparent first step.

APPROACH AND CONTACT CLIENTS-
Business is a contact sport. No contact, no business.

MAKE A PRESENTATION-
To establish rapport with a potential client, be interested, not interesting. Go into their world and get them to open up to you. Once you have that shared reality, you can find an opening to introduce your services and make your pitch.

OVERCOMING OBJECTIONS-
Turning a ‘no’ into a ‘yes’ is an art form and it takes practice. Blair says when someone raises an objection, don’t try to answer it or refute the objection- instead acknowledge their objection then ask them a question which helps you find out more about their decision process. If you try to answer the objection, people will know you’re trying to pitch to them them. In addition, they might also feel you’re pushy, and be turned off by your attitude. If you keep asking them questions, you can find out what is making them say no. If you bond with them and get them to trust you- then you’ll find ‘no’ will turn into ‘yes’.

I volunteered for the exercise on overcoming objections and I tell you it was an eye-opener! Blair pretended to be someone who didn’t want to buy something from me and I had to deal with his objections. I tell you, I felt a lot of pressure- standing up in that room of 500 plus people and having to refute objections on the spot, on a microphone! I found I ended up crossing my arms and taking a defensive stance. The adrenaline was flowing and I involuntarily got into fight or flight mode. What you find is when emotion is high, intelligence goes down.

Salespeople often confuse objections as rejection. The key is not to take an objection personally and just calmly try to figure out what that person is thinking through asking questions. First you acknowledge the person’s viewpoint (I understand, I see your point of view) then you ask a question like “why do you think we’re too expensive? “Why do you think magazine advertisements are better?” “If you’re busy now, what would be a good time to call you this week?”

I was a bit confused by this idea at first to be honest, because I always though if someone had a problem, I could offer the solution, if someone had a question, I could help find the answer but the thing that I learned is that I need to listen more, ask more questions and be more interested instead of trying to answer or refute the objection. If someone disagrees, the key is not to convince him or her that you are right and they need your product, the key is to find out what their needs are. If you repeatedly practice how to handle that objection scenario, you will condition yourself on how to stay cool in the face of adversity and your communication skills will go to a completely different level.

CLOSE THE DEAL-
Closing is an attitude. Ask a question at the end with an assumption that you’ve already made the deal. Say something like “So, when would you like to start?” Then stay quiet.

GET A TESTIMONIAL FORM A SATISFIED CUSTOMER-
Testimonials give you credibility and will help you close future sales. Don’t have a testimonial? Ask one of your clients for one! You may get valuable feedback in the process.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF SALES DOGS

Different people have different sales styles. In the seminar they likened sales styles to dogs:

The Pit Bull
Someone is who is super persistent and will not let go till you buy. It’s an aggressive approach.

The Poodle
Someone, who spends a lot of time on their appearance, does tons of networking and always knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone who they will need to sell their product.

The Retriever
This type of sales dog is super nice and is always doing things to help others. They operate on the law of reciprocity. I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine.

The Chihuahua
The Chihuahua is a numbers oriented salesperson who is always throwing out facts and figures and analysis at you. They like to do research.

The Basset Hound
This type of sales person is good one on one, like to listen, sympathize and knows how to build rapport

The point is, no matter what kind of sales dog you are, you need to play on your strengths instead of wasting too much energy trying to be good at something you’re not.

AMBITION AND ACTION

During the lunch break, we were asked to break up into teams and make appointments with people who could potentially be our customers. The team with the most phone calls, people contacted and appointments would win some of Blair’s training CDs. One team made 201 phone calls, reached 120 people and made 61 appointments! I made 5 phone calls and sent 3 emails. The rest of my team decided it was Saturday, they weren’t going to get a hold of anyone and they would rather eat. The exercise was meant to show who had the drive and ambition to succeed. It also demonstrated what the winners had that other people didn’t: energy, enthusiasm, courage, persistence, the willingness to follow through. It personally taught me that I need to get on the phone more often and make more sales calls.
 

THE GAME CHANGER

In order to sell more, reach your full potential, and play a bigger game you need what’s called the “the game changer”. The game changer is the ability to manage the little voice in your head that prevents you from succeeding. The voice might say things like:

“I’m not experienced enough”
“They don’t like me”
“What if they say something I can’t handle”
“I need more credibility first”
“I already know this”
“I’m not smart enough”
“Sales people are cheesy and manipulative”.

This little voice causes fear- and it’s this fear that paralyzes people and prevents them from reaching their full potential. (Fear of public humiliation and rejection by your peers are the 2 greatest human fears, even bigger than the fear of death!) The fear incurred from the useless chatter of the little voice prevents people from approaching that contact, making that pitch and closing that sale. Imagine if that little voice was serving you instead of hurting you and saying- ‘you can do it!’ Being able to control this little voice gives you the ‘absolute certainty’ to play the game as big as you want and to fulfill all your goals and dreams. Champions commit to their mindset first. They commit to win!

Take this quiz to find out how your “Little Voice” stacks up when it comes to business, income, goals and happiness.

I learned tons of valuable information at the seminar but information is just that- information. Unless you take what you learn and apply it to your life, it has no value. After this seminar, I will be practicing little voice management skills, playing on my strengths, building my team and training them on how to sell, mustering the courage to make more sales calls, listening instead of preaching and changing my mindset so I can make that commitment to make my dreams come true!

https://www.blairsinger.com/

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