“To close the tough sale today you must establish yourself, not the buyer, as the expert” 

-James Schlinkert, CEO Olivetti Corporation-

Old school training courses often extolled the virtues of various closes, and suggested the A.B.C’s of closing were ‘Always Be Closing.’

Today’s intelligent buyer does not want to be sold or closed, they want to buy. And most want to buy from someone they trust to make the best possible recommendations for them.

One of the preferred closes was the alternate choice close. Basically, you assumed you had the sale, and asked the buyer to choose from one of two or more alternative proposals.

The problem with this approach was two-fold:

1. It makes the buyer, not the seller, the expert. Roy Williams points out most business owners are “uniquely unqualified” to handle their own advertising.
2. It creates the impression you don’t care what they buy, you only care about making the sale.

Professionals, like lawyers, doctors or accountants, consider alternatives for you, but maintain their credibility by recommending which alternative they consider to be the best for you.

If you do not have complete confidence the buyer will appreciate the benefits in your proposal, you may take alternative proposals as a back up. But you should always clearly state which proposal you believe will work best for the client to maintain your position as a consultant rather than risk being positioned as a peddler who just wants the sale.  

Clients will always respect sales people who have the courage and conviction to make strong recommendations.

           My wife, Angela, taught me one of the most valuable sales lessons I’ve ever learned, that being the difference between selling to a need, versus selling to a want.
            When she sold Fords and GM’s, she sold to a need. Families needed a van to take the kids to school or a car to replace their dying relic in order to get to work. These were largely transactional buyers looking for basic transportation needs to be filled at the lowest possible cost. They did not look forward to spending money on another vehicle.
            When she began to work at BMW, she quickly discovered nobody needs a BMW. At BMW, the customers bought what they wanted rather than being sold what they needed.  There was a huge difference in the customer relationship at BMW.  Customers were actually excited about buying their new BMW while the needs buyers were skeptical and nervous.
            While the Ford and GM buyer shopped all over town and had no loyalty, the BMW buyers became life long friends who still send Angela cards and letters today even though she’s out of the business and works with me.
            Do your sales people know how to build relationships to the next level, going beyond selling solutions to needs?
            Traditional needs analysis and solutions selling are great door opening strategies. But the cost of the cure can not exceed the price of the pain in needs selling.
            To build more profitable customer relationships you need to get beyond appealing to needs and become a partner in filling the wants of your key accounts.
            Needs are largely short term band-aid… “I must sell four cars today.”  Wants are longer term and visionary in scope… “I want to be the largest dealer in the county within five years.”
            When you become the conduit to filling the vision instead of the need, you are on your way to partnering in a more profitable customer relationship.
            If you are interested in having our Beyond Selling Solutions workshop at your next sales conference, click here.  

 “Genius is making the complicated look simple.”  – Albert Einstein-

     During the last couple of weeks, I have had clients and radio sales managers tell me our new SoundAdvice radio marketing system is “brilliant” or “sheer genius.”
      Frankly, I find flattery like that a little embarrassing, especially when the three-part SoundAdvice system seems so simple and common sense to me.
      So I began to reflect upon the difference between common sense and brilliance.
     I believe the difference is effort !
      When Alexander Graham Bell was credited with inventing the telephone, many other inventors were working on similar ideas. When Thomas Edison introduced the light bulb, other scientists had been working on the concept too.  These ‘geniuses’ just worked harder and faster to get their ideas to market.
      SoundAdvice has been more than three years in the making; researching topics, developing proprietary software, and testing it in the marketplace.
      I’m sorry, it’s not genius, but common sense with a lot of hard work behind it.  And radio advertisers, prospects and sales professionals are loving it.

 If you would like an on-line demonstration of how SoundAdvice can help increase your sales just contact me at [email protected]

     Depending which survey you believe, approximately 95% of radio audiences find their favorite station “by accident” or through “word of mouth”.
      That’s not because advertising doesn’t work, but because stations are too easy to find.
      Unlike our clients’ locations, listeners can find our location without looking… a simple push of the scan button does it for them!
      So why invest in billboards, TV and other audience-promotion advertising if less than five percent of our audience will be generated by it?
1.) Advertisers are people too. They see and hear our advertising and get the impression we’re bigger than life!

2.) Staff morale, both on air and off, gets a definite lift that you can hear over the speaker and in sales presentations when your station is making the extra effort and investment to improve its profile in the market place.

3.) Reinforcement – Advertising and a high in-market profile tells your existing audience that they have made the right choice and chosen a popular station.

4.) Leading by example. Advertisers expect us to practice what we preach. If we do nothing but wait for audiences to find us by accident, it sends a signal that those of us in advertising do not believe in advertising. 

      I once managed the number thirteen station in a four station market (numbers four through twelve were near-by major market stations) but we actually out-billed the number one station five months out of twelve.
       Much of that sales success was the result of the huge market profile of our window-sticker, billboard and bus-back campaigns that advertisers were exposed to on their way to work every day. We looked successful!
       Audience promotion for radio stations does work, just not in the way some of us think it does.

We’ve always known about the differences, and the synergies, between passive media and intrusive media.
Traditionally, intrusive media, like radio and TV, have been particularly good at creating awareness, building brands and driving traffic.
Passive media like brochures, magazines and newspapers, on the other hand, have been used to provide the details, features, prices lists and other data consumers looked for when making their purchase decisions after the awareness was created.
The problem has been, the printing and distribution costs of these passive media have been huge. These costs cut into budgets that could have gone to us, the intrusive media folks.
Well thanks to websites, those days are ending. 
The internet is the new passive media, providing all of the details, prices and information a consumer could want, with no printing costs and no distribution costs. The production costs for websites are about the same as for printed material but there is no postman, carrier or printer to pay, no trees to cut or data bases to maintain!
Hold onto your hats!  As budgets are freed up from old-media printing and distribution costs, we will be used more and more to create awareness and drive traffic to the new ‘free’ easy-access passive media…the internet and websites.
If you aren’t offering your clients links from your website to theirs, you should be. The more your clients use the internet, the less they’ll have to depend upon printing and distribution of old, more expensive, passive media.  
And at a nominal charge of only $5 per week for 52 weeks for all of your clients to be on your station’s advertiser link directory, you will raise more than $100,000 to cover the cost of operating your site and maintaining the links. 
 

We hope some of these ENS on Sales tips improve your sales. For other ENS Media consulting, training or revenue-development ideas contact [email protected] .