Getting the sale 

I will start by giving my opinion on what professional selling is all about.

Professional selling is doing your best, to convince your customer to do what is best for them, if you are trying to convince them to do something for any other reason it is NOT selling, it is conning and has no place in business.

If you read and accept the above statement then you are well on your way to increasing your sales, because to believe what you are advising your client to do is right for them, means that you have 100% belief in the product or service you are selling. 

Belief creates confidence, traffic wardens put a ticket on your car with absolute confidence as they know and believe they are right and you are wrong this gives them the confidence to behave with absolute surety. Ask them to give a speech at a small wedding in front of their friends however and they are not so confident, and it shows.

You say your typical client is clueless and does not know what is needed for their site to be an effective marketing tool, then teach them! Do not talk about what is needed for their site, talk to them about their dreams for their business. A good salesperson is a good educator they will pass on the knowledge to their customer they will ‘create’ their marketplace around themselves. 

If you want a man to stop sleeping on the floor, a poor salesperson will turn the light on and show him where the bed is, a GOOD sales person will describe to him how much better sleeping in the bed will be, and what will eventually happen to his body if he continues to sleep on the floor. This is the difference between the top performers, and the average Joe salesperson who ‘tells’ and don’t ‘sell’.

OK then facts. We ALL got through the same process when we make a buying decision, the trick to getting the deal is to control the customer and guide him to where you want him to be, signing on the line that is dotted. Remember that we should see no wrong in doing this, as what we are doing for them is what is best for them, it is no different than insisting someone wear a seatbelt if you KNOW you are going to crash the car.

Attention
Interest
Desire
Action

These are the four stages of buying. 

ATTENTION
First you have to get your prospects attention, this can be done in a number of ways, but something as simple as, Mr prospect, do you want your business to make more money? (You now have the attention of ANY businessman; it is now about keeping that attention)

INTEREST
I have made money for other businesses by getting them loads of referrals, from their websites by getting them to the top end of the Search engine results. What this means to them is that when one of their potential customers types in a search for a product they can supply they are the company that is seen first, or seen as the expert on that subject, THE man to deal with.

To give you an idea Mr prospect, there were 18,000 people last month searching for blue widgets, now am I right in saying that YOU supply blue widgets? Yes? Well those 18,000 people did not see your name in the results, their money was spent somewhere else, money that YOU could have had if your website had been up there, 

Would you like a slice of that money? YES, then lets talk!

This has completed the interest part of selling, and is moving into the next part of the process, desire.

DESIRE
We do not buy the things we need, we buy the things we want, this is fact, the things we need, we buy grudgingly where as the things we want we buy with excitement with relish and with great anticipation of ownership. I could probably prove that you need more life insurance, but to get you to buy it I would need to put horrible mental images in your mind of your wife living on the streets pushing a shopping trolley with dirty fingerless gloves, while your children suffer the bullying in a children’s orphanage, I am sure you now see life insurance in a different light. (Sorry for painting those mental images but I write as it comes into my mind)

To get your customer to desire the ownership of your product you have to find out what he wants. I sold a customer last year that said to me, ‘I can’t handle any more customers so there is no point in promoting my site’. I quickly went down that route and asked him what he does that takes so much time, how the sales process works from visit to final payment, who his typical customers are, where they live why he feels he could not handle any more customers and when he gets paid.

It turned out that the guy spent half his working day putting together and mailing out information packs, BINGO there was my answer, sell him on more time, by automating his ‘pre-sales’ stuff. We redesigned the site to incorporate all the information contained in his pack that he usually sent out including downloads of all the pages in html & rtf formats, and made all the info pages printer friendly. 

I sold him on the fact that it was NOT more customers he couldn’t handle, it was More WORK, he now has a lot more customers than he did, and he gets between two and 3 ‘orders’ from the online booking form where all he has to do is arrange a fitting date, we cut down the time between HIS customers being ‘hot’ to the time they could order, this stopped them going elsewhere to look after requesting information, we provided a mountain of generic information about his product and the marketplace, and it worked.

What I am saying is that this guys ‘desire’ was to be more productive it just took a while to work that out, you do this by asking, who what why when where and how these questions will give you the ammo you need to fit what you do into what he does for a better world for you both. This is professional selling

The very first thing you should ask your client is why he has a website, then you should ask him what he thinks it can do for him, pro selling is easy when you master it, it is all about doing the best for them, which results in what’s best for you, another customer. I am not being offensive here, but you say your clients do not have a clue what is needed, ‘ well IMO that is YOUR job!

If the site has to be redesigned DO NOT talk about that, talk to him in language he will understand, if you are in his shop then say, ‘ Mr prospect you see the way you have everything on neat shelves here, and the way you have everything in neat sections, your kitchen appliances over there, your hi-fi right here, and this is really neat, you have the batteries on display right next to the things that need batteries, clever stuff, but why do you do that? 

The prospect will then tell you why his website needs to be redesigned, he will tell you it makes sense for things to be together, it makes sense to have sections clearly labelled, it makes sense to have the prices right ‘there’ for all to see, it makes sense to let them know ‘immediate delivery’ hey they might not want to wait, it makes sense to have room for people to walk around.

You then only have to say, well the web is no different, your shop here is the same as your shop online, your website needs all the things you have here, it needs to be warm and inviting, and it needs everything in the right place, imagine having the food processors in the hi fi section, that would never happen would it?

Tell him that with the web you have customers, and mystery shoppers, the mystery shopper being the spiders, tell him they come down and have a look, and if they can find everything easily, and all the right stuff is together in neat sections with all the information about those sections right there, then they will report his shop as ‘the ‘ place to go for x y or z. tell him in language he can understand. 

Tell him that while his real world shop can allow say 50 people in it at a time, with maybe 3 or 4 customers in each section, his online shop can allow as many customers as you can attract, all being served at the same time all wandering around happy, getting all the help they need to buy from the great ‘ copywriting’ you have done, and all of them being asked, shall I arrange that for you then? 

Refer back to the research you did, in REAL terms ask him how many people come into his shop weekly, and how many buy, translate these into the stats you quoted earlier I always say OK then 1 in 25 browsers buy right? So lets go mad lets say 1 in 50 will buy, hell no lets say one in 100, no lets be even MORE pessimistic lets say 1 in 200, so that could result in 18,000/200 that’s an average of 90 potential sales, at an average sale value that you gave me of $100 dollars and we could be looking at $9,000 a month revenue here, amazing, your entire new online shop could be bought and paid for in less than 2 months, how long have you got left on the mortgage on this place? Just kidding I don’t want to know.


ACTION
When you have them really hot, talking about visitors, conversion ratios, and MOST importantly actual $$$, take it all away, hit them with, ‘ but all this is only going to happen for you if you make it happen’ and the best part is that the small investment he is going to make in his business will payback time after time after time.

That is the final part, the action, unless you ask for the order you are not going to get it, and the best sales presentation in the world will not have earned you a penny.

Ask him, so how soon could you start handling this extra money? If he says right away, then say fine, lets get things rolling I will do xxxxx and I will xxxx leave the selling and go on to consolidation.

To sum it up

Do your homework
Know their industry
Know your own
Genuinely care about their business welfare
Find out how you can help
Draw out the plan
Lay it out to them
Get them excited about having what they WANT
Get their agreement at every step of selling the new set-up to them
Close the deal
Lay out a timetable
Do the work
Get paid
Get referrals
Start again with the next customer

The one thing that sells above all else is enthusiasm, I am (as you probably have guessed) madly passionate about work, I love it, is the best fun you can have with your clothes on, seeing your vision and dreams result in the success of your customers business and private life. The guy I told you about earlier fits satellite systems in France, he has now been able to live his dream by moving out there, all his dreams came true, and he has passed on £1,000s of work to me as he goes around fitting dishes. He is my best salesman. HOME

One last thing though, don't expect pieces of paper to sell for you, I believe if they are close enough then get out there and see them face to face.

Hope this has been of help, if not I hope it has given you a laugh.  All the Best, OWG

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