Perfect Phrases for the Sales Call, Second Edition

By Jeb Brooks and William T. Brooks

THE RIGHT PHRASE FOR EVERY SITUATION . . . EVERY TIME DON'T MISS THESE OTHER BOOKS IN THE PERFECT PHRASES SERIES

How do you get face time with someone who doesn't accept sales calls? What is the best way to present the value of your offering? How do you handle price objections? Answer: You need to speak the right language.

This fully revised second edition of the popular Perfect Phrases for the Sales Call provides an arsenal of persuasive language and word-for-word practice scenarios to help you address any challenge. Learn the most effective language for:

• Getting past gatekeepers and selling to the decision makers
• Presenting your product or service in the best light
• Handling objections, stalling, and other delaying tactics
• Building trust and cultivating relationships

• Language: English
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
• Release date: Dec 3, 2010
• ISBN: 9780071759434

Book preview

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Part One

The Principles of Selling Today

Chapter 1

The Realities of Today’s Selling Environment

There are 12 realities that form the philosophical underpinning of why the phrases and terms outlined in this book really work. Why is that? Because sales is a dynamic science that when practiced correctly, becomes an art form. And although its tactics are constantly changing, its foundational principles remain constant.

Let’s take a look at a few principles of selling.

1. The Secret to Selling Is Never in the Selling

Reality: The secret to selling is never in the selling. Instead, it’s always in the continuous act of prospecting.

Most salespeople fail because they lack a sufficient supply of qualified prospects. What does that tell you? That you need to consistently, intelligently, and capably prospect for business, no matter how long you’ve been selling. It never stops. Whether you’re vertically integrating an account or attacking an entire market segment, sales is always all about prospecting. And that’s true whether you’ve been selling for two months, two years, or even a lifetime!

2. To Sell Successfully, You Must Be in Front of a Qualified Prospect

Reality: To sell successfully, you must be in front of a qualified prospect when he or she is ready to buy, not when you need to make a sale.

Because qualified prospects will always choose what they perceive to be the most viable option when making their purchasing decisions, it’s essential that you and your company are in front of the people for whom your offering is a viable option. That means qualified prospects! And remember that prospects make buying decisions on their time schedules, not yours. A major part of that secret is to invest your time intelligently and wisely. You must avoid at all costs merely spending, irresponsibly wasting, or just plain abusing your time with unqualified prospects. You need to expediently and efficiently identify the most promising prospects quickly and move beyond those who are not qualified. Your only real asset is time, and your only real advantage is how you invest your time and with whom you invest it.

3. You Must Position Yourself Correctly

Reality: You must position yourself, your organization, and your product or service correctly in the mind of the buyer.

Due to rapid changes in technology, competitive pressures, a crowded market, and the commoditization of many products or services, you must differentiate what you do and how you do it from the rest of the pack. This is becoming even more critical to long-term sales success. In the final analysis, how you position yourself will far outdistance how your organization, product, or service is positioned. This is true no matter how large or small your organization’s advertising and promotion budget may be.

4. There Is Less Margin for Error

Reality: There is less margin for error than ever before.

This reality mandates that you must always show up on time, fully prepared, equipped with thorough knowledge of your prospects, what they are trying to solve, how they function, how and why they make decisions, and much, much more. Bottom line? Virtually all prospects have a plethora of options from which to choose. Unfortunately for you, you are only one choice among many.

Therefore, you must not only be fast on your feet, but also have the skills to apply your product or service, know exactly how to impart that knowledge to your prospect, and know how you can leverage his or her understanding of it to your best advantage.

5. Prospects Must Believe You Have Something Important to Offer

Reality: Prospects will only grant appointments to salespeople whom they perceive as having something important to offer that will positively impact them.

Coming across as desperate or ill-prepared will do nothing to help you maximize this principle. On the other hand, knowing what to say and do, when to say and do it, and precisely how to position yourself will allow you to win!

Let there be no doubt. Old-school methods like aimless cold calling, using tie-down questions, or memorizing scores of worn-out old closes will blow up in your face in this century.

6. Being Trusted Is More Important Than Being Liked

Reality: Being trusted is far more important than being liked when selling.

Salespeople who master the art of building trust outsell those who are merely glad-handers looking for another target of opportunity. Certainly, in order to have the opportunity to build trust, it’s important to be pleasant and friendly. But all in all, a salesperson who is trustworthy and knows how to demonstrate and communicate that trustworthiness at the very first opportunity will outperform one who is just a smooth-talking flash in the pan.Which do you want to be? Which should you be? Which are you? What type of sales experience are your prospects and customers looking for and expecting? What type of experience do you give them?

7. Prospects Are Busy

Reality: Prospects are busy.

What does that mean to you? Simply that you need to get to the point of your meeting with the greatest speed and efficiency. Move from small talk to positive, effective sales talk with confidence, trust, and ease. Prospects don’t have time to invest in a long, drawn-out journey waiting for you to get to the point.

8. Prospects Will Buy to Solve Their Problems, Not Yours

Reality: Prospects will buy to solve their problems, not yours.

What might be your problem? To make a sale, earn a commission, win a contest, earn a bonus, keep your job, pay your bills, get a promotion, or look good to other people.

The truth is that none of these have anything to do with their problem! And just what might their problem be? To achieve greater efficiency, make money or a profit, keep their job, fix something that’s broken, enhance their organization—or to solve whatever your product or service helps them solve.

9. Prospects Will Try to Make Your Product or Service a Commodity

Reality: Prospects will try to make your product or service a commodity.

Why will they do that? It’s simple. In the world of commoditization, price always rules. Prospects are always trying to get the best price. Therefore, if they can reduce whatever product or service you sell to a commodity, they’ll win! Your job is to keep that from happening. However, in order to do that, you must know exactly what, when, and how to deal with it. You need to be prepared to handle I can get the same thing down the street—and handle it well.

10. Prospects Will Want to Know the Price Before You Want to Give It

Reality: Prospects will ask the price of your product or service before you’re prepared to give it.

Premature price questions are far more the rule than the exception. And, once you offer a price either verbally or in writing, that’s likely to be the only thing your prospect will remember about your product or service!

And if you offer it too soon you won’t have created value. Why is that? Because you haven’t shown how you can satisfy a want, fulfill a need, solve a problem, or resolve an issue.

On the other hand, if you withhold it too long or too clumsily, you’ll run the risk of alienating your prospect and creating an adversarial relationship.

Clearly, both of these options are wrong. So, what do you do? Hang on.You’ll find out soon.

11. Establish Value or It’s All About Price

Reality: In the absence of value, every transaction revolves around price.

Salespeople (including you) can’t presume that prospects perceive, understand, and comprehend the value of any offering without having it first interpreted for them. Price is such a dominant factor in today’s crowded marketplace. The value you deliver must be so clear in the mind of the buyer that it supersedes his or her drive to seek a progressively lower and lower price.

12. Relationships Have Changed

Reality: The nature of relationships has changed forever.

It’s true. Customers are not as loyal as they used to be. Couple that with younger and younger buyers coming into the marketplace who have learned to build and manage relationships online, and the impending changes promise to be cataclysmic for the unprepared.

Those factors, the constant pressure to compare prices, and the emergence of new products, suppliers, and services into the marketplace on a wholesale basis all merge to tell us that the terrain that defines relationships has truly been transformed forever.

Understanding the Realities

All of these harsh realities mean that your fundamental philosophy of sales may need to be modified, as well as the very words, exact phrases, and specific utterances that you’ve been using. However, there are certain sales truths that have not changed and will likely never change.

For example, the preeminent role customers play in the relationship will never, ever change. In spite of this, there have been thousands of cases where a company or organization had the corner on a market and the employees falsely believed that they didn’t need to change, only to discover that once their market changed without them and their customers had other choices, ultimately the customer was still in charge! And those customers decided to change suppliers—fast, furiously, and often.

Six Truths of Selling

Here are six truths that will never change in the world of selling, no matter how much the landscape of sales may change:

1. Listening is still the best personal skill a salesperson can master.

2. Failing to get in front of the real decision-maker is a fatal error.

3. If you can’t close sales, you’ll never be successful as a salesperson.

4. Successful selling requires a significant level of skill in time-and self-management.

5. Great salespeople are simultaneously competitive and resilient.

6. Sales is all about presence and persuasion.

This book is really all about number 6. It’s about how to create a strong, positive presence and simultaneously be more persuasive. More specifically, it shows you how to be succinctly persuasive as well as how to avoid wasting words, time, and your prospect’s attention.

Now, let’s get to work!

Chapter 2

The Nine Sales You Must Make First

Here are the nine specific points you will have to sell to yourself before you can expect to sell your product or service to any prospect.

1. If You’re Not Sold, No One Else Will Be Either

A lot of work was done during the twentieth century around the concept of self-talk.That science says that each of us, in the final analysis, is nothing more than a manifestation of everything we have ever heard, read, or believed about ourselves. And that belief is further refined and defined by how we actually utter phrases (usually silently) to ourselves that reflect nothing more than those things we have heard others say, write, or otherwise communicate about us. That is called self-talk. And that self-talk will ultimately define your level of drive, achievement, and motivation. It really is an inside job . . . and anchors your personal level of drive, achievement, and willingness to perform at peak levels.

For example, think about a parent with two children. To one child the parent says, You’ll never be as successful as your sister, and a teacher declares, You just aren’t good in math,while to the other child a parent says, You’ll be great at leading others,and a teacher says, You have a great deal of potential.

You can guess the result, can’t you? The first two create self-doubt, a sense of inadequacy, and a lack of confidence. The latter two do just the opposite. And in both cases, the children start repeating those very same phrases—good or bad—to themselves. And there’s a direct relationship to performance.

But what does this have to do specifically with the profession of sales? More specifically, what does it have to do with your view, belief, or the level of confidence you have in your product, service, or organization? In sales as a profession?

Have you ever heard someone say, All salespeople are crooks, or Salespeople are people who can’t do anything else? How about this one? When are you going to get a real job? Or this gem, Just promise them anything. Sell it now and we’ll worry about fixing it later. Or "I know it’s only version 1.0. We can always upgrade or improve it with later