Sales Is Not An Art, It’s A Science

Sales is LESS about selling, and MORE about “HOW THE CUSTOMER BUYS”

Everyone needs sales.

Whether it is to sell your products/ services to your customers, your ideas to your peers or your boss or your parents or investors, your girlfriend/ boyfriend, husband/ wife.

Hope you get my drift??, everyone needs sales.

So…. Let’s start liking sales by busting some of the most common myths and take them head on and by the time you’re finished with this series, you will be ready to look at ‘Sales’ in a more likeable way.

Sales is fantastic, liberating and gives the most pleasure than any other thing that you will ever do. Some may say, “let me just read this first and then reach the conclusion above.” I understand what you mean and only thing I expect is an OPEN mind, think you can do that??

Lets DIVE IN ….

Myth No 1: Sales is only about the gift of gab or the art of manipulation.

Myth No 2: Only way to get clients is Cold Calling (and I can’t do it).

Myth No 3: I don’t have it in me, only a few people can do it.

Myth No 4: One must lie, cheat and sell their soul to make more sales.

Myth No 5: One must cut profit margins by huge amounts for getting new clients.

I could go on and on, but let’s take a pause here and bust some of them.

Myth No 1

Sales is a numbers game and it’s about having the right process in place. Whether you are a retail outlet looking at B2C customers or an MNC company wishing to acquire B2B customers in bulk or you are a dealer looking to acquire about 50-100 new clients a month or a niche-sector like an architect or a consultant, who is looking for anywhere between 5-20 clients.

What you need is a PROCESS.

It’s a simple number game. If you require 5 warm leads to close 1 deal, then how many leads do you need for closing 25, think about it?

Not that difficult, is it now?

It’s a simple funnel approach which most people know or have read about and yet it’s something which is ignored the most.

Why?

Because of the following excuses

• No Time
• No quality Leads
• Don’t have more capacity to handle more work
• Not confident of quality that can be provided

Knowing a process and to be able to do it consistently is a different ball game. The gift of gab won’t work as well on cold leads or the leads which don’t need the product or have already bought it, nor can the art of manipulation build a long term sustainable business.

Only a disciplined approach towards the Sales process is what it will take to get more warm leads .

STILL WITH ME??

Lets go deeper..

Myth No 2

Every time I start a conversation with my client about sales, there’s resistance and the first comment out of them is, “Please don’t ask me to cold call 100 people a day.”

Cold calling is ‘one of the ways’ to generate leads, lemme remind once again, ‘one of the ways’, not the only way.

if you’re not a fly-by-night operator, then one of the most important activities which will help generate long term leads is building a network full of meaningful relationships. A lot of us have a habit of not calling up that friend (because he/she hasn’t called in the first place, it’s beneath me to call first).

Even if I mustered enough courage (and forgo my ego or some like to call it self respect), what should I speak? Wouldn’t they know, I am calling to get leads?

Here I would like to share 2 scenarios.

Scenario 1: As perceived by most people on how the call could be done!

Sachin and Mahesh are good friends but haven’t stayed in touch.

Phone Call

Sachin: Hello Mahesh, how are you doing

Mahesh: Good yaar, long time, how are you?

Sachin: Doing good too. Listen, you know that Gentleman in XYZ MNC Ltd. compant, any chance you can connect me to him?

Mahesh: (in his head- he’s called me to ask something, and I thought it’s to keep in touch)

Sure Sachin, let me see what I can do !

End of Call

Scenario 2: A Different Way

Sachin: Hello Mahesh

Mahesh: Hello Sachin, Long time, did you need something?

Sachin: No Mahesh, I just called since we hadn’t spoken in a long time

Mahesh: That’s nice of you. So how are things?

Sachin: Work has been great, we’ve been adding new product lines recently and getting good responses. How are things at your end?

Mahesh: Good at my end too. That’s interesting about the new products, what kind?

The conversation flows smoothly and has a very high chance of getting Sachin the Connect with XYZ MNC Ltd. company, either in this conversation or subsequent conversations, as the rapport is built.

No soul was sold , No cold calling required. Focus is on building relationships !!

The more the relationships, the more Sales!! ( it’s also nice to be able to interact and exchange new ideas with different people.)

Look out for the Part 2 (Concluding part of this blog)….

[The author of this post is Ankoor Naik, Business Coach.]