Seven Steps to Success in Life & Business!

I want to share with you a very good process, that you can adapt to lots of situations in life.

But its main use tends to lend itself to selling and the process enables you to know your strengths and the areas you may to work on. It is also useful tool for managers / team leaders to use when you have to monitor individuals of their team on a weekly basis, and give them feedback about their sales performance.

How do you make feedback developmental and motivational at the same time? Well my earlier blog about B.O.O.S.T. Feedback (another process).

Well this process I am about to introduce to you, some of you may have come across it before, and thought it is to simple to work effectively? Well I am a believer in simple is good and simple is often the best and easiest route to take.

Well this process is what I call Seven Steps to Success.

Think about this as to what does each step mean. Once you have the what's and why's sorted, you can then move onto developing the how's to use these steps skilfully with every sale you want to make.

Trust me it works and you also come across as a natural, knowledgeable sales person who know's what they are talking about.

And the customer will react responsively to your questions and because you have taken time and shown interest in your client and got into their world for a short while. You will be able to give them what they want and they will want it as well.

By the way you can build and add additional items, anything you think will improve the overall performance of a sales person.

Preparation

Be at work early, Have the right Mental Attitude.i.e. not tired, hungover, but a positive can do attitude. Your computer systems up & running and ready as soon as that phone goes beep. All relevant scripts and paperwork ready also have a spare pens etc and a tidy desk.

Think about the types of questions our you going to use, i.e. open, closed, rhetorical,funnel down further to get into the customers world. Be dressed appropriately, this shows a positive attitude to work and your posture is also important. How you sit or stand shows portrays how interested you really are with the customer and it is also reflected in your voice. Your voice - pitch, tone, pace, is also important part when it comes to building rapport, and remember if you are not in rapport with yourself, how can you in rapport with your customer.?

Introduction

Physical or verbal handshake, this is the start of building rapport with your customer. Then you need to sign post what is going to happen during your time together, this reassures a customer and helps to reduce the no, your ok, I am not interested.

Always reflect to how you react to sales people yourself, whether it be face to face, over the phone or in the street when you are about to get some lunch! And remember how you felt at those times and what would avoid this happening in the future? Always use the customers name again to build rapport, now there is a lot of confusion as to what is the acceptable amount of times to use the customers name?

Well I advise so as not to detract from the situation to use the customers name three times during your time with them so at the beginning, middle and end. This is where you start to use questions to identify the customers reason for call or visit and to enhance the rapport building with the customer. So this stage is about you and the customer getting to know each other and what is required and what is going to happen next?

Establish Needs

This step, is the find out stage, you need to identify the customers needs and wants via effective questions, using open type questions to enable you to get the customer to give you information, because they start with either a What, When,Where, Who, Whom, Why & How at the beginning of the questions, which means they can't just say yes or no, which they can do to closed question.

But closed questions are good to control the conversation and enable you to lead the questions where you want them to go! A rhetorical question is one that does not require an answer straight away, i.e. I would like you to think about what would suit you best? And after I have either explained or demonstrated the various options, models etc, to you, you can then tell what you think is in your opinion is the most suitable.

Match Needs

Now that you have introduced yourself to the customer and built rapport and also identified what their needs and wants are. You are now in a position to cross reference, what you have established the customer requires and match the features advantages and benefits of what you are selling to their needs and sometimes to their wants as well.

Needs and Wants are two totally different things and don't get confused. Because what a customer wants is different to what they actually need, and if you sell to a customers wants you are over stepping the mark and misusing the information, to your advantage and financial gain. Which is short sighted on your part, good sales people need to be good at knowing their customers and some times less, means more in the long term.

Customers will know when you are praying on their venerability of what they want rather than what they need and can afford right now. Which helps to build loyalty with a customer and they will come back again and again it they like you. Remember one thing, people make their minds up in approximately 20 seconds as to whether they you or not.

Handle Objections

This step is all about whether a customer has a genuine objection, which if they have you will never win them over. Or it could be that you have not covered or explained sufficiently for the customer to make a confirmed choice. Which means tell me more.

So what then happens is that customers don't want you to think they have not understood or that you will think they are stupid, so they make a false excuse, like oh I need to talk to my partner as they make these sorts of decisions. Or oh I am in a bit of hurry now, I will think about it and get back to you. In those situations you need to show empathy and reconfirm you understand their situation and offer a solution. In the first scenario, state I totally understand, I wouldn't make a decision without talking to my partner either.

Is there anything else I can confirm with you so that when you discuss this with your partner, you will then have the right information. That usually prompts a well, is seems a bit expensive or I am not sure about a curtain issues, which you can cover and hopefully dispel by giving further information.

But if they say no I have all I need, I do just need to discuss it with my partner, then you know that it is a genuine objection but not a rejections, so offer to help by saying when is a convenient time when you are likely to be together, the reason I ask is that your partner may ask a question we may not have discussed, you know what it is like! Plus it saves you money by me phoning and if you and your partner then decide you don't want to go ahead then fine, I will leave you in peace.

Close

This step is probably the easiest if you have done the previous steps well, but it is the one step that you can talk your customers out of buying, because you over sell and talk to much or over sell by telling to many details that blows their mind or bores them. At this stage silence is golden! hold back you have done the hard work, await agreement from your customer and then explain what will happen next in the sales process.

Reflection

Final stage, which is after the deed is done. And it is about reflecting on what you done!

What worked well? What could you improve upon next time?

Take the learnings and build them into your Preparation, this process is a complete circle and your learns help you to continually develop your skills through each and every step.

Also your peers will be able to monitor and when they give you feedback about any particular step, you will understand what they are talking about and the right kind of support and training can be provided.

You can adapt and use this process to deal with other areas of your life or business.

Martin Biginelli is a UK based life coach who also provides professional business coaching to small businesses and corporate clients. You can find out more about these services, as well as life skills coaching by visiting his website at http://www.CoachingFourSuccess.com.