How To Stop Being The Lowly Order-Taker, Become The Consummate Marketer, And Get More Sales From New Buyers

Very neat. And very disastrous -- for the employer. For you see, the employee who has so kindly helped you is nothing more than a lowly-order taker, a person who'll sell you what you're already determined to buy but who makes no attempt to find out what problem you have so that he can sell you more by solving it. It goes without saying that most of the people masquerading as sales personnel are actually order-takers, drones who regard their job as completed if the customer gets (something close to) what he came for and who make no attempt either to understand what the customer really is attempting to do or see if additional sales can be made by truly serving him. Whether you are selling a product or service, if you think like an order- taker, or employ people who do, you are losing mega-bucks every year. In fact, the degree to which you and your employees are order-takers is the precise extent to which you are sabotaging your profit.

The Key Rule Of Successful Sales: Never Sell, Always Solve To begin to solve this pernicious problem, you need to understand what client-centered marketing is. One rule is critical: Never sell, always solve.

The order-taker is quite content to give people what they came for. He makes no attempt to understand what your prospect is attempting to do, what problem he needs to solve. The order-taker regards his work as complete when he gives a prospect what he says he wants.

But consider how truly stupid this is. There is an implicit assumption in the way the order-taker works: namely that your prospects know precisely what they want and precisely what you have available to meet their need, solve their problem. This assumption, of course, is absurd. Even if the prospect knows exactly what he wants (a wanton conjecture in its own right!), he almost never has a good idea of the various ways you have available to help him solve his problem.

The job of the true salesperson, then, is clear. He must listen to what the client wants to do and the way the client now thinks he wants to solve this problem. But, before selling him anything (which is the first thing the order taker wants to do), he must ask a simple question like these: "What are you trying to accomplish?" Or, "What problem are you trying to solve?" Or, "What do you want to do?"

To the order-taker these questions will seem superfluous. After all, the order-taker seems to reason, the customer already knows what he wants: "I'll serve him best by giving it to him with the least possible fuss, then going on to the next customer (or, more likely, returning to gossip with my co-workers, which, of course, I like a whole lot more than sales anyway)". It may be true that the customer knows what he wants to achieve, but, not being a specialist in your field, he is not as aware as you should be of how his problem can be solved.

The true sales professional seeks to understand precisely what the customer wants to achieve (as well as the extent of his means for achieving it) before he even thinks of offering a suggestion about how to achieve this beneficial result. Then, and only then, does he offer a recommendation. "Sir, given that you want to achieve this result, I think you'll be well off using this product/service." It goes without saying (I hope!) that the recommendation made by the consummate salesperson is always more comprehensive than that the prospect comes up with on his own. After all, the salesperson is an expert in solving the problem and knows precisely what must be done to solve it, as the prospect ordinarily does not.

Will the prospect resent this approach? After all, order- takers might argue, prospects generally have an idea of what they want. Certainly it's presumptuous to probe into what they want to do instead of immediately giving them what they came for. Nonsense!

Most prospects are ecstatic when anyone in our apathetic, selfish, and slothful age takes an intelligent interest in their affairs. They are accustomed to (but not happy about) buying from order-takers who evince no interest in what they, the prospects, are doing or why they are doing it; they are accustomed to handling over money to enervated employees and contemptuous clerks, whose eyes never focus on yours during the entire transaction and whose behavior is a clear indication that they regard your presence as an unmitigated irritation. Don't tell me that you don't regularly encounter such "sales personnel", because I know that you do. What's worse, you may be one yourself!

Act Like A Problem-Solving Consultant, Not An Order-Taking Drone

The order-taker sells the paint. The sales professional gets the room protected, painted, and entirely cleaned up. It should be obvious who is responsible for more money being generated.

It is important to point out that you can be the complete sales professional with your clients whether you see them in person, deal with them on the telephone or by mail. And, indeed, it's important to think through in advance precisely how to act in each situation so that you derive the maximum amount of profit in the minimum time. This is not the way order-takers think. They give a customer what he wants and then wait for the next customer, who (at best) they also give what he wants.

The sales professional meets a prospect, works to understand his problem and what he wants to accomplish, then sells him the maximum solution possible given his (the prospect's) resources. If these resources are insufficient entirely to give the prospect his desired outcome now, the sales professional lets the prospect know what he should do next. In other words, he doesn't think merely in terms of this sale but in terms of transforming this prospect into a client, that is an individual who regularly brings in problems for your company to solve, thereby generating regular revenue in the process.

Then and only then is the sales professional ready to move on to the next prospect, whom he is equally interested in becoming a client, not just a momentary (and relatively low- level) buyer.

Rules For Becoming The Complete Sales Specialist

- Even before you have any prospects, think like a sales professional. Think through all the problems you solve with your product or service. Then group your products or services into logical clusters, or lines. Thus, you'll know that if the prospect is interested in something, he should also be interested in a related item. Thus: ice cream means cones, napkins, bowls, spoons, syrup, toppings. You get the idea. Sales professionals think in terms of problem-solving clusters. Order-takers think about individual items.

- Even when the prospect want to buy, don't sell -- yet. Instead, ask informational questions to determine what the prospect wants to accomplish and if he is well informed about the means you have available to reach his objective. The larger the dollar transaction, the more important these questions are.

- Once you know what the prospect wants to accomplish, let him know you can help him solve his problem. Who do you think builds more trust with a prospect, the order-taker who merely gives the prospect what the prospect thinks he wants, or the sales professional who takes a sincere interest in what the prospect is trying to do and lets the prospect know equally sincerely how he (the professional) can help? Isn't it obvious?

- Don't act like the stereotypical salesperson. Instead, function like a problem-solving consultant. Salespeople engage in all kinds of devices to get people to buy, often against the prospect's own interests. Prospects know this and distrust a salesperson to the extent they feel he is using such techniques. Consultants, on the other hand, make a real effort to understand what the prospect is trying to accomplish and to present the various ways the prospect can reach his objective. Having gathered information on what the prospect wants to do, the consultant says, in effect,"I understand what you are doing. Let me give you some ideas about how to get what you want." And then he lays them out, always laying stress on the benefits of the most comprehensive (and profitable for you) solution to the prospect's problems.

- If the prospect is not able to buy this comprehensive solution now, the sales professional always lets him know what the prospect's next step should be, the step he can take when his resources permit him. The sales person must note this step and the approximate time the prospect will be ready to take it. Reconnecting with the prospect at that time helps build the trust relationship between sales professional and client and should result in continuing sales. It goes without saying that the order- taker never attempts to contact a prospect. How could he? He has no idea what the prospect wants to achieve and thus has no sense of when he wants to achieve it.

Being The True Sales Professional In Person

- Send a letter welcoming the buyer to your firm's family, let him know that solution to the extent he purchased it will help him begin solving his problem and that you are glad he chose to start solving it through a relationship with your firm.

- Then add a secton about what the customer should be doing next, the next move he should make to reach his objective. If he didn't purchase your complete solutions package initially, properly handled he will purchase it in due course. Your job is to remind him about what needs to be done and to say when you'll be back in touch to discuss the project again. Then do it. Most people don't follow up.

Indeed, they regard follow up as beneath them. Don't be one of them. Follow up is one of the things that distinguishes the consummate sales professional from the mediocre order- taker.

Being The True Sales Professional On The Telephone

If the prospect buys your recommendations immediately, well and good. If he does not, you have two options:

- If the items you are selling are relatively low in price and will not support your making long-distance telephone calls and extensive personal follow-up, nonetheless mark in your sales literature what you feel the prospect needs to completely solve his problem. Either design your literature so that you can include a short personal note or (if you are computerized) have these notes essentially written up in advance, needing only brief personalization. The important thing is that you let the prospect know he needs more to solve his problem and that you have what he needs. Don't leave the prospect to work all this out for himself.

- If the items you are selling are more expensive and thus will support more extensive personal follow-up, write the client a personal note, explaining why the prospect needs what you have proposed and when you'll follow up. Then, do indeed follow up like the true sales professional you are.

Being The True Sales Professional By Mail

Make sure you cluster your products into logical, problem- solving lines. If a person orders a single item in a particular line, give him an immediate inducement to buy the entire line by offering him a special price. Make sure this is a timed offer, say thirty days.

If you have a catalog, give your prospect an inducement to buy more by having premiums that are only available if the prospect buys a certain dollar amount. And make sure they can only get these premiums if they order by a particular time.

Develop a letter to send each buyer. Open by saying you're sure that if the buyer had known about the special offer, he would have made use of it initially. However, as a friendly, client-centered person, you are still giving him the opportunity to take advantage of it for the next thirty days.

If you follow these steps, you will succeed in upgrading your customers. They will buy more and buy sooner. Moreover, by working in this fashion they'll develop a relationship with your company which no order-taker will ever succeed in creating.