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Training Tuesday:Fixing Sales Talk Mistakes

Posted 8 years ago

“Open mouth, insert foot.” It’s a saying used to describe what we feel happens when we say something that we should not have said because it could potentially be interpreted as inappropriate, hurtful, embarrassing for either party, or just awkward. In sales, you can occasionally say something and immediately want to take it back.

There are a few reasons this typically happens:

* We’re so excited and nervous to be talking to the customer that we get on a roll and can’t seem to stop ourselves

* We get defensive when we hear an objection – about our company, office, or service, and we rush to give an explanation

* We become uncomfortable or impatient with the silence after we ask a question, and we start speaking without waiting for an answer

* We say something we know didn’t sound right, but instead of stopping to regroup, we stumble on to the next potentially bad comment

The problem with this is that we can never fully take back those words. More importantly, we can’t predict a customer’s reaction to them.

What can you do when you’ve said something you wish you hadn’t?

  1. Offer a sincere apology. Give a genuine “I’m sorry” or “I apologize” followed by specifics of what you said or did.
  2. Use humor. With the right person and context, self-deprecating humor is helpful and almost always works.

Admitting that you did or said something wrong can be powerful in building a new customer relationship. We’re all human and we all make mistakes. Your customer knows that. Sometimes demonstrating the ability to admit your mistakes, and trying to remedy them, makes a customer want to work with you even more. It lets them know that you’ll be honest with them going forward.

We all make mistakes. Very few are fatal. Apologize when you make them. Learn from them and make it your goal to make fewer mistakes and more sales.

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Training Tuesday:Sales Listening

Posted 8 years ago

Sales listening is patient listening. Don’t anxiously wait for an opportunity to jump in and solve all the customer’s problems right away. After I ask a question I shut up and allow my prospect to speak. Sometimes I wait for several minutes. Most salespeople can’t stand a pause in the conversation. Take a deep breath, relax, and listen. Some prospects want to be listened to more than they want their problems solved. People love to talk about themselves, their jobs, and their companies; encourage them to do so.

Transportation salespeople who have been in our industry for a long time should re-visit how they qualify and maintain accounts. It’s easy to start believing that you have all the answers, but you never know what changes may have happened since your last call.

Never waste the prospect’s time. There will come a point when the customer is ready to move past the small talk, and it’s usually quicker than you might think. Everyone is short on time these days and most traffic managers, purchasing managers, and other decision-makers will appreciate you getting to the point. You can do this tactfully without jeopardizing the emerging relationship.

First, give the prospect a reason he or she should answer your questions and ask for permission to proceed. The prospect always expects to answer questions and will give this permission. When you move on to the questions, make sure you are actively listening and not just mentally preparing for the next thing you are going to say.

Take notes! Taking notes can be one of your most powerful sales tools as it will reinforce the reason you made the appointment in the first place: to learn more about the prospect and their company’s needs.

Taking notes also helps you listen. There’s something about holding an empty notepad in front of you that makes you pay better attention to what is being said and makes it more difficult to miss important points.

Taking notes puts you in a position of authority. It encourages the prospect to open up and generally sends strong positive signals to them. It says, “I’m listening to you and I won’t forget.”

Be sure to pay attention to the fine line between asking questions and making the prospect feel that they are being cross-examined. Be natural and at ease to create a comfortable two-way conversation.

Listen, Learn, and Earn.

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Training Tuesday:Mastering the Sales Presentation

Posted 8 years ago

Increase your odds of closing more sales by practicing your presentations. After you’ve made sales presentations, they become practice sessions for presentations you’ll give in the future.

Collect the ideas you’d like to suggest or selling points you want to make; then organize them according to your purpose and the needs of your prospect. Give your words greater credibility by backing them up with data or testimonials. Keep your words as simples and direct as possible; use active, not passive language; and vary your tone, volume, and pitch to keep the prospect interested. Illustrate your words with examples and interesting stories to add color to your presentation.

Lastly, get to know everything you can about the transportation business – both SunteckTTS and the competition. When you demonstrate how much you know about your industry you’ll gain the respect of your customers and prospects. When people believe they are dealing with an expert it’s a lot easier to close the sale. Most customers want you to advise them. When they realize that you have a great knowledge of the transportation industry and of available carriers, then they’re happy to let you take control. It’s when a salesperson doesn’t know much about the transportation industry as his or her prospect that people resent a strong sales approach. However, there’s no doubt that traffic and purchasing people are better informed today than they’ve ever been.

The best way to make a compelling sales presentation is by demonstrating that you’re an expert in your business as well as theirs. When you exemplify excellence in your sales presentation, the customer is eager to find out what you can do to offer solutions to their particular transportation problems.

To make the best presentation possible, you must have conviction in the services you’re there to sell. A customer instinctively knows whether you believe in your service. If you do, they in turn will believe in you. Only then can you make a sales presentation that turns into a sale every time.

 

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Training Tuesday:Managing Stress

Posted 8 years ago

Training Tuesday: Stress Management to Improve Success

Selling offers more highs and lows than most other professions. Most salespeople suffer through periods of stress that are direct results of their sales jobs, but salespeople who succeed in the long run never let disappointments get the best of them. They know rejection goes with the territory and learn not to take it personally and instead, they view mistakes and failures as lessons that will help them improve. On the other hand, some very promising sales careers have died premature deaths due to stress. Stress sometimes causes sales people to lose confidence and then fill their day with nonessential activities and hide from their customers or prospects. We’re also faced with lots of rejection on our daily search for success. If you dwell on the negatives, they’ll bury you. You have to lighten up and look for ways to lessen the stress caused by your job.

Below are our top 10 tips to reduce stress:

1. Focus. Focus on what’s truly stressful to you about a situation and why – the idea being that understanding the stress lessens it and gives you some control over it.

2. Put stressful situations in perspective.

3. Postpone thinking about problems until an appropriate time. Successful people learn how to compartmentalize their thinking.

4. Take a deep breath. Size up stressful situations and decide which are worth worrying about.

5. Take vacations and occasional time off. 

6. Don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself.

7. Talk to others about job pressures.

8. Expect the unexpected. Allow time and reserve energy to deal with the inevitable stressful events that occur daily.

9. Do something for yourself.

10. Volunteer or do something in the community that is rewarding to you.

 

Check back next week for more sales training and tips.

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Training Tuesday:Balancing the Sales Pitch

Posted 8 years ago

Training Tuesday: Balancing the Sales Pitch and Silence

Often the most important part of your sales pitch is when you are completely silent. We often rush through all the great benefits of why a customer would buy, without really listening to them tell us what they need and why they might buy from us.

Most people hate mimes. Why do they exist? Are they evil? If a tree falls on a mime does he make a sound? But, silence is the one important sales attribute that mimes demonstrate in abundance. So, on your next sales call, be a mime, at least for part of the call. Silence just may turn out to be the most important piece of the sales puzzle. 

Why is it that so many salespeople think they must tell everything they know before allowing the prospect to talk? Why is it that some think the sales process involves a lot of talking when, in reality, the most successful salespeople do more listening than talking? It’s a fact that the more we listen, the more we can learn about our prospects and the easier we can find their “hot buttons.”  It’s not what we say that makes the sale, it’s what we can get the prospect to say.

Begin With Questions

Think about how many times you launch right into your presentation thinking you know what the prospect wants. Sometime later, often too much later, you find you’re on the wrong track. The prospect has an entirely different need – one you might have uncovered by asking open-ended questions that required more than a yes or no response. Then you could have focused on what the customer wanted instead of what you had to sell. Stop thinking so much about what you are going to say and concentrate on what the prospect is telling you.

It’s a paradox: the more we try to tell the prospect up front, the more barriers we create to the purchase. However, the more we listen to why he or she wants to buy, the more we can tailor our delivery to providing very specific information concerning how our product or service fits his or her needs.

Ask More Questions

The opening question is merely the first in a series of questions that guide the dialogue. It’s an approach as old as the art of miming. If we want to involve someone – the first step in convincing that person – every comment we make should end with a question that solicits more information. The person asking questions is the person controlling the direction of the dialogue. The one who is talking is providing information that helps the other adjust the direction.

After you ask a question, however, don’t be too anxious to fill the silence. Let the silence work in your favor. Too often we answer the question for the prospect by jumping in and providing him with an objection:

“Perhaps you don’t like the price,” or, “Maybe you don’t like the resources it would involve.” 

Beware of the very real temptation to fill in the silence with a product weakness – the one we are most worried about.

Don’t Rush In With Answers

Salespeople have a terrible tendency to try to get their point in as soon as the customer stops talking. Think about how often you find yourself stepping on your prospect’s last words, rushing in right after the prospect has finished making a point.

Salespeople can break themselves of this self-defeating habit by training themselves to wait several seconds after the customer has stopped talking before they begin. That gives you ample time to think about your response and answer in a way that reflects the customer’s concerns.

Get in the habit of paraphrasing what the prospect has said. This will accomplish two things. One, it reduces the likelihood of misunderstanding what was said, and two, it boosts the prospect’s ego. People like to hear their thoughts repeated – it makes them feel like what they said was important.

Learn to Listen

Don’t listen with just with your ears. Listen with your eyes and your entire body. Use body language that shows you are paying more attention, and your listening habits will automatically improve. Lean forward intently, look the prospect in the eye, and focus on the valuable information you are hearing.

And finally, listen for buying signals. You’ll never notice a buying signal from the customer when you’re doing the talking. Sure, we want to talk so the prospect will learn how smart we are. But the prospect only really knows how smart we are when we’ve “listened” to the information he or she wants to share.

 

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Training Tuesday:Asking Questions

Posted 8 years ago

Training Tuesday: Asking Questions

Asking good questions can make the difference between making a bad sales call and engaging the prospect in a worthwhile conversation. Here are some important tips to remember:

Use ‘assumptive problem’ open-ended questions
Instead of saying, “Do you have any problems with moving your product now?” say, “How are you handling problems that occur while transporting your product?” If you know your industry well enough, you’re aware of the problems that everyone seems to have. You are asking your prospects to quantify and explain the implications and consequences of those problems.

Use ‘instructional statements’
Don’t ask for information; tell them to give it to you. Use phrases like, “Tell me a little about……….”; “Share with me……….”; “Give me some idea of……….”; “Detail the way………” and, “Let’s talk about how you……….”

Ask yourself questions before you make the call
Think about the call before you make it. Ask, “What do I want them to do as a result of this call?” This will determine your primary objective. Then ask, “What information do I need from them?” This will provide whatever qualifying or information-gathering questions you must ask. Finally, ask, “What do I need them to think and believe in order to take the action I desire?” The answer to this question provides the points you’d ideally like to get across….without actually making the points yourself. They are ideas for them to discover through your questions. The reasoning is that people always believe more of what they say and think than of what you say. One of the surest ways to give yourself a fair chance at making a sale is to ask the right questions.

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Training Tuesday:Addressing Problems

Posted 8 years ago

Training Tuesday: Handling Problems

It doesn’t take long for anyone in the transportation business to realize that occasionally bad things happen to good people. You name it, it can and occasionally will happen.

When customers aren’t happy, whether it’s because a shipment is late, damaged or lost, five things can happen—and four of them are bad:

THE CUSTOMER DOESN’T LET US KNOW THEY WERE UNHAPPY WITH SUNTECKTTS’ SERVICE. NOT GOOD.

THE CUSTOMER CHANGES CARRIERS IN SILENCE. NOT GOOD EITHER.

THE CUSTOMER TELLS HIS OR HER FRIENDS. WORSE.

THE CUSTOMER TALKS TO THIRD PARTIES. WORST OF ALL.

THE FIFTH OPTION IS COMMUNICATION.

The best possible outcome is that your unhappy customer talks to you.  This gives you a second chance to understand their needs, identify and correct problems, and convert your dissatisfied customer into a happy customer – one who’ll keep coming back.

Here are the proper procedures to best help your customer.

1.Inform the customer as soon as you can—they’re absolutely going to find out—no news travels more swiftly than bad news.

2.Get to the point quickly by saying something like, “You’re not going to like hearing this”

3.If your customer approaches you with a complaint, don’t interrupt.  Don’t become defensive.

4.Take complaints seriously, no matter how trivial the issue may seem to you.

5.Don’t create distance from SunteckTTS by referring to it as “they.”  Use “we” instead, and proudly stand behind our service without making excuses.

6.Apologize sincerely.

7.Avoid focusing on fixing the blame; instead focus on fixing the problem.

8.Let your customer suggest alternatives.  Every customer has some idea of what they want as a solution to every problem.

9.Do something extra. Correcting the problem isn’t always enough.

10.Trust the customer’s sincerity.  It’s better to err by believing too many people than by not believing enough people.

11.Never just say, “I don’t know.” When you don’t know an answer, simply say, “I’ll look into the matter,” and then look into it, soon.

12.Empathize with the customer.  If you can’t relate to the complaint itself, at least relate to the process of complaining.

13.If the timing is appropriate, ask for future business—let the customer know this does not represent SunteckTTS’s usual high quality of service.

14.Follow-up.   Make sure the customer is truly satisfied.

15.Don’t let it affect your interaction with the next customer. And most importantly:  Most customers will accept occasional mistakes.  How you deal with the problem and how you resolve it is what will distinguish you as a real professional.

16.Always remember that listening to your customer is the best way to help in an uncomfortable situation.  Some people want to be listened to even more than they want their problems solved.

Check back next Tuesday for more tips on Selling SunteckTTS. The full playlist of videos can be found on our YouTube channel.

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LTL 101:Billing

Posted 8 years ago

LTL 101: Billing Accuracy

Many shippers have expressed concern about accuracy of LTL carrier’s billing practices. Having pushed the LTL carriers to be more vigilant with making corrections for weight and other aspects of shipments for proper revenue capture, SJ Consulting researched the validity of such perception by conducting an extensive survey with several large LTL shippers, 3PLs, and freight audit and pay firms, with particular thanks to Williams & Associates. The freight charges on LTL shipments by these companies exceed $8 billion over a 12­ month period, representing 22 percent of the total industry revenue. For decades, the LTL industry has relied on an honor system for shippers to provide true characteristics of their shipments, required to accurately bill the customers for their shipments.

The survey found the range of billing accuracy was 94 to 99 percent depending on the carrier, with the average being 97 percent. The most interesting revelation of the survey was that what shippers perceive as a billing error actually is due to shippers providing an estimated weight or freight class for dimensional attributes of their shipment that are corrected on more shipments as more LTL carriers deploy scales and dimensional machines. Given that about 50% of bills of lading have errors in weight or description of the shipment, it’s no surprise that a correct invoice from a LTL carrier can get perceived as a billing error.

Despite shippers’ perception, the LTL industry has an impressive record in billing accuracy, and it is finally converting rapidly from an honor system.

 

Check back every 2nd and 4th Wednesday each month for more inside information on LTL through our Multimodal Wednesday Series.

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Training Tuesday:Delivering Great Customer Service

Posted 8 years ago

Training Tuesday: How to Deliver Great Customer Service

Many customers are suspicious of freight salesmen. They think that we’re there at the time of the sale but not when they need us if something goes wrong. Many people get buyer’s remorse. When they get that follow-up email or phone call, or they experience the other customer service techniques discussed here, it makes them think, “Yes, I made the right decision.”

Constant communication is the key to building a lasting relationship with customers and prospects.  You must stay in touch.

Let’s define SERVICE as anything that builds trust and confidence in the company and the services you provide to the customer.

Following is a list of services that are specific and measurable. You can use this checklist to make service a more specific part of your sales planning.

1.Write thank you notes as part of your service system. Carry cards in your car and fill them out at the end of the call while still in the customer’s parking lot.

2.Schedule a visit of upper management to your client. This is a symbolic and information gathering visit.

3.Conduct agency or corporate office tours on a regular basis. Clients need to see the agency or corporate office, especially large shippers, so that they can see the depth of the professionalism and dedication that goes into moving their freight.

4.Hold round table discussions about business trends and opportunities with key clients.

5.Throw a client appreciation party, cookout, or breakfast.

6.Invite your customer to accompany you to seminars, speeches, and functions.

7.Return all phone calls immediately. The simple act of returning a phone call can differentiate you from the competition.

8.Vary your modes of contact. A call, package, or email will have more impact if it’s reinforced with another form of contact.

9.Make buying fun. Selling doesn’t have to be all serious business. You don’t have to sacrifice professionalism to make buying an energizing, enjoyable experience that will keep your customers coming back.

10.Make sure internal employees are well-trained in good customer service techniques. 

11.Most importantly, do what you promised, do it when you promised, and do it more often than the competition.

 

Check back next Tuesday for more tips on Selling SunteckTTS. The full playlist of videos can be found on our YouTube channel.

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Training Tuesday:Asking for Referrals

Posted 8 years ago

Training Tuesday: Asking for Customer Referrals

Referrals are the easiest sales you’ll make. It’s your job to tell a purchasing manager that SunteckTTS offers the best service available; that’s what he expects you to say. But when he hears it from a fellow purchasing manager then that’s something entirely different.

Always ask for referrals! Asking for referrals is the difference between middle-of-the-pack sales agents and star performers. And yet sales agents are usually terrified to ask for referrals. Don’t be timid. Always start by asking for referrals within their own company, on-site and at different locations. Then, branch out and ask for referrals to businesses in the area where they might know a decision-maker.

When asking for a referral, try and get this information: company name, contact name, new contact’s title, what they ship, address, telephone number, and how your client is acquainted with the referral. You should also ask permission to use their name when making the call.

Ask every prospect you meet for referrals, and ask every satisfied customer for a testimonial letter. If they don’t have time, offer to type up their comments and then get their signature. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain – ALWAYS ASK!

Using referrals and testimonials in your presentations and qualifying calls sends and reinforces the message that it’s a good business decision to trust you and SunteckTTS. Others have trusted you with good results.

People like working with a winner. In many ways it makes them feel like a winner too. When you demonstrate your successes you make the customer more comfortable with their decision to buy from SunteckTTS.

Repeat business and referrals are the two biggest keys to long-term success in transportation sales.

 

Check back next Tuesday for more tips on Selling SunteckTTS. The full playlist of videos can be found on our YouTube channel.

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