Sales training for everyone who touches the customers

Everyone who works for a sales and service organization will eventually have some contact with clients or prospects. So everyone needs the confidence to present your business professionally in a way that will assist the sales process of the official sales team.

When running sales training I always suggest we invite,  anyone who wishes to consider a career move to selling. After the sales audit is complete we may choose a few to invite as well.

As an example of some of this content and an introduction to my sales style, you are welcome to download the first component of my sales training series. This first session is the broad view of selling and is not specific to any industry. All in-house training is fully tailored to your industry with industry-specific examples, techniques and tools.

I believe as sales staff we are not selling something ‘to’ people, rather that we are assisting people as they make decisions. In real estate, we are helping them with an incredibly important decision so the process is even more difficult to do well. If as salespeople we understand how people make decisions we are able to help them in a way that will make the most sense to each person we met rather than just repeatedly giving out information about our offering, leaving them to make sense of it themselves.

Most sales training is only focused on how we word our information or the ‘pitch’. Some courses even teach ‘magic’ words or phrases that they claim will improve your sales performance. As an example, you may have heard trainers’ advice we refer to the price as the ‘investment’. But this all assumes that every prospect has the same existing knowledge of your product/service and that they are all looking for exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason.

I have a degree in Psychology, providing sales training since 1994, and have merged my knowledge of practical selling with how the human brain makes stable decisions. Starting from understanding why they are searching for this product or service and on the journey to that decision they currently are before introducing your solution. To do this the salesperson needs thoroughly know about the role of emotions, especially fear, in the decision process and how to build trust before a decision is possible.

The first session, which I suggest everyone attends focuses on how the brain works and what our role in that is when we are selling. The following sessions use that decision model in situation-specific contexts.

To create a training schedule tailored to your business anywhere in the English-speaking world please email me at maya@salesinventoryprofile.com

Places I have trained include Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada and the US.

How we make decisions and the effect of fear in building trust

Finding your way through the decision maze.

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What’s the number one issue facing sales organisation, managers and owners?

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Hiring staff who cannot prospect and will fail at closing, no matter how well you train them.

It often starts here: A candidate’s résumé tells you: “five years selling software”, “highly motivated and a self-starter”, “a degree in Computer Science”, “retail selling experience”!

 Question: What’s wrong with this information?     Answer: Everything

  •  It’s not independent
  • Maybe it’s been polished by a recruitment company
  • It’s what they think you need to know
  • It’s what they did in the past
  • It’s not about what they can do in the future
  • NONE of it means they can and will sell in your industry for your office
  • It’s boring and it’s wasting your time!

And, it’s why 70% of NEW STARTS in Real Estate will FAIL within 12 months and a total of 90% within 2 years!

This will cost you, the business owner over $100,000 dollars in the first year for each unsuitable candidate chosen in salary and indirect expenses.

It could be costing you millions in lost sales opportunities in hiring or hanging on too long to the hard-working but wrong ones! Imagine how many sales you lose in the second year as they slowly starve you and themselves before they admit they cannot do it?

Even worse, reading résumés can mean throwing away the sales stars of tomorrow because their résumés are poor, or don’t have the right clues, or maybe (and here’s the big one) there’s nothing in their past worth putting in a résumé because they are still young or returning to the workforce after having stopped for a period for parenting or complete their education, travelling, etc. We all know great real estate salespeople whose past gave NO clue to their future sales potential!

Excellent résumés aren’t always a good indicator of sales abilities!

Question: What’s the alternative? Answer: Start using SIP today!

The SIP system combines innovation, the internet and psychometrics. The results identify only those candidates who have the inherent attributes to enable them to sell real estate.

The SIP team will:

  • Analyze your existing team to show you how SIP works, review how your current team is structured, who your team needs as the next recruit and give you a personal sales competency benchmark for your office to use in the hiring process. We have provided this analysis for over a 200 businesses around Australia.
  • Write the advertising copy for you, so the best inherently attributed sales stars of the future in your area apply for your job. In addition, the SIP process highlights those with genuine motivation. Using SIP you now have people who can sell and do want your job.
  • Provide you with an online Candidate Management System so you need never read another résumé AND only organize to meet candidates who can sell and live locally.

Use SIP first before you read yet another résumé or hire another salesperson.

What our customers are saying about SIP: “We agreed to Maya applying her SIP test to all our Sales and Property Management,  Managerial and some admin staff. The results produced, when compared with our own staff assessments, were surprisingly accurate.”

– Jim Shortall, Sydney

Want to have a chat? Contact Maya Saric, Managing Director maya@salesinventoryprofile.com 

Want more Sales articles? Check out these from our blog:

Einstein’s Theory of Selling | Sales Excellence business

“Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open” – Sir James Dewar

Are your staff developing trust or creating fear with your clients?

Are your staff developing trust or creating fear with your clients? Have you ever wondered why clients DON’T buy from you when the call seemed to be going well?

I have launched my new workshop that is changing the way we sell in Real Estate. It is called Emotions in Selling – Helping clients make strong decisions.

I have developed this content from 25 years of selling having been a sales trainer and Coach for half of that time and from knowledge of how the brain works learned in my degree in Psychology. So the content is clearly anchored in understanding the workings of the mind first then translating that to the specifics of your sales situations.

I’m a bit over trainers who teach how to execute specific actions that have worked for them. Some parts of my training do include specific actions but I believe if you understand the intent of the underlying process you will be able to adapt the action to your own style and execute them well and so get the advertised outcome for yourself. If you just blindly copy others (even if the technique you are copying is absolutely fabulous) you don’t get the same outcomes they did because your situation is never exactly the same.

Content:

  • Understanding the neurological structure of the brain and how the flight/fight mechanism drives all decision making. We will review the progress of data arriving from the senses (hearing sight etc) to the two levels of thought processing; emotional and logical.
  • How to uncover the buyer’s personal perceptions of safety and the decision process they are using in order to guide them to use your service. If you contradict this process and trigger even the smallest feelings of fear they will reject you and your product.
  • Learn how fear and anxiety can turn your clients’ thoughts from caterpillars into pythons and how to prevent this so that the caterpillars turn into butterfly’s instead.
  • Learn how selling your own home is the scariest decision a person may ever make and how to guide them safely through their anxiety to a stable decision to list with you.
  • We will look at very specific strategies to maximize your message and they way you present it so that your clients are able to process safely through their emotional filter to make effective decisions that will not unravel when they continue to think about the situation after you have left or when they hear new data from your competition.
  • Importance of the customer doing at least half of the talking during the sales process in order for the purchase to be stable. Using the magic wand technique that helps a buyer express their needs so you can discuss the real value to them of your offering
  • How to manage your clients fear response to help them to continue to listen and have the ability to buy from you.

I believe this program will up skill the sales effectiveness of the entire office as well as providing more sales energy and focus. I encourage my clients to have all staff in their business sit in on it as everyone in a sales organization participates at some stage with our clients whether they are vendors, buyers, landlords or tenants. Most importantly each client interaction contributes to the reputation of our business and builds trust for our brand.

I’m offering to run a two hour session for just you or your team for just $750 +GST conducted at your office. Call me, Maya, for more info on 0407 005 290

For more articles on Trust in selling, check out our Emotions in Selling (EiS) training series here

Emotional Engagement during an Appraisal

Selling without emotion is hard work!

Emotion stimulates the mind 3000 times faster than rational thought. The brain is structured in such a way that the emotional processing (instinct) starts responding first and creates much stronger chemical reactions then the logical processes, which are triggered much later. The emotional processes are designed to turn on the flight or fight (or freeze) mechanism and are on a 24/7 hair trigger for anything that creates fear.

It’s an emotional world we live in. Many people say we live in a rational world but nothing could be further from the truth. Emotions drive our behavior; the world is driven by emotions. Rational thought leads customers to be interested but it is emotion that sells.

Capturing minds is one thing; capturing hearts is quite another.

The most successful sales involve strong emotional connections between people. People don’t actually make life decisions on clear logical grounds. We often decide first and rationalize second. We are emotion based creatures that are first and foremost run by our fears and instincts. Our brain has been designed so that logic cannot easily override our emotions, especially strong emotions.

The better you target that human instinctual connection with the vendor the easier the sales process that follows will be. You need to start targeting their emotions the second you walk across their threshold. Given we sell Real Estate at a very intimate, personal level (in their homes) you have the opportunity to connect with them not in a brash, blatant way but in a simple and very profound manner.

To maximize your chances of getting the listing you must first connect with their hearts then later you can rationalize with their minds. Remember that the fear emotion has the strongest effect on the decision making process. You need to connect very directly with their fears in a way that explicitly helps reduce their fears.

So what are you selling that you need to be emotional about before you get the listing? Until you have secured the listing you have just one product: YOU.

Who are you? (some standard stuff, you need to tailor this to you):
• A committed member of your local community.
• A professional real estate agent of XX years standing.
• A highly experienced sales person who knows how to sell the value in each and every property.
• XX years young, e.g. through your own midlife dramas with plenty of drive and ambitions (people want personal content i.e. who are you?)
• You’re a specialist with Blue Bay Real Estate.
• A Licensed Agent partnered with one of the area’s most successful agents.
• Educated and raised in this community.

BUT of what value is that to them? How do you meet their emotional needs?
How does that make you the right person to sell their castle? How can you reduce their fears? You have to translate these things into specific benefits to them, in their context.