Are Sales People Born or Made?

When I started this business, five and a half years ago, I think I would have given up very quickly if I thought sales people were born. I was terrible at sales – it was very definitely a skill I had to learn. I’m sure like anything else, there are some people who don’t need to be taught anything about sales – they just naturally know what to do and how to do it. But, not me. It was something I had to learn how to do.

I read books, went on courses and spoke to my dad (who was a top sales person in his company for a long time), but none of these really helped. And then, one day I went on a course where the tutor said “All sales is, is listening.”

That was the light bulb moment. From that day forward, I stopped talking and started to listen. And then, when the person had finished talking, I just asked a few questions and listened again. Very soon I realised that if I just listened chances are that the person would just tell me exactly what they wanted and how I could help them. Listening helped hugely and started to make selling an easy process for me. That is, until I encountered my next problem…

People started asking me questions and ones that I didn’t have an answer too off the top of my head. Questions like “Exactly how would the service work” and “How much does it cost?” My standard answer tended to be “I’ll come back to you with that”.

The problem with not having the answer there and then was that I would leave the person assuming what the answer would be – so if the price was actually £500, the person would assume that it was much lower, say £200 and therefore get a shock when I told them the real price.

After the penny dropped that this was happening, I drew up some frequently asked questions for myself; putting down all the questions I was often asked and then writing down and memorising the answers. This way I could give people the answers they wanted there and then and it saved a lot of hassle in the long run as people could immediately tell me whether they were interested in what I could do for them and whether the price was ok.

The third main problem I faced was timewasters. I have lost count of the times I’ve spent 2 hours in a meeting for it to have ended with “I’m sure I can refer people to you” and no sales. For a long time, I prided myself on getting two meetings a week, but realised after a while that there’s no point in having a meeting if I hadn’t made sure beforehand that they were actually serious about buying my services.

How do I do this now? Well, first I have a chat with the person on the phone to check whether there is anything there. 15 minutes on the phone is very different from 3 or 4 hours in a meeting! If I’m still not sure, I’ll send them a short questionnaire to complete and send back to me. If they do this before the meeting, chances are high that they’re pretty serious.

My final tip and something that’s really helped me is to review my sales after each meeting. I always ask myself four questions so I can learn what I’m doing right and what’s gone wrong. They are:

1. What exactly happened and why did it happen that way?
2. What did you learn from the process?
3. Did the person buy? If so, why did they buy? If not, why didn’t they buy?
4. How would you do it differently next time?

I’m not a natural reviewer. My style is generally “Ok, it didn’t work. What can we do now?” instead of “Ok, it didn’t work. Why not and how could we do it better?” But, I have to say that reviewing what’s happened and being honest really helped me see what the problems were in my sales process and get some idea of how to fix them. And as usual, it’s the little things that make the difference.

So, if you’re sat in your business, thinking that you need to get more business into the pipeline, I’d encourage you to ask this question – if you sat down with 10 people, how many of them would you turn into business? If the answer is don’t know, find out! If it’s less than 7, you need to look at your sales process as I have and work on increasing the number who turn into customers. There is no point increasing the number of people in the pipeline, if you’re going to let 8 of them get away when you sit down to meet them.

Good luck with your sales. Let me know how you get on.

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides marketing and business planning advice and support to small businesses and people starting their own business.