Raising the Game

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Raising the Game

• DPA Conference 2007
• Alison Dawkins

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Self-audit

• New business conversion
• Existing account growth
• Targeted growth
• Lapsed business figures
• Perceived sales style
• Perception of product
• Perception of service levels

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What makes the difference?
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Winning formula

• Logic
• Rapport

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Logic - four stages of selling

• Preliminaries engaging your contacts
• Investigating finding out facts needs
• Demonstrating capability identify solution
• Obtaining commitment next stage

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Engaging your contacts

• Marketing support
• Multiple contacts, referrals
• Prospect awareness, lead sourcing

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Investigating

• Situation questions
• Explicit need questions

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Standard Investigating

• Situation questions

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Situation led questions

• Who is your target audience?
• How have you been marketing your business up
  until now?
• What are your plans moving forward?
• Who makes the decisions?
• How are decisions made?

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Explicit need questions

• What do you see as your key challenges?
• What particular issues are you facing as a
  business?
• What do you see as the potential threats facing
  your industry, business?
• What keeps you awake at night?
• What do you talk about in board meetings?

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Building rapport

• Empathic statements
• Supportive listening
• Reflection of meaning

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Demonstrating capability

• What matters?
• Insight and Idea!

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Insight

• Tell me about the benefits of your products and
  services
• Be prepared to show me your competitive market
  and your competitive positioning
• Demonstrate capability with real life examples
  and case studies
• Make use of facts and figures
• Discuss return on investment

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Idea

• Show me how I can get the most out of your
  product
• Sell me a solution that is tailored and specific
  to my needs
• Take time to prepare mock-ups
• Offer design facility
• Show me how it fits in with the rest of my
  marketing strategy

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Danger!
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Derailment
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The role for reassurance
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Overcoming resistance

• Barriers
• Smokescreens
• Genuine objections

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Remember the balance?

• Empathise
• Explore further
• Overcome using logic
• Trial close

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Some examples

• We dont have any budget
• We are moving all spend to online directories
• We dont see it as a strong return on investment

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Obtaining Commitment

• Traditional one question closing
• Multi-layered commitment building

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One question close

• Assumptive
• Alternative
• Trial
• Direct

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Commitment building

• Time-frame close
• Next step close
• Client close

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How does the stall sound?

• Its on my to do list
• Can you leave it with me?
• Can you call me back?
• Can you send it through again?
• So sorry, Im just rushed off my feet
• We will be having a meeting about it in a few
  weeks

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Can be genuine, can be a tactic!

• I am going to make you feel vulnerable
• You are at your weakest at this part of the sale
• This is where I get a good deal
• Im going to try it on and see what I get

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Pushing through the stall

• Define the problem
• Trial close
• Ask for input
• Push forward
• Time-frame close

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Ring fencing the business
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