70/30 – The Odds Are In Your Favor!
Without progress, a profession becomes just another job. Sales is no different. What worked in the past doesn’t always work today. Markets change, society evolves, and sales techniques must change right along with them. In fact, certain selling systems were developed for that very reason – a better way to sell, more suited to a changing marketplace.
One thing that doesn’t change, however, is human nature. Customers and technology are more sophisticated in some ways, but strip away the current pop culture, and people are basically the same as they were decades or even centuries ago.
You can see this pretty clearly if you back at some of the popular sales manuals over the last 50 years or so. Salespeople have always had to face many of the same obstacles that we face today.
For instance, typical sales methodology has always emphasized the importance of product knowledge. What gets overlooked are the dangers of sharing too much of it at the wrong time in the sales process. And that is an important point of value in other selling systems…….a systematic approach to contemporary selling that continues to lead our profession into the future.
Let’s examine the topic of talking too much. David Sandler’s ground breaking book, You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar, has a chapter titled, “Can Asking Questions Be the Answer?” The chapter begins with, “One of the things people say they like least about salespeople is that they talk too much. And it’s true.” So far, what’s groundbreaking? Nothing yet. But let’s read a little further: “I’ve discovered that if you talk less, you’ll sell more, and that’s a rule you can take to the bank….Traditionally trained salespeople talk at least 70 percent of the time in front of a prospect when they ought to be talking less than 30 percent of the time. The problem is that they don’t know how to get the prospect to do most of the talking.” And that was groundbreaking. It still is, because a lot of salespeople just don’t get it. It’s the prospect who should be doing most of the talking. To reach the proper ratio, you have to approach your relationship systematically right from the beginning.
When you first talk with prospects, either in person or on the phone, there are two systems at work: the prospects’ and yours. We call this initial contact WIMP JUNCTION because you will either wimp out and default to their system, or you will show a bit more fortitude and guide them with your own subtle but powerful selling system.
You know the prospect’s system: They convince you to turn in a proposal which they proceed to use as a bargaining chip as the shop all over town. They stall, they object to price, they think it over. In the meantime, they’ve turned you into an unpaid consultant.
Sound familiar? Why doesn’t the old-fashioned “features and benefits” download cause the prospect to buy more often? How do you get inside a buyer’s head to learn what his/her buying and decision-making processes look like? Well, that's the essence of what David Sandler was stating in his book, a sales philosophy comprised of concepts, and techniques to put the concepts into practice. If we look at the 70/30 rule, what is the rationale behind this proven concept? And why is it that so many of Sandler’s techniques are designed specifically to support that concept?
It all begins with pain. Pain is the prospect’s emotional need to buy – the problem that needs solving – as opposed to his/her intellectual need. Remember: Prospects think they make all their decisions intellectually, but they really make the decision to buy emotionally. They will be ready to buy from you when they feel that your product or service solves their pain. They may not understand consciously what their pain is, but they’ll be able to sense when relief is in sight…with your help.
You uncover pain by asking questions. Often you respond to questions by asking more questions using the reversing technique. In fact, throughout the sales process, whether you’re making a cold call or about to close the sale, you have to know when to “dummy up” and say little if anything at all, when to impart information or ask more questions. At each step in the selling process, you must use the right techniques to move forward.
Your personal progress as a sales professional is possible because of the progress people like David Sandler made in the selling profession, the major improvement that took us from simple “Know your product!” to the process oriented “Uncover pain!” If you want to make sales less painful for yourself, make it more pain oriented. It could be the start of a brand new chapter in your career.