Author: dev_admin

Why I Use Vitamins and Painkillers When Selling

It’s more common for people to buy and consume painkillers when they are sick compared to purchasing and consuming vitamins on a day-to-day basis to keep healthy. It’s also easier to forget to drink your vitamins because the effects are not immediate and serve you longer. On the other hand, painkillers are usually taken when needed, and consumption is generally urgent, such as managing allergic reactions or easing severe pains. One serves as a precaution, the other as a remedy, but both of them are important.

An age-old question in venture capital is, “are you selling vitamins or painkillers?”

Venture capitalists love investing in painkillers because the reality is, people are ready to pay a premium to address urgency, such as pain, compared to the longer-term benefits of vitamins.

As a salesperson, I can’t let one or the other dictate if I should only be pitching to a healthy company or a business with existing challenges because there are opportunities to tackle both. This can be applied when I use the vitamins and painkillers sales tool to make my messaging crisp and tight to communicate better how I can help a customer.

What is the vitamins and painkillers sales tool

The vitamins and painkillers sales tool uses both the long-term benefits of vitamins and easing the pain using painkillers. Business owners want to reap benefits that can help them for a long time, such as buying pricier equipment for more durability long-term or sending delegates to training to bring back business learning. On the other hand, the same as you would take painkillers to manage your stomachache, a business will move faster and will be willing to spend more to handle issues and other urgent tasks, such as a PR crisis or fixing critical machinery in a manufacturing process.

This tool includes four key steps: anticipating the question, identifying the problem, need, and value, capturing the pain and gain statements, and enumerating progress made and pain eliminated.

1. Anticipate questions
One of the most basic tactics in information gathering is the Five Ws and H framework. It consists of What, Who, Why, When, Where, and How, and helps me collect key information. Using this framework in sales allows me to tighten the message and help me close a deal because I clearly understand the goals I set.

Below is a set of five Ws and H questions and some guide questions I use to craft my answers. These are questions that are expected to be asked by any new prospect you may have. The key is to prepare the answers and keep them short and concise, as a phrase or a sentence. Otherwise, instead of tightening the message, you may end up confusing yourself and the potential client because of too many points you want to get across.

• What are you selling?
  What are the primary products or services am I selling to the prospect? Is there any specific one I want to hero? This may be a basic question, but it creates clarity in my intentions and goals. There may also be a wide range of products and services that may not be directly related to each other. Each product and service will have a different target market and messaging, and identifying which one to focus on is important to tighten your message.
  
• Who is it for?
  Who am I targeting? What is their profile? Are they CXOs of a major firm? IT pros? Small and medium business owners? The way I communicate with each will be different, so it is important that this is clear. For example, IT professionals will be more focused on the technical aspect, while business decision-makers may be more responsive to possible effects on employee efficiency and cost savings.
  
• How does it work?
  How will I get the job done? Do they avail of my services to make their team more productive? Do they purchase my tool to bring in more leads? Do they hire me to standardize the process?
  
• Why does it matter?
  Why do my product or service matter to my target client and their business? Why do they need to purchase my product or hire me for my services? Why should they buy from me or hire me instead of someone else?
  
• When and where does it pay off?
  When and where will they see the impact of your products or services? Where will this value show? Is it short-term or long-term? Is it immediate or needs a few years to ROI? Is it tangible? Will it show when they compare the baselines to the results?
  

2. Identify the problem, need, and value for their business

Every business has someone looking into how to make everything better— faster processes, more productive employees, higher savings, and so on. But if you can help them see these challenges and how you can help them, they would know that you did your research and are prepared to offer solutions. There’s also the benefit of being an outsider looking in because you provide fresh perspective.

• Identify a discreet problem that your customer is facing
  Clearly showing customers gaps that they might not have noticed immediately sparks an interest. These may be issues that are within the fine print of what they do, or what they may think is unimportant.
  
• Identify the need that the problem is creating
  If I can provide the needs that these problems are creating, I show them the impact of the issue on their business. Giving them this information allows me to show actionable steps that I can help them with when they hire me.
  
• Identify the value to your customer when the problem is eliminated
  Once I identify the value when the problem is eliminated, I gain a better understanding of the concerns. It also shows that the need I presented will yield good results.

I then list each problem I can solve, the associated need, and the value accrued in a simple table to quickly summarize and lay out what I can do for the client. For example:

3. Capture the from-to statements

The pain (from) and gain (to) statements are key details that I create to clearly enumerate the challenge and the intended result for each. Take the table you created in the previous step and enumerate the pains you are helping the customer alleviate and the gains you are helping them make against the challenges they are facing. For example:

4. State progress made and pain eliminated

When you help people make progress, you help increase positive results. On the other hand, when you help people eliminate pain, you decrease negative outcomes. This is the time I narrow my messaging by clearly stating the progress made and the pain eliminated. For example:

In conclusion

The vitamins and painkillers sales tool enable me to develop several ways in talking about impact, to be clearer and more concise, yet targeted in my messaging for faster and more effective results for my client and I.

Sounds interesting? Let’s talk about how we can put these tools into action for your business.

About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.

The Three Pillars I Live By as a Salesperson

Any salesman going into a pitch meeting knows that doing your research about the company, finding out about their objectives or challenges, and bringing your A-game is the first step in getting new business. After all, when you want to impress a potential customer, you want to make sure you know as much as you can, so you have answers when they challenge your competency and intentions.

But to me, a great salesman uses more than his knowledge to close a client. Demonstrating my skills and exhibiting my discipline proves to be very essential in selling. How I communicate, the strategy I use for my opening, when I decide to start talking, and when I should be listening, among many others, create the pillars that can help anyone become a high-performing salesperson. In fact, without knowledge, skill, and discipline, it can shake the very foundation of our efforts as a salesman.

But what exactly does it mean when we use these three things to build our selling framework to become a high-performing salesperson?

Knowledge is power

We can easily define knowledge as what we know— what we can recall, summarize or explain to others. Facts, stories, frameworks, concepts, and formulas are all knowledge. It is what we typically prepare for before talking to clients or for our day-to-day life.

Knowledge also has pitfalls. As a salesperson, it’s easy to rely on what I know. I researched my prospect, read about the big news that affects their business, did background checks on the stakeholders involved, and prepared my speech about what I can do for them. Going on and on about the products or services I offer, stating facts, and enumerating credentials and awards I’ve garnered is easy because I can pull out that information from my knowledge database in a blink of an eye. But when I become over-reliant on my knowledge, I’ll be focusing more on myself and less on them.  In the end, I may end up confusing, overwhelming, or boring my clients.

If I rely only on my own, I can also mistakenly use outdated or plainly wrong information that won’t connect with my customer. Imagine sharing a case study from the ’90s when talking to a tech-savvy millennial digital marketer. I won’t get my point across simply because it’s not relevant or it’s not the correct language or story that can tug a nerve.

“I’ve got this” is one of the most dangerous sentences that can be spoken in the business world. And that’s because mindset fuels the energy you can bring in sales. When you say those words, you stop being curious, and you rely on what you know without hesitation. That’s the challenge. When I simply depend on my knowledge, I stop learning, and I stop seeing how there are several other things I can improve on. Knowledge is important, but it’s not all-important. If I can’t put my knowledge into action, then it’s nothing but abstract thought. Until I can act on what I know, the things I know about my chosen profession won’t make a difference in my performance.

Rewiring my mind with skills

When you go into a room to sell, do you think of the skills you will use to close the deal as much as the information, ideas, and frameworks you add to your presentation file? Did I focus on how I’ll share the narrative— is it through a list of facts or storytelling? How about the way I assess their interest— is it checking their body language and facial expression or asking them point-blank about their hesitation?

Skills talk about the timing of an action. When do I speak? When do I object? When do I show case studies? When do I ask an impact question? When do I tell a great story? Developing my skills, using, and practicing them lets me become a high-performing salesman because it allows me to improve what I know, update the knowledge I have gathered, and lets me get better and better at what I do.

Your skills are abilities you acquired through practice, sustained effort, and applying feedback you receive over time. When it involves an idea, you can tap your cognitive skills, if it involves a thing then you should use your technical skills, if it involves people, then it uses your interpersonal skills. Regardless of what type of skill you choose to apply when you sell, it’s a continuous cycle because your focus and skills can degrade over time. There isn’t such a thing as “set it and forget it” for any skill you need, whether it’s for selling or for every day. Even when I learned how to ride a bike in my childhood, if I don’t use it, my skills and balance can get rusty, and I need to re-learn and practice it again to be able to ride it as an adult.

In selling, a lot of things can affect decisions, and it’s a matter of using the correct skills so I can showcase my knowledge in the best possible light. It helps to have continuous practice to refresh my mind and rewire my brain to encode new skills and abilities regularly, or I’ll also get rusty.

Choosing discipline

Discipline is a choice. The choice of taking an action or not. But it is binary— I do, or I don’t. However, it’s only effective if I have both knowledge and multiple skills in my roster. If I only know one skill or one kind of knowledge, then there’s no choice to make, and my decision is automatic to that one thing I do know.

Deciding whether you should take action or not is another key aspect of any sales pitch. Do I speak now, or listen until I have all the information I need? Do you I the floor for discussion as I’m are presenting? Do I interact with my audience as I talk? Do I use storytelling to narrate something my prospect can relate to? Do I send them a thank you note after taking a meeting with them?

Discipline and skills go hand in hand. The former answers whether you should perform an action, while the latter answers when you should be doing it. Showing discipline decides if I should ask an impact question, send 50 cold emails, or do my pitch over coffee instead of a conference room. While skills determine at how and what point I should ask the impact question, if I should send 50 cold emails on a Monday morning or on a Wednesday afternoon, or if I am doing a breakfast or afternoon coffee pitch meeting to close a deal.

Balancing knowledge, skills, and discipline

Sales is like a contact sport. You can learn it in theory and practice it until it becomes a habit. But, the only way it works is when you can balance knowledge, skills, and discipline as you constantly grind to get better.

Let me give you an example. A sports coach can easily tell an athlete to read books and theories about basketball or watch gameplays and wins for the past twenty years to learn. They’ll harness the necessary knowledge to understand the rules and mechanics of the game. But that wouldn’t matter if skills and discipline do not accompany the information he gathers during an actual match. An athlete needs the skills to decide the kind of strategy in the gameplay or when it’s best to fall back or go for the kill. He also needs the discipline to determine whether or not he should do each shoot and pass or if an offensive or defensive stance is better within the situation at any given time.

This applies the same to salespeople, I can just read about all strategies and formulas to get new business, but I need to practice, apply, and have the ability to discern when the right timing is.

When you understand knowledge, skill, and discipline at each sales stage, you can make more conscious decisions that rely on only one pillar you are familiar with. I don’t have to leave it to chance if a customer’s decision goes in my favor because I influence it by balancing the three pillars I need to become a high-performing salesperson. Removing the guesswork from the sales process and making each of my actions well-thought-out and deliberate is an essential step in selling.

Taking the time to practice and improve and repeating it over and over makes you better and better. And a high-performing salesman— or any great man— doesn’t stop learning no matter how high your role gets in the corporate hierarchy. Instead, balancing these three pillars becomes a stepping stone for even greater success.

At what level is your knowledge, skill, and discipline? Let’s talk about how we can take it to the next step.

About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.

Your company’s got a great idea for a new product, service, or feature.

The first question you ask is: Will it generate more sales?

The answer: It depends on whether it’s a candy, vitamin, or pain killer.

Painkillers always sell. When you’re in pain, you’ll grasp anything to help alleviate the discomfort. A painkiller is a must-have. Vitamins? Not so much. Sure, they can help, but they’re just nice-to-have. It doesn’t really make a difference whether I take it today or not. Candy? Well, I don’t need candy. In fact, it may even be bad for me. But it’s cool, the latest thing, and everyone’s buying.

Irrespective of what you’re selling, it’s either candy, vitamins, or painkillers.

It may even be two or all three at the same time!

One Man’s Candy Is Another’s Painkiller

As a product, how would you categorize Facebook? Is it candy, vitamin, or painkiller?

The answer will differ dependingon whom you ask:

• For the taxicab driver who spends some of each day waiting to pick up a fare, Facebook is probably candy. It allows him to see what his friends are doing and make comments. It’s non-essential but helps pass the time.
• But for the working Mum who wants to stay in touch with friends and family, share in their lives, and celebrate special events, it’s possibly a vitamin. A nice-to-have, but not essential.
• And for the widowed grandmother living alone, far from her children and grandchildren, it’s undoubtedly a painkiller. It’s the only way to stay in touch with what’s happening in their lives. It’s essential.

CANDY

Candy gives people pleasure. They’re sugary, sweet, and deliver a sugar “high,” but we’ve been told they’re bad for us try and avoid them. Candy doesn’t solve a problem, doesn’t have to be bad for you, not everyone has to like them, and you can live quite happily without it. Online games serve up candy day after day, and great games generate massive income for their creators. 

VITAMINS

Vitamins are cool ideas. They’re great but not essential. We know they’re good for us but aren’t in a rush to buy them. But they could be a painkiller tomorrow. Think about a product like Zoom. It started off as an alternative video conferencing tool; something we installed but rarely used. Today? It’s an essential part of almost every business and household across the globe during COVID-19.

PAINKILLERS

Painkillers, on the other hand, are essential. If the pain is bad enough (e.g. kidney stones), you’ll do everything possible to alleviate the suffering. When it comes to selling, having a painkiller that addresses a pain point is your quickest path to success. And if your product is an addictive painkiller—one people can’t do without even when the pain subsides—all the better.

Three different individuals, all with friends and family, but different needs.

What is it? Positioning Your Product

Whether your product is candy, vitamins, or painkillers impacts your go-to-market (GTM) strategy.  But it requires more than merely understanding what your product is and what it can do. As we saw from the Facebook example, knowing your target audience is essential for marketing and sales. So ask yourself:

• Who is our target customer? Is it the right group for the product?
• Could there be more than one customer persona?
• Is our product non-essential but give people pleasure?
• Does our product make people’s lives easier?
• Could our product become a painkiller in the future?
• Does our product address an existing pain point? Are people looking for it now?
• Is our product addictive? Will people keep using it after it’s fixed their pain point?

Once you’ve identified whether your product is candy, a vitamin, a painkiller, or a mix, write down the need and value for each target persona. State what pain point or desire is being addressed, the anticipated impact of acquiring your product, and what you need to do for them to become addicts. As the sales cycle evolves, update your positioning based on your observations, including market trends, positive outcomescreated, and adverse outcomeseliminated.

The Bottom Line

You don’t need an addictive painkiller to be successful. That would be nice, but it’s not realistic.

The most important thing is to know your target audience and position your products correctly.

About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.

Have you ever gone into a meeting with a salesperson and walked out overwhelmed and exhausted?

It’s happened to all of us at one time or another.

Sales folk usually know their stuff inside out. But as a potential client, do I need to know everything they know?

The answer is simple: “No, I don’t.”

As a customer, I want to know how your solution impacts me. I don’t need to know everything about your company, product range, and what your other customers are doing. I want to understand if you can solve my problem or not, and if you can, how long will it take and how much will it cost.

High-performing sales people combine what they know with skill and discipline to increase their effectiveness, carefully choosing what to say and when to say it.  Let’s illustrate the process.

Knowledge
Competent salespeople understand both their own company and its offerings and the business challenges and market characteristics of their target clients, e.g., strengths, weaknesses, competition, and trends. Gathering and synthesizing market intelligence helps ensure productive conversations with clients, aligning problems and challenges with potential solutions, and developing an action plan for moving forward.

But before picking up the phone or walking into a sales call, there are other things a sales rep needs to know about the stakeholder, their company, and the deal on the table:

• The background of the person they’re meeting (Hint: Use LinkedIn or Zoom Info)
• Key metrics he/she is most likely being measured against based on the customer persona
• Recent news about the company,e.g., deals announced, personnel movements, or investments
• The solution within the portfolio that best matches the company’s challenge and stakeholder metrics
• Solution pricing and implementation details and time frames

Armed with relevant, up-to-date information, you’re now in a position to utilize your knowledge and apply your sales skills.

Skills
Every sales professional’s goal is to provide solutions that address each client’s needs and expectations. But that requires more than having a thorough of their challenges and objectives and presenting your products or services.

To be effective, you need to develop a set of essential interpersonal skills. These include being adaptable, skillfully combining discovery and impact questions with storytelling to create alignment, and thinking out of the box when put on the spot. You may also need to read between the lines (i.e., what isn’t the client saying), adjust to stakeholder body language, and overcome objections and potential show-stoppers.

But there’s a caveat.

You can’t learn these skills online or in a classroom. The only way to acquire them is through repeated practice, effort, and feedback. If you don’t practice, you won’t get the feedback you need to hone those skills and take them to the next level. And never think to yourself, “I’ve got this.” Those words imply that your leaning on old skills and experiences that may not work in new, evolving sales situations. Go into every new opportunity with your eyes open, confident that you can seal the deal but ready to learn new things and practice discipline.

Discipline
An essential component of every sales cycle involves taking the steps necessary to create or strengthen lasting relationships with new or existing clients. Doing so encompasses establishing rapport, communicating using various channels, and conducting productive meetings.Doing so takes both skill and discipline.

Discipline means making conscious choices regarding what to do and when to do it. You may have both the knowledge and the skill to do something, but timing can mean the difference between success and failure. For example, should you talk or listen, discuss benefits or pricing, let the meeting meander or rein it in, respond to an objection or stick to the subject? All of these are within your control, but choosing the right time takes discipline.

Discipline—like skill—takes practice. When you have the knowledge and a list of skills to choose from, discipline yourself to use a combination of them at the right time to maximize the impact.

The Bottom Line

Over reliance on knowledge is a trap. It’s easier to talk yourself out of a deal than it is to talk yourself into one—just talk too much. High-performance sales teams build their skills and discipline through a continuous cycle of practice, feedback, and implementation. When a sale stalls during negotiations, it’s often an indication that skills and discipline were lacking in earlier stages of the sales cycle. Understanding what skills to develop and when to use them will help you navigate this critical juncture in the sales cycle.

About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.

Being a sales rep isn’t easy.

It’s like riding a roller coaster: highs followed by lows, earsplitting thrills by gut-wrenching disappointments.

But speak to anyone who’s been a sales rep for a while, and they’ll tell you, yes, it’s hard, but at the end of the ride very satisfying.

And the best thing about sales is that success is up to the individual. People talk about the “natural-born salesperson” who could sell “ice to Inuits,” but how many of those do you know? And why would you want to do that in the first place? Studies show that those friendly, enthusiastic, outgoing extroverts don’t make better salespeople than quiet, reserved, thoughtful introverts. In fact, the extroverts are often the ones behind the stereotype of salespeople being overbearing, pushy, and manipulative. 

When Being in the Middle Makes the Most sense

But great salespeople aren’t like that. The most successful sales reps are the ones that fit in the mid-range between introvert and extrovert, having traits of both but knowing when best to use them. Yes, to be successful, you have to be friendly, determined, and tenacious, but you also have to be seen as being caring, knowledgeable, helpful, and trustworthy.

And there’s a good reason for that!

A dedicated salesperson doesn’t view selling as a one-time transaction. Whether working out of a food truck, shoe store, or corporate headquarters in midtown Manhattan or Silicon Valley, great sales reps are all trying to achieve the same goal—build a business. And to do that, they need repeat clients, resulting in more money in their pocket and a better customer experience.

5 Indispensable Qualities Make a Great Sales Rep

Whether you’re looking to create a successful sales team or enhance your skills, here are five things qualities you need to look for and nurture—both in yourself and your team.

1. Curiosity

Selling isn’t an action; it’s a mindset. But unlike mediocre salespeople who think they know everything, look for situations where they appear intelligent, avoid challenges and risk, and dodge advice so as not to threaten their view of themselves, great sales reps do the opposite. They’re curious about their customers (current or potential), ask questions, and welcome feedback.

A successful sales rep empathizes with his customer, understands their goals, and rides alongside—not opposite—for the journey. And that all starts with being curious and asking questions. 

2. Attentiveness

When people think about sales, they often picture that slick, smooth-talking used car salesman who’s not listening and won’t take no for an answer.Great salespeople aren’t like that; they’re not preachy or dogmatic. They don’t call or visit customers to tell them what they need. Instead, they call them to find out what challenges or problems they’re facing and offer assistance. They listen carefully, ask questions to make sure they understand the situation fully, and then respond carefully and thoughtfully—matching the need to a solution—before (hopefully) closing the deal.

And if they don’t have a solution in their portfolio, an honest salesperson readily admits it, stays in touch, and adds value as best they can. If you do that, you’ll be viewed, not as a vendor but as a trusted advisor.

3. Resilience

The famous saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” means more to salespeople than most others. Sales isn’t for the faint of heart or for those who feel entitled to success. It just doesn’t work like that. One month you’re riding a wave; the next, you might be struggling to close only one deal. But great salespeople don’t give up. They’re resilient in the real sense of the word, being able to “withstand or recover quickly from difficult situations.”

Great sales reps keep going, viewing a poor run as a temporary setback and focusing on nurturing the pipeline for the next month. Even when they experience disappointment, they turn rejection into motivation and failure into fuel.

4. Confidence

Even if they’re momentarily embroiled in uncertainty, a great salesperson exudes confidence and control. That’s what customers expect from a trusted advisor. You may not have all the questions, but a calm disposition, well-prepared pitch—combined with a measured dose of enthusiasm—will go a long way to engendering confidence in your audience.

And while you never want to mislead your audience or over promise, using confidence-building words such as“absolutely,” “certainly,” and “definitely” go a long way to allaying fears and instilling trust. Just make sure you deliver everything you’ve promised—and more.

5. Humility

Humble people generally excel because they recognize they don’t have all the answers and others have skills they don’t. But rather than viewing it as a competition, they embrace feedback—positive and negative—and seek out situations where they can learn from others and tune their skills. Sales is all about pushing yourself to do better, and that in itself entails recognizing that what you previously did wasn’t your best.

Good salespeople look for ways to improve because that—in the end—translates to more money and recognition. They’re always asking themselves: How can I get more leads? How can I improve my close rate? How can I increase the LTV of my customers? And when someone gives them a tip, a hungry salesperson tries it out, irrespective of whether it’s from a friend, family member, customer, or colleague.  

The Bottom Line

Despite what some expert say, you don’t have to have natural charisma or talent to be a great sales rep. Yes, it helps, but there are plenty of naturally talented athletes, dancers, musicians, and singers you’ve never heard of because they weren’t prepared to put in the hard work. If you or your sales team want to be more successful, you need to adopt and nurture a growth mindset built on five essential characteristics: curiosity, attentiveness, resilience, confidence, and humility. It might not happen overnight, but success will come your way—if you don’t give up.

About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.