To the average salesperson or entrepreneur, closing major deals with ease is just impossible. It’s all blood, sweat and tears. Their close rate is around 20%.
For the superhuman salesperson or entrepreneur, closing deals with ease is normal. Their close rate is around 80%.
Why?
Well, there’s nothing supernatural going on! It’s all just doing sales right.
This is not hard. It’s actually easier than “conventional” sales, because you’re not straining to follow the myths below – myths that keep most people stuck in the blood-sweat-tears-20%-close-rate paradigm.
Myth #1: Sales is a numbers game
False! Most people are taught that as long as they book enough meetings, this will eventually translate into more sales. In truth, 80 percent of salespeople struggle. They spend all their time focusing on the wrong stuff, thinking that calling enough of the wrong people will eventually result in a sale – or that persuasion and clever tactics are going to convince people to buy. They aren’t.
Myth #2: Sales is all about how well you pitch or persuade your prospect
False! It’s actually quite the opposite, and you definitely don’t have to be a professional presenter in order to sell. In fact, prospects hate being sold to—yet they love to buy. They despise the typical sales approach of being lied to, manipulated or pressured into doing what’s in your best interest.
That’s why most deals fall apart.
Unfortunately, it’s very easy for you to slip into this approach when the pressure is on to make sales. But if there is no trust or relationship, how will you ever sell anything?
Myth #3: Cold calling still works
False! This isn’t your grandfather’s door-to-door encyclopedia sales. The world is a very different place, so you need to think very differently about sales.
How are you going to be heard over all the “noise” out there? With the huge amount of information available on the internet, your prospect today is far too clever – and you’re not prepared. Statistically, your customer is going to your website seven times before even filling out an enquiry form. He’s smart, and if you’re sleazy, you have less chance than someone actually trying to sell ice to an Eskimo…
Myth #4: You have to be a born salesman
False! It’s funny (in a shocking kind of way) that most so-called “skilled salespeople” are actually clueless and think that sales is about persuasion tactics and being slick. They’ve somehow managed to get by, but never quite made it in a serious way.
The reality is that you’re better off with nothing but an interest in problem-solving and no sales experience at all, because that way you have no terrible habits to undo, no preconceived ideas to unlearn.
As Drayton Bird (the man who trained under David Ogilvy) likes to say, “Some people have 20 years of experience… and some people have one year of experience repeated 20 times.” You’re better off without 20 years of repeated garbage in your head.
The fact is, because sales isn’t about pitching or persuading, it is a very learnable skill – as long as you don’t try to figure it out in college or university.
Most of the best salespeople aren’t actually salespeople
(A lot of them are entrepreneurs.) Would you trust the slick-back, greasy hair, white suit and aviator sunglasses car salesman…or the down-to-earth driving enthusiast who isn’t pressuring you to buy and genuinely wants to give you what you need?
Myth #5: It’s all about the close
False! You’ve probably heard of ABC, or Always Be Closing. It’s garbage. When you follow my methodology, the closing actually occurs naturally – it becomes the logical conclusion of a pleasant, easy interaction with your customer. There is absolutely no hard closing at all. None. Zilch. Because hard closing does not work!
So what does all this mean?
Here’s the bottom line:
Selling is actually (first and foremost) all about qualifying while building trust. It has little or nothing to do with closing. The close happens naturally when you qualify correctly.
But to actually do this qualifying process, and especially to do it naturally so it works really well, you need a set of key principles. You need them to be based on science, so you know they’re repeatable, and objectively true. And you need them to be so effortless to implement that anyone can learn them.
You want the 20% of skills that will give you 80% of the results.
If you want to figure out how to do that – start by reading Selling in a Sh1t Economy, which looks at three main parts of selling: the qualifying process, what your prospect wants from you, and what you need from yourself.