How to Sell Persuasively

"Sales is the engine that drives every business enterprise.  Whether it's the sales force on the front line or the telemarketing department in the back office, every person who comes in contact with a client or potential client plays a critical role in selling your company's products or services."

• Know your customer. Top sales professionals understand that the most effective presentations focus squarely on the target's needs. Use open-ended questions to learn as much as possible about customers and what they want to accomplish with your product or service.
• Be passionate. Not only must you know all about your product or service... but you must also believe in it. After all, if you don't, why would anyone else? Besides, it will enable you to enjoy selling it to others, even have fun talking about the product. Believe that if you convince prospects to become your customers, they will be better off because of what you sold them.
• Build rapport. Use the initial two or three minutes of conversation with prospects to lower tension and make them feel comfortable. Try to identify any negative attitudes about you or reservations about your product. Spend more time listening than talking.
• Be succinct. Identify key benefits of your product or service to focus on in advance. Catch your prospect's attention within the first few seconds by highlighting how your product or service can fit into the customer's plans or goals. Don't ramble. Avoid irrelevant or boring details.
• Demonstrate the product whenever you can. Don't just tell how the product works. Show how it can help your customer. Compare and contrast it directly to competition when possible. That can help close the sale.
• Sell on value, not price. Whether your product is premium priced or the low cost entry, selling on price alone is a poor strategy. Sell on value-what your product can do to help the prospect. If you know your market and you know your product performs well versus competitors, you can keep the dialogue away from price and focused on benefits.
• Anticipate and address specific objections. Uncover, identify and resolve any customer resistance regarding the product or service. Make a point of refuting each one.
• Match your communication style to your customer. A hard, analytical sales approach may work with some prospects. A softer, more emotional appeal may be better with others. Most important, learn to be comfortable interacting with people, especially those you have never met.
• Use past customers to make current sales. Positive feedback from satisfied customers can help influence uncertain prospects. Customer testimony supports your sales claims and adds credibility to you as a sales professional.
• Stay on top of your game. Like any professional, you need to sharpen your skills with training. Even seasoned sales professionals need to continually upgrade their knowledge and capabilities.

PASS

• Leader's clarity of expectations and accountability of team members.  Pamela understood that the women's team needed more structure and boundaries. She wisely began by clearly defining her expectations. She immediately got her team's attention declaring that she would not tolerate their previous behaviors of inconsiderate interruption and backbiting. She set clear boundaries and told them that she would hold them accountable. As a result, we saw less fighting and backstabbing this week from the women.
   
• Behaviorally specific feedback.  Leaders must give behaviorally specific feedback in the workplace if they expect any change in behavior. Pamela said to Stacy, "Stop what you are doing and listen." This statement is clear and direct with no room for interpretation. In contrast, last week's fired project manager used statements like, "Stop wreaking havoc." This statement is open to interpretation and we all interpret things differently. Leaders need to key on the specific behavior that they want to change and communicate that clearly.

  FAIL

• Dictatorial leadership style.  Pamela went overboard with her drill sergeant style of leadership that was interpreted by her team as being "lecturing and condescending." As in parenting, there is a fine line between providing clear boundaries and a dictatorship. Extremes in leadership (either being too permissive or too rigid) should be avoided.  Leaders need to balance their decisiveness and boundaries with openness to being influenced by followers. Pamela cut off her teams' attempt to strategically and collectively determine the best pricing for their product with her authoritarian style. One of the strongest assets of a team is the collective wisdom, experience and talent of the group. If a leader isn't open to influence or hearing a team's input, this asset is lost.  Pamela had to be bleeped several times due to her continued swearing at the team. Leaders who swear in an effort to gain control of a team are modeling unprofessional behavior and are demonstrating a lack of respect for their team.
   

• Praise in public, criticize in private.  Elizabeth criticized (at Pamela's direction) Maria's poor trial performance as an on-air promoter via a loudspeaker and in public with only minutes to spare before going live on air. This didn't give Maria much chance to recover her self-confidence and composure and was no doubt embarrassing for her to overhear. Feedback (particularly negative feedback) should be given carefully and with respect in the workplace. It is best to give challenging feedback directly to the person and privately.
   

• Assessing talent and skill of team members before assigning roles.  Leaders need to effectively assess the existing talents and skills of team members before assigning team roles. Pamela relied too heavily on individual self-reports by simply asking the women on her team what roles they would be comfortable in.  Trump fired Pamela because of his perception that she did not possess a good assessment of people and chastised her for not having done a better job assessing her team's individual skills.  Leaders should use a wide variety of methods to assess the talent and skills of their team. As one example, a 360-feedback assessment commonly used in a corporate environment allows for a more complete view of each individual. This process gathers feedback about an individual from all sources, including supervisors, peers, customers and direct reports.
   

• The price is right.  Product pricing was a major factor in winning this week's competition. Assessing what price the market will bear is a critical factor to business success. There are a multitude of methods to determine pricing. I was disappointed that both teams rushed through this decision-making process and that neither team used a good facilitation method to strategically analyze options. It was surprising that both teams elected a risky "high price/low volume strategy" and did not capitalize on QVC's proven marketing strategy of leveraging low price and high volume. QVC sells more than $4 billion a year with this pricing strategy. It could be argued that the men's team was the true loser this week. They sold a paltry 252 Delonghi panini grills -- 25 percent of their sales forecast -- on QVC. In the corporate world, this performance would be viewed as dismal, particularly in light of the potential of the QVC viewer market.  Likewise, the women were selling a cleaning product at a price near $30. A better strategy might have been to price the product low as a way to encourage new customers to try the product, resulting in higher sales volumes.
   

• It's tough being the substitute quarterback.  Pamela was directed to lead a chaotic team that was on a losing streak. I give Pamela credit for recognizing that a major change in leadership style was needed. Again, there is a fine line between providing direction and being perceived as a dictator. This fine line, in her case, was the difference between success and failure.

MAUREEN MORIARTY
SPECIAL TO THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER