Never Ask For The Order!!!
Success in sales is not about pressure, it’s about performance and top performance comes from executing a structured, effective, efficient, engaging and endearing sales process. If you are feeling pressure on a sales call, you are working too hard and working on the wrong end of the problem.
“Pressure is something you feel when you don’t know what the heck you are doing.” Chuck Noll – Former Head Coach of the 4–time NFL World Champion Pittsburgh Steelers
Sales or selling is not a numbers game. More leads do not necessarily yield more sales. Remember, as sales professionals, we don’t get compensated or recognized for running leads, generating proposals, contributing to budgets, goals, quotas, etc. for anything that we do.
In fact, it can be said that as salespeople nothing we do matters unless we get a sale.
An old cliché states: “Nothing happens until someone makes a sale.” On the contrary, nothing happens until a customer buys something, and it's usually from a salesperson.
As salespeople, we only get compensated and contribute to sales volumes and quotas based upon what our customers do. Only then is what we do truly meaningful.
Short of engaging a prospect to purchase something, our role as salespeople is simply a conversation between people about what they expect and happens to involve a discussion about the products and services we represent. Both parties must mutually agree that they are comfortable with one another, want to work together and feel that the solutions or recommendations make sense and the money to do the work is right for both parties.
The sale is the natural outcome of those events coming together.
In order for this mutual respect to be present you must see yourself as an equal to your prospect. No matter their status in society, you are not “less than”, of lower class, subservient, or “at their service”.
You must realize the difference between your Identity (I) and your Role (R) and work hard to keep them separate while enhancing both. To do so, you have to remove your preconceived barriers to success, self-limiting beliefs, broken records and personal head trash. However, both parties must also be able to pull the plug and walk away if any of those items don’t make sense for them, allowing the sales process and buying process between those parties to end amicably. In other words, it’s over – and that’s okay as long as both parties agree in advance that they are okay with either result. That’s only fair to both parties isn’t it?
The prospect or customer is in complete control of whether or not your conversation concludes with them signing a sales agreement, cutting a check, or issuing you a purchase order.
As salespeople, we can only manage that which we can control and we cannot control when or if any of these events will occur. However, a salesperson can manage and control their behavior through a standardized and systematic sales process - A process that is designed to keep the salesperson in control of the selling process, always knowing what happens next and when, and yields success more often than not.
If you give up your personal power and cave in on this fundamental obligation and fiduciary responsibility or try to cast blame for your lack of execution and say that the problem or solution is “out there” – THAT THOUGHT IS THE PROBLEM!
Lastly, don’t ever ask for the order! “What?” you may be saying to yourself. You’ve been told for years that you have to trial close, close and ask for the order a number of times and hear the prospect tell you “No” several times before to be successful in sales, right?
WRONG!!!
This may seem confusing, since traditionally the whole idea of selling is to make a sale and get an order from a prospect. However, making the sale is actually a natural outcome of the conversation between the prospect and salesperson if there is a mutually agreeable process to work towards an amicable solution and an acceptable reason for doing business from the start that you jointly agree to early in the process.
As part of your qualification, your questions and follow-up questions lead you to understand what the prospect truly wants and what it will take to earn their business which evolves into what we call the upfront commitment to mutual expectations.
Thus, your primary concern during the fulfillment or presentation stage of the sales process is to put together a solution that meets your prospect’s conditions for satisfying their concerns in their mind (features, advantages, benefits, etc.), address what they are comfortable investing in a solution and how they plan to pay for it, installation timeframe, follow-up, referrals, etc.
As you share your findings, solutions, options and recommendations you can ask the prospect after addressing each concern: “That’s what you said you wanted, correct?” or “Wouldn’t you agree this satisfies or addresses that concern?”
Then, each concern you address and satisfy is a step in the closing process as this automatically develops a series of mutual commitments between prospect and salesperson fulfilling what you promised to address during your time together when you agreed how to work together early in the process.
The sale is the natural outcome or end result of all the steps you took along the way. It is simply part of the natural progression of people having a conversation that are open to sharing their thoughts, working together and are committed to a process that if the outcome is mutually agreeable they will continue to work together or realize that if it does not make sense or feel right to continue working together mutually or individually, that the parties will part ways with no hard feelings.
Asking for the order is a traditional salesperson’s way of painting a prospect into a corner with the only acceptable option the salesperson wants to hear in the prospect’s mind is “Yes”, which leaves the prospect feeling frustrated and yields a whole series of objections or in some instances a prospect that buys. Asking foir the order is a necessary step in a weaker and manipulative sales process that prey’s on prospects by being relentless in the pursuit of a sale.
This may all sound like psychobabble, but as David Sandler of the Sandler Sales Institute said “Sales is a Broadway play performed by a psychiatrist.” In other words, as a salesperson you have to act and perform a role that is sometimes out of character for who you are normally. This is just short of the definition of crazy. However, it’s not insane and it’s not chaos. You have to be passionate to be great.
In the Disney movie National Treasure, Nicholas Cage’s character asks: “What is just short of crazy? It’s being passionate”, much like the Free and Accepted Masons portrayed in the movie.
Not asking for the order is not crazy or insane, it's what the most passionate and successful salespeople do. Maybe it's time you change your game plan because doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
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