A Life You Love: Sales Tips with Jennifer Fisher

Episode 23 - How to follow up after losing a sale

In this week’s episode, I’m going to discuss the importance of a lost-deal analysis, and how to follow up with a prospect or client when you do lose the sale. There comes a time for every sales rep to hear these words, “After careful consideration, we have chosen to purchase from someone else”. This happens to every salesperson; however, the real question is, will you let the loss of this deal cause you to lose even more sales?

Even if you have the best solution available to the client, their buying decision may lie elsewhere, and we often can do nothing about it at that time.

And that’s the key issue here…’at that time’!

There’s also danger of dwelling on a lost deal and turning inward to a negative mindset – which could start you down a losing streak. The best way to handle the mental anguish of losing a deal, is to own it. Make no excuses and take responsibility. If you start making excuses as to why you lost the deal, you’ll never correct the behavior. The sting of the loss will linger much longer than you want it to. 

To be ready for the next time a sale could fall through, analyze the lost situation objectively. What could you have done differently? What will you do the next time? This can help you move on from the loss and become a better salesperson. Mistakes are one of the greatest teaching aids out there – but only if you are willing to take ownership of them. 

1.       Don’t make excuses for why you lost the sale – take ownership and the responsibility to learn and grow in your sales journey.

2.       Approach your prospect for information in a way that shows them you want to learn how to improve your offerings or approach.

3.       Dig deeper than accepting price as the reason for losing a deal, price is the driver in less than 25% of instances. Dig deeper.

By learning from every lost sale, you give yourself opportunities to build good client relationships in the future, which is definitely good for business!

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Episode #22 - The Elevator Pitch

I’m going to talk today about “the elevator pitch”. We all talk about it, we all know we should have one, most of us probably think we have an elevator pitch, but when the moment comes where you need to execute your elevator pitch, you end up fumbling for the right words and before you can clearly articulate your message, your opportunity is gone. 

Let me first talk about what an elevator pitch is. An elevator pitch is a term used to describe a short description that outlines an idea, product, service or company that explains the concept in a way that any listener can understand in a short period of time. The name comes from the notion that the pitch or speech should be delivered in the short time period of an elevator ride, usually 20-60 seconds. 

An elevator pitch should be interesting, memorable, and succinct. It also needs to explain what makes you, your company, product, or idea unique. Elevator pitches can be used in areas outside of sales as well. You can use it in your company to sell a new idea to your boss, or to tell people about the change initiative that you’re leading. You can even craft one to tell people what you do for a living.

Many people feel they have the elevator pitch nailed and can “wing” it when the time comes. However, it’s critical to get yourself prepared and always be ready – as one of my colleagues say, if you stay ready, you don’t have to take time to get ready. 

Before you begin to write out your elevator pitch, do your research to make sure you have a full understanding of what you’re selling, who your company is and what you have to offer. And this goes with saying - become an expert on the products and services you sell. 

One thing that will set you apart from your competition is your knowledge. Study your products and services like you would study vocabulary for a school quiz. It’s easy to say “We’re a gardening company, and we sell pots and plants” – but so do all the other gardening companies out there. Prior to crafting your elevator pitch, dig into the details of your products and services. Consider what you sell that is unique and what sets your business apart from the competition. Perhaps you sell pots and plants that only a few people (like you) can access from a certain part of the world – your prospects need to know this.

Every good elevator pitch should be built on a standard foundation:

1.       Your name and job title

2.       Your company name

3.       What your company sells

4.       Who you sell your products and services to

5.       Your unique selling proposition

6.       A call to action

here are my top 3 sales tips on developing and delivering your best elevator pitch.

1.       Write it out and practice it – just like you do for your sales presentation.

2.       Be conversational – and have fun with it.

3.       Smile and let your passion show – this is who you are and you love what you do!

This week, set aside some time to craft our elevator pitch (or dust off the one you’ve used before). You just never know who you might run into tomorrow morning!

And always remember, you’ve got this!

Link to Episode #3 - Client Segmentation

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Episode 21: Building Deeper Connections

The single biggest void in professional B2B sales is the skill needed to cultivate meaningful customer relationships. Ironically, making customer connections has never been easier, thanks to social media, email, texting. But because our ability to connect is never more than a few keystrokes away, we have a false sense of our position with customers and prospects. 

Emotional connection is what you need to sell your product or service. If you don’t connect with prospects on an emotional level, they won’t buy. According to research published by Harvard Business Review: Brands put billions into boosting awareness, satisfaction, and loyalty, but often overlook the most powerful driver of customer value: emotional connection. 

HBRs research involved hundreds of brands across dozens of categories showing that emotionally connected consumers with a brand are anywhere from 25% to 100% more valuable in terms of revenue and profitability than those who are merely highly satisfied with it.

Companies spend the majority of their time on measuring satisfaction and improving transaction details. Focusing merely on those is a waste of time. 

So what is an emotional connection? How do you emotionally connect with customers and prospects? Emotionally connecting with customers and prospects means capturing their hearts and minds. How you make customers feel when they buy from you, as well as after they have bought from you?

Building an emotional connection is crucial in sales: selling more, earning more, and making customers stay loyal to your brand. Loyal customers are more likely to recommend your product to their friends and family. And it’s difficult to achieve brand loyalty if you are not building an emotional connection with customers. 

1.       Create curiosity: share articles, blogs, news posts. You’ll show you have your finger on the pulse for current events as well as trends in the industry or field that you’re working in.

2.       Be Curious: show authentic interest in your customers and prospects and their business reality

3.       Be Authentic and Genuine: care more about the individual you’re selling to than about you and winning the sale. 

As a salesperson, you won’t have all the answers and you will make mistakes, but if you stay curious and genuine in all your interactions, you will build trust and deeper and stronger relationships with your clients. 

Thank you for joining me this week - let's connect on LinkedIn!

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Episode #20 World Class Discovery Meeting with Kim Chernecki

In today’s episode, I have a very special guest for you, Kim Chernecki who is here to discuss and share what it means to have a World-Class Discovery meeting – and why it’s crucial to your success.

Kim is Canada’s leading expert on helping high-performing freelance executives, consultants, coaches, and other experts to land lucrative corporate contracts. She has a proven method that will help consultants get meetings with executive decision-makers in minutes vs weeks and double the likelihood of winning that business without being salesy.  Kim is the creator of the Land Corporate Contracts Fast-Track System and is a top-rated sales performance executive, facilitator, coach, advisor, speaker, and strategist.

Kim created a Discussion Document tool that will support the World-Class Discovery meeting and you can access the link here:  https://www.freedomstreetinc.com/discussion-document-template

Please feel free to connect with Kim at

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.freedomstreetinc.com

or on LinkedIn

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Episode #19 - Soft Skills for Sales Success

There are plenty of crucial sales skills you need to have to be a successful and effective salesperson. But beyond knowing how to make cold calls and filling your pipeline, being a great salesperson means you’re in tune with your soft sales skills just as much as your technical sales skills. 

Just about any salesperson can learn the hard skills – product and industry knowledge, research and negotiation tactics, or pipeline management. But if you aren’t someone who can really develop relationships with customers, you won’t get very far. 

Buyers connect with people who master soft skills. Buyers struggle to relate with salespeople who strictly master facts and data. And just so you know, more sales are won due to proficiency in soft skills than are won due to perfection in hard skills. 

Soft skills are hard to define relational skills, but if you master them, they will give you a huge competitive advantage today.

One of the top soft skills is Empathy: Which is about understanding and relating to your customer’s challenges. It’s always important to put yourself in someone else’s shoes – especially as a salesperson. When you’re able to understand what people might be thinking or how they might be feeling, you’re able to guide the conversation productively. 

Another top area is Emotional Intelligence: Emotional intelligence allows you to understand how others feel and manage your emotions and emotions toward you.

When you’re an emotionally intelligent person, people naturally relate to you and want to follow your guidance. 

Four abilities encompass emotional intelligence:

1.       Perceiving emotions 

2.       Using emotions 

3.       Understanding emotions 

4.       Managing emotions 

As you can see, being emotionally intelligent is an incredibly valuable soft skill to have both in your career and your personal life.

If you’re able to pick up on a prospect’s mood, you’ll be able to gauge how to proceed with conversations. 

·       Are they in a great mood? Maybe it’s time to close the deal. 

·       Are they in a not-so-great mood? Sincerely ask them if everything is ok and listen to what they have to say. This brings me to the next point

Salespeople simply can't succeed without being able to build relationships, build rapport, communicate, and collaborate effectively. Soft skills are foundational to sales success, which leads me to my top 3 sales tips on soft skills in sales.

1.       Develop your empathy skills to help relate to your clients and prospects

2.       Fine-tune your emotional intelligence to help understand how other people are feeling

3.       Curiosity: being curious helps you to learn about and understand other people, their challenges, and triumphs 

And remember, sales is a people business. Your success is tied to soft skills and you’re able to truly connect with and understand other people.

And always remember, you’ve got this!

Thank you so much for listening to, A Life You Love: Sales Tips with Jennifer Fisher – I look forward to chatting again next week.

Now go LIVE, the sales life you love!

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Episode #18 Handling Objections

No matter what industry or field you are in, every sales professional need to be able to handle objections and successfully move your sales opportunity forward to a win. 

Objection handling is when a prospect presents a concern about your product or service you are selling and the ability for you to respond in a way that alleviates those concerns and allows the opportunity to move forward. Objections are generally around the price, product fit, and even competitors.

Objection handling means responding to the buyer in a way that changes their mind or alleviate their concerns. Some sales reps argue with their prospects or try to pressure them into backing down, but that’s not handling an objection. And prospects typically end up more convinced than ever of their position; and worse yet, salespeople lose the trust and rapport they've built up. Instead of telling your prospect they're wrong, help them come to a different conclusion on their own accord. 

There are a few frameworks on objection handling and the one I use with my team and probably the most known and time-tested framework is the LAER (layer) Framework: L A E R
Listen

Acknowledge

Explore, and

Respond

As you contemplate your own biggest objections, I’d like to close out this week’s podcast with my 3 sales tips on handling objections:

1.       Always anticipate sales objections, the more you’re prepared, the more natural and confident you will appear to your prospect.

2.       Listen to and acknowledge you heard and understand your prospect’s objective.

3.       Dive deeper with your prospects to uncover additional objections.

As long as you’re familiar with common objections and equipped to answer them, you’ll be able to distinguish between prospects who have the potential to be good customers and prospects with whom you need to part ways. 

And always remember, you’ve got this!

Please connect on LinkedIn and let me know your thoughts on topic ideas for the future

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Episode 17 - Growth Mindset

The last few weeks on my podcast, I’ve been focusing more on mindsets rather than the tactical, for the moment anyway. I discussed agility and the importance of having an agile mindset to move and react quickly and easily in response to change. I talked about the dreaded sales slump – it happens to all of us and the role agility plays in quickly reacting and shifting to get out of the sales slump by staying positive, reflecting in a gratitude journal, and the ability to keep moving forward. This leads us right into last week’s episode on motivation. Many of these traits and skillsets align nicely with getting motivated and staying motivated throughout the sales process. This week, I focus on having a growth mindset and why a growth mindset is so important.

A growth mindset is a theory coined by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck. Carol describes a so-called “growth mindset” where successful people are those that have talents and abilities that can be enhanced by effort, learning, and persistence throughout their lives.

Growth mindset sales professionals:

·       Seek to learn and work hard to improve their performance and skillsets

·       They aren’t afraid to fail, in fact, views failure as a learning experience

·       They embrace challenges because it forces them to focus, work harder, and persevere

·       They see obstacles only as means to change strategy or to find a new way

·       They view effort and persistence as the defining characteristics for success

·       They find inspiration by helping others succeed

·       They learn from criticism and don’t take it personally

·       Embodies a “free will” view of themselves which means they have the willingness to try and try again, despite setbacks and failures, determines their success.

As you contemplate a few pivots in your own sales journey to develop a growth mindset, I’d like to close out this week’s podcast with my 3 sales tips on developing a growth mindset:

1.       Focus on your effort – you’ve got to put the effort in and follow the playbook.

2.       Exhibit a positive attitude and resilience: successful salespeople are enthusiastic to learn new things and they always go the extra mile to meet and exceed their sales quota.

3.       Embrace an entrepreneurial attitude: growth-minded sales professionals take care of their sales territory as if that territory was their own company. They are constantly looking for ways to add value to their clients, their team, and the company.

Adopting a growth mindset is not an easy task, it takes discipline and dedication but in the long run, it’s well worth it. The successful salesperson needs to embrace risk, understand their inadequacies, and learn from those around them if they’re to avoid the pitfalls that will inevitably come their way on the sales journey.

You’ve got this!

Let me know your thoughts on this podcast, let's connect on LinkedIn or email me at [email protected]

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Episode #16 - Motivation

What is motivation?

Motivation is the drive to achieve your goals or needs. It is influenced by:

• how much you want the goal
• what you will gain from achieving the goal
• your personal expectations

Motivation is a process we develop within ourselves that enables us to meet our goals. It is our desire to make sales and satisfy customers. Our motivation levels are often affected by outside influences such as our bosses, friends, our spouse, the economy, customer rejection, and relentless competition. But regardless of outside influences, there is ample research that tells us that salespeople can and should manage their own levels of motivation.

Why is motivation important?
It’s important because:

• it provides you with goals to work towards
• it helps you solve problems
• it helps you change old habits
• and it helps you cope with challenges and opportunities

Here are my top 3 sales tips to stay motivated:

1.       Surround yourself with positive people. Stay away from the negative people and negative self-talk.

2.       Align yourself with the best salespeople. Greatness produces more greatness. Winning is contagious!

3.       Take mental health breaks, exercise, and stay healthy.

Sales is one of the toughest jobs. You face rejection every day and yet you push forward. You find motivation within yourself to succeed.

You’ve got this!

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Episode #15 - Sales Slump

So you’re in a slump. It happens to all of us and it’ll happen numerous times throughout your career. One minute we’re hitting home runs out of the park, and the next minute, we’re swinging and missing - every time. A sales slump is especially unfortunate because making sales is how you make your living. If you’re not making any sales, you’re not making any money. Frustration, disappointment, nervousness, and confusion are all symptoms of a sales slump. When you’re “in the slump” you may feel like the cosmos have aligned just to deny you deal after deal. However, a slump isn’t the result of supernatural forces. You can shake it off and get back to your A-game!

Here are my 3 sales tips to get out of a slump:

1.       Stay positive – by maintaining a positive mindset you’ll be able to quickly move out of the slump and back to your A-game.

2.       Start a gratitude journal and identify your victory list. This will help you move quickly out of the downward spiral and back up.

3.       Keep moving forward, keep up with your daily activities: phone calls, emails, virtual coffees – this will get you back on track.

Sales is a mental sport, and slumps happen to everyone. Take heart, practice these tips and you’ll be able to break out of the slump faster and get back to being the sales rock star that you are! Now go pick up the phone and get selling!

Would love to hear your thoughts - Connect with me on LinkedIn or email me: [email protected]

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Episode 14 - Sales Agility

In today’s episode, I’m going to discuss what it means to be agile in business, your sales role, and why agility is so important to succeed. In episode number 2 of my podcast, I focused on handling the unexpected, because as we saw through covid, anything can and will happen. As I discussed navigating change, having flexibility and the ability to improvise are important traits in business and as a sales professional; however, in this episode, I’m going to dive into agility.

Everyone likes to think of themselves as being agile, and we all enjoy throwing the term around every now and then too. But in today’s new world of work, what does agility actually mean, and what does it mean in sales? And why has it become such a powerful buzzword?

We live in a business world that’s constantly being rocked with disruption, be it political, economic, digital, or organizational to name a few. And in order to cope with this continuous disruption, organizations and their people need to not only be able to adapt to change but take ownership for driving that change in order to succeed. Agility is the ability to move quickly and easily in response to change.

In order to be agile in selling, a few of the skills you need to develop:

Speed:
 Sale people need to be able to quickly process information, think on their feet, and pivot quickly – all while being strategic and helping your client reach their goals.

Active listening skills and the ability to communicate effectively.
 If you can’t communicate effectively with your clients to understand their needs and pain points, then you will not be able to respond efficiently to identify solutions to help your clients solve their problems. Agile sellers are active listeners. They are able to digest messages from clients to find out their exact needs and wants. Agile sellers choose their language carefully and are flexible with verbal interactions, a crucial attribute when negotiating. Agile sellers are self-aware, humble, and curious. 

Questioning skills
 Salespeople cannot be agile in meeting their client’s precise needs, priorities, concerns, and desired outcomes without an in-depth and complete understanding of the customer’s goals and challenges. Gaining that understanding is critical. When it comes to questioning, a salesperson should be asking open-ended questions, so they can better understand the problems their prospects and clients are facing and the consequences of not solving those problems. 

Confidence
 One of the most powerful tools in the salesperson’s toolkit is their confidence. There is little that impresses potential clients more than the calm, assured demeanor of a genuinely confident salesperson.

A confident seller develops trust, provides reassurance, and enhances their reputation. Confidence enables the salesperson to explore the client’s needs and offer ideas in the most persuasive manner possible. Confidence cannot be learned, it has to be gained.

In our competitive business landscape, sales teams cannot afford to fall behind. If speed is the new currency in sales then sales professionals must learn to adapt to this new environment. Agility requires being responsive and constantly restructuring sales strategies in order to stay up to date with the persistent changes in your clients’ business. Elite sales professionals constantly hone their sales skills and integrate them into helping your clients achieve success. Sales agility requires flexibility from sales professionals in all matters of selling. Sales professionals who lack fundamental sales skills, product knowledge, a curious mindset, critical thinking skills, and technological competence are limited by their inability to engage clients in meaningful ways.

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