The Insurance Record - February 23, 2012

SELLI NG STR ATEGIES by Maura Schreier-Fleming

Maura Schreier-Fleming is a professional salesperson, sales trainer, and motivational speaker. An engineer by training, she was Mobil Oil’s first female lubrication engineer in the U.S. With over 20 years of sales experience, she teaches the art and science of selling with a unique, hands-on perspective and a great deal of real-life insight. She can be reached at Maura@BestatSelling.com or 972.380.0200.

Lame-O Selling

uct sells itself is lame-o. You’ve got even more work to do if you also think that everyone is a prospect for you.

When is the last time you heard a child say, “When I grow up I want to be a salesman?” I’ll bet never. I know why. It’s because too many salespeople are doing what I call lame-o selling. Here’s what they’re doing.

lationship. They work together and sell more.

Leave Voicemails That Will Never Get Returned Think back to your last voicemail. Did you call to thank your prospect or customer for their business? Lame-o. Did you call to touch base? Even more. You are calling busy people who are running businesses. You will never get a call back unless your reason to call is to help them with their business. That means you have to know why you’re calling before you make the call. Think about how you helped other customers reduce a cost, avoid a cost or add to their revenue and that’s why you’re calling this customer. Now banish touch base from your vocabulary.

Missing The Real Picture Don’t you think you should know the assumptions that drive your business if you were selling a business plan? I think you should. Someone talking about a transportation business who never references the impact that fuel price changes can have on his business is missing a key part of business reality. Can you talk about your business growth with realistic growth projections? I think you should. People who talk about their business without addressing key assumptions that can change their business or make unrealistic assumptions come across as ignorant or Pollyanna. Both are doing lame-o selling.

You Have A Bad Attitude I actually heard a salesman say to a customer, “It’s not my job.” What was he responding to? The customer asked the salesman for some information so he could buy a product. Unbelievable. Your job in sales is to serve your customer. It goes beyond lame-o to think that your job isn’t to serve.

Let’s hope that the only lame-o selling you’ve experienced is the kind that you’ve heard about. When your competition is lame-o it means you have lots of great prospects for your successful selling.

Best wishes for your continued sales success.

Build A Poor Relationship With Suppliers There are some salespeople who think relationships with suppliers are irrelevant. They’re the customer so why bother? These salespeople don’t return phone calls, are antagonistic when they work with suppliers and have a sense of entitlement. Next time these salespeople have a problem, where do you think they’re going to get help? Certainly not the supplier who views them as unhelpful because of the difficult working relationship they have. Have you ever asked for pricing consideration from a supplier? Of course you have. Now think about the kind of pricing you’ll get from a supplier who doesn’t like to work with you. The opposite of lame-o selling are the sales teams that include vendors in their sales meetings. Now everyone knows each other and sees both sides of the re-

Have A Bad Strategy What do you say when someone asks you how you sell your product? Have you ever heard that it sells itself? Sales managers beware! Nothing sells itself. Even if a customer needs a particular product, there are always alternatives to that product with other suppliers and salespeople. You want that customer to buy from you. What’s your plan to make that particular customer buy from you? That’s a strategy that you create. Thinking that your prod-

Did You Know?

Here’s a tip this week for your sales success. For every interruption, it takes the mind 10 to 20 times the length of the interruption to get back to the task. So, avoid multitasking while you’re working. It’s one thing at a time, not multiple activities. Source: Jonathan Spira, Chief Analyst at Basex.