Improving sales skills

It takes 3 seconds for your customer to form their first impression of you. In the 3 seconds after that, they confirm or change that impression.

This first impression influences their decision about how much time to give you. It's based on your appearance, body language and mannerisms, tone of voice and facial expressions, words, and demeanour.

Tips for creating a good first impression

• In a retail 'browsing' environment allow 1 minute to pass before you greet your customer.
• In a fast-paced, counter service environment greet your customer immediately.
• Make eye contact.
• Give a nice, genuine, warm smile.
• Open with a sincere, friendly greeting.
• Pay attention to the customer—not to the product, your stock or a colleague.
• Greet the customer and ask a useful opening question. For example, 'Good afternoon. Can I help you find something you are looking for?'
• Never ignore the customer.
• Show the customer that they have your undivided attention.
• Don't portray to the customer your need to reach sales targets (i.e. sell to their needs, not your targets.)

Your appearance shows your customer that you respect them, your business and your products and services. Here are some useful personal presentation tips.

• Aim for a straight, confident and relaxed posture.
• Don't distract your customer with personal fidgeting and adjustments or by handling stock while you're talking to them.
• Dress to impress—take care with your choice of clothing, and tailor your wardrobe and appearance to appeal to your customer base.
• Dress for the situation. Are you serving in a café, a retail shop, or presenting at a formal business meeting?
• Make sure your hair and nails are well-groomed.
• Align your presentation to the style of business you represent and the customer demographics you aim to sell products and services to.

Your attitude affects the way you approach people and events in business. Choosing to approach potential customers positively, confidently, enthusiastically and with a helpful attitude—even when you're tired, stressed or frustrated—will help improve your sales performance and grow your sales.

Every business exists to meet customers' wants, needs and expectations. If you believe your job is to understand and solve the customer's problems, then you will show a natural, helpful confidence.

Customers should never be an interruption or distraction from getting your tasks completed. Customers are the reason any business survives.

Closed questions require a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer.

For example: 'Are you looking to buy a television today?'

Closed questions are used to:

• find out facts
• limit or guide discussion
• gather specific information from the customer that you can use to generate an open question.

Open questions ask a customer to explain or elaborate which helps to build rapport with the customer and encourages them to open up about the product or service they are looking to buy.

For example: 'What type of product are you looking for?'

Open questions are used to:

• encourage your customer to provide more detail on the specific product or service so you can determine your customer's wants and needs
• build relationships with customers so they are comfortable dealing with you.

Probing questions are about a specific topic to uncover more information.

For example: 'What type of television do you think would fit best in your living room?'

Probing questions are used to:

• get more specific information to fully understand your customer's needs
• uncover and clarify your customer's perceptions and opinions.

Confirming questions are designed to check that your customer understands what you've said.

For example: 'Which of these features would benefit you most?'

Confirming questions are used to check that you've successfully communicated information to your customer and that they understand it.

Summary confirmation questions are designed to check that you understand what your customer has told you and that you are successfully aligning your products or services to their wants, needs and expectations.

For example: 'Are you saying you'd prefer to order the next model up in our range?'

Summary confirmation questions are used to:

• check that you understand your customer's needs
• check that the benefits you've outlined meet their needs.

Listening to your customer to discover their needs helps you suggest appropriate products or services to meet those needs.

Active listening is the process of confirming what you think your customer has said, and meant, by observing their verbal and non-verbal cues.

To be a good active listener:

• focus your full attention on your customer
• briefly summarise your understanding of what your customer has said
• take notes (if necessary)
• use appropriate non-verbal cues such as nodding your head, inclining your body forward and maintaining eye contact
• note your customer's non-verbal cues—are they eager, reluctant, impatient?
• use appropriate, well-timed probing questions and summary confirmation questions.

Interpreting your customer's non-verbal signals and behaviours allows you to read their attitude and better understand their needs. Projecting the right non-verbal cues yourself can help your customer feel at ease.

Here are some positive and negative examples of non-verbal cues:

Facial expressions

• bad – wrinkling the nose, furrowing the brow or rolling the eyes
• good – smiling, raised eyebrows, relaxed mouth

Eye contact

• bad – avoiding your customer or looking outside your sales space
• good – looking back to your customer's face and at your products

Smile

• bad – closed, firm or expressionless mouth
• good – smiling or relaxed mouth

Hands

• bad – hands folded to the chest or near the face
• good – hands moving freely, relaxed, touching the product

Gestures

• bad – closed arms, dismissive hand gestures
• good – open arms, nodding the head

Posture

• bad – slouching, shoulders turned away
• good – standing upright, inclining the body forward

Position

• bad – moving too close, facing away
• good – observing personal space accommodating cultural differences.

• Research your customers.
• Identify your strategy for finding new customers in your sales and marketing plans.
• Gather information about your customers' needs, such as:
  • what motivates them to buy
  • how they prefer to shop.

• Review information you have gathered about your customers and their needs—make sure it is up to date.
• Consider what products, services or experiences you have that meet their needs.
• Be clear about your purpose. Are you making contact to convey information, arrange a time to meet or hand over your business card?

• Approach your prospective customer in a way that reassures them and builds their trust in you by using friendly and courteous body language, facial expressions, and manners.
• Listen to their needs.
• Use an anecdote or relevant fact to establish their interest. For example, describe a recent customer who received the kind of benefits they are looking for.
• Where suitable, use humour. Be open and genuine.
• Don't take up more time than you need. Get to the point quickly.
• Make an observation about something your customers have, or say, that relates to your products.
• Read more about how to build customer relationships when selling below.

• Confirm an individual customer's needs by listening to their requirements.
• Ask questions that are relevant to your customer's needs and your products. Questions can be
  • open-ended: 'How does it feel to drive this car?'
  • direct: 'Is your current vehicle fun to drive?'
  • for clarification: 'So, you're really looking for a reliable vehicle that is fun to drive that has great pickup from traffic lights. Is that right?'

• Consider your product range and choose the product, service or experience that best meets the needs of the customer.
• If you have several options to choose from, pick one and focus on it.
• Read more about knowing your products and services.

• Present your product's features but focus on its benefits and link these to your customer's requirements.
• Be enthusiastic and show your conviction.
• Explain what makes your product different from the others.
• Anticipate likely questions or reactions and be prepared to respond to them.
• Use examples of your product's success.
• Use up-selling or cross-selling techniques to introduce your customer to related products.
• If using a presentation, ensure it is up to date and tailored to your customer.
• Be open in your presentation.

• Be prepared for what customers will say and be ready to respond.
  For example:
  • Objection: 'Sorry, I don't have the time today.'
  • Response: 'No problem. Could I book you a short 10-minute test run another afternoon this week? Our complimentary offer is worth your time.'

• Recognise your customer's comments by acknowledging their views and then responding with solutions.
  For example: 'It seems like you don’t want to waste your time on a product that you're not sure will meet your needs. Would you invest a few minutes in a product that does?’
• Ask questions about their views to find ways to address them.
• Restate the customer's objection. By saying it aloud, you can reduce its impact.

• Look for signals that indicate the client is ready to make a purchase (e.g. they ask specific questions about availability or warranties).
• Stop talking—give your customer a chance to fill the silence and say yes.
• Offer a choice that assumes their purchase (e.g. 'Would you prefer Blu Tiffany or Rosso Portofino?').
• Address the customer's minor questions or decisions about the product to eliminate all of their obstacles.

• Offer after-sales service and deliver on whatever you've committed to during the sales process.
• If you were unable to close the sale, follow up with additional opportunities to maintain the relationship.
• Update your sales matrix and/or customer relationship management tool.
• Check in with your customer after the sale to see if they are happy with the product.
• Look for the next selling opportunity by drawing the customer's attention to related products or upcoming specials.
• Build on your rapport to establish a relationship over the longer term.

• Gather information about the sales performance and product popularity for your business.
• Do some customer research. If appropriate, consider using customer feedback forms to evaluate customer satisfaction.
• Look for issues in product performance and take-up to identify where your sales tactics are most and least effective.
• Consider what you have learned and make relevant changes to your sales plan.

Customers are more likely to trust salespeople who show confidence in themselves and confidence in the products or services they are selling.

You can build this credibility and confidence by increasing your knowledge of your products or services.

Use conventional and creative sources of information to learn about your products or services, including:

• your own experiences using the products
• product literature such as brochures and catalogues
• online forums
• feedback from customers
• trade and industry publications
• internal sales records
• your more experienced team members
• visits to manufacturers and suppliers
• sales training programs
• competitor information.

If your product or service has some limitations in certain situations, acknowledge them with your customers.

Let them know early on if you don’t think your product or service is right for them and they will be more inclined to trust you when they need something in the future.

As you engage customers, use your knowledge to lead your customer through the steps to a sale, and make their experience enjoyable so they won’t hesitate to revisit.

Successful salespeople know their products' features well and skilfully turn features into benefits for their customers.

Some of the different strategies for negotiation include:

• problem solving—both parties committing to examining and discussing issues closely when entering into long-term agreements that warrant careful scrutiny
• contending—persuading your negotiating party to concede to your outcome if you're bargaining in one-off negotiations or over major 'wins'
• yielding—conceding a point that is not vital to you but is important to the other party; valuable in ongoing negotiations
• compromising—both parties forgoing their ideal outcomes, settling for an outcome that is moderately satisfactory to each participant
• inaction—buying time to think about the proposal, gather more information or decide your next tactics.

Your chosen strategy will depend on who you are negotiating with, the potential value of the sale, and the type of relationship you have with them.

For example, what level of cooperation and common interest exists between you, and how will each party behave during the negotiation? It will also depend on what you are negotiating, and the time frame and setting you are negotiating in.

As well as choosing a strategy, you may wish to consider your approach to the issue being negotiated.

There are 3 key approaches to negotiations: hard, soft and principled negotiation.

Many experts consider the third option—principled negotiation—to be best practice:

1. The hard approach involves contending by using extremely competitive bargaining.
2. The soft approach involves yielding, where one party tries hard to meet the interests of the other party and forgoes aspects of their own short-term interests in return for long-term benefits.
3. The principled negotiation approach focuses on achieving a lasting, win-win outcome by:
   • separating the people from the problem
   • focusing on interests and not positions
   • generating a variety of options before settling on an agreement
   • basing the agreement on objective criteria.

No amount of preparation is too much in approaching complex or high-stakes or high dollar value negotiations. Plan both your approach to the subject under negotiation, and your tone and communication style.

In approaching the subject of your negotiations:

• set your objectives clearly in your own mind (including your minimum acceptable outcome, your anticipated outcome and your ideal outcome)
• determine what you'll do if the negotiation, or a particular outcome, fails
• determine your needs, the needs of the other party and the reasons behind them
• list, rank and value your issues and then consider concessions you might make
• analyse the other party including their objectives and the information they need
• conduct research and consult with colleagues and partners
• rehearse the negotiation
• write an agenda—discussion topics, participants, location and schedule.

In deciding your communication style, familiarise yourself with successful negotiating strategies. Arm yourself with a calm, confident tone and a set of considered responses and strategies to the tactics you anticipate.

• Introduce yourself and run through the agenda. Demonstrate calm confidence.
• Seek the first offer from your counterpart. You should rarely accept the first offer. It signals the start of the negotiation.
• Ask how they arrived at this offer and seek to understand what is important to them and any emotion behind why it might be important.
• Check your understanding of the other party’s proposal.
• Remember your objectives.
• Provide a counter-offer and a reason why the offer meets their objectives and any emotion you might have uncovered.
• Listen to the feedback and explore the concepts and ideas your counterpart puts forward.
• Keep the conversation open, friendly and paraphrase what your counterpart is saying to demonstrate that you have listened to, and understood, what they have said.
• Consider making further proposals and listen to offered suggestions.
• Look for non-monetary elements that may tip the balance in your favour.
• To close the deal, consider an appropriate compromise, then make and seek concessions.
• Be prepared to walk away in a friendly way—recognise that this may not be the final negotiation and that it may resolve as both parties consider what was discussed in their own time.

During a negotiation, you may choose to use a passive, or assertive communication style or a combination of both.

Passive communicators are inclined to use ambiguous language, adopt submissive body language, and agree to demands. Using only this approach can often put customers off from dealing with them or result in a low-margin or unprofitable sale.

Assertive communicators are not confrontational. They speak and interact in ways that respect the rights and opinions of the other party, while also putting forward a position that acknowledges their own needs.

In any negotiation, both parties hold the key to the outcome.

Confident and considerate communicators are more likely to keep discussions going to facilitate mutually beneficial outcomes.

A clear, steady tone of voice, and a focus on the needs of both parties, provides a way to proceed that reduces the potential for intense conversation.

Learn more about communicating effectively for business.

Take a moment to revisit your objectives for the negotiation.

Once you feel you are approaching an outcome that is acceptable to you:

• look for closing signals; for example
  • fading counter-arguments from the customer
  • tired body language from the other party
  • negotiating positions converging

• articulate agreements and concessions already made
• make 'closing' statements yourself, and look for closing statement signs from your customer
  For example:
  • 'That suggestion might work.'
  • 'Right. Where do I sign?'

• get agreements in writing as soon as you can
• follow up promptly on any commitments you have made.

Even with the best preparation, you may not always be able to negotiate a successful outcome.

Planning alternative solutions can help you to:

• avoid unnecessary stress
• reduce your own internal pressures, particularly during the negotiation
• minimise your chances of accepting an offer that is not in your best business interests
• set realistic goals and expectations.

Preparing an alternative plan

When it comes to negotiating, there's always more than one positive solution for your business.

Take pressure off yourself by identifying several other options or alternatives to the outcome you are seeking.

1. Brainstorm all available alternatives to the process you are negotiating.
2. Choose the most promising ideas and expand them into practicable alternatives.
3. Keep the best alternative in reserve as a fallback.

Take a firm and assertive stance when proposing ideas or drawing definite lines in your negotiation. Being willing to walk away is a powerful tool.

Clearly determine the worst possible outcome you are prepared to accept in the negotiation.