How To Sell When Nobody's Buying

(And How to Sell Even More When They Are)

Dave Lakhani

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780470523599
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sales
• Index: Business

The most effective sales strategies for tough economic times

Today's selling environment is tough, and only getting tougher. The old tactics are no longer working, and the current economy is only making selling more difficult. You need sales tactics and strategies that work now and fast... even when no one wants to buy-and tactics and strategies that will work even better when they do want to buy.

How to Sell When Nobody's Buying is a practical, effective guide to selling even in the toughest of times. This book is packed with new information about creating sales opportunities. Most sales strategies taught today are based on outdated information from ten, twenty, even thirty years ago and they simply don't work today. You'll find the tools and information you need to gain confidence, create powerful alliances, profitable social networks, and drive your profits to unprecedented highs. Whether you sell business-to-business or direct to the consumer, whether you sell real estate or retail, this is the sales guide for you.

• Features effective, simple strategies for selling in tough economic times
• Offers free or low-cost prospecting tools that bring in customers by the herd
• Includes case studies from top salespeople that reveal new ways to bring in customers
• From sales guru Dave Lakhani, author of Persuasion, Subliminal Persuasion, and The Power of an Hour

These days, you need all the help you can get to sell effectively. If you want to increase your sales and drive your business forward-no matter what the economy or your industry does-learn How to Sell When Nobody's Buying.

1

GET REAL AND GET FOCUSED

Economies and industries change; that’s not your fault. But responding to the change profitably is your responsibility.

—Dave Lakhani

You likely picked up this book because you are experiencing a sales slump of some sort. It could be caused by the economy or a change in your industry, or maybe a run of bad days. Whatever it is, I want you to know right now that you can change your results, and it won’t take a long time.

This chapter is about reality, how you think, and how you work. You’ll be tempted to skip this chapter and go right to the sections that have tactics that you can use. I’ll caution you not to do that, because if you do you’ll be missing one of the biggest lessons in how to overcome any economy and any slump. And the hidden lesson here is that being thorough, being complete, and taking all the steps are what lead to success in learning and in sales.

One thing every professional salesperson can be sure of is that throughout their careers, many things will change; there will be exceptionally good times, very average times, and some really tough times. This is the nature of sales. Economies change, industries change, buyers change, and the most successful salespeople are able to react quickly, learn what they need to succeed, and take action. When it comes to selling in challenging times, implementation is everything, and money follows action. If you choose to sit around and think the sky is falling, you’ll miss the many opportunities that show up that didn’t exist when just anyone could show up and get a sale. Challenging times hone you to a fine edge that makes you effective and profitable when others struggle, and that allows you to prosper even more in the good times.

WHEN NOBODY’S BUYING, PEOPLE BECOME PREDICTABLE

When economies or industries change, sales managers begin chanting their predictable mantra: “You just need to cold call more, push people harder, cut back on your expenses; no more client dinners or paying for golf.” If simply cold calling new prospects and cutting back on client entertainment were the answer, there would never be a lack of sales. But with changing economies, with changing access to information, with changing and consolidating industries, sales strategies have to change, too . . . yet they’ve remained fundamentally the same for years.

When economies and industries change, CEOs, vice presidents, and buyers of all kinds begin chanting their own mantra: “We have to make across-the-board cuts, make do with the technology we have, cut back on all spending, negotiate everything, and put a hold on all contracts until we see what is really going to happen.”

And with that, salespeople pick up the phone and start cold calling, trying desperately to reach buyers directly who they’ve never spoken to before—and buyers develop more sophisticated strategies for avoiding their calls. Companies struggle to meet revenue projections, and salespeople wonder if they should look for greener pastures. Business continues to stagnate and decline.

But it doesn’t have to.

You are about to learn what works today; you are going to learn how to think differently and to act differently so that you can always sell when nobody’s buying and sell even more when they are.

There are two trains of thought about selling in tough times. The first is that times are not tough, it is really all in your head and you just need to work harder and with a better attitude to sell more. It is tough to accept that argument when the businesses you sell to no longer exist or when a major change in your industry or the economy causes people to behave differently. The second line of thought is that the sky is falling; everything is bad no matter where you look. Don’t waste a lot of time trying to sell anything, no one is buying anyway. It is time to commiserate with others who feel the same way; they understand. Listen to the media for very long in any economic change and you’ll soon be convinced that the apocalypse is on your heels and the only thing to do is bury your head in the sand and wait for the inevitable . . . whatever it is.

Reality, however, is something different. Difficult, challenging times offer unique opportunities for smart salespeople to make more sales than they ever have before and to position themselves for extreme success when the cycles change. Selling when nobody is buying requires a different approach, not the one that your sales manager learned in 1974 or even the sales techniques you learned a year or two ago—it requires that you learn some new but very simple skills that will allow you to dominate the current marketplace, no matter what the condition. It also requires that you do even more of what you are doing well. The exciting part is that as the marketplace changes, you’ll constantly be evolving on the front edge of the change, not in the back, where all the competition is. Before I get further into that idea, let’s take a look at business cycles.

Dr. Clement Jugular (1819-1905) was one of the first to develop the idea of a business cycle. His work led to many more advanced business and economic cycle discoveries and definitions. For salespeople, his initial business cycle description is probably the most useful in terms of thinking about selling. The four cycles according to Jugular are:

1. Expansion

2. Prosperity

3. Contraction

4. Recession

In the current economy (2009) we’ve seen wholesale devastation of the housing market, bailout of banks, economic stimulus packages that really did nothing, and businesses and jobs disappearing at record rates. I think most people would agree that we are in Stage 4, recession.

And that is the best time to sell.

In recessionary times, several things happen. Many people steer away from sales jobs, leaving the market ripe for the picking. Even more salespeople believe that no one is buying because the techniques they’ve always used aren’t working, so they stick their heads in the sand and do nothing. Coincidently, I believe it is precisely what salespeople do that kicks off Stage 1, expansion.

Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial salespeople get hungry; they go out, they find and sell solutions, they create opportunities in the vacuums left by others’ exits. They take massive, focused action. The result is nothing less than expansion in industries where these pockets of revolutionary thinking exist, where people like you create the future. They do whatever it takes to be successful. They ask their clients what they can do to help, and then they get busy doing it. The law of reciprocation says that people are much more likely to give you something when you’ve given them something first.

There is a gap between recession and expansion that is ripe for focused salespeople to really make their mark, and here’s why: After the expansion phase has kicked off and is about halfway through its cycle, everyone jumps on the bandwagon and tries to grab what would appear to be low-hanging fruit. Everyone loves to sell in the good times. They see opportunity everywhere because the economy is flourishing. But in the space covering recession and expansion is real opportunity for those salespeople who think better, work smarter, and try harder. Those salespeople create expansion and they reap the rewards. This book is all about how to leverage that time as well as how to position yourself to sell even more in the expansion and prosperity periods.

The great news about economic cycles is that the good times last a lot longer than the bad times. Since the great depression of the 1930s we’ve had a good number of setbacks in the economy, and we’ve consistently recovered faster from each successive one. Where recovery took almost a decade after the Great Depression, we’ve recovered from most recent economic slumps in a few years or less. The same is true of your industry, unless you are in an industry that is truly going away; the need for your product or service will return to the masses more quickly.

REALITY IS WHAT YOU FACE EVERY DAY

I’ve noticed that no matter how good times are, there are a lot of salespeople who can’t sell, and when times are hard there are a lot of salespeople who are getting rich. And as you’ve probably heard before, whether you think you can or think you can’t, you are right. And boy, would it be nice if it were that easy.

For exceptional salespeople, reality is not simply looking at what is happening in the economy or in the market. Reality involves, in fact, taking in everything that is happening in your industry, in your market, and in your company and developing a powerful plan for leveraging that material in your favor to help your prospects while getting what you need as well. The question that will arise is: “How do I do that?” And the answer is quite simple.

YOU DO WHATEVER IT TAKES

As I travel around the world training salespeople, I get the same question over and over: “What can I do to sell more now?” And the answer I’ll give you is never the answer they want to hear. The answer is, you do whatever it takes to meet your quota and to get the sale. Of course, that doesn’t give you permission to be unethical or untruthful, but it does give you permission to start thinking differently. I also tell salespeople that they need to take the time to learn what is working now.

Doing whatever it takes means just that—it means you dig deeper, you look harder, and you build relationships deeper and deeper in the organization. And your sales manager got it right: You make the extra calls, you call those people who are on your inactive list, you call new prospects, you call people who were doing business with you and left, you call old prospects you didn’t close business with. Too many salespeople leave money on the table because they don’t go back and talk to people who’ve raised their hands and asked for information, even if they didn’t move forward before. But that is only part of the equation. You’ve also got to become an aggressive prospector who develops phenomenal skill at getting the appointment. A mistake many sales professionals make is asking this question: “What can I sell to people who have money to buy today?” The question they should be asking is, “How do I find the people who have a need and a capacity for buying the product I have to sell?” The difference is that flitting around trying to match products or services to people with money is a losing game and you’ll never come out on top.

When nobody is buying, it is time to do whatever it takes to find the people who are, to learn new influence strategies to sell to the ones who are on the fence. It means that you have to get more creative than ever with the budget you have to reach the clients you need. It means working harder, longer, and often without immediate financial reward in order to achieve great success. The payoff in the long run is that as the economy changes or as your industry changes, you’ll be on the front end of profitability from all the hard work you did today.

FOCUS IS THE REAL KEY TO MORE SALES

In an over-communicated, over-stimulated world, most people will tell you that they are able to effectively multitask and to focus. In reality, however, nothing is further from the truth. Study after study is beginning to emerge that demonstrates that the time lost in trying to focus when attempting to multitask is much greater than the time people believe multitasking saves.

I wrote a book called The Power of an Hour (Wiley, 2006) that looked at focus and how to apply it, across the board, to your life. I want to share a key concept from that book and I want you to apply it as you go through your day and even as you go through this book.

PRACTICE FEARSOME FOCUS USING THE 45/15 FORMULA

Fearsome focus™ is the single-minded ability to concentrate fully on the task at hand without allowing anything to impact your effort to perform that task. That means that you don’t accept interruptions for any reason, that you don’t do anything else, even for a second, while you are focused on the task. If you are calling prospects, no checking e-mail for even just a second, no looking something up on the Internet because it entered your mind, no idle chit-chat with people who just need a “quick second.” Your focus is on calling prospects, connecting with prospects, and moving the sale forward—nothing else.

Fearsome focus works best for sales professionals who use the 45/15 formula. That means that you practice fearsome focus for 45 minutes, and then the bottom 15 minutes of the hour give you time to quickly check e-mail and voice-mail, do anything else you need, move around a little, and then get back to the next task.

For this process to work best, it is important that you condition the people around you to your new process and that you follow the process rigorously.

HOW TO CONDITION YOUR COLLEAGUES TO RESPECT YOUR FEARSOME FOCUS

1. Tell people that you are implementing a new plan for increasing sales and it requires all your attention for brief periods of time throughout the day. When you ask not to be interrupted, tell them you’d like them to support your commitment to increasing sales by not interrupting you until 45 minutes past the hour (or whenever your 45 minutes will end).

2. When people interrupt you (and they will),gently but firmly tell them that you are absolutely unavailable now but that you’ll connect with them at 45 minutes past the hour (or whenever your 45 minutes end). Honor your commitment and follow up with people who need it.

3. Be consistent about your application of the process; try to sch...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• PREFACE
• Chapter 0 - QUICK START
• Chapter 1 - GET REAL AND GET FOCUSED
• SLUMP BUSTER - AN INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT MARKER
• SLUMP BUSTER - AN INTERVIEW WITH TODD CARLSON
• SLUMP BUSTER - FOR SALES MANAGERS AND CEOS: AN INTERVIEW WITH DWAYNE SPEAGLE
• AFTERWORD
• Teaser chapter
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• INDEX