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Welcome to Loyalty MagazineLoyalty Magazine reports on customer retention,loyalty schemes, rewards, affinity, CRM, call centre issues, direct and viral marketing, mobile and internet channels for both B2B and B2C enterprises. It covers all global markets and business sectors, including retail, financial services, travel and hotels, telecoms and electronic commerce. |
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Thursday, 09 December 2010 09:59 |
 The Secrets of Success in Selling
It could be argued that a book about selling has no place in a magazine about loyalty and retention. Except that customer retention is about building strong and lasting customer relationships, creating long-term rewards for you, your business and your customers – and so is selling. So with this in mind, here is the book.
The Secrets of Success in Selling - 12 Ways to Achieve Exceptional Results is written by Nicola Cook, who has spent 20 years gathering experience in sales.
She says that many people fear the word sales, due to the poor reputation salespeople have gained over time, and that this rubs off on peripheral areas, such as customer service and call centres.
She defines sales as “motivating your prospect into taking action” but argues that this is done by transferring your beliefs and emotions on to your prospect. So you are not selling at all really, just convincing them of what you already know - that your product or your company is great.
Beliefs and emotions
“If you appreciate that successful selling is the process of motivating others into taking action through the transference of your beliefs and emotions, then first you need to clearly define the action you wish to induce as a a result of your influence,” writes Cook, which is good advice regardless of what it is you are trying to do.
Cook peppers her book with countless soundbites such as “The only difference between a salesman and a conman is their level of integrity,” and “If you don’t believe there is a market for your opportunity, stop! Even if there is, you won’t make the sale. Either reinvigorate your belief or go and find something else that gets your juices flowing.”
Then there are the mantras. Try telling yourself: “I have all the confidence I need within me now’. Then persuade your boss to greatly inflate your job title so you feel really good about yourself. Apparently it really helps.
Then armed with title and mantra, you have to move out of your comfort zone and invite challenge – in order to keep growing, because complacency kills sales results, as it does customer retention and even customer opinion.
One useful suggestion for your own team is to work out what motivates them. It is rarely money alone, says Cook, but what money can do for them, such as pay for the holiday, paint the kitchen, or replace the cooker. Once these goals have been gleaned, get people to stick notices with this information on the wall, so they know what they are working for.
Relevant to anyone working in loyalty, it is very important that you differentiate between features and benefits. Features tell, says Cook, but benefits sell. So don’t bother telling people how wide ranging your loyalty scheme is, tell them what it can do for them.
Emotion over reason
Probably the most interesting message of the book is that people make choices with their emotional side. Then they justify them with their rational side. This apparently works just the same for business to business selling as it does for business to consumer. Analyse your latest purchase and you will understand.
You may argue later that you bought those trousers because they were good quality, but the emotion that made you part with the cash was because they made you feel good. Even the boring stationery salesperson can use this approach. If he can persuade you that buying now is a good idea because of course there will be a rush soon caused by current bad weather and future holidays, it is your emotional side that will respond – fear of being without supplies. Your rational side will then kick in to add that you would have bought the goods anyway, but two months later.
This is how cross selling in financial services works. No-one thinks about insurance when booking a holiday, but if the consequences of not having cover are reminded to you, then suddenly it makes sense to spend the extra money.
“All of us are motivated by the desire to move towards pleasure and pleasant outcomes and the desire to move away from pain and outcomes that do not fulfil our expections,” writes Cooke. “Most people believe they are motivated by their own desires for pleasure and all the rewards that that can bring, whereas psychological findings, and particularly the work of Dr Alfred Alder, tell us that the human condition is actually more motivated by the desire to avoid pain and negative consequences: obviously physical pain, but also psychological pain – things that do not make us feel good.”
Cook explains that these pain/pleasure motivations work in exactly the same way in the decision making process. An initial reluctance to buy may be turned round if the consequences of not buying are a greater risk.
She put in bold the following statement: “I can’t stress this enough. Be under no illusion that your client buys from you simply because you present some snazzy benefits. The benefits simply help them logically justify their emotional attachment to the outcomes from the purchase of the product.”
Cooke provides a mind-engaging gem on nearly every page including the information that less than 15% of people will only ever buy the cheapest option available. This is why branded products automatically carry a perception of higher value and can therefore charge a higher premium. In the same way, we never buy the largest, or the smallest, but go for the medium. If there were only two choices however, we would probably choose the smaller of the two, unless the larger was CALLED medium.
The strongest message of the book is that it is vital to believe in your product and to really believe that it is good for your customers. It is exactly the same with a loyalty scheme. Customers can see through empty offers and phrases, as well as rewards that are meaningless.
Clearly the marketing department has to believe - or your customers won’t.
The Secrets of Success in Selling – 12 Ways to Achieve Exceptional Results, by Nicola Cook is published by Pearson, price £12.99
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Positive impact of the feedback huddle