Money Maker #84: All the sales skill in the world will not save you if you do not understand your fellow man.

Technique is useless without feeling. People will not buy from you because you are a great salesperson. They will buy from you because you are a great person. People will not buy from you because of how much you know, they will buy from you because of how much you care about them and relate to them.

Understanding our own personality type and that of our customers will greatly enhance our ability to sell. In addition to making our selling efforts more profitable, it will make selling less stressful and more enjoyable on a daily basis.

When I first started selling I sold everyone the same way. In fact, I tried to force all my customers to buy from me the way I wanted to sell. This was a disaster. I made a decent living, mainly because I worked hard, but many of my peers doubled and tripled my income. This was tough on my ego, but the numbers were the numbers, and I had to live with them.

When I finally understood that there were different ways to approach people and began to apply these different approaches, my selling career took off and selling became much less stressful and more fun.

Part of what makes selling difficult for some of us is that we have to come to terms with our own personality. We have to look at ourselves and think about how our personalities affect our fellow man. Believe it or not, there are things about our personalities that other people do not like at worst, or at best, make them uncomfortable.

People are not receptive and are not going to buy anything from someone who makes them feel uncomfortable, so learning how to control some of our natural tendencies that irritate some personality types will help us sell more lumber.

The difference between promoting versus quoting is control. Have you ever felt out of control as a salesperson? Have you ever felt you are running hither and yon for “potential” customers and “potential” business with little or no results? That’s why promoting instead of quoting is where it’s at if we want to control our selling time and our income.

I. Set ourselves up as a partners/experts
When we make a proposal to our customers we are telling them that we are expert at what we do. When we ask them what they are looking for or how we can help them, we set ourselves up as “quotron units” and shopping services. There are customers who want those kinds of sellers. We must lead the customers that want to be led, convert those we can, and jettison the rest. The “rest” in this instance is any customer that just wants a price. We need customers that are looking for solutions, not prices. Our customers can get prices from the internet, they buy solutions from us.

II. We set the tone
When we propose, we set the tone of the meetings we have with our customers. For example, many times customers will try, what I call, The Bum Rush. They will ask us a bunch of questions in succession, and then kick us to the curb without even listening to what we have to say. We use the turnaround to fight The Bum Rush.

Example: Customer: “What’s your price on these? Us: “We have great prices on these, how many are you looking for?”

When we enter conversations in “may I help you” mode, we open ourselves up to The Bum Rush and many other “tones” that don’t work for us. In public speaking we should control the room, lighting, noise, seating etc. The same can be said of sales presentations and sales conversations. Leading through promotion of product will set a favorable tone for us, and will lead to more profitable sales.

III. We save time
When we promote product to our customers, we are promoting something we are already doing successfully somewhere else. We have done our research ahead of time and know that what we are proposing to our customer will work for them based on past experience with other customers. (Or past experience of others in our company.) When we chase new items or unfamiliar territory for our customers frequently we are chasing something we aren’t great at. It is fine to blaze trails. (create new business segments) Some blazing of trails can be done through the pursuit of customer RFQ, but it is often a quagmire of wasted time, frustration and low profitability. New business will also have a higher rate of claims almost by definition, so make sure you‘re blazing the trail, and that the trail’s not blazing you.

IV. We control when and how
When we say, “Let me work up an idea that I know will save you money. I should be able to meet with you on this next Tuesday (or tomorrow), how does that work for you?” we have set the time and the agenda. Now we make a good plan and Close!

V. We create exclusivity
When we promote our plan, product or solution to our customers we gain exclusivity. No one else can promote our service or product exactly the way we can. A friend of mine, Sam Fox, says, “Be yourself, no one can beat you at that”, and he is right. The same can be said for sales presentations. Propose something! Be somebody! Present your product in a way that works for your customer. By proposing we show our customers we care about them. We show our customers that we have thought about them and their desires ahead of time, and that we have a leadership plan for their individual situation.

VI. We control price
When we ask our customers what they want instead of giving them our solution, we also give them control of price. When we promote our unique solution, and make it sound so good our customers want it, we control price. There is a time to do needs analysis with our customers. But many sellers finish with needs analysis and then say, “So, what do you want to buy?” In this instant these sellers have relinquished all price control to their customer. We need to do a very thorough job of needs analysis and then do a thorough job of working up a solution – proposal that works for our customers. Plan B. We don’t always get the price we want. But (us) setting an original price will always bring us a better final price that letting our customers set the original price. Note: Just because we come in with a well thought out proposal doesn’t mean we aren’t ready to do business. We stay open to your customers. Once they begin to tinker with our proposal, we have the order; it’s just a matter of how profitable it will be.

VII. We do what we do best –our competitive advantage
Why work on things we aren’t good at when we can work at things we are good at? Two reasons: 1. There can be profit in new products. 2. There can be less competition (for customers and business). Be very careful with these two reasons. Many times we move towards trail blazing because we are reluctant to do the hard work it takes to compete in the “mainstream” market. When we promote, we promote what we have already had success with. This will raise our hit percentage. We can reinvent the wheel once we’re up and running. Until then, we should have a healthy dose of promoting the tried and true products that are already working for our customers. Be open to new markets yes, but also rely on past successes by ourselves and others in our company to tell us what we should be promoting to our current and prospective customers.

VIII. We streamline our selling process
When we promote something that works, we can promote it in a repeatable way. When we chase customer inquiry, we run from one thing to another all of which can be different. When we promote, much of the detail work (that we love as sales people) can be done ahead of time. Often we can create templates of proposals and change the details to fit each of our clients. This makes us more efficient, assures quality and makes our life easier. Working up proposals for new business (and getting it!) is an important and exciting part of being in sales, but we must make sure our balance is right.

IX. Our presentation becomes expert
Selling, promoting, Closing is exacting work. Timing is crucial to success. The difference between getting an order and not is often a small, subtle thing. When we promote our product, our idea, in a repetitive way, our overall presentation becomes tighter. Our timing becomes better. We learn which phrases cool customers off. We learn which phrases bring results. We learn, and thus can anticipate, the questions our proposal will generate. We polish our presentation until our Closing percentage increases, then we keep polishing.

To take control of our selling careers, we need to Promote not Quote!

In the February issue of Merchant Magazine, we contributed the following article:

Competing on price is often just being in front of the wrong customer, with the wrong product at the wrong time. Avoiding that situation is a subject for another article.But in the hyper-competitive lumber industry, we are often in front of the right customer, at the right time with the right product, and we still are forced to compete on price.

Use these techniques to battle price:

1. Assume the order. “When we put this together” not “If we put this together.” Act as if the order is yours.
2. Don’t bring up price until the customer does. When we hold off on price we show confidence in our proposal. This relaxes our customer. When our customer is interested, they will ask about price.We can close from “What is the price on this?” - “That’s the good part, we can get this to you at $350, when would you like to take delivery?”
3. Propose don’t Quote. Questions like “What are you looking for?” or “What do you need?” Make us shopping services or quotron units. When we propose solutions to our customers, we are proposing something unique, special, all our own.
4. When customers say, “Your price is too high.” We say, “Oh, (really), we’ve been selling at these levels, what were you thinking/feeling/hearing about price?”“What are you thinking?” is a discussion question. “What do you want to pay?” gives all the power to the customer and will produce a lower price discussion every time.
5. Quality with a Similar Story. “Mrs. Customer, the quality warrants the price. I have a customer in Texas, a real price shopper. For six months I tried to get him to try this product and he wouldn’t. A couple of weeks ago he was caught in a bind and had to try it. He loves it and has re-ordered. The quality makes it a great deal for him and for you also, let’s put this together!”
6. Fear, Scarcity and Urgency Closes combat price.Example:“I know this is more than you are thinking of paying Tom, but people are paying these prices and we are running out of stock, so let’s take care of this before they’re all gone. What’s your PO# on this?”“Tom, you’re a busy man. You can shop this thing and maybe save a few bucks, but your time is worth a lot, and when you come back these could be gone. Let’s get this one off your To Do list. Give me your PO number, this is a great product.”
7. Is price the only thing standing in the way of us putting this deal together? We bend ourselves three ways from Friday to get the price right, AND THEN, there is another slight problem… Ask this question early and save lots of time! The beauty of this question is that it is a Closing question. Either way the customer answers, we are moving towards a Close.
8. Just because that is a good deal doesn’t mean this isn’t a good deal also. (Or, that’s a great deal, and this is also.)When a customer tells you they can (or did) buy something similar for less money, DO NOT ACT DEFEATED. These supposed lower prices are a test to if we believe in our product and our price.
9. Don’t lower the price without customer participation. Don’t negotiate with yourself. If your customer won’t talk about price don’t fish for a lower number alone.
10. Best Quote Price Vs Best Sell Price. When we try to ask customers where we need to be on price, they say, “I don’t play that way, you tell me the best you can do and I’ll let you know.”

Change the paradigm.

“Mr. Customer, we sell this product all over the U.S., do you know who gets the best prices from us?” Most of the time the customer will answer, “Probably the customers that buy the most from you.” You say, “No, the customers who get the best prices are the customers that work with us.”

Go on to explain, “Mr. Customer, I am giving you my very best Quote Price, but we will have to work together to get my (our) very best Buy Price.”
Sell “teamwork” to our customers when they try to make us their adversary.


Let’s treat price as just another detail. Propose unique solutions and use the above techniques to compete against the price objection.

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