As a telecom sales professional, you know that you can’t win an opportunity based on low prices and a long list of features. Your goal is not to become the bargain bin of the telecom world. You chose the products and services you represent because you believe in their value. But how do you convince your prospects that your products really are the best?
The answer lies in differentiation. In order for your client to believe that your services would really address their problems you have to be able to answer two questions:
1.What makes your product better than the competition?
2.What makes YOU better than other telecom sales agents?
Product Differentiation
After your initial consultation with a client, you understand their telecom goals, limitations, and expectations. Although you know the ins and outs of your product as well as the competing products, your client doesn’t. He or she is relying on you (or another agent) for advice.
First, consider your competitors. When bidding on an opportunity, when do you feel you have the competitive advantage? Alternatively, when do you dread going up against your competitors? This will help you clarify your product’s strengths and weaknesses and highlight them accordingly.
Next, to show that you are a true advocate of your product or service, you must use them yourself – or at least have access to demo equipment and accounts. Let the client know that you use your own products and services and what YOU like best about your product? How have these products helped you save time, increase efficiency, or improve processes?
Take this a step further and ask your current clients how the solutions you have recommended in the past have positively influenced their businesses. Have they improved customer relations because the phone solution you recommended resulted in less dropped calls? Has employee satisfaction risen because you sold the company a solution that allows more mobility? When you get a customer quote, try to get the specific solution-and-effect details.
Sales Agent Differentiation
If you were in the client’s shoes, why would you choose to work with you? In addition to finding value in your product, the client has to find something enjoyable about working with you. The attributes that a client needs in a sales agent are the same attributes you would want in any business relationship:
•Reliability
•Foresight
•Likeability
As you will find on most business’s web sites or brochures, anyone can SAY they are the best. But you need to SHOW that you are the best. Show you are reliable by making yourself easily accessible. Don’t let as many client calls go to voicemail. Respond a little more thoroughly in emails. Show foresight by informing your client how a solution will affect them one year from now and five years from now. And finally, just be easy to get along with. Make jokes. Share stories. If you want to have a long term client relationship, try to make it enjoyable for the both of you.
In a highly competitive field, it can be difficult to stand out. What are your sales strengths and how do you illustrate those to new clients?
No matter what your art form is, there are always tools to assist you. Even the most experienced artists use tools to create their masterpieces. Auguste Rodin, creator of “The Thinker”, had clay, casts, marble and bronze while Leonardo da Vinci had oil paints and wood pallets. These tools allowed them to create some of the most well know art works in history.
As a Telecom Agent, perfecting the art of successful selling is a constant journey. Here are 7 tools to help you create a sales masterpiece:
1. Got attitude? This is the single most important factor to getting the sale! No one wants to do business with someone who has a bad attitude; they are discouraging, unwelcoming and typically unsuccessful. With a positive attitude you encourage a sale, are hopeful of a sale and create opportunity for you to get the sale.
2. Be Confident. Be convinced of yourself and your product. If you are confident and believe in yourself and your product your customers will too. With confidence you are creating an impression that influences your customer experience. If you want to seem smarter, trustworthy, and credible then be confident that you are!
3. Set goals. A good sales individual has vision and doesn’t just think about today or tomorrow, but years ahead. They see the BIG picture. Understand that a sale is never ending; it is constantly evolving along with the relationship with your customer.
4. Know your audience. Make sure you do your homework. Know your customers pain points, needs, and industry in advance. Be knowledgeable enough to point out challenges and problem areas and then suggest solutions.
5. Ask questions. By asking questions you are showing interest in your customer’s success. You are also giving yourself an opportunity to listen for keys to developing a relationship with a customer. Make sure your questions are open ended and solicit detailed responses. The most important question to ask? Ask for the sale!
6. Be prepared, clear & flexible. Have a planned agenda, presentation and flow for how you would like your meeting to go, specific to each customer. Make this clear to your customer, the biggest frustration for a customer is confusion. Once you have this established, practice. Be prepared to shift focus based on the feedback received.
7. Follow-up. Stay in constant communication with your customer. Follow-up is key to getting the sale. Send a thank you note, make a call, email or send a singing telegram. Follow-up will assist you in keeping your finger on the pulse of the sale until the deal is done.
Selling is an art! It takes skill to create an opportunity, but tools like attitude, confidence, goals, questions, and follow-up to successfully sell. Work on perfecting your art form with these tools and be a world known Telecom Agent!
What tools have helped make sell successfully? Anything we missed? Please share your comments below.
As full-time telecom sales agents, you are constantly trying to replicate success. You take note of what works well and you develop a sales process. Whether that is a formal, written process for your organization or just your own personal ritual, you repeat proven tactics and techniques. But what about your process for lost sales?
You are well advised, in any task, to learn from our failures – but how do you learn from lost sales? By developing a quick Lost Sales Process, you can analyze your losses and correct any destructive patterns you find.
Vent and Disengage
No matter the situation, it is difficult not to take rejection personally. This is why you’re allowed five minutes, and only five minutes, to vent, wallow, or pout. Once those five minutes have passed, move on. Distract yourself with an activity where you can burn off some of that frustration. Go for a walk, do a set of jumping jacks, run up and down the stairs, play with the kids – it doesn’t matter. Try to gain a sense of clarity in order to move on to the next step so you can reflect on the lost opportunity more objectively.
Personal Evaluation
It is always helpful to find someone willing to offer an outside perspective to help you find missteps you might not have noticed. We’ll get to that. Before you are influenced by any outside remarks, it is time for a personal evaluation.
Take a moment to ask yourself a few quick questions:
-What went well in the prospecting process?
-What was the point where you believe you lost the sale? Did the loss come as a surprise to you?
-What did the winning competitor do differently?
Client Evaluation
After you’ve reflected on your own view of the lost sale, reach out to the client to get a little feedback.
Be prepared for generic answers from clients; Studies show that only about 40% of prospects and clients are completely honest when answering why they turned down a solution. No one likes to be the bearer of bad news – so to make the situation less confrontational and more analytical, consider creating an online survey or having an assistant or marketing representative make the follow up call. Try to include a couple of simple but open ended questions like:
What needs did you feel were not met by the proposed solution?
What did you like about our services? What didn’t you like?
Peer Evaluation
After you receive feedback from your client, have a short brainstorming session with the team of people who helped you with your presentation and proposal. Share the client’s feed back with them, ask what they felt worked, and find out if they saw something you might not have.
Record in CRM
Wrap up your process by updating your CRM. Your best bet is to add a field for “Reason for Opportunity Lost” with a drop down menu and a separate section for notes. Suggested menu options are:
Wrong Decision Maker
Unqualified Lead
Wrong Pain Points Addressed
Too Much Contact
Not Enough Contact
Pricing
Schedule yourself to run a report every six months based on “Reason for Opportunity Lost.” This way, you can catch the most common reasons your team loses opportunities and work to correct them.
Don’t let all of the work you put into prospecting and proposals go to waste. Developing a Lost Sales Process can ensure that a lost opportunity does not equal a lost lesson.
What are some of your experiences with lost sales? How did they help you with future sales?
Until we perfect lead generation or can afford to hire the marketing team behind Apple, cold calling will always be a part of the job of an Independent Telecom Agent. Here are a few of ideas to make your calls go a little smoother.
Do your research!
It surprises me how many sales calls I get at work for services I sell myself. This may seem like a rookie mistake, but a couple minutes of research can go a long way for anyone. With a quick Google or LinkedIn search, you can typically find all you need to know about a company. By learning out what they sell, how many employees or locations they have, and what kind of press releases they have posted, you can typically determine whether they are really in your target market before you pick up the phone.
Make friends, not sales
The most successful sales people I have met all have one thing in common – they’re personable. Most of them can make anyone laugh within the first couple minutes of meeting them. It makes sense – people want to work with people they like. Be confident and conversational, not pushy and rushed. New to the independent sales world and think that strength in sales can’t be taught? Think again. Join a group like Toastmasters or find a mentor who has a strong sales record.
Keep track of calls and conversations
What’s even worse than failing to research a prospect? Finding out that you have already given your introductory speech to the person on the other end of the line. There are several free CRM tools out there to keep notes on which companies you have called, to whom you spoke, when the best time to call back is, etc. Use them.
Making cold calls takes a little bravery and a lot of resilience. Making successful cold calls takes a little wit and a lot of preparation. What has led you to be successful on cold calls? Any horror stories?
I recently read an article on how to make a bad first impression. With only seven seconds to make a first impression, the pressure to immediately impress is imperative. Don’t miss out on an opportunity with a bad handshake, black eye, or tardiness.
Your website is often the first impression you give prospects; don’t let it be the black eye of your business. Your expert technology knowledge and customer service skills are a great foundation, but your marketing efforts need to compliment your business model to capture and pique interest in your business offerings. This means it needs to not only engage the viewer, but also inform and call them to action.
Start small; ask yourself these three questions to begin building a Telecom website that sells:
Who is your audience?
What characteristics best describe your ideal customer? Cherry pick a few of your current customers and identify what makes them a good fit for your business. From here you can begin to build the profile for potential customers. This will also help create the voice that your website will be written in. For example, are your customers primarily IT executives? If so, you will want to appeal to them with more in-depth information on your processes and service offerings.
What is your message?
As a telecom agent, you have the opportunity to build a website that is unique to your business and one that stands out from your competitors. Identify what telecom products, platforms or services distinguish you from others. Be sure to also talk about the benefits of partnering with you, the agent, not just the features you offer. Do you consider yourself a vendor, partner or consultant? When creating your website you want to clearly communicate this to your viewers.
Is your core competency telecom or design?
All good websites start with good design. If you want an eye catching website and your core competency is telecom, not design, enlist the services of a professional web designer for the best result. Your ideal designer with have familiarity in your field and a track record of success.
The right website can make or break others’ first impression of you and your business. Position yourself and your business in exactly the image you wish to communicate by accurately identifying your audience, messaging and selecting the right web designer to take your website to the next level.
Have a success story on what makes your website sell? Did we miss any tips for creating a telecom website? Share your comments below.
Humans are complex creatures by nature. We have millions of thoughts a day, and our emotions can change from positive to negative and back to positive in a very short time. But one thing remains constant about us when it comes to our motivation:
We are always either moving toward pleasure OR moving away from pain.
This one concept is critically important for telecom agents to understand when you are selling your services. Think about it…there really are no other options besides increasing pleasure or avoiding pain. Consider any action you take on a regular basis and ask yourself why you do it. It’s either because you want more pleasure or less pain.
For example, you:
Pay your mortgage and credit card bills on time to avoid late fees (avoid pain)
You work out regularly at the gym to stay healthy and avoid disease (avoid pain) but also to look good on the beach (increase pleasure)
You indulge in your favorite past-time or hobby because it makes you feel happy and alive (increase pleasure)
What is even more essential to understand is this:
MOST people are FAR more motivated by fear of pain than by promise of pleasure.
You can see evidence of this everywhere. Like the person who opts to go to driving school in order to avoid increased car insurance rates, or the child who works hard in school to avoid being grounded or missing the big dance. We simply are more likely to take action when we know the lack of action will result in some type of pain or punishment for us.
What does this mean for your telecom sales business? Plenty! When you understand that your prospective customer has fears and potential pain points, you can position your sales messages to those fears. Here’s a simple process for doing this effectively.
During the discovery phase, try to uncover as many fears and pain points your potential customer has as possible. They may fear not being able to scale fast enough with their growing business, or potentially losing business by having unreliable services. The trick here is that they may not use these words to describe their fears. Instead, they will say things like, "We need guaranteed uptime," or "Scalability is important to us." It’s your job to take what they say and uncover the underlying pain or fear.
Organize the pain points and fears you have uncovered in a list for easy reference. If you use a CRM tool, you may want to put them in there so others working on the account can see them as well.
When presenting your solution, begin by reviewing your prospect’s fears and pain points. Then show them how your service will greatly reduce or eliminate that fear. Refer back to the pain points frequently throughout your presentation. The more pain your prospect feels, the more likely he or she will be to take action to move away from it.
Use the pain points you have discovered to outline a "why now" statement. Your prospect will quickly take action when there is a very strong reason to do so associated with his or her pain points and fears. Are rate increases happening at the end of the month? Is the company in danger of maxing out their bandwidth and losing potential business? When you give your prospective customer strong reasons to act now, your success closing ratio will greatly increase.
Remember, most of us are more motivated by trying to avoid pain than by seeking pleasure. The better you understand this principle, and the better you incorporate it into your sales techniques and presentations, the more successful you will be!
Please share any questions or examples you have of this principle in action in the comments below.
