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Table Of Contents

Page 2... Introduction

Page 7… Rapport Building

Page 9… Credibility

Page 11… Positioning Strategy

Page 15… Bringing It All Together

Page 18… Follow Up Meeting

Page 22… Successful Meeting Checklist

Introduction

If you are struggling with Sales, it isn't your fault, the rules of the game have changed! How you manage sales meetings with your prospects may actually be hindering your success in making the sale. To succeed at sales in today's world you need to master new models of selling, relationship based selling.

Old Way of Selling vs the New Way

The old model began with "the approach", usually a generally friendly opening, like. "Hi how are you"? Before engaging the prospect about the latest sport event. The sales person then launches straight into the

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sales conversation. The second part involved quickly qualifying the prospect, to identify whether they might be a potential customer, or not. Thirdly, the sales person would talk at length about the benefits of the product or service, while the prospect looked on. Then finally the sales person would push for the sale. I still see 80% of sales people still use this method. If you are also using it, it may be holding you back.

“This approach is no longer successful in today's world. Customers have changed completely in their level of knowledge, choice and sophistication”.

The new Model Relationship Based Selling involves 5 parts. Firstly you need to build rapport and trust. Secondly, you need to establish credibility. Thirdly, you need to accurately define what really matters to your customer. Forth is you need to tailor your product or service as a solution to what the prospect has identified is a problem for them. The final part is to close the sale, which is often based on a series of meetings, where you help the prospect understand how best to gain value from your product or service.

Relationship based selling positions you as a trusted adviser and consultant to the prospect. This is what the top 20% of sales people know and understand and is why they are so successful.

Top Salespeople have been analyzed to find out how they think and behave. What has emerged from these studies is that the highest paid sales people have an easy ability to enter into friendly relationships with a great number of prospects and customers.

They establish rapport early and build high levels of trust in the course of the sales process, especially the top 20%; who make 80% of the commissions. It is called RELATIONSHIP BASED SELLING. The key is to build high quality, professional business relationships with

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customers. This model involves building high levels of trust and credibility, identifying the prospects needs carefully and accurately, showing the prospect or customer how your product or service will satisfy those needs and then encouraging the prospect to take action. I have found that to do this effectively you need to follow a step by step process.

I have used a simple 5 step relationship based selling process to run my sales meetings over the last 6 years. It has completely revolutionized my success and has allowed me to sell over $600m of services. I don’t say that to blow my own trumpet, I want you to know that this is not just another list of 5 steps from someone pretending to know about sales, I use this every day in my business and this process works.

In this eBook, I am also offering you the chance to sign up for our FREE Masterclass: “The 5-Step System We Used To Grow Our Construction Profits By 500% Inside 18 months…”.

You want to know how we did that? Click here

This process involves a modest amount of preparation and planning, but if you execute each step you will see exponential increases in the outcomes from your sales meeting. You will be able to:

Understand exactly what the customer wants so that you can develop a proposal that meets their exact needs.

Develop a genuine relationship with your customer. Position yourself as an expert in your customer’s

mind. Make them WANT to buy off YOU. Develop and communicate a clear Value

Proposition for your product or service Position yourself as a trusted adviser and

consultant to the prospect.

So without further delay here are the 5 steps.

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#1 Rapport building

People buy off people that they like. That has been my experience in business. You can plan to make your customers like you and your company. This just involves a little research and some emotional intelligence.

If I am meeting a new customer for the first time, I will do, or have one of my team do, some basic research into the customer. It’s never been easier to find out basic information about your prospect. Check out their profile on Linked In, or their website, or Google them. Use google alerts or Talkwalker alerts to get continuous updates on what is happening with the prospect or their company.

I use this information to start off a conversation about where they are from, where they went to college,

common interests you may have with the prospect. Even better is if you identify common interests or acquaintances. A great tactic for this is to use Linkedin connections, to see if you have common connections. Use this to kick start a friendly, interesting conversation with the prospect. No politics and no religion!

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#2 Credibility

This is a big one… and also one that most sales professionals get wrong in that they miss the mark altogether, or they spend too much time at this part of the sales meeting talking about their product or services benefits. In order for you to really gain credibility in your prospects mind you need to be very specific in what you cover at this stage in the sales process.

People are only interested in what will meet their needs and desires.

To hit the mark and achieve this; again you need to carry out some careful research into the prospect and what their requirements are. For example, let’s say you are

selling business consulting services and your prospect is in the business of manufacturing furniture. His needs, wants and desires in business are going to be almost exclusively aligned to how he can improve that business. So you need to communicate your past experience case studies, testimonials and references on how you have helped similar businesses in that niche.

So what will his key concerns or requirements be:

Does he want to increase sales or turnover? Is he interested in introducing lean manufacturing

processes? Does he want to implement a quality management

system, like ISO 9000; for example.

Identify prior to the sales meeting what it is that your prospect wants to achieve, and communicate how you can help him do this. Do not spend 30 minutes showing him endless slides about your company and your impressive list of past projects and clients, because if it is not specific to his needs, wants and desires, he is not going to be interested! In summary show them past projects that are:

Relevant Interesting Similar

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#3 Positioning Strategy – The art of key questioning

In a world of noise it is so difficult to make your offer stand out from the crowd, or to communicate a clear Sales Value Proposition to your prospect. Well, if you follow this step you can not only identify your clear Sales Value Proposition, but ensure that it is 100% aligned to the needs to your customer.

I do this through key questioning.

In some respects it is a continuation of building credibility but you do it by getting the prospect too outline themselves, what their key concerns and requirements are. Again, this is where a lot of sales professionals go wrong. They do all the talking, whilst the prospect sits there wondering what they are going to have for dinner that evening. Well if you use this technique, you will get the prospect fully engaged.

People love to talk about themselves, so utilise this. It might seem strange at first but if you use this technique regularly it will soon become second nature. Taking up our consultant example (it will work for any sector, product or service) again, let’s imagine the consultant is selling the prospect a lean manufacturing process. So it goes like this. You ask the prospect the following questions:

So, can you tell me your top 3 concerns with regards to this project?

What business challenge are you hoping to address with this project?

What are your top 3 concerns with regards to employing a consultant for this project?

What is the main objective you want to achieve with this project?

What does success look like for you? What outcome would you consider a failure? What criteria will you use to evaluate proposals? Is there a weighting for the assessment of proposals

I need to consider? Can you tell me how the decision making process

works? Are you the decision maker? What is the timeline, when will a decision to

appoint a consultant be taken? Etc. etc.

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Naturally you can ask more questions, but these are the core. What you are looking to do, is to get a deep insight into the mind of your prospect and:

Identify what really matters to them.

With relationship based selling you can address these key concerns head-on in your proposal to the prospect. This allows you to totally differentiate your proposal to those of your competitors, because you are addressing your prospect’s specific concerns.

I call this touching Hot Buttons.

So, in this example, let’s imagine the sales profession asked the prospect, can you identify you number 1 problem in your business and he

answers "excessive waste". Now you can position how your consulting service, through specific case studies, past success stories and by explaining how you helped reduce waste in a similar facility to the prospects, resulting in a 5% increase in the bottom line profit margin for the customer and a 10 fold ROI for the investment in your consulting services.

Now you have the prospects attention.

You can put a section in your proposal called; ”The reduction or elimination of waste, through lean manufacturing”. Your competitors won’t have done

this, because they won’t have asked the right questions. This process has been central to allow me differentiate my proposals and eliminate my competition. Get this right and price can even become secondary!

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#4 Summarise - Bringing it all together

Relationship based selling involves matching the prospects pains to company offering. This is where you use the prospects Hot Buttons to really hook your prospect. At this point in the sales meeting you will know exactly what products or services your prospect wants but also you will have identified:

How your products or services will be able to benefit them

Having asked the prospect the key questions, wrap up the sales meeting by summarising what their key concerns are. I do this by saying;

So, if I have understood you correctly your:

Key concerns are… Key requirements are… Objectives for this project are…

Do this, and the prospect will know that you have listened to them. In a world of short attention spans this will show the prospect that you really care about what matters to them, and it will also build further rapport and credibility.

You then outline your Sales Value Proposition based on the above needs to the prospect.

A Value Proposition needs to answer three questions:

1. Why should I buy YOUR product or service?

2. Why should I buy from YOU?

3. What is in it for me? How am I going to BENEFIT from buying your product or service?

A Value Proposition should look like this:

Your prospects pain and measurable impact of your

product or service in solving that pain

Your specific solution

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How you will differentiate your offer, as per the

example above

The ROI to the prospect through using your solution

Case studies of where you have solved similar

problems for other clients

#5 Set a Date for a Follow-Up Meeting

Research suggests only one in 50 deals are struck at a first meeting, yet many sales people give up after just one or two knock-backs. Perseverance will give you a major edge on competitors.

It is critical to set a date for a follow up sales meeting while you are still with the prospect. They are much more likely to agree to it whilst you are there in front of them, than trying to arrange a meeting later by mail or by phone.

'Top of mind' awareness

Contacting your prospective and existing customers every three months or sooner builds trust and professionalism and keeps 'top of mind' awareness. With relationship based selling the follow

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up sales meeting is your opportunity to pull it all together. I put together a specific presentation where I address all of the prospects key concerns identified during the previous sales meeting and work hard to help the prospect understand how the service will benefit them and identifying how the prospect can maximize his ROI from his investment in my services offering. This is relationship based selling.

I also use these meetings to implement what I term Farming. Relationship based selling is about delivering real value to your prospect, so I am always looking to deliver value to a prospect in these meetings. Let me give you an example, take the consultant selling lean manufacturing services. In his follow up meeting, he might turn up with a specific case study to show the prospect how they saved another client money by implementing 3 specific things in his business. The consultant gives the prospect this information for free. I call is FARMING because although it might not involve an immediate sale, you are sewing the seed for future sales with the prospect.

You are becoming a trusted adviser and consultant to the prospect, which is what relationship based selling is all about.

Follow this simple 5 step relationship based selling process and I guarantee that you will blow your

prospect and the competition away, by your ability to position and differentiate your offer. You will also build long term relationships with your prospects and customers.

If you follow these 5 steps to a successful sales meeting, you'll have a standard, consistent, and easy-to-follow sales process, that will keep you focused and on track. With it, you can reduce your meeting preparation time dramatically, and dramatically increase your sales conversions! Good Luck!

Stephen Duggan May 2016

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Stephen Duggan is a founding partner of Construction Profit System, a company that helps individuals and businesses of all sizes grow their businesses profitably. To learn more about Stephen Duggan, please visit http://constructionprofitsystem.com/

To learn about how to you improve your profits, grow

your business whilst delivering massive vale to your

clients sign up for our free training where we show you

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RELATIONSHIP BASED SELLING – 5 STEPS TO A SUCCESSFUL SALES

MEETING CHECKLIST

No Step Notes

#1 Build Rapport

Research prospect on LinkedIn

Google prospect

Review their website

Outline some points that you can cover at the start of the meeting

When meeting somebody for the first time, some simple tips will help you reduce the tension in the situation, enabling both parties to feel more relaxed and thus communicate more effectively:

Use non-threatening and ‘safe topics’ for initial small talk. Talk about established shared experiences, the weather, how you travelled to where you are. Avoid talking too much about yourself and avoid asking direct questions about the other person.

Listen to what the other person is saying and look for shared experiences or circumstances - this will give you more to talk about in the initial stages of communication.

Try to inject an element of humour. Make a joke about yourself or a situation.

Be conscious of your body language and other non-verbal signals you are sending. Try to maintain eye contact for approximately 60% of the

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time. Relax and lean slightly towards them to indicate listening, mirror their body-language if appropriate.

Show some empathy. Demonstrate that you can see the other person’s point of view.

Make sure the other person feels included but not interrogated during initial conversations. As you may feel tense and uneasy meeting and talking to somebody new, so may they. Put the other person at ease, this will enable you to relax, and enable the conversation to take a natural course.

#2 Build Credibility

Research their business

Research projects they have done in the past

Services: Research the specific project they are looking to procure

Products: If selling a product, research how they will use your specific product, and outline and identify how your product will benefit them

Identify which companies they have worked with in the past

Define the purpose of the meeting

Outline what you feel the prospect’s objectives are

Put together a presentation of past experience which is specific to the prospect’s project

Make your sales presentation specific to the meeting, i.e. put the prospect’s details on the cover etc.

If selling services, outline your experience in similar projects

If selling products, outline similar companies to the prospects who have used and benefited from your product

Outline similar clients you have worked with in the past and how they have benefited from your services or product.

Outline how your company has the required expertise to meet the prospect’s needs for their specific project

At all times outline how your company’s product or service will benefit the client specific to their needs!

Remember: make sure your presentation is:

Relevant

Interesting

Similar to what they want to do

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#3 Key Positioning

Use key questioning to identify the customer’s Hot Buttons

Use the information gathered at this stage in the sales meeting to develop a clear Sales Value Proposition for your proposal

Translate the client’s key concerns into a positioning strategy for your product or service, when you submit your final proposal

Suggested Questions

So, can you tell me your top 3 concerns with regards to this project/product?

What business challenge are you hoping to address with this project/product?

What are your top 3 concerns with regards to employing a consultant for this project?

What is the main objective you want to achieve with this project/product?

What does success look like for you?

What criteria will you use to evaluate proposals?

Is there a weighting I need to consider in terms of how you will evaluate proposals?

Can you tell me how the decision making process works?

Are you the decision maker?

What is the timeline, when will a decision to appoint a supplier be taken?

#4 Bringing it all together Use this part of the meeting to:

Outline that you have understood the client’s key requirements

Develop further rapport

Identify how you will build your Value Proposition

Repeat back to the client their Hot Buttons, i.e. what really matters to them

Having asked the prospect the key questions, wrap up the sales meeting by summarising what their key concerns are. Do this by saying; So, if I have understood you correctly your:

- Key concerns are… - Key requirements are… - Objectives for this project are…

Describe based on the prospects pain ponts how your Sales Value Proposition will address their needs: A Sales Value Proposition can outline: - Specific benefits that the prospect will gain from your product or service - Why the prospect should buy off you as opposed to the competition - Develop a clear sales hook - Address the prospects clear pain points These can then be summarised at the end of the sales meeting or built into the subsequent proposal or second sales meeting In a world of short attention spans this will show the prospect that you really care about what matters to them, and it will also build further rapport and credibility.

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#5 The Follow Up Meeting Ensure where possible that you get the prospect to agree to the date and time for the follow up meeting Research suggests only one in 50 deals are struck at a first meeting, yet many sales people give up after just one or two knock-backs. Perseverance will give you a major edge on competitors

This ensures: Momentum is maintained You get a follow up meeting This is where you - Highlight the prospects pain that you identified in the last meeting and then outline your solution, which will address this pain - Communicate your prospect specific compelling Value Proposition - Outline the prospects ROI if they go with your product or service - Outline how you are really going to help them Use follow up meetings to help the prospect and deliver real value. This is how you become a trusted advisor.

Final Note

The objective of this process is to build credibility and rapport with

the client and to identify what their clear concerns are and to build

your proposal around addressing this pain point. It is aimed at

establishing you as a trusted advisor and consultant to your

prospect.