Three Sisters

Sales & Sales Management Brew

Three Sisters

Posted by Tony Cole on Mon, Jun 30, 2008

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I'm in Black Butte, Oregon. And when I look out my sliding glass door tomorrow I will see the three mountain peaks known as the Three Sisters. This time of year they are still snow covered and when the morning sun shines upon their faces they are certainly beautiful. But what does that have to do with effective selling? Nothing. But they remind me of the Three Qs of Selling:

Qualify, Qualify and Qualify.

The first Sales qualifier can be defined as pain, motivation, needs/wants or as we describe it ‘severe mental anguish'. As a sales person, you MUST understand that you will not get anyone to buy anything until they are in severe mental anguish. Anguish over their current position or a perceived future position. No anguish, no prospect.

The second sales qualifier is budget. Not just money issues like how much money can they spend to make the mental anguish or problem go away, but also their time and resources. So many times salespeople miss out on sales opportunities and have their proposals rejected because they did not clearly identify TMR (time, money and resources) available.

And the third sales qualifier is commitment. It takes commitment to invest time, money and resources to make problems go away and it takes someone that can make the decision to invest that money and solve the problem. Too many times, salespeople lose an opportunity simply because they fail to understand exactly who the decision maker is or how to accurately judge the decision maker's commitment.

Yes the Three Sisters of Hope, Faith and Charity are beautiful to look at first thing in the morning, but when it comes to selling:

Hope is not a strategy.

Faith is mis-placed in the complete honesty of prospects

And charity begins at home, which means make sure that you are getting what you need from a prospect before you provide them the information they need.

Happy Selling!

Tags: Sales Skills, Selling Attitude, Selling, Sales Strategies, Sales Strategy, Skills, Sales Tips, Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Activities

COMMENTS

Great post, Tony. I've forwarded it around to some of my peers.
Two questions for you.
1. What about "Timing"? A lot of people throw around the acronym B.A.N.T. Budget, Authority, Need, Timing when talking about qualifying.
Many times, prospects say that the timing isn't right. It usually just means that they don't have some other resources available to them to take advantage of the offering. So, they need to work that out. Often times, it's just an excuse for not having enough "pain" either. So, interested in your thoughts on that.
2. What do you recommend when a prospect "just wants to see" what you have to offer. Many times, I'll tell them that "we help all kinds of people with all kinds of internet marketing related issues. Instead of me guessing exactly what your challenges are, it might make sense to let me ask you a bunch of questions. Then, based on that and my experiences helping others with their internet marketing related challenges, I will make a recommendation for you." Some people still push back. What do you recommend in that situation?

posted @ Monday, June 30, 2008 4:50 PM by peter caputa

Timing? Some would say that timing is everything in selling. I would say that often a great sales person will make the timing right by helping buyers buy. Not necessarily what they don't need or want but what they don't realize. I spent several years in the insurance business and I can't begin to tell you how many people didn't realize the financial strain they were placing on others simply because they had a non-supportive mindset about insurance. So timing comes into play when the motivation to buy is obvious. As to prospects that 'just want to see'. I love these situations because now I can ask 'what happens once you see something that causes you to say, wow that is exactly what I'm looking for. Forget about me for a second. Forget that I sell what you are looking for. Let's help you decide first if you need what you say you are looking for. Then I start to ask questions to help them discover if their want is really a need.

posted @ Monday, June 30, 2008 5:10 PM by

Great post.

Tony,

kindly suggest the tactics to create and close deals for investment/insurance plans.

sometime, people wants to invest but do not give time for a meeting because of their busy scheudle.

How to deal with such prospects and close the deal.

posted @ Monday, December 15, 2008 12:09 AM by Loveleen Arora

Closing deals with people that dont have time to meet is certainly impossible. So the right end of the problem is dealing with why they don't have time to meet. Usually that means that the sales person hasn't given the prosect a compelling enough reason to meet and so they blow the salesperson off with an objection like: 'I don't have time'. So in today's market place a positional statment or a compelling reason to meet might sound something like: I work with people that are scared of the impact that the current economic crises is having on their long term security. Typically there are two major concerns: 1) losing money they can't affort to lose and 2) Uncertainty in the direction they should now take to begin gaining back what they've lost. Prospect, which of those two issues are you most concerned about? Start with that and see where that takes you.

Good luck

posted @ Thursday, December 18, 2008 7:01 AM by Tony Cole

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