A sales trainer explains the ABC mindset: help prospects talk through active listening, sell value rather than just enable buying, and find the hidden influencers who sway decision-makers. Most products must be sold, not simply purchased.
I was doing some sales training with some young, new, up-and-coming salespeople, and I used an acronym, ABC, Always Be Closing, and they hadn't heard of it. It's been around since forever, and I just thought if that was the case, then I might just open that up a little bit for people today. ABC, Always Be Closing, it's about an attitude of selling. That puts the responsibility for communicating the value of your product on you as a member of the sales team. And so there's 3 key elements to it. Number 1 is help your prospects talk or help your people talk. If a person is open to buying your product or your service, it will usually— you'll usually be able to tell way before you get to The close of a sale. If you listen to a person and find out what it is they're asking for, you're able to sell to them, not allow them to buy. And that's a key component there, is you should always be selling to your prospects, not allowing them to dictate buying. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So help people talk. Get them to open up. Get them to communicate. One of the key aspects to active and progressive selling is listening. Your ability to be able to hear what your client or the prospects want and communicate your product's ability to be able to meet that need. Now back to the second point that I just touched on is sell, don't enable buying. Most products are sold, they're not bought. People don't go out looking for your product. You have to sell your product to them. You have to communicate to them the need and the value of it. You have to communicate to them how your resource, your product, what you're doing is going to help meet and facilitate the fulfilment of a need that they have within their organisation, their business life, or their personal life. A product like iPod is something that you want to buy. It sells itself. But if it's not a product of that level, then everything else has to be sold. You have to sell a product. You have to be involved in that. And with that, the best lead-generating things that you can participate in are things like seminars, presentations by company executives, or the good old-fashioned networking. Getting out there and schmoozing people because you are the product in a sense. You have to be able to sell and communicate To people the need for your particular resource, the product that you have. So the first one is help your people talk. The second one is sell, don't enable buying. And the third one is find the key influencers, or I like to say the hidden influencers within an organisation. They might have innocuous titles like secretary, personal assistant, database administrator, or one of my personal favourites is customer service manager. Customer service manager. And there's a difference between the decision maker, the key decision maker, and the key influencer. The key influencer is the one that slides across to the decision maker those products or resources that will help them go forward as a company. The influencer is the person who's already made a series of decisions before it gets to the decision maker about what products or resources, goods or services they're going to see come across the table at them. So 3 things: always be closing, help your prospects or help your people talk. Number 2 is sell, don't enable buying. And number 3 is find the hidden influencers or the key influencers. Sell, don't enable buying. And number 3 is find the hidden influencers or the key influencers.
