The Kamikaze Contractor, Part 3

In the first two posts in this thread, I introduced you to a fictional contractor I called Kamikaze Ken.  If you have read those posts, you know how he got this name.   And if you have not read them yet, now would be a good time to browse them before going on.

I promised in the second episode to show how Kamikaze Ken could not only survive in a recession, but do very well.  I will keep my word in this episode!

The key to thriving in a recession is to understand your customers better than ALL of your competitors.  With this understanding, you will be able to deliver incredible levels of value.  It is these higher levels of value that are the key to your survival-no, your success-in a recession.  Higher levels of value allow you to charge what you need to charge to continue as a strong business.  They also slam the door on your value-less competitors.

I have attended many classes on HVAC sales techniques over the years-heck, I have even taught many of them myself.  As I have matured (a graceful way of saying “aged”), I have seen a steady evolution in my thought processes and practices in the area of sales techniques.  I have also noted that in most cases, sales training has not kept pace.  Too many sales courses teach good stuff, but not the most important stuff.  They teach good stuff like how to ask good questions, how to do a thorough home survey, how to present a solution (or solutions) to the prospect and so on.  Most of the courses I have attended or know of do these things, and most (but not all) do them very well.

Yet most of them leave the student with the same worn bag of tricks-the “magic questions”, the “irrefutable closes”, the “sure-fire scripts” and so on.  As a result, graduates of most sales training go back into the field well-armed with tools, but are so inwardly focused on using those tools correctly that they lose sight of the most important part of the sales process-the customer’s way of seeing things, of valuing things, of making decisions.

You cannot pick up all the signals the customers is sending you if you are focused inwardly on what YOU are going to do next and how you are going to do it.  And by the way, “Did I do it the way I was taught in class?”  You can only pick up the signals (visible and invisible) by focusing on the CUSTOMER.

Are you aware that customers in their routine conversations with sales people spill out a whole pile of cues on the values they hold, how  they sort their needs and wants, and how they reach decisions to satisfy those needs and wants?  It can be something as simple as the darting motion of the eyes in conversation, or the use of certain types of words.  It can be as complex as asking the customer specific questions to help you unpack their decision strategies.

Decision strategies are like the combination to a combination lock.  If you know the combination, you can dial it in and presto!  The lock opens. If you don’t have the combination, you can sit there all day spinning the knob until your fingers grow numb-and you won’t open the lock.

So the thing that I now teach in my sales courses is how to do just that-how to unpack a customer’s decision strategy.  Once you know how to do that, you are in a position to take the other skills you learned (like how to ask questions, how to design a good solution, how to present, and so on) and customize them to that particular customers decision strategy.

Here’s the neat thing about this: when you know a customer’s decision strategy and then present your solution the way he or she is “wired”, they don’t hear YOU talking-they hear THEMSELVES thinking!  I don’t know about you, but when I do my “self-talk”, I never argue with myself.  I consider all the options and make a decision because it is MY decision and I always accept what I tell myself.  (Dangerous sometimes, but true of all of us!)

Customers raise objections in sales calls because the sales agent has not unpacked the customer’s decision strategy.  The customer hears the SALES AGENT’S arguments, not their own.  If the sales agent could couch the solution in the customer’s decision strategy, the customer would have nothing to argue with.  Is it possible to have objection-less sales calls?

You bet!  Go to my “Services” page and click on the “Contractor Training” link, then scroll down to the last two courses listed:  “Communication Styles: A Beginner’s Guide to Neuro-Linguistics”, and “Selling More by ‘Selling’ Less.”  The course on Communication Styles is a general course to help managers get better results out of their people (or spouses to have a better marriage, or friends to get along even better, and so on), while the Selling More course is tailored specifically to sales situations.  These courses are only offered through local distributors, so if you are interested in attending one, have your distributor contact me.

Or, check back on this web page in the next few months as I will be publishing all my course material in the form of “learning kits” you can purchase and study at home, learning the skills you would learn in one of my “live” seminars.

Stay tuned, Sales Fans!