As the most prominent US politician Benjamin Franklin said: "Time is money." Therefore, we turn from words to action immediately.
Newcomers to the business inevitably face many difficulties every day, and believe me, tax accounts are not the biggest of these surprises. The path to success is not carpeted, and all successful entrepreneurs know this rule firsthand.
Do you know everything about sales techniques? Do you know how to communicate with potential customers and generally recognize them? Do you know in person all their fears, hopes and expectations about you?
If so, then we can only truly be happy for you. If at least one of the points has cast doubt on you, continue reading and you will find answers to your questions.
From biography
Who is Stephen Schiffman? Say this name in the company of any successful entrepreneurs, and you will immediately receive an answer to your question.
Stephan Schiffman, Director of DEI Sales Training Systems, knows exactly how to sell in order to make a profit.
For 40 years now, the company of the famous business sales trainer has been engaged in helping to attract customers to companies with completely different starting positions and opportunities. Among the client base of Stephen Schiffman's company were such giants as Chemical Bank, Manufacturer's Hanover Trust and Motorola, included in the Fortune Global 500 rating, and startups, which were promoted largely thanks to the help of Schiffman trainings.
If you think of yourself in the field of sales, but don’t know where to start, you just need to get acquainted with the main works of the largest American mentor-businessman. If you just wonder how human psychology works, read on anyway. You can find a lot of interesting things for yourself, which you probably did not know about yet.
Five business reference books
Any businessman, entrepreneur, sales agent and person interested in the field of business, it will be useful to get acquainted with the main books of Stephen Schiffman, in which you can find answers to the most urgent questions.
1: “25 sales skills, or What is not taught in business schools”
- Who should definitely read this book?
If you are new to business or have recently noticed that things are not going as well as you would like, check out this book. It is written in a living "human" language, structured and pleasing to the eye. The author of the book appreciates your and your time and does not allow empty talk. Just the thing. At the end of each described skill, a brief summary is made, which would be nice to write out in a notebook. This way you get a whole page of real practical tips. This will help you not get bogged down in the problems that absolutely all beginner (and even very experienced) entrepreneurs face.
We will give for illustrative purposes only a few tips on sales techniques taken from this book.
Beware of tips from the internet. Creating a website is too simple - and therefore it is not easy to find a good website that provides sales agents with relevant verified data. Fear tips from the internet.
Make the most of the situation “I did not foresee this.” The desire to be corrected can be an extremely effective strategy for collecting information. Use it to get a potential customer to react.
Do not put it all at once. Resist the temptation to lay out all the materials at the first meeting; leave yourself a reason to meet with the client again.
Use your email wisely. Follow the ten commandments of electronic epistolary etiquette.
Do not pile everything up. Try not to overwhelm your customer with the flow of information about your products. This will turn him away from you.
© S. Shiffman “25 Sales Skills, or What They Don't Teach in Business Schools.”
2: Golden Rules of Sales
The book is called: “Golden Rules of Sales: 75 techniques for successful cold calls, compelling presentations and commercial offers that cannot be abandoned.” The name is long, but it fully reflects the essence of the text inside.
We’ll talk about cold calls a little later. In general, this book contains the sales philosophy of the author himself. To understand it will be interesting and useful.
The foundation of Stephen Schiffman's philosophy
What is the biggest business problem in Russia?
Many people in our country are looking at people involved in entrepreneurship. There are justifiable reasons for this unhealthy skepticism. In the view of many of our citizens, business is built on the principle: to achieve benefits at all costs. At the same time, analyzing Stephen Schiffman’s book “Golden Rules of Sales”, one will have to look at usual things in a completely different way.
- What is the sales area for?
The main idea of the author is that the business should satisfy the demand of the consumer. And the businessman, in turn, must make every effort to identify the client’s problem, find a way to solve it and ultimately solve it.
As you can see, this philosophy goes beyond the generally accepted ideas about business. High-quality business, according to Schiffman, should solve the problems of people, and not create them.
- Customer study is the foundation of a successful business
To solve a client’s problem, you should thoroughly study his portrait, needs and approach to solving the problem. Only through direct dialogue and analysis can we determine the need of the client and understand how to satisfy it. Of course, the dialogue should be preceded by a high-quality preparation of the conversation itself. It is necessary to write out the questions that you are going to discuss with a potential client in advance.
All questions should be divided into 6 groups.
- What do you do?
- How do you do this?
- Where and when do you do it?
- Why are you doing it this way?
- Who are you doing this with?
- How can we help you do it better?
- Do not dissemble with a future customer
You should not think up problems of the client or try to convince him that he has them. The main thing is honesty and openness of intent. The client needs you then in order to change his life for the better, and not make money on it. Examine your client, not hypnotize him.
This is the foundation on which Stephen Schiffman builds his business. The Golden Rules of Sales is a practical guide that summarizes several works by the author. In it you will find answers to many questions, including:
- how to survive failures;
- how to motivate yourself;
- how to build your business planned, not trusting the will of chance.
Knowing the basics of this guide will be equally useful for both startups and advanced businessmen.
3: “25 of the most common sales mistakes and how to avoid them”
Mistakes in business are inevitable, but rather fortunately than unfortunately. It is possible and necessary to learn from mistakes, but everything that does not kill makes us stronger, according to F. Nietzsche.
However, it is still better to be prepared for difficult situations, to know the pitfalls and be able to get around them if possible. This is precisely what the third book of the American business coach Stephen Schiffman teaches. In particular, you will find practical tips on how to implement various techniques in your field. We will confine ourselves to providing only a few, the most extravagant, in our opinion, examples:
Mistake number 1: Do not listen to a potential client. You can provide important information ... but in the end, the decision must be made by the client, not you. Ideally, you should know what you need in order for the customer to make a sale to himself.
Mistake # 2: Treating a customer as an adversary. Do not follow the ridiculous advice that you can often hear that you must guide the client before he guides you. This is a rude, arrogant, antisocial and unprofessional approach.
Mistake # 3: Chasing a sale. Work with any client is cyclical. You first look for the client himself, then find out his problem, explain how you can help him, and conclude a deal at the end. The main mistake of many is that they play "distillation", forgetting that each stage is important.
Mistake number 4: belittle yourself. You are a professional. There is no reason to humiliate yourself in front of the client instead of working with him to solve the problem.
Mistake # 5: Take rejection to heart. Whether you understand it now or not, the main obstacle to the perception of the failure problem is not what the client thinks of you, but what you think of yourself.
© S. Shiffman “The 25 Most Common Mistakes in Sales and How to Avoid Them.”
4: Telemarketing
Even a little acquaintance with the works of Schiffman, it is already possible to understand how important the American sales coach pays to telephone conversations.
If you have ten minutes a day, you can make a breakthrough in phone sales!
© S. Shiffman Telemarketing.
In Telemarketing by Stephen Schiffman, you can find answers to the following questions:
- how to master the five ways to increase income;
- how to use calls to your advantage and how to track them;
- how to achieve your goals;
- how to use “how” and “why” to your advantage;
- how to avoid four types of failures;
- how to make small changes for a big increase in income.
5: The Cold Calling Technique by Stephen Schiffman
The sole purpose of a cold call is to get consent for a business meeting. The goals of a business meeting are to re-meet or close a deal. The goal of each step of the sales process is to move to the next stage. If your actions do not help you with this, then you are doing something wrong.
© S. Shiffman “Cold Calling Technique”
- What is it and why is it needed
As you can see from the quote, the goal of a cold call is to get a business meeting. But why do they need to be done?
Cold calls are the best and most economical way to organize a constant search for potential customers.
Without constant customer acquisition, sales will not grow, and therefore, a business cannot be considered successful and advanced. In his book, Stephen Schiffman best compares this situation with collecting alms: you can stand all day with outstretched hands - and they will give you a penny. Or you can stand with a mug, a bell and a sign “Give Christ for the sake” and earn much more.
- The main difficulties when talking with strangers
What is the main difficulty in communicating with a potential client? What difficulties do you face in a telephone conversation?
Answering the first question, Stephen mentions the status quo.
The status quo is what people are doing now. If you understand this, you can succeed. We rarely have to fight a real competitor. Usually we struggle with the current situation, with the status quo. Remember: most of your potential customers are happy with what they have, otherwise they would call you!
© S. Shiffman “Cold Calling Technique”
Based on this, the second question immediately arises. What to do if your client’s status quo is quite comfortable with him and doesn’t want to change anything? The “Cold Calling Technique” by Stephen Shiffman will tell you how, when, how much and where to look for customers, he will explain “on the fingers” the principle of the human psyche and help to cope with all the difficulties in attracting customers. Again, this is not just theoretical material, it is a direct guide to action.
The big bonus of the book is that all the dialogues described are taken by Steve literally from his own practice. You can and even need to learn from them, as in a primer.
To summarize, we can conclude the following: Stephen Schiffman's philosophy and his sales manuals can be the key that will finally open the way for you into the boundless world of entrepreneurship.