Recently I watched a video on YouTube.com which was about selling and marketing. It was a real eye opener for me as I’m more an operations sort of guy and certainly not a salesman! I’ve spent days, maybe weeks, of my time over the years attending sales courses and being taught about features and benefits of items I was selling. You know the thing: tell me the features and benefits of this ball-point pen. 

It seems so easy until you visit a customer who then asks questions that you can’t answer. A real salesman would probably have an answer but most intelligent people can see through that. 

That was until recently when I was working as the Head of an International School in the Middle East. Every six to eight weeks we’d host a coffee morning for the parents to come and ask questions about anything referring to the school. The first couple of events were tortuous as I was new to the school and their questions needed the standard reply of “oh that’s a good question. Let me get clarification and I’ll get the school to call you”. As long as we got them their answer it was fine.

But then after a few more meetings, I sat down with my HR Team and discussed what questions might be fired at us at our next coffee morning. The list was long and at the meeting, I made a speech highlighting up-coming events at the school, our plans for the next few months and I made some general academic comments. (To me it was, reminiscent of the final chapter of the movie 8 Mile where Eminem steels the thunder of his opponent in the rap competition.)

My speech was longer than usual and as I finished, we asked the parents if they had any questions. The room was silent. Even the one or two who always liked to ask had nothing to say. Inside I was smiling so much as we’d worked hard to achieve this. One mother even suggested I go into politics if I could talk like this!

It seemed that we’d anticipated everything that was going to be thrown at us, having done our preparation well. 

What are we saying then? 

Well, what we’re saying is that too many Salesmen or CRM staff go to visit a client (or speak to them on the phone) with the intent on selling them a product rather than taking an interest in their business. You have to imagine what you’re going to be asked and answer it before. Referring back to the school I worked at, the issue of transport often came up. We wanted all students to come on the school transport as there was limited space in front of the school (and the bus service made a small profit for us) so we’d carefully explain the upgrades we were making to buses, such as a Wi-Fi service, to counteract the parents’ feelings that their kids got rowdy on the bus because they were bored. 

Prospective parents would come in to see the school and learn about our style of teaching. It was too easy to tell them the subjects we taught. What they wanted to hear was how their little children could grow to be future leaders, how they’d speak near-perfect English, and how they could apply to study in the United States once they graduated from our school.

One focus we had was using personal experience too. So many parents thought their child should go into a higher grade than we had allocated (for example we put a child in Grade 1 due to their age and parents wanted Grade 2. This was in Iraq and very common.) To help them understand, I would explain that my parents did this to me and one year, I was 8 or 9, my world collapsed and I could no longer keep up with the pace of the class. It devastated me. As school administrators, we could then explain the emotional trauma of this happening to a child and how we were concerned about the welfare of the child, not how quickly he could graduate! 

All of these techniques and all of this work to make a sale. Is it really worth it? As long as it benefits the company then it is. But it’s still hard work.

Keeping with the school theme, how many of us received a note on our school report that said “Could do better”. I may have received that once or twice (or more) but how could we do better?

The answer lies in the leads4biz.net website. It’s simple and takes most if the stress and strain out of buying. Simply put, we find Leads and buyers for you, and then let you know that they want to buy your product.  Just register with us and let the buyers come to you. We generate Leads for you, it’s now up to you to convert them into sales. 

For more information on making your life easier, email us at: contact@leads4biz.net