A few existing and prospective clients have expressed need for a transactional sales process – A step-by-step method that motivates a prospective customer to move from “hello” to “yes” in a single phone call or face-to-face exchange.
To date, my main focus with The Five Abilities® has been to help clients with relational selling needs, which applies to longer sales cycles that require the development of complex business cases and personal relationships. However, the principles in The Five Abilities also apply to shorter-term, transactional selling so I wanted share a helpful example.
I started my selling career in transactional telesales for American Bank Stationery. I also did cold-call selling early in my HP career and helped to design our early telesales efforts at Microsoft. All these transactional experiences contributed to the development of The Five Abilities. The commonality is that customers look for VISABILITY, CREDABILITY, VIABILITY, CAPABILITY and RELIABILITY, whether we’re doing relational or transactional sales.
Transactional selling at American Bank Stationery
We sold checks. Since a check is a check, it was by definition a commodity. Selling a product that has no obvious difference was a blessing because it forced me to learn, early in my career, how to create value for prospective customers even when my product alone fell short.
I got an early lesson from a Credit Union President in Montana who chewed me out on the phone for wasting the time of his New Accounts Manager. I was sitting in a cubicle in Portland, Oregon, selling by phone in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Alaska. This was my third attempt, in three months, with this credit union. The President grabbed the phone from his manager with the intent of making sure I never called again.
Here’s a replay of that conversation:
“Look pal – There’s no difference between your s___ and the s___ we have. The only thing I care about is getting members to buy more services and you can’t help me. Quit calling!”
I was 22 years-old with all the naivety that goes with 22, so I plowed ahead.
“What if I could help your people sell more services?”
He responded, “You stupid son-of-a-_____. You don’t want to b___-s___ me, pal.”
“I’m not trying to BS you sir. I think I can help your people sell more services.”
“Now that would be something. (Suspicion of Value) I should call your bluff.”
Weeks before this call we had a sales meeting in Portland and this topic came up from our outside salespeople. We had research that showed two main barriers to better sales performance by new accounts people. The first challenge was that most people had negative perceptions of selling. They saw it as trickery versus helping people. The second barrier was simply that they didn’t know the benefits of what they were selling.
This discussion led our VP to buy the Xerox Professional Sales Skills course for our own training and an abbreviated version that salespeople could deliver to customers. My problem was that the class was meant to be delivered in person and had never been done on the phone. Even so, that 22-year-old naivety told me I could make it work so when the credit union president said, “I should call your bluff,” I told him about our research and how our training could help his people. He responded saying,
“How long would it take and what would it cost? (Buying Signs)
“I can do the training in 90 minutes and I’d do bi-weekly check-ins after that. It’s free if you buy our checks.”
“I’m calling your bluff. You asked for it.” (Close)
That credit union had great results from the sales training. I was also able to repeat this transactional process with other financial institutions over the next year which earned me Rookie of the Year and a promotion. More importantly, it was the start of me seeing sales as a repeatable process rather than an unpredictable act.
Summary of transactional selling
We have 10-15 minutes in which to:
- Earn VISABILITY by creating a suspicion of value in the customer’s mind within 30-seconds or less.
- Earn CREDABILITY by learning and presenting information that gets customers to change their suspicion of value into acknowledgement of value such that they start offering buying signs like asking how long and how much?
- Prove VIABILITY by learning and presenting information that makes both parties comfortable that this is mutually beneficial. This is where customers start asking how things work.
- Show CAPABILITY & RELIABILITY by addressing concerns/objections such that the customer is confident with their decision. This is where the customer asks final questions to test the resolve of both buyer and seller.
- Close the sale.
Whether you’re doing transactional or relational selling, The Five Abilities® of Incredibly Successful Salespeople is what your customer is looking for.
©2015 Rick Wong – The Five Abilities® LLC
