Sales Tips

The theme for this week’s High Octane Minute podcasts is selling accessories. Tagging onto that, this post is a deep look at one accessory. I have chosen the small cargo nets for pickup trucks; they hold smaller cargo against the front of the truck bed. My hope is that those selling pickup trucks will benefit directly, and others will learn how to take a deeper look at any accessory they sell.

Cargo nets are great for holding things in one place. Think of all the things you would not want in the cab of your truck or the seating area of your SUV, yet you don’t want bouncing around loose either. Here are a few for the pickup truck:
1. Balls – these little devils were made to roll and bounce around. You don’t need that going on in the cab while you drive, and you sure don’t want to risk making a no-look pass to another vehicle by leaving it loose in the truck bed. Slam dunk it into the cargo net and you score a safe trip home.
2. Sweaty clothes – Exercise is a wonderful thing for the body and the mind. But after a long game, hike, bike ride, etc. that exercise residue may not be welcome in the cab of your new truck. The car behind you probably doesn’t appreciate your Under Armour on her windshield either. Just stick it in the net for a safe and smell-free ride home.
3. Muddy shoes or cleats – Motorcycle and hunting boots are likely to stay where you put them in the truck bed, but children’s shoes can get just as dirty and bounce around the back of your truck.
4. Just about any light thing made of metal – I wish I had a dollar for every seat punctured by a loose screwdriver. If it is made of metal, chances are it can cause damage to your interior. Bed liners help protect the appearance of the bed from scratches, but that doesn’t stop things from bouncing around. The last thing anyone needs is loose metal gaining velocity in back of their truck.
5. An empty crock pot coming back from a potluck. Might as well put the serving spoon in there too.
6. Plastic beach toys – light enough to fly out of the truck bed, sandy enough to make you want to jump out of the cab when junior starts banging them around.
7. Picture frames – the corners are perfect for scratching up the interior, but they ride flat up against the front of the bed when held in the net.
8. Trash from a picnic or family outing. You did the right thing by bringing the trash bag and carrying out what you brought in, but it’s too light to just stick in the bed and you sure don’t want it in the cab.
9. The bonus - Anything you want to keep away from the kids while you are driving. You can honestly tell them it is in a safe place.

From this list we can put together a list of trigger words that would indicate a need for the accessory is likely. When we hear these triggers we think of the accessory.
1. Kids – dirty shoes and toys
2. Soccer, baseball, basketball, volleyball, or football
3. Hiking, biking, hunting, fishing, and other outdoor activities
4. Picnics
5. Potlucks
6. Tailgate parties
7. Beach activities
8. In a hurry (toss things in the net)

We can start to formulate some softly probing questions that might release trigger words.
1. What are some of your favorite outdoor activities?
2. Are any of your kids involved with sports?
3. Do you ever have a need to transport food for things like picnics, potlucks, or tailgate parties?
4. Do you like the beach?

You can work on your own methods of setting up the opportunity to ask softly probing questions. A common method is to point to how you or someone else uses the product and then ease into the shopper’s situation. Another method is to ask them what they have planned for the weekend, or if they have a big trip coming up. This can help ease them into telling you about their lifestyle. From there you can better match the shopper’s needs to the accessory.

How active the shopper is today is not important. You are selling them a vehicle that will help make their life better and make them more confident. Give them all the accessories they need to live the life they want, which is not necessarily the life they have. Explain benefits in terms of what they will be able to do. Don’t limit the discussion to what they do now. No one needs a cargo net to watch Wheel of Fortune. But you are greatly enhancing their life if you sell them a product and a vision of themselves that provides greater happiness than a night in front of the TV.

Be ready to overcome objections. “I’ll just buy it later” can be answered with a negative eliminator, “I’d hate to have your new-truck experience shattered by something getting scratched inside or bouncing out of the bed and causing an accident. Let’s get you what you need to get going with your active lifestyle.” Remind them of the negative they face without the cargo net and show them how having the net eliminates that negative.

Another method of overcoming objections is with positive providers. Remind them of the positive improvement they want and that is only comes from adding the accessory. “A truck brings freedom to enjoy an active, healthy outdoor lifestyle. It frees up your body to go where you want to and bring all your cherished toys and gear with you. Having a proper and safe place to put everything brings peace of mind and let’s your emotional side worry less while your body takes it on a vacation.”

Selling accessories can be fun, easy, and rewarding. A simple cargo net can add to both the utility of the vehicle and the vision the shopper has for themselves. They may see themselves as more responsible, and more organized. They will definitely enjoy their outings more and have fewer problems wondering where to put things. These benefits don’t just happen because someone makes a product like the cargo net. They happen because sales professionals enhance their customers’ quality of life.

Learning what your customer is afraid of and providing reassurance may be essential to closing the deal. The origin of customer fear may be a past experience, a story they heard, or something their imagination dreamt up. At the end of the day, you need to have found it and dealt with it.

Product quality is a common fear when consumers are shopping for durable goods. Some brands come with product quality fears baked in, but every product has some customers considering purchase who are worried about the likelihood of failure. Assuming that your customer is worried about quality may lead to an unintentional injection of fear. Assuming that they don’t could mask a serious impediment to the close. The solution is to not assume. 

Show the shopper some of the ways quality has improved from previous versions or is better relative to a competing brand. This gives you an opportunity to gauge the shopper’s interest in quality issues and opens the door for you to ask the shopper if they have had experience with related products or heard stories about them. “I am certainly glad I don’t have to sell those products today” signals that you are open to talking about the issue, care about your shoppers, and are confident in your product.

Some shoppers fear the reaction of others. Good sales people add a great deal of value in this area. These fears are an open opportunity for up selling:

•    “This engine has plenty of power for what you are planning to do, but the larger engine really makes a statement.” 

•    “In this community, not everyone approves of an SUV, but this hybrid logo on the side wipes all of that out and sends a clear message that you care about your community as well as your family.”

•    “There will always be some chance involved in who catches the biggest fish, but there is nothing left to chance about pride of ownership when you buy the best boat.”

Fear of financial commitment may be offset by energy savings, reduced maintenance costs, and lower repair risk. White goods can often pay for themselves over and over. A new refrigerator leads to less spoiled food. A new washer leads to longer lasting clothes. A new stove or oven leads to better meals at home and fewer nights out at expensive restaurants. 

Motor homes lead to fewer nights in hotels. A new boat that brings the shopper closer to his kids may be more important than bowling night. Your product is going to enhance the shopper’s life more cost effectively than something they are doing now, even if that something is not directly related to the purchase decision.

The better you listen to your shopper the better chance you have of identifying her fears and understanding how to overcome them.

Before presenting data to a customer, think about what your response will be if they are not satisfied with the number. If the customer says, “I’m looking for better gas mileage.” You can respond with a trim or model that will provide improved gas mileage. For every piece of data you present or the shopper may ask for, consider what your response will be if that data is found to be displeasing. This is the kind of thing good sales people work on when they are not in front of customers so they can perform well when they are.

If you think your customer is looking for a combination that just does not exist, you can help him frame the decision in a yes-no-yes fashion. “Yes, I can get you into a truck that will provide you with the 10% increase in fuel economy. It will cost you the ability to tow your brother-in-law’s larger boat. I can help you with that trade-off decision.” If the vehicle gets 20 MPG and gas costs $3.00 per gallon, then you will pay $15,000 for gas over the next 100,000 miles. “Ten-percent better fuel efficiency is going to save you $1,500 over the next 100,000 miles. It sounds to me like you two are real close and might take that boat out 75 times over the life of this truck, making it just $20 per trip, and you have the added satisfaction of knowing you have that extra power every mile you ever drive this vehicle for whatever opportunity may present itself.”

You have gone from being the sales person who can’t give him what he wants to the only one who has given him what he really needs, a way to be sure he is making the right purchase decision.

The math here may look tricky, but tools are available today to allow anyone to handle this type of challenge. With a programmable calculator or spreadsheet, the formula can be set into the machine one time. The sales person only needs to put in the numbers as called for in the calculator. Sales people never need to actually perform a mathematical calculation or take the risk of doing one wrong.

The calculator only needs to be set up once by someone who does have the ability. The resulting benefits will be reoccurring. Every time you deliver data, you do it with confidence. Every time the customer is faced with competing trade-offs, you are the person who can help them through that decision or rationalization.

When a customer wants more refrigerator space than can be purchased at the price they want to spend, you can make it your problem and cut your price, or you can recognize that they need help getting through their decision making problem. “That extra cubic foot is probably going to mean you can bring home two gallons of milk instead of just one and save yourself that aggravating and expensive extra trip to the store. That extra foot of space is going to cost you $1.00 per month over the life of this refrigerator and probably save you at least two extra trips to the store every month. That’s 50¢ per trip. At $3.00 per gallon and 25 miles per gallon, the gas alone is 12.5 ¢ per mile. Two miles to the store and two miles back means the gas cost you as much as you would have paid for the refrigerator and you got nothing for your time and the wear on your car. I want to make sure we deliver the refrigerator that is going to save you money and enhance your quality of life for years to come.”

If there is no one at the store who can set this up, it may be worth hiring an expert to help identify data presentation situations, put the right tools together for the sales team, train the team on how to use the calculators and provide support.

Today, math problems are easily eliminated, but decision making problems are torturing our customers through their shopping process. Decision making problems are causing them to make poor decisions resulting in low sales satisfaction. In many cases it is causing them to exit the shopping process altogether, a decision that is bad for everyone.

Durable goods are products that come with performance data and cost data. There is no getting around the need to present this data, and shopping problems are going to surface. Today, sales people don’t need to know the math to be able to eliminate these problems; they just need enough empathy to listen and the right tools to do the job. Helping shoppers make good decisions leads to higher gross profits, higher close rates, and much higher job satisfaction.

For those who want the math from the truck story:

The formula is cost per gallon * miles / miles per gallon = cost. This is how we got to $15,000 dollars for gas over the first 100,000 miles.

Another program would help you know that the difference between 20 MPG and 22 MPG is 10% and another would show that 10% of $15,000 is $1,500.

Finally, $1,500 / 75 trips = $20 cost per trip.

Each of these steps can be programmed and trained to individually, and the whole mess can be put into one process to eliminate the steps. It does not have to be an either/or decision.