High Trust Selling

WISDOM IN A NUTSHELL
HIGH TRUST SELLING

Make more money in less time with less
stress

By
Todd Duncan

Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville 2002
ISBN 0 7852 6393 4
252 pages

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High Trust Selling Page 2
www.bizsum.com 2001 - 2003 Copyright BusinessSummaries.com
Book and author web site: http://www.hightrustselling.com


The Big Idea

If youre serious about the business of selling, if you are tired of living from one
sale to the next, and you want to keep clients for life, then read this book and
apply these valuable lessons that add value to what you are selling, and to your
life. The whole premise is to serve fewer clients a high quality experience and
build long-lasting relationships, resulting in more free time to spend with your
family and friends, less stress, greater income, and genuine success for you!

1. The Law of the Iceberg
The true measure of success is invisible to your clients

To begin, you need a firm foundation or reason for being. Lets take the
pharmaceutical giant, Merck. This company makes, among other drugs, low-cost
AIDS drugs for patients in poorer countries. By this example you have to
understand that selling and business is more about service than about making
money. Your purpose has got to be deeper than just earning a profit. People are
more motivated when they know they are doing something that makes a
difference.

If you dont have a strong sense of purpose in what you do, you will be heading
fast down the wrong direction, and will end up hating yourself when you look in
the mirror.

Clarity in purpose in your life and why you are doing what you do is essential.
Without it you will burn out, feel frustrated, and put too many things on your plate.

Application to sales leadership: Sit down with your team and have individual one-
on-one sessions with each member to make them think about their own personal
vision and how it integrates with the company vision.

Keep in mind some people will realize that sales may not be the right profession
for them.

2. The Law of the Summit
Your direction is a result of your perception

Take a new perspective on failure. You will never achieve your peak if you are
afraid of taking a risk. Think of failure as a temporary setback, not a dead-end.
J ust like going on a lot of blind dates before you meet the right person, you need
to see your prospecting in sales the same way.

Every failure is supposed to be an opportunity to learn something, not a reason
to give up. Understand that failure is ok. It is perfectly normal. Failure is your
greatest teacher. Failure is the force that compels you to climb higher.

If youve lost the trust of a client, have you tried to win him back?

Sales leadership application:

As a leader, be big enough to admit your own mistakes. Help others on the team
perceive failure differently. Have debriefings and post-mortems to learn from
failures and give them the freedom to try again.

3. The Law of the Shareholder
Successful salespeople buy stock in themselves

If you think like you own the business, you will start to make more money quickly.
Theres nothing like responsibility and accountability to get your butt moving.
Employees only do what is expected of them and nothing more, but business
owners will go out on a limb to please a client, and try to make the best use of
their time. A business owner will invest money in order to make more money.
Shell call on the right prospects instead of just any prospect. A CEO puts people
before profits, reputation before revenue, schedules priorities, and thinks about
long-term strategies. Success is never accidental. It has to happen by design.

Top ten investments you can make in your future:
1. Invest in your relationships with those you love.
2. Invest in a long-term personal development program. Get enough training.
Find yourself a mentor. Read and keep learning.
3. Invest in a sales coach.
4. Invest in a competent right-hand assistant. This will free up time for you to
do relationship building with the right clients. Your assistant should take
care of all the things that take up too much of your valuable time.
5. Invest in your personal image.
6. Invest in a personal financial plan.
7. Invest in a regular exercise program.
8. Invest in a client-retention program. This means having creative marketing
tools, innovative follow-up, value-added gifts, and making use of client
feedback.
9. Invest in a library
10. Invest in technology

4. The Law of the Ladder
The success you achieve is directly related to the steps you conceive.

If you dont have a good plan, then you are planning to fail. When it comes to
selling, hope is not a strategy. Once you begin to develop clarity in your future,
you become more productive in your present.

You need to take time to think and write down your Core Four. These are your
core plans namely, your Life plan, your Business plan, your Time plan, and your
Client plan.

Life planning must include your purpose, values, vision, short-term and long-term
goals, plus the daily activities you need to accomplish to move step by step
towards success.

Your business plan:
Determine volume goals (monthly and annually)
Determine daily numbers/targets
Establish lead generation and management strategies
Establish standards for prospects and clients
Employ target marketing

Your time plan: invest the majority of your working hours selling to prospects and
clients who have given strong indications they are satisfied with the product,
share your core values, and desire a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship.

Your client plan should concentrate more on serving the low maintenance-high
return clients, and the low maintenance-repeat-business clients.

With all these plans written down, you can then gear yourself up for
implementation using the idea of the 90-day burn. Focus on your goals and
nothing else for the next 90-days, before your actual sales launch.

5. The Law of Leverage
Youre less likely to fail when youve told others you will succeed.

Let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. Announce your goal to others who will be
able to check on your progress. This means putting a deadline on your step-by-
step action plan. You will follow through when there are colleagues and people
around you who can engage in friendly competition with you. Look for
professionals in your field who will hold you accountable to every date you set for
yourself.

6. The Law of the Hourglass
You must make your moves before your time runs out.

Treat time as a resource, as important as money. Mike Vance of Disney had to
think out of the box and devise ways to make Disneyland more profitable by the
hour. The park began a tradition of holding high school graduation nights to
increase revenues at little operational cost. A Magic Kingdom Club organized
club nights at a discount and special programs. This move generated enough
popularity to open the park every day. This is one example of how you can
exploit the time you have and thereby increase revenue.

You need to value each working hour as much as a doctor, lawyer, or graphic
designer does. If you dont put a value on your hour, you will waste time on many
unprofitable tasks. You will notice the 80/20 rule applies to time. Eighty per cent
of your major earnings may come from twenty percent of your clients. You need
to work smarter and determine the right 20 percent and concentrate on those
who are truly worth your time.

Notice how the 80/20 rule applies to a lot of things:
80 percent of the days interruptions come from the same 20 percent of
the people
80 percent of the decisions in meetings come from 20 percent of the
meeting time
80 percent of the company sales come from 20 percent of the sales force
80 percent of your staff headaches come from 20 percent of your
employees
80 percent of your success comes from 20 percent of your efforts

Think about it. The more time you spend working means less time for your loved
ones. Your life doesnt have to be all about selling. If you determined which 20
percent (clients, tasks, meetings) really matter, and concentrate your efforts on
the right client relationships, then you can easily cut down your work hours from
70 to 35 in one week, and still make the same amount of money, perhaps even
more.

7. The Law of the Broom
To build your business up, you must first clean it up.

Stop spending your time reacting to situations that arise throughout your day. If
you spend everyday putting out fires, you wont have time for the important, long-
term work of building a good relationship of trust with your more profitable clients.

Be more proactive and practice time-blocking. Plot out your entire week and
chart your exercise, family time, meetings, lunches, rest, lead calling, emailing,
and team building. Use time to plan, prospect, follow-up, sell, resell, and add
value to your key clients and partners.

Spend more time improving your product knowledge, generating leads,
identifying prospects, improving presentations, creating marketing material,
follow-up materials, and managing customer objections.

Do not waste all your time doing filing, paperwork, faxing, copying, managing
crises, dealing with high-maintenance/low-profit customers, telephone
interruptions, email interruptions, gossiping, taking long lunches, and hanging out
with whiners.

8. The Law of the Dress Rehearsal
Practicing your lines elevates the level of your performance.

The Approach
Your opening lines are the most important ones. You need to build up your
passion for your product, and immediately give what value it will add to your
clients business. The aim is to get an appointment and get them curious enough
to want to meet up with you and find out more.

The Interview
Dont keep on trying to close. You need to listen first and see what your prospect
really wants from your product. Selling is about providing a solution and
addressing a need. If you havent established there is a need, you wont get
anywhere near the close.

The Solution
Script your solutions to a clients specific needs. In general, most want to trust in
your experience, knowledge, integrity, professionalism, accessibility, flexibility,
and responsiveness.

Concerns about your company normally include location, delivery, technical
support, reputation, innovativeness, financial strength, market share, product
line, and research and development.

The Action
Getting the yes comes after you have understood the prospects needs,
answered all their questions, provided solutions, and confirmed their indication
that they would like to move to the next step.

Managing objections
Practice playing out different scenarios where a prospect is not yet convinced to
buy into your product. You need to be prepared for their objections. The more
ready scripts in your head tailored to a particular prospect, the greater your
chances of success will be.

9. The Law of the Bulls Eye
If you dont aim for the best prospects, youre likely to do business with any
prospect.

It only takes a few minutes to make a list of your best prospects. This list will
save you a lot of time and energy in the long run. The best prospects are low
maintenance/ high profit prospects. If they are easy to serve because of a high
level of professionalism, have a great desire to partner with you, and have
efficient business practices these are the ones that go on your list. Even low
maintenance/ low profit types are fine because they eventually grow into the
relationship and offer more referrals.

High trust selling has a lot to do with constant and quick communication with your
prospects. If it takes you 3 weeks to follow up on a prospect, then you will
undoubtedly lose him to someone faster and smarter at selling. Sometimes you
wont get an order for months, but if you keep in touch and add value each time,
they may just select you as the vendor when their first choice screws up.

Tips on high trust selling
Use the name of another client to build trust and credibility
Send a letter in advance of a phone call
Letters must contain a unique value proposition to capture interest
Keep phone calls down to 90 seconds and ask for an appointment for a
presentation
Send a thank-you letter and a testimonial from an existing client to
prospects two days before meeting with them

Five methods of getting prospect referrals:
Never leave a successful appointment without seeking referrals
Track clients with repurchase cycles. Never leave the appointment without
determining the next order and seeking referrals
Network to broaden sales and partnership opportunities
J oin organizations and clubs
Prospects may have related businesses and may be able to refer you

Writing the approach letter
Grab attention in the first paragraph
Tell them who you are in the second paragraph
Let them know how you got their names in the third paragraph (use the
name of the referral source)
Offer the unique value proposition, provide substantial evidence to set you
apart from the competition,
Suggest the exclusivity of your offer in the fourth paragraph and seek the
next action

8 simple steps for setting an appointment:
Call the prospect and professionally introduce yourself, making reference
to your letter
Convey that your referrer asked you to call and introduce a possible
solution to a need in his life or business
Ask the prospect if he has 90 seconds for you to explain
State the purpose of your call
Ask for a 30-minute meeting to explore possible opportunities for
partnership
Ask for a convenient time to meet
Confirm the goals of the meeting
Thank the prospect and assure him it will be time well spent

10. The Law of the Scale
If you want more business, have fewer clients.

Your aim as a salesperson is not to satisfy the needs of everyone but to secure
the loyalty and trust of a few good clients.

The scale of sales is made up of the monetary value on one side (future
business) and financial obligations and negative experiences on the other side.

How do you balance the scale in your favor? Here are some steps you can
achieve
Take an honest inventory. Do you really know your clients? Do you spend
more time building relationships or trying to please capricious customers?
When was the last time you did a thorough analysis and planning
session?
Measure your productivity over the next month on the sales scale.
Determine the maximum number of clients you can invest in and still give
each the time and energy they deserve.
Begin investing in your top clients today.
BE PATIENT.

11. The Law of Courtship
For a relationship to be right on the outside, it must first be right on the inside.

Sales professionals would increase their sales dramatically if they did a better job
of dating their prospects before saying, I do to a sales relationship.

If the essence of your relationship is wrong, you will spend 90 percent of your
time on form.

Successful salespeople
Write down questions in advance of meeting their prospect
Have a protocol for how and when to ask these questions
Have a different process for determining the potential of a relationship
than for securing and sustaining one
Have an ongoing questioning process to ensure client satisfaction and
relationship growth
Ask questions for the purpose of customizing solutions
Ask questions for the purpose of meeting needs

All the sales training in the world will not create lasting success if your prospects
dont trust you.

12. The Law of the Hook
A captivated audience stays to the end

J ust like a great film that keeps audiences glued to the screen, your presentation
and selling process should have the important thing, get them hooked on you!

To have great audience impact, you need to show the product inspires you.
Motivate your prospect to act, and be very professional. You need to establish if
they want a long-term relationship. Be considerate of their opinions. Your
sincerity should shine through and if you are a trustworthy person, and if your
product is reliable, then you should have no problem making a favorable impact.

13. The Law of Incubation
The most profitable relationships mature over time.

J ust like our dating analogy, before getting into a marriage, you need to have a
good long courtship, and once you get married, its really only the beginning.

Adding value after a sale demonstrates the relationship is more important
than revenue, and the person is more important than profits.

You must do more to keep a client than you did to get the client.

Develop a tier ranking for clients, from VIP to premier and standard.

Commit to a specific investment for each tier.

Decide your annual contact plan for each tier.

As in any relationship, the better in tune you are with your partners needs,
the more easily you can meet that persons needs.

14. The Law of the Encore
The greater the performance, the louder the applause.

All sales happen as a result of trust
High trust is a result of genuine, consistent service.

How much is the cost of bad service?
Well, when you lose one customer, typically that unsatisfied customer will tell up
to ten people about your bad service. These people will go on and tell maybe a
few more. Thats losing more prospective business at more than ten times the
cost of one customer.

So what can you do to improve service standards?
Set your own personal standards
Publish your core values and service standards
Take only the business you can handle
Survey your customers before, during, and after the sale
Under-promise and over-deliver.
Keep clients informed
Master the art of client recovery. Apologize, tell them what you will do to
correct the problem, and communicate. Give incentives for them to give
you another chance.
Do whatever it takes. Nordstrom is famous for doing this. Its employees
have a budget to use at their discretion for taking care of customers. If
something has to be delivered on a Sunday, then Sunday it is. Go the
extra mile and youll have a client for life.

High Trust Selling

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