Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this AED University webinar. My name is Don Buttrey. I'm your host. I'm with Sales Professional Training. And the title of this webinar is Everyone in the Dealership Sells. And I'm sure if you're listening in on this, you agree with that statement. We all sell. And what we want to do is we want to maximize every precious interaction. Throughout this, this is going to be a quick webinar. But if you do have some questions, as it goes along, there's a chat box. And you can type those in, and I can address those at the end. Here's my challenge to construction equipment dealers this morning. Train and motivate everyone in your company to reinforce your dealer value and to be able to sell spontaneously and appropriately. Those are a couple of really important words, to sell spontaneously. That means that salespeople, support people have got to be able to sell on their feet, especially support people. And that it has to be appropriate. It can't be where it's like, would you like fries with that, or trying to push something, or be pushy, or this canned rote pushing for more business, which is kind of self-serving. It has to be appropriate. To do that, we want to become a selling organization. And if you think about it, as an equipment dealer, that's what you do. You sell. That's the driving factor of the organization is selling. And a lot of times, we think about the sales team, the outside sales team. But the inside sales team and the support team is equally important. The outside sales team may get the first order, but the rest of them are the result of the support team. So team selling, as a group, is vital to providing total customer satisfaction and developing lifetime customers. In fact, how well your sales and service organization communicates and works together can be a primary differentiator to set you apart from the competition. We all sell, whether it's parts and parts counter, service managers, service technicians, customer financing, customer service, all sales support. We all sell. Selling, by definition, really is this simple. It's getting someone else to want to and to do something that you want them to do. And we're all doing that in some form or another in our everyday life and in our personal lives and as we perform our primary job functions. You know, it's really true that many product support professionals have regular contact with customers. As I said, the salesperson may get that first order, but usually the rest are the result of the relationships and the performance of the sales support and the service team. These key individuals that we're focusing on today have a unique relationship of trust and credibility, which allows them to be ideally suited to recommend additional sales, discover leads, and acquire critical customer information. Sales support professionals can often, though, become reactive and transactional. And I guess that's kind of due to the nature of their sales responsibilities. However, with proper direction and skills training, they can begin to sell spontaneously and appropriately, assessing and capitalizing on every precious interaction. And that's the goal of our time today, is to really set the stage for that and to show how easy it can be to help these people get game and get skill. So to get us started for this quick one-hour webinar together, what we need to do is make sure that our focus is on the customer. It's not on just increasing revenues or increasing market share. And customer satisfaction overrides all that. Because if we satisfy the customer and we focus on the customer, then everything else tends to fall into place. I love what the great Sam Walton said. He said, there is only one boss, the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else. Some time ago, I came across a list of customer service facts that was put together by the Better Business Bureau. And I thought this would be an appropriate way to set the stage for this particular discussion and really trying to help support people have skill. Because if they have skill, they're going to be able to really satisfy the customer. And it's of utmost importance, as we look at these customer service facts. Look at this, the first one. And some of you may have heard these before, but I think it bears repeating. Dissatisfied customers tell an average of 10 other people about their bad experience. 12% tell up to 20 people. So if people are not happy with something that went on between you and them and their company, they're going to tell people. Satisfied customers tell an average of five people about their positive experience. And I want you to note the discrepancy there. The negative experience has twice the impact, sometimes even four times the impact. When somebody has a bad experience, they're going to go out and blab about it. And they're going to say, man, doing business with that dealer there, rinky dink. And they're going to say negative things. If you do a good job, they're not going to tell as many people. So we're already at a disadvantage. So this is so important. Up to 90%-- number three here says up to 90% of dissatisfied customers, they won't buy from you, and they won't even tell you why. That's why a lot of dealers have done surveys, because we've got to know why are people walking away? They're not telling us. 96% of those dissatisfied customers, they won't even complain. They may tell somebody else, but they won't tell you. Those are difficult numbers to grapple with, because we may think everything is going good, but maybe our customers are not as happy as we think. Number five kind of makes a turn here. 95% of dissatisfied customers will become loyal customers again if their complaints are handled well and quickly. And this is why our discussion today and the need for continued training, not just of your outside sales team, but of the whole inside support team that is dealing with customers every day, dealing with negative issues, complaints, and problems. The good news is, even though a lot of the statistics we were looking at at first were somewhat negative, the good news is most of them, 95% of them, will become loyal if we deal with it right. Every company makes mistakes. It's how you handle it that matters. They'll forget what you do, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. Number six kind of shows the impact of this immediate interaction that they'll have when they walk in and talk to a rental rep, or someone out on the field, or someone in your parts counter. The first 30 seconds of a phone call or a meeting sets the tone for the remainder of the contact. The last 30 seconds are critical to establishing rapport. What they're saying is, man, we've got to be on our feet, and we've got to have immediate, trained responses and skill. Number seven says, and this is where the money comes in. Providing high quality service can save your business money. The same skills that lead to increased customer satisfaction also lead to increased employee productivity. They're going to feel better about their job. They're going to feel better about their company. Eight and nine, I've heard this many times, but it's so true. It costs five times more money to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one. We've got customers that are gold to us, and we've got to see them that way. And in many industries, the quality of service is one of the few variables that can set you apart from the competition. I always say the closer your product or your service looks like your competition, the better your selling skill, the better your people have to be. Yeah, customers will pay more for that. They'll pay more to receive better service. And then good service is going to lead to increased sales. And it's going to help you as a dealership continue to grow. Because it's all about relationships. People buy from people. They buy from people they like and people that they trust. I came across this quote some time ago by Scott Robinette, and I love this. He said, developing relationships with customers is a process, not an event. And so our goal today is to help you as a dealership, to help you as individuals to see that those interaction times that you have with customers, if we have a process, if we have a way of dealing with them, and I'm not talking about some rigid, canned, five-step program, what I'm talking about is game, interaction skill. That's where relationships happen in those dynamic interactions. So a very important premise of our discussion today is identifying interaction points. Here's what I want you to do as an individual and as a dealership. Consider the interaction points that occur as your company delivers service and then list them. This is a critical list that'll be utilized and developed and perfected with cell processes for each of the interaction points that customers experience with your company. So what I want you to think about is, what are those points of interaction? Like, for example, a customer walks into your parts counter. Those first few moments, how they're received, what someone says to them, that's a point of interaction. If somebody calls and says, do you have this part in stock? And the person on the phone says, no, no, we're out of that. OK. And they hang up. That was an interaction point that just blew. We missed a golden opportunity to qualify that customer to find out what was going on. These interaction points, especially for support people, happen all the time throughout the day. And if we can identify those and really put them into practice and apply processes to them so that we're consistently responding to those repeatable interaction points that are happening all the time, then we're going to, in a very tangible way, take our company to another level. It's the same thing that happens in a manufacturing environment, where they look at their processes, they look at the things that are happening, the problems that they're dealing with, and they take each one one by one and say, OK, let's resolve this. Let's come up with a systematic way to make sure we consistently, everybody, no matter who it is, responds properly and deals with so we don't have scraps, so we don't have issues. It's the same thing when dealing with people. If we could identify those points of interaction and then have a process, and I'm going to show you that process today, a process where we could prepare and execute highly effective interactions. So here's my assignment that I'd like you to do as a follow-up immediately after this webinar with your team around the table. Or you could schedule a time in the next few days or weeks to do this, but this is kind of your double practice workshop following this webinar today. And it will be an essential foundation to powerful practical application of what you learn. This is assignment of one of two. I want you to consider your interaction points. List the proactive and reactive interaction points that your support team encounters. I want you to take your time on this. You could get a flip chart up on the wall and just start listing, a person calls in and asks about this. Somebody complains about this. We have to call a customer and tell them that the service job that was due Friday is not going to make it until next week, or that we ran into another problem. These are all, and some of those, as you can see by that example, some of those are when we have to proactively pick up the phone or go to the customer and contact them. We have to initiate that. That's a proactive interaction point. It may not be something you want to do. It may not be something you look forward to, but it is an interaction point that needs to be done. And we need to be prepared and know how to do those and even have a tool to help us prepare and execute those. And then some of them, and these are even more tough, are reactive. What I like to do is I like to make a list and then put a P next to it or an R next to it if it's reactive or proactive. A reactive one might be where a customer says, you know what, every time I call you guys up, you're out of stock on these parts, okay? And a customer might say, well, that's because you don't call, or a salesperson may say, or a support person may say, well, you really need to fix this machine. You're calling way too late and expecting us to have, and blaming the customer. And you just blew a golden opportunity. We've got to be ready for those reactive ones. And again, those are on-your-feet skills where we have to be ready with our cell defense. And I'm going to show you that today. I'm going to show you the process, which will just be a beginning to help you address these. So brainstorm. Discuss and document all the points of interaction that your company or even your particular department faces. If you're together with the parts and counter people or with the service managers, what are some of those things that happen out on the field? Maybe you get called away to another job and the customer gets all whipped out of shape that you left their facility and went and worked on somebody else's job. Those kind of things that might happen over and over. And who knows what a service manager might be saying out there if they haven't been trained, if they really haven't looked at this as this is a golden opportunity to differentiate our company. So I want you to really take your time on that and list those points of interaction. And then I'm going to show you for your assignment number two at the end of this webinar how you can really apply the process I teach you to prepare some really powerful proactive and reactive interactions with those. You know, team selling is the key here. Nothing happens until somebody sells something. The service manager, the service technician, they don't have, customer financing doesn't have anything to do if we don't get a sale. And the more we understand that as a whole team, the more we realize who's paying the checks here, the better the team's going to be at realizing how absolutely precious every one of those interactions are. Every time a customer walks in the door, every time we have some phone call or we pick up the phone, even with a routine call to a customer, it's precious. And we've got to make sure we maximize every one of those interactions. So what we're going to look at for the last part of this webinar, for the balance of this webinar, is tactical selling. And don't be afraid of that word selling. Again, selling is just interaction. It's having this back and forth dialogue with customers to help them get what they want. And maybe it would be valuable for me to kind of define what tactical selling is. It's really three things. Tactical selling, first of all, is interaction. And I love that word, interaction. What's the last part of that word? Action. If you want to get action, we need to be masters of the interaction. See, interaction is a dialogue involving communication and human behavior. And that builds relationship. That's where those relationships are sealed, and that loyalty is driven deep within the heart of the customer, is in every one of those interaction points. So selling is all about these interaction points that we have. Secondly, tactical selling. And we shouldn't be afraid of the term selling. We all sell. It's a focus. And who's the focus on? The focus is on the customer. So it's a target to help us identify and communicate perceived needs and wants. I don't know what's going on in that customer's head. We don't know what's going on in their heart, what motivates them, what drives them. So we need to get out of our own mindset and try to understand what's happening in their mindset. We've got to understand what's going on in their brain, what motivates and drives them, what's going on in their company. So many times when we think about growing sales or incremental sales or helping our field service team impact continued business and service business, that's kind of focused on us. We want to grow our business. We want to increase our sales. We've got to get out of that mindset. Yeah, that is what we need to do. Don't get me wrong. But we've got to refocus on the customer, what's in it for them. How's this going to make their life easier? Why should they buy from us? And in order to realign that focus and improve those precious interaction points, we need a process. That's where the cell process that I'm going to show you today comes into play, a process, a systematic and logical control of the dynamic interaction. Now let me slow it down here. I want to repeat that. A process is a systematic and logical control of the dynamic interaction. That almost seems like a conflict of terms. A systematic and logical control of the dynamic interaction where anything could happen. The process that I'm going to show you will empower the support person, will empower the person who is having a dynamic selling interaction with the customer. It will help make that interaction result in action. And it will also help us to maintain a focus on the customer. So what we're going to look at is the cell process. If you take the word cells and you put it in a different format, what it becomes is a simple but profound tool to help you prepare and execute your selling. This is especially valuable for proactive selling. If you have to pick up the phone and call a customer, you say, OK, man, this is a tough situation. What do I want the customer to do? What's my objective? What am I trying to accomplish here? I mean, if you don't know why you're calling them, they don't know why you're calling them. You have to think that through. What is my objective? And then what will I say when they pick up the phone? I don't want to just start going, da, da, da, or say something that'll tick them off or that'll make them think that I don't know what's going on. I've got to figure out what I'm going to say. What questions will I ask? How will I show them the value to them? How can I help them see how our conversation is directed at solving a problem for them or saving them money or making them money or improving their business? And then how will I lock action based on that interaction? Start, evaluate, leverage, lock. A really simple but really profound process to help for those proactive calls. Now, you may be thinking, OK, well, yeah, if I had to call a customer, but what if they just walk into my dealership? Well, here's the thing. I always tell support people, even though it seems pretty formal, if you can learn this process that I'm going to show you and get it under your belt, it'll provide a framework so that when you do make proactive contacts, you know what? Even in your personal life, if you're trying to get somebody else to do something you want them to do, say, man, this is a tough situation. They're not going to like this, but it really makes sense to do it. But I've somehow got to articulate that and figure out what do you want them to do? What are you going to say to start that will get it moving in the right direction? And what questions will you ask to find out what they're really thinking instead of just doing your closing arguments and pushing your agenda? Get them talking. Engage them. So you can see how this process for any proactive interaction is powerful. And then here's a side benefit. The more you do that, the more you prepare and get the sell process and understand this process and get it under your belt and get game, the better you will become on your feet because the process is so simple. And once you get it in your head and you learn your offense and you learn your defense, because this same tool could be a powerful defense as well. And I'll show you that at the end of our webinars. Get this process under your belt, and it will help you prepare and execute selling, and it'll help you be on your feet and be able to take control. I talked about a systematic and logical control. Man, this is going to take away all that apprehension. This is going to help put you in the driver's seat. Instead of getting grilled constantly by customers, you can get back on the offense. Now, I'm not talking about being offensive. I'm talking about getting back on the offense, getting back in control. So let's walk through each step of this process, starting with the top of that form, the sales call objective. It's really important to have a realistic but aggressive objective for your contact with the customer. I said this earlier, if you don't know why you're there, they don't know why you're there. I tell salespeople, if you go around and just do the milk runs, and you just make calls, and you're just stopping and going, hey, happened to be in the area, thought I'd stop by, or hey, got anything for me, or how's everything going? I mean, it's good to have some relationship with customers and be out there in front of them. But if you don't know why you're there, they don't know why you're there. And I tell outside salespeople, if you don't have an objective, you're just going to end up being a professional visitor. And if you're a support person, and you're unclear on what you're trying to help them do, if you don't have clarity, then you're going to lose credibility, and you're going to lose their trust. You've got to know why you're calling them. So for proactive calls, have a clear, realistic, but yet, and notice I said, but aggressive. You miss every shot you don't take. If you say, you know what? This person, they have not paid their bills, and they need to pay the bills. Let's say you're a dealership customer financing person. And you've got to call a customer about the fact that they're 120 days out on a payment, which is way out there. And you're like, OK, we're going to drop them as a customer. We're going to tell them what we're going to do. And instead of doing that, you can use the process and find out what's happening, who the right person to talk to is, and really get to the bottom of it using the process. But you've got to have a clear objective. And that objective might be, you know what? I don't want to just get a partial payment. I want them to write a check today, or to send it electronic today, and we get a confirmation today. Maybe that won't happen, but again, you miss every shot you don't take. Have a realistic, but aggressive purpose for the call. And then next, consider your strategy and identify, OK, maybe you won't get a total commitment on what you're looking for right now, but maybe you could make some incremental, get a first down. Get some incremental progress toward your goal. So kind of step back and think, OK, what's the next step? What do I want that customer to do? Don't just go in there and just shoot from the hip, but step back, get a strategy, and then say, OK, what's my next incremental action? If I get the customer to commit to this, then we're going to be on our way. So think of your strategy, and then what's your next incremental action that you want? And I keep saying action, because it needs to be action-oriented. What do you want the customer to do? What will actually show that they believe? For example, if a customer is saying, OK, I'm not going to buy your OEM parts, because you're ripping me off and the price is way too high, and there's no difference between these two parts. And if you're thinking, man, this guy's totally wrong. This particular OEM part lasts way longer. It's made of much better steel, and whatever that situation might be. So if you want the customer to buy those parts and to actually commit to a stocking program on them, and that's your objective, you want to get some action. And a lot of times I'll ask a person, OK, what's your objective when you're calling this customer up about this part? And they'll say, well, I want to, my objective is to prove to them that this part is better than the other part they're looking at that's a lot cheaper. And I'm like, yeah, you've got to do that. But that's not your objective. Your objective is, if you're able to prove that value, what do you want them to do? You want them to actually commit to that stocking program. You want to actually get them to buy the part today. Are you seeing what I'm getting at here? We've got to be very clear on what we want them to do. We want to get action. We're not just trying to prove a point or to win them over. We're trying to get them to act. And in a reactive encounter, when something negative gets thrown at us, what we're trying to do in our objective is get back on the offense and try to go back to our original objective and say, OK, we've got to get this thing back on track. It just derailed. So those are even tougher. But that's the whole beauty of this process is that you recognize what's going on and say, man, I just got put on the defense. And I need to resell. I need to get back on the offense and turn this thing around and prove to them that this is to their benefit. And that all begins by having a clear, action-oriented objective. Now, once we have that in place, now we're ready. That's actually going to guide the rest of our process here, because if you don't know what you're trying to do, then how can you actually prepare to execute? If you don't have a game plan, how can you run your play? So now that we know the play that we're going to call, again, that could change during the interaction. You may have to call an audible Omaha or call an audible on the line of scrimmage. But we still want to go in with an objective. And then based on that objective, what are we going to say to start? What will attract them to our objective? So let's go to the chalkboard, and let's kind of break down the start step. First of all, consider small talk. If you call a customer up, and you're approaching them, and you're trying to start a discussion about some sort of a situation that's happened or a late delivery that you have to deal with or an out-of-stock situation on parts or whatever, or maybe that their repair job for undercarriage is going to cost twice as much as you originally had told them, should you start with small talk? There are some people that maybe they would not feel comfortable if, and maybe you've known them for 20 years, so you can talk about the game or talk about, well, don't talk about Trump and Clinton, but you can do a little bit of small talk. Should you do it? Should you not? You just have to think about that. Small talk can sometimes be very appropriate. Sometimes it can be a huge risk, and sometimes it gets out of hand and we go down rabbit trails or tangents or things that we shouldn't, and we're wasting a bunch of time. And not just wasting our time, but even, you know, to the point where eventually the customer might dread us calling and thinking, oh, I ain't got time for this guy, he just goes on and on, and we may not even realize that, so be very careful with small talk. Consider it, you know, take it or leave it, but here's the beauty of the start step. The start step, what I'm asking you to write on that pre-call planning form, that cell process sheet, and by the way, I'll make this available to anybody who contacts me and I'll talk about that at the end of this webinar. You can contact me through my website or you can contact AED and we'll be happy to get you this pre-call planning tool kind of as a framework, and I've got it as a Word document with text boxes. But in that first box, that start box, what's the big talk? What will you actually write out? What will you say that will get this thing moving in the right direction that will put you on the offense? See, this is your inbounds play. This is how you get the ball in play. This is the big talk. So decide, how am I going to set the focus and the direction on my objective? What will I say? How will I say it? And keep this in mind, first impressions are huge. Those first 30 seconds of the interaction, they're deciding, is this about me or is it about them? Are they jacking me around? Do I trust them? Does this person know what they're doing? I mean, they're making a whole bunch of decisions about you in those first few moments. This start step, what you say when they pick up the phone or when they walk into your shop is critical. Those first impressions are important. And here's what's important as we look at that cell process framework, all the rest of the steps of the process are somewhat dependent on how they respond and what they say and how they answer the question or whatever. But the start step, it's all yours. You can set the tone and the direction for that interaction and you can select an appropriate way to start. Maybe you start with a question. Maybe you start with a statement. Maybe an interest-creating question or maybe a shocking statement or maybe an agenda start where you say, okay, here's what we need to do and I need to ask you a few questions and then we'll find out how to solve this problem for you. There's a lot of ways to do it and actually when I train outside salespeople and I train sales support people in this process as well, I have a one-day course that I teach inside and support people how to do this process. And I think in some ways they need it even more because they've got to really get the process under their belt. But we look at a bunch of different examples of starts and different types of questions to ask and how to ask open-ended and closed-ended questions and just mix and match different ways to start. So there's all different kinds of ways to start an interaction. You just have to decide what the right way to start this particular interaction because every interaction is different. Every situation is different. And so you can standardize it by saying, okay, when I have to call a customer about this, this is, I've tried a couple different things and this, I've tooled it out and this is the best way to start on this situation. And you can even tweak it to the individual. That's why on a proactive interaction, I usually recommend that you write it out in quotations, wordsmith, perfect it, because this is such a big play. This is going to set the tone and the direction for the rest of the interaction. And I'll tell you where I am on this, folks. I teach this stuff, but I also have to have a lot of interactions with my customers and I have to sell an intangible product. And I never pick up the phone to call a customer that I don't have it tooled out. What am I going to say? What questions am I going to ask? I use this process because it's powerful and it works. And it's amazing how trimming down and saying a really good start at the beginning instead of going down rabbit trails and getting diarrhea of the mouth or what I say, showing up and throwing up. If I can tool out a good start that's concise and to the point and that is appropriate for the situation, it puts me in control. It puts me in the driver's seat. And so I want to challenge you to really consider, even though we're going through this quickly in a one-hour webinar, this is something that you need to practice, practice, practice. And that's one of the things I'm going to talk about at the end of this is that I'm just introducing the components of this process. If you really want to get game, you've got to work on your offense. You've got to work on your defense. And I hope you leave this webinar saying, wow, this can be a framework that can help me perfect my game. Now the start, it only lasts a few seconds. It's huge. It's critical. But almost immediately, after 20, 30 seconds, you're going to segue into the next step of the process, which is an extremely important step, the evaluate step. Evaluate to discover the customer's interest. This is what helps us put the focus back on the customer. Don't skip this step, because you can't really sell your value, benefits. You can't change a person's thinking, if you don't know what's going on in their thinking. So our focus is on the customer. You want to be a consultant. We're not trying to turn you into slick, manipulative salespeople. Please don't get me wrong. I don't even want salespeople to be that way. I want us to be consultants to the customers. I want us to focus on the customer. And we do that by asking well-prepared, that's an important aspect of this, well-prepared, open-ended, and closed-ended questions. And that's somewhat of an art. But what I've found is that I'm pretty good, most support people, especially, who are technically sound, are pretty good at closed-ended questions. Are you having a problem with this? Did this break when you did this? How long has your operator been using this piece of equipment? These closed-ended, short-answer questions that we ask. Instead, we need to ask more open-ended questions. What are your goals for this piece of equipment? How long do you plan on keeping it? And what's your philosophy about new and used equipment? Things like that to really get the customer talking. And those are hard to come up with on the fly. So that's where this, when you make proactive calls that are highly critical, take some time, say, okay, what am I going to say at the start, tool that out, put it in quotations, trim it down, make it concise, and then say, okay, now, what are some questions I need to ask? What don't I know? What might be going on behind the scenes? What's changing in their company? What issues are they're facing out there on the job site? And you start thinking of those, and you prepare them ahead of time. And that's, again, the beauty of being more proactive. This is what NFL players are doing on the sideline. They're looking through their playbook and saying, okay, what play am I going to call in the next series? And they're thinking it through and preparing, and I want to challenge you to look at your interactions with customers that way. Because what we're trying to do, we're not going in there and pushing our agenda. We're trying to engage the customer in a dynamic dialogue. We want to have an inquisitive mind. We want to dig deep for facts and find out what's really going on behind the scenes. We want to get deeper than that even and understand what motivates them, what annoys them, what drives them, what politics are happening between them and their operators or their boss or their owners. We want to get an understanding of what's really happening, because that way we can be that consult. That way the focus is on them. See, when we're talking, that's when they're looking at their watch. But when they are talking, they're involved in it. And open-ended questions, wide-open questions that get the customer talking are what make it happen. So let's say you have somebody call you up, and they want to buy a significant amount of parts, and they're trying to get some pricing for a parts program. And you're thinking, okay, I don't know if this is a gopher that's calling me or if it's just some assistant or if this is the owner. And so I need to find out if this is the decision-maker. Well you could ask a closed-ended question. Are you the decision-maker on this? And once you think about this, how might they respond to that? Things might be going on in their brain when you say, are you the decision-maker? They may be thinking, so if I'm not, you're not going to do business with me? You know, this is none of your business. And yeah, I'm a peon in this company, but I'm not going to tell you. I mean, they could be offended by that. And if it's the owner, they could even think, who is this person asking me? It could be very negative. But you know what? They could say yes. You really didn't find out too much, because they could be lying. They could say yes and at home too. And they may not be the decision-maker. Or if they say no, now what are you going to do? You see what I'm saying? We've got to, we've really got to work on our process so that we learn to ask more open-ended questions. And that comes with preparation before you pick up the phone. And practice on this to where it becomes somewhat instinctive and automatic. So if you need to find out this person's a decision-maker, at some point you could say, OK, this is a pretty big project with a lot of parts. Could you tell me a little bit about the decision-making process and when you decide who you're going to go with on this project? See now that's a more, that's going to give me a whole bunch of good information. And they say, well, you know, my boss, the owner sent me to, and I do this all the time and I've been in this company 20 years. And they could start giving you all kinds of information simply by engaging them and being alert and aware with an inquisitive mind. And here's the key, folks. Ask more questions and shut up. Listen. Listen. So many times we're thinking about what we're going to say next. We might even accidentally be interrupting customers and not really listening to what they say. So if we're going to do this evaluate step right, we, it's not just going through a list of questions and then saying, okay, now it's my turn, and then start preaching at them. But actually get this dialogue, listen, be alert to things and say, oh, tell me more about that. Or what do you mean by that? And take notes, especially if you're on the phone. You can have a pad of paper in front of you and take notes. I always tell salespeople, ask more questions and shut up. And I try to drive that home in every training event I do. Ask more questions and shut up. I want you to leave this webinar with a little Don Buttry on your shoulder going, shut up. You have no idea what that guy's thinking. You don't know what's going on in his brain. Quit guessing. Okay? Ask more questions and shut up. And that's what, this step is so huge. It's so important because as we look at the next step of the sell process, the leverage step. Leverage step says, leverage to match discovered desires with benefits. Let that sink in. Leverage to match discovered, where are they discovered? In the evaluate step. Desires. Let's get into the heart, what does this person want? What motivates them? How are they going to benefit? And you can't sell benefits. You hear a lot of talk from manufacturers about features and benefits. And about dealer added value. But you can't sell value if you don't know what it looks like to that person that you're dealing with. They may have a completely different set of values and benefits. You can't sell benefits if you don't know what it looks like to that person. The benefits of an owner are going to be different than the benefits of an operator. The benefits of a third party contractor on a project is going to be different than the end user on a project. So be aware that we've got to find out what it means to the person that we're talking to. To the person that we're dealing with. Leverage to match discovered desires with benefits. You can't do step three unless you do step two. And you can't really sell benefits unless you understand a very important selling fundamental. Features and benefits. If you look at this model that I have up on the screen, a feature is simply a trade or an element of your product, your service, or your company. It's a difference. A uniqueness. Don't get hung up on that. Because a competitor may have the same thing. But I always say the closer your product or service looks like your competitor, the better your selling skill has to be. What is it about your product that's different? What is it about your company that's different or better? And a benefit, and I call this a tentative or a typical benefit. This is selling fundamentals here. And some of you may not be familiar with that, but I think it's an important premise here. A benefit is a possible advantage. And there could be many typical or tentative benefits for each feature. That's generic. That's usually what you find in literature. Features and benefits. Features and benefits. This has a tier three engine, which is going to be better in fuel consumption. Features and benefits. Very generic. Probably not what's going to tip the scale. A benefit with a capital B is a specific customer benefit. It's a benefit to that particular person in that particular company at that particular time. And the way you can do that is if you ask questions. You have to evaluate. You have to dig deeper. You have to find out what their core motivator is to action. That's how you tip the scale. That's how you get leverage. And it depends on the individual. It depends on their behavior style, their personality. That's why you can't do step three, leverage, until you do step two. And then if you do step two effectively, you can relate your solution, your part, your product, your service to how it benefits them. And that's what people buy. That's what people buy. What is it that motivates them? It could be profit, cost savings, money gained. There's so many things that everybody is different. It could be competitive drive. It could just be their values, their taste. Everybody is different. What motivates people? That's what you have to find out. You know, and you say, well, it's always money. It's always cost savings or profit. You know what? Maybe the person wants to save money so they look good in front of their boss. Maybe they want to save money because of their competitive drive. I've met a lot of construction company leaders who were millionaires and they drove around a piece of junk car and they were still out running a backhoe. It wasn't about money. And they'll beat you up over $5 even though they're a millionaire because for them it's about winning. It's about validation or whatever. So my point is figure out what motivates people. How do you find that out? Well, you ask questions, okay? And that starts with understanding that you've got to sell the benefits of your product and then you also have to sell the benefits of your company, your dealership. Why you? Why should your customers buy from you and do business with you? That's so important to think about. And if we don't know that as a member of your dealership, if you don't know why you're better, if you don't eat, sleep, and drink that, if you don't live it and preach it, then you're missing the opportunity because your customer's not thinking about that. We've got to sell our differences. We've got to sell it. If you have product advantages, leverage them. If you have company advantages, leverage them. And you say, but we're a real small dealer. We use that to your advantage. You're up against big dealers that have all kinds of communication problems and are dysfunctional and everybody hates their job, but you're part of a small team that all works together and that cares about each other. Leverage that, okay? And if you're a big company, leverage that. Leveraging is just about using what you have to your advantage, all right? If you take product and company benefits, that equals your weight in value. But to get leverage and to really tip the scale, it takes skill in the process. And I'm setting the stage here on this leverage stuff. This is very important. Selling value, which everybody seems to want to talk about, selling value and benefits is not just a sales philosophy. It is accomplished tactically in every interaction in the very heart of the sell process. See, price is what customers think about when we give them nothing else to think about. So let's take a look at the leverage step. In the leverage step, this is when you present your value solution. You match what you discovered in the evaluate step. It's when you sell your product benefits. It's when you sell your company benefits. And again, I want to reiterate. You sell them as benefits with a capital B. How does your product, the features of your product or the features of your company, how does that benefit that particular person in that particular company at that particular time? And this is when you kick it into gear. This is when you're persuasive and enthusiastic. And you can even use appropriate sales tools like literature, comparative analysis online of different machines or even manufacturing literature about features and benefits of the product. This is when that comes into play. That's what the leverage step is all about. And we're on the last step here. If we have a good start, we have a clear objective, we initiate that by attracting them to whatever that objective is with a good start. We ask questions, we listen, we engage the customer, we get this dynamic interaction going on. And then based on what we discover as we're listening, we match it up and we leverage to match discovered desires with benefits. And then now it's go time. Now this is the easy part. A lot of people think, well, you know, I don't like to push customers or close on them. What we're doing is we're locking action, confirming conviction, and agreeing to action. See, you got to do that. If you do all the other steps right and you don't get commitment or action, then we've pretty much just wasted their time and our time. So be alert. When the customer's ready, they'll say, yeah, you know, they'll give you a buying signal. They may say, well, I like doing business with you guys. Or they may ask a question like, well, do you have enough, do you have this in inventory right now? You know, ding, ding, ding, ding. When they start giving you signals like that, try a lot. Don't hesitate to lock. Ask early and ask often. It's not a bad thing to ask for a commitment. It's a natural, normal part of the interaction process. Because think about this. If you did the process right and it was focused on them, all you're doing is sealing the deal for them. You're giving them what they wanted in the first place. To solve a problem, to save money, to get the machine they wanted. And so this is not manipulation. This is not jacking people around. This is just a perfectly logical way to get action, as long as you keep the process in harmony. And you can use some techniques. I'm a little hesitant about even the word technique. Because it somewhat implies that you're manipulating, you know. But that's not what this is about. You could just maybe assume that they're going to do it. Say, you know what, let me call back to the shop, make sure that they still have those hours available. I think we can get this done before Monday for you. And that'll solve this problem completely. You didn't even ask them. You just kind of assumed that they were going to do it and move forward. Or maybe make a minor decision and say, well, do you want five of these or did you want to just start with the first order of two? Or you could summarize and say, you know what, we talked about the difference between the option of use versus going ahead and just repairing this undercarriage. And this is going to save you money in the long run. We've got certified rebuild available here. And you just summarize what you talked about. And it locks the deal in. This step is just a systematic, it's part of the process. It's logical. Ask and let it work. Now, this is really important. Silence is powerful. When you ask for the commitment, when you ask for the action, you're done. Shut up. Don't say another word. Let it happen. Because if you speak up again, it distracts their thinking, it takes them off the hook, and it kind of shows that you're scared. And you'll probably say something stupid like, okay, we can give you a 5% discount on that So just when you ask for a commitment, just even though it seems like an eternity, especially on the phone, once you lock, you're done. Don't say another word. Can you see how simple but profound this process is? Start, evaluate, leverage lock. So for proactive situations, this is a great tool to help you prepare and execute your selling. But you know what? Sometimes they attack you. Sometimes you get put on the defense and you get objections thrown at you or complaints or somebody's trying to get something free or not pay for something, negotiation ploys. We've got to be ready with sell defense. Now, just in the last few minutes of this webinar, let me give you a beautiful piece of advice here. When you get put on the defense in selling interactions, your best defense is a good offense. You don't have to learn anything new here. To deal with those really tough situations, all you have to do is get back in control. All you have to do is get back on the offense. So you can see that this sell objection response tool, this defense tool, looks the same as the sell offense. All we have to figure out to do is when somebody throws that objection at us, how do we get back on the offense? This is a beautiful play. You start. You get back to the start step by restating the objection as a question. That's your key defensive maneuver. To restart, restate. Say that. To restart, restate. Drill that in your head. To restart, restate. Here's what happens. The customer says, well, your price on that part is too high. You say, it's too high. Now, I'm not trying to sound like a parrot or jack them around, but when they say that, it puts you on the offense and puts them on the defense. Now they've got to defend why they said that. That's a beautiful play. Or if they say, you know what? Your salesperson is a liar. They promised me I could get this. You don't want to come back and go, I know they're a liar. They make all kinds of stupid promises and it ticks me off. That's not the right response. Instead, you want to get back on offense and say, so our salesperson specifically told you that we would have it by this date? Now, if that salesperson did, let's find out. But that puts it back on them. And they may say, well, they didn't say specifically that date. And maybe they were talking about when it would ship, not when it would arrive, or whatever. But it puts them on the defense. And that's a beautiful play. Plus it kind of gives them a playback so they can hear the validity of what was said. If they say, well, we always have problems with you guys. You go back and say, man, every time you've done business, you've had problems with us? Well, not all the time, but the last couple of weeks, it seemed like every time I called, you guys had a late job. Now I can deal with it. And it lets them know I'm listening instead of sparring with them and fighting with them. And I'm likely to get more information on the next response. And the best part of this is it's such a simple play. Somebody puts me on the spot. My heart's pounding. I've got to defend myself. I'm on the defense. And instead, I just simply restate it as a question. I may come back and say, seriously? Or really, when did this happen? And I just throw it back at them. And then they know, hey, somebody's finally listening to me instead of fighting with me. And now, what step am I on? Almost seamlessly, I'm right into the next step of the process, evaluate, leverage, and then lock. I'm back on the offense. I'm back in control. Simply by restating a negative situation, an objection, a complaint, or a ploy, and boom, I'm back on the offense. I'm back in control. That's a beautiful play. So today, in just a real short order, and again, I spend an entire day training sales and support people on this process because, man, when you really dig into it, there's so much we can learn and apply it to real situations, and that's going to be my assignment to you, is to think about this process, the sell offense and sell defense that we talked about quickly today. And here's your follow-up assignment. By the way, those tools, AED can give you those tools, and if you contact me through my website, I can also provide those tools as a Word document with text boxes. But here's your follow-up assignment. Use tool 4.1 or 4.6, they're available as downloads, to pre-plan for each selected point of interaction. So if it's an offense where you're going to contact them, use 4.1. If it's a defense where you're saying, oh, man, they always throw this objection, they always try to get this price discount, then use tool 4.6. And then create specific, and by the way, you're going off of this list you made in the earlier assignment that I gave you of those points of interaction. You're taking each of those and saying, which ones of these are proactive offense, which ones of these are reactive defense, and then we're creating specific sell models for typical or critical customer interactions. So go back to that list, look at it, and be prepared. This can help you on delivering good and bad news, requesting action. For reactive, it could be walk-ins, incoming calls, objections, complaints, et cetera. We're going to be able to help you use a simple but powerful process to prepare for each of these interactions that you face. Use the sell tool as a framework for all customer points of interaction. This will assure practical, effective, and consistent customer satisfaction. Ultimately, you can even build an offense playbook and a defense playbook, and you can practice these. And that's kind of beyond the scope of our discussion today, but just think of the possibilities of perfecting your offense and perfecting your defense. So many times, customer service, customer support teams get thrown a bunch of hype. It's all about the customer, and put the customer first, and we've got slogans and banners that we put up on the walls, and I'm not against that. But what I'm saying, it's time for us to develop some on-your-feet skill. It's time for us to take every one of these interactions seriously and really develop a process. One last thing before I close it down and open it up for Rebecca to see if there are any questions that might have come up. If you're interested in saying, man, I want to learn this process better, if you go to my website, I actually wrote a book, a very easy read, a very simple book on the SELL process, and it covers offense and defense and really gets into great detail on what I introduced today. So if you're interested in the book, go to my website, and you can get it as an e-book or as a hard copy. Thank you, everyone, for joining in on this webinar. I hope that it gives you some practical, tangible ways to get better at every precious interaction with customers. Thank you.

sales skills

dealership

training

SELL process

customer interactions

product benefits

listening to customers

addressing objections

customer motivations

competition