We are going to be talking about the sales process. The part of the whole marketing, sales, and advertising process where you talk about getting the money from the customer. The marketing and the advertising process precede the sales process, and each of these processes is supposed to have provided a certain amount of information to the customer. And then, the customer needs to have taken certain actions to prove that they are ready to get into the sales stage.
Why don’t people want the sales?
Usually, when we talk about sales and marketing when it comes to a lot of corporate professionals or independent professionals, the risk is that you may be one of those people who may feel that they want to do business, but they don’t want to do sales.
The problems in Facebook Ads
There is a huge kind of boom in the digital marketing industry where people say that they just want to set up an ad on Facebook to sell products for them. There are two issues about that. If you don’t understand the sales process yourself, you cannot teach a machine to make that sale for you. So you need to understand the sales process yourself in order to make that machine understand how to do it for you.
The second issue is that people only buy certain things online. Therefore, there’s only a small price range that they buy online. They are typically in the very low-ticket range, in the 300-900 rupee range at the maximum.
Nobody buys a fridge online. It’s the same fridge that you want, but you don’t buy it online. You want to feel assured when you try to buy a 40,000 or 30,000 rupee product. So the issue is you can actually have Facebook do the selling for you, but you’ll only be selling three hundred rupee products. The problem with Facebook is that everybody is advertising on Facebook. The price per advertisement is going higher and higher because more people are coming onto Facebook.
So what happens if your cost to run an ad is 450 rupees for consumption and your revenue from that ad or the revenue per sale is 350 rupees, then you’re basically losing money on the whole thing. That’s why all these digital marketers don’t have any products of their own, but they’re trying to teach you how to do digital marketing. If you work in digital marketing, why would you teach other people how to do it?
How does the sales process work?
I would teach you a process where you will never feel uneasy, and the other person will never feel anxious. Not only that, I can guarantee you that they will be begging you to do business with you or to move to the next stage. They will be the ones begging you. You won’t have to convince them. So today is the day I walk you through that concept. The concept is called “The express Highway approach.”
If you’ve ever been on an Express Highway, you’ll see these highways are built in a particular format. And the format is if you’re going on your inner-city road and at a certain point, there is a board that says from here, turn left for the express Highway. They also have prices written on it, and it says it’s a toll road.
When you start going on that Highway, at different points along this Highway, you’ll have to pay the toll tax depending on where you want to go. You may cross one tollbooth or two, you have to pay money. However, if you’re sick and tired of paying money again and again, what you can do is exit the Highway. So if you don’t want to pay the money, you can choose to exit. They’ve made these multiple exits between the toll plazas, and every exit is marked by a board.
Now, if you exit, it means only two things either you don’t want to go to the destination, or you’re going to try finding another long, painful route to go to the destination, which could even be free. So if you exit and take a small village road and want to spend ten times the amount of time to reach that destination, that’s fine. You can actually exit anywhere you want, and then you try to find your own way, or maybe you don’t even want to go all the way. So if you’re going to exit, that’s fine. This is the express Highway Approach.
Similarly, when you go to make a sale, you will typically be making a sale at a certain ticket size. If you’re trying to sell a product worth 350 rupees and waste your time with 1000 customers trying to sell 350 rupee products, your time will be wasted, and you will run out of money, and your business will be bankrupt.
Now you have your advertising and marketing process, and there’s a board that says that if you want, turn left and get on to the Express Highway (sales). The board is made clear so everybody can read it and nobody can say, well, I never saw the board. It’s big and prominent. Then there’s an actual turn that you have to take in order to get onto the Highway. It’s not like a normal road suddenly becomes the Express Highway. So this is how we get a customer onto the express Highway.
They have come on this road because we have advertised and marketed to them. And as part of the whole arrangement, we’ve sent some information to them. They already know what they want to know. They’re at a certain stage where they have to decide whether they want to get onto this Express Highway or not. When they get on to the Express Highway, you intend to provide the features, benefits, and pricing. If both of you have the intention and all goes well, they will be making this purchase.
Now, there are four critical questions that we need to ask the customer. This board is formed by four critical questions that you ask, and if you keep asking these four critical questions in every sales meeting that you have, even if you want to sell something worth 5 lakh rupees, you can do that.
The first question is, if all goes well, do we have the budget? If they say, well, I don’t have the budget. What’s the point of wasting your time with that customer. You say whenever you have the budget, come back to me.
There’s a certain fashion in which Mercedes cars are sold as opposed to Maruti cars. When a customer walks into the Maruti showroom, the salesman goes right into telling the features of cars. But when you walk into the Mercedes showroom, they’re going to ask you what car you already drive? If you tell them I drive an entry-level car, they’re not going to waste their time with you. They’re going to figure out ways to get rid of you.
So you want to prequalify a customer. When they get on the Highway, there are different points where they will be applied with a toll. This toll will come in different formats. The toll is if you ask them a question, they have to answer it. So get into the habit of asking difficult questions and get into the habit of expecting answers. If they say, we’ll get to that later. First, tell me what your product is? Tell me the price? They don’t go ahead, and you don’t go ahead too and say, well, the way it works is that I need to know. Otherwise, there’s no point talking about it.
First Question
The first thing that they can do is when you ask questions, they have to answer. Hopefully, you have already trained them to understand that this is a two-way process by this time. There are two people on a team—you and them. We may not reach a conclusion together, and you can take any of these exits that will come during the process. However, until that time you decide to take the exit, you and I are a team. So we have to go on to this process together.
If they say, just tell me what you have. Give me a product demonstration or tell me about your product and tell me the pricing and I’ll get back to you. Then they’re obviously not behaving like a team member. So do not waste your time with them. There are polite ways to do that. You don’t want to be rude to anyone, but just understand that this is the control that you have.
Second Question
The second thing is that once they clear the toll while learning the tools, you will also give them exit options. So you will say that assuming all goes well at this point in time, I will be expecting that you will be making a payment, and in what form will you be making the payment? And if they say, well, I will not be making a payment, then you say exit, you say, well, let me do this. I will give you an excellent resource where you can get all of this information for free. And then, once you’ve gone through this, you can always call me back, and we will restart from here. So you give them an exit, and you give yourself an exit too. Why waste your time with that kind of person or prospect who may not be in a good position to buy from you.
Third Question
Then there is another toll, the third question, where you say, now this is what I want you to do. I want you to open my Facebook or website and check it out during the sales presentation in order to drive compliance, which is to see if both of us are on the same page. At any point, if you feel that they are trying to be high-handed or say, let’s not do this. Just tell me the price or something, then you’ll again let them get the next exit.
If there are compliant people and you ask them questions and tell them things, that ensures their assurance level is increased. So, there are four emotions that you need to transfer to the customers, which is Assurance, trust, excitement, and urgency.
Fourth Question
The fourth question is, when your product requires a down payment, the customer has to pay it or exit. If you’re doing all of that and they are walking by the toll plazas and certain products may actually require a down payment, or they may require a booking amount, they have to pay that. It’s only a small percentage of the total payment, but it’s a booking amount that basically shows you that we are in the right direction, all the way towards the goal.
So that is how the Express Highway works, and you go all the way to the end. By the time you reach the end, you are 99% sure, and they are 99% certain that this is going to happen. So by the time you ask for the cheque, there is no uneasiness or discomfort or anybody being uncomfortable. This whole Express Highway consists of at least four toll plazas and at least four exits.