Hello again everybody. I'm Bob Allen with you again today to guide us through today's topics which will include customer styles and negotiation techniques. Today's session segue as well from the previous session we worked on, we talked about proposal mechanics and presentation delivery techniques. By doing so, by understanding our customers' styles we are about to provide our proposal. It's going to help us to focus their proposal based on the areas in which our prospect will be most comfortable and it'll be most attractive to them simply by understanding how they like to receive their information. In addition to that, by understanding or by actually building our skills for negotiation and being able to negotiate more skillfully, we'll be able to address any questions our prospect may have during our proposal period and also be able to overcome or work with any objections they may have during their time period. We'll be looking at customer styles, I'll be looking at negotiation techniques in developing our skills to be better negotiators, should we have to work with our client or prospect and make some changes or some alterations to the proposal that we're recommending to them. Let's begin as we should by reviewing a four-step selling process. As we see on the screen, we're looking at the four steps that brought us to where we are now in terms of providing the proposal. Prospecting early on as we noticed was all about the drip marketing program we recommended with the four emails that went out. The whole point of prospecting piece once again is that pre-sales, call planning, making sure we're calling the right people qualifying the possible prospects. Of course, our goal is to try to encourage them for some way that we may be making them curious about looking at our product or our service that we're recommending. Want to make sure we're getting them curious enough to want to have a meeting with us, to want to have an appointment. Basically, the prospecting piece is simply getting information out there to excite them, make them curious about wanting to meet with us, and hopefully, we can provide a solution for them. When we do finally get an appointment, either by phone or by personal meeting , let's get together, let's talk about if your company and your product and service can actually provide the solution we're looking for, then we have an opportunity to meet with them and move to step 2, which is actually going to be our needs assessment. Again, we mastered these two steps, the needs assessment piece we looked at, we've really worked very carefully on doing role-plays and developing the needs assessment, asking the right questions, I can't stress this enough. When we ask enough of the right questions, we can get a very good profile of what that customer's all about. Once we do that, and only when we get a good profile, have we earned the right to go to step 3 to tell the story about how we can resolve their issues. We don't understand our issues, we certainly can't provide a solution to resolve them. Now we're going to step 3, and actually, this is where we're going to look at your proposal mechanics we did last time. That, what do we have to provide them in writing to show them that here, step-by-step is what we can do to take care of some of the issues that they're experiencing, and to let them know that our product or service is the right answer. We tell them the story, we do the proposal, we've read them in the mechanics and all the things that we need, the timeline and so forth, which we went over last time. Now again, we're going to step 4. The final thing we do in that proposal is talk to them about the return on investment. What is it when we talked about hard and soft return on investment if you remember correctly, and how do we provide that return on investment in such a way that they realize the investment we're asking them to make in our product or service is certainly going to come back manyfold in terms of what they're looking for, for gaining the results they want and the results they seek. Is customer style and negotiation skills really important in sales? Well, why do we care what the customer styles as long as we have the right style for delivery? Truly, we want to make sure that our delivery presentation style meets and is acceptable, and is congruent with the styles of our prospect. It doesn't mean we have to be exactly like them. It simply means that we have to approach them in a way in which they feel more comfortable. By doing so, let's take a look at our prior agenda for today's meeting. The agenda today, we're going to be looking at decision-maker styles. Now, I mentioned decision-makers styles. We talked about customer styles. I hope that when we're at the point where we're providing a proposal, even in the analysis stage, I hope that we're looking at the decision-maker and talking to the decision-maker or doing the needs analysis and also we're providing the proposal. It's very difficult for us to provide our proposal to somebody who does not have the authority to make that decision whether move forward or not. It means we have to do it over and over again. If at all possible in every case, we want to make sure we have the proper, authoritative decision-maker on hand to look at the proposal we're recommending both a written proposal provide and also the presentation we give. We actually have an opportunity to get in front of them or in a Zoom meeting to provide our presentation and our proposal. We were look at overcoming objections as we mentioned before, and also negotiate more effectively should there be some objections that they may have. What is customer personality as we get into the material, what does it mean? What's Customer style? Well, Customer personality is based on a lot of different types of buyers out there. There may be some of these very interested in the financial aspect of what we're doing. Somebody might be very interested in looking at how is our solution easy to use for my team. A lot of different things, people coming from different directions to get an understanding of what our [inaudible] services and how it would affect them in a very positive way. But we also look at different personalities and styles that a customer may have and in this case again, they hope is the decision-maker. Let's look at these styles and see exactly what these styles have. Do we need to have our style to be exactly as the prospects? Of course not. We don't need to be chameleons, but we do want to make sure that we adapt our delivery in such a way that it's acceptable in a format that they feel comfortable with as you provide our presentation and our proposal. We want to tell our style a little bit to their characteristics and the style and our personality and fit our approach to the decision-maker who's ultimately going to decide whether they're going to purchase our products or not. There are several that actually four different styles we're going to look at today. By doing this, we need to know what our selling style is. As we approach the four different styles or [inaudible] styles that we're going to be dealing with. How do we communicate? How do we get our ideas of trust? Are we a detailed person, aria friendly person? Are we a direct person? We'll talk about these styles as we move forward but we want to recognize the difference of our style versus the style of the decision-maker with whom we're talking. For example, if we're really a direct type of person and we deal and communicate indirect senses indirect ways. But yet our prospect to our decision-maker is a friendly type person that decision-makers going to want to develop a bit of relationship before to get down to business and our case of our direct person in the right down to the numbers and it may turn off that prospect if their style's significantly different than ours. We want to flex our style to connect better with others, we should do is not just themselves, but we should do is across the board socially and professionally as well. Well, here's the four basic personality styles that we'll probably be working with as we move forward. We have the dominant, demanding individual and they're really focused on results. They want the bottom line. They are very direct people. They want answers. Don't shit yet, don't mess around. I want to make decisions right away. The other style is friendly, talkative person. That's the person who's going to want to develop a bit of relationship let's have a friendly discussion. Let's have some humor involved in our presentation. Let's be outgoing and talkative and very high in optimistic personality styles include those individuals are more detailed and organized, really specific. Show me this command of what you're going to be showing me here and sharing with me here and I want to look it over very good. Make sure that it's all data-driven and show me some facts. Really a perfectionist type of individual. There are going to want to make sure that we taught about mechanics earlier. Your PowerPoints are succeeding through a point it'll give me a lot of additional baloney. Give me the specific information and the facts. Just the facts, ma'am as they say. Then of course we have the steady, stable individual. That's somebody who doesn't want to tip the apple cart. They want to be a team player. They're not open to change too much so we tried to promote a change. It's significantly different from what they're used to. They may reject there little bit and because they're not people that would take a lot of risks. Those are four personality types will we be looking and let's look at them individually and get a little better handle on each one. We have the direct, the dominating, demanding personality type, typically the strong leader, sometimes military backgrounds, sometimes military base. These people are adventurers, very decisive, very confident. They want to get it done. They want the facts, and they want to make sure that you give your information, with don't waste my time. I'll take some risks, but don't waste my time and let's get this thing done and get it done immediately. There are very heavy with the authority and responsibility based. The next one is the friendly talkative personality type. Well, now this individual you want to spend little more time with, you want to get to know them a little bit, warm up to them a little bit. They want some rapport built, they don't want to just jump into the sail. They want to spend some time understanding, talking and being motivational and persuasive and just being friendly to each other. They build a bit of trust before they go into the actual business environment or business discussion. Be careful with this type in that we got to make sure we can't jump too fast into business discussion and they'll think there we're being a little bit too pushy, let's say. Then we have, of course, the steady stable personality type. This person is an individual who's going to be a good, solid team player. They're not really big on change. They don't want to see a lot of things changing too fast unless they can really understand the value of doing so. They're going to be asking the question; how, how do we do this and how is it going to affect my team and how is it going to affect my people? Really concerned, very stable and careful with where they are and not easy to change in a significant way, change their mind or change your product or service, or change even their vendor in some cases. Now finally, we have the detailed organized personality type. This is the kind of person who was really a perfectionist. I don't like to categorize anybody, but very often you find these people in your engineering sales and even your financial sales in some cases. They're very detailed and specific numbers focused, numbers oriented, precise. Again perfectionist they want to understand exactly what they're getting into and show me the proof and show me the schemata and show me the details of what we're doing. In these cases, we want to make sure that a lot of fluff involved here either we want to make sure we provide them with the details, the numbers and statistics that will backup what we're seeing in terms of evidence to backup the presentation and proposal we're recommending. These are four major personality types of decision makers that we're going to be working with. Now, what we want to make sure is that we don't look at a person who has a personality type that is detailed and organized in the engineering background, who wants to facts and figures and statistics, and approach that person as if we want to build a lot of rapport and have a lot of friendship prior to it. Because although they're not unfriendly people, they really want to see the numbers and that's why we have to base our proposal based on what they want to see, not necessarily what we want to show them. Keep this in mind too, they really don't care our prospect in any case, we don't care how much work we put into it. What they care about is what's in it for them so make sure we direct our presentation and proposal accordingly. When we look at these four different personality types; the dominant and demanding, the friendly talkative, the stable and what do we need to do? We need to work it. We need to make sure we're being akin to what they want to see in a proposal. I've been asked many times, have I had to choose a personality type to work with, which personality type? Which style do I like working with the best? Again, this is shipping my opinion and also part of my style. But quite frankly, I really liked the dominant and demanding prospect because they're not going to waste your time. They're going to be very direct and very involved. If they say, let's do it, they mean let's do it. If I've one over a person who's dominant and demanding, that means I've really won their business and that's for me a good thing. Not a time waster, not building rapport time waster, relationships have a lot to do with sales but if it was my call, give me a person that I make a decision quickly. In lieu of the friendly, talkative they could talk to you for hours and hours. They're afraid of your feelings, they're afraid to say no to you. You may walk away spending much time without any results and without ever making a decision about to buy from you. Remember that our time is important as well. The steady, stable person, again, might be hard to have them to accept the change with a truly doing. The detail organized person unless you have all kinds of statistics and a logical probably more focused on the hard ROI than the soft ROI. You better have that information available for them or they may not be so happy with a recommendation making. Remember we want to adjust our style somewhat to what we're looking at here. Overcoming and understanding our customers style is going to help us be more successful and increase our chances of success when providing a proposal. What else do we need that can be important to the success of us making the sale or getting our proposal approved by the decision-maker of any style. Certainly it's going to be the returning on investment that's against the Step 4 of the returns sales process. The right return on investment is vital to the success.
