Anthony here, and in this video, I just want to do a review of a sales
transaction that I’ve recently gone through. I just want to give you the
background, and then I want to run you through a sales coaching process. I
just want to show you the process I do for coaching, but hopefully, the
value you get from watching it is some ideas about how you can tune up your
own sales process. So let me just give you the background.
Over the last 6 to 12 months, I’ve really been getting back into surfing, I
think because my son has been so keen on surfing. I mean it’s a large part
of where we live, and part of the reason that we’re here. He’s getting
better and better. Recently, it culminated with me buying a brand new
board.
Now I love this new surfboard today. It is so much fun. It is a great
board. It’s the first board I’ve bought in 15 years, and I’m extremely
loyal to my old surfboard supplier. But unfortunately, after 15 years, he’s
now sold his shop. He’s retired and not to mention that he lives 950
kilometres south of here. So I can’t really buy a board from him.
So what I wanted to just run you through is, I guess, the process that I
went through in buying this board. In terms of the prospecting and
qualifying, well, actually I didn’t have any ideas. Contact with the shop,
apart from them selling my surfboard, and my son, his first surfboard, they
did a wonderful job and they gave him great value. They gave him a second-
hand board rather cheap, but really tricked it up and painted it to make it
look good. So at that stage, they never asked me if I was interested in
another board. So I certainly wasn’t qualified, but clearly I was in the
market. So there was no asking at that stage.
When I did come into the store to buy my surfboard, rather than Cam’s
surfboard, it was a very relaxed initial contact and almost to the point of
it didn’t really help me. I had to go away and come back a number of times.
It was up to me to show commitment to buy. There was no real help in trying
to help me buy. So in terms of questioning and needs discovery, it wasn’t
until I was ready to place the order did I get to go through any sort of a
questioning process to work out what was the right thing for me. So it was
a yes and no closed questioning technique, filling out an order form,
whereas I know that some of my friends have tried to buy boards from this
supplier and they have gone elsewhere because, one, when they went to the
shop, no one was there and they couldn’t get any answers. The communication
just wasn’t good enough. Anyway, there were no real questioning techniques
here. It was someone taking an order. So there’s no sales process up to
this point.
In terms of presentation of options and what I could do, I got referred to
the website to have a look at products that are available, and it was a
little bit confusing because there were other people’s brands up there on
that website. I clearly wanted to buy from someone who’s local and someone
that I care about. So the pitch wasn’t very good, and it was left up to a
website to do it, and it didn’t do it very well.
In terms of negotiation, this is really strange. I certainly agreed to a
price, and in my initial meeting, I asked what a price range for board is,
and I was given an extremely low price. On top of that, I actually was told
for the local guys it would be sped up and you would get your board quick,
which I didn’t need. I was in no hurry. There was no need to give away
that, and there was no need to give away the price. The supplier was really
competing on price, not me. I was exploring and deliberately asked for a
range. So there’s no negotiation. There’s no trade-offs. There was no
alternative to, if a price had been too much, to buy a second-hand board or
anything like that.
In terms of priorities being agreed with the client, we didn’t have a
delivery date, didn’t know what the price was, and there was no
communication back to me. I actually had to ring up and ask where’s the
board and is it ready yet. When I finally did get through, it was great
that I could walk around to someone’s place and pick it up, but really
there was no thank you for that. The board actually has five fins. It can
be set up as a quad fin, not just a thruster. That was incomplete. I guess
when I chased up to get those fins, I actually used Facebook to contact
them. I tried on the phone and also tried SMS, and I didn’t get a response
there. So there is no expectation for an ongoing relationship. There’s no
communication. I guess once it’s done, the deal’s done. You’re sold and you
disappear off the radar.
So not an ideal sales process. This person is competing on price, and I
think what’s really sad about it is that I know there are Chinese-made
boards being sold up the road, and the person that’s competing on price is
the Australian supplier and they don’t have a good sales process, which is
making it very easy for importers to beat them on everything else other
than price and then drive the nail in the coffin with price.
Just a quick review of the sales process there. I hope that gives you some
ideas for your own sales process. I’m not perfect, and certainly I have to
coach myself back to this same process. But you can see where there are
gaps in the different stages of the sales process, and I hope that helps.
Thank you. Bye.
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