Transcript for:
Effective Sales Techniques with Andrew Anderson

all right Jeremy Miner founder seventh level welcome to another episode of closers or losers I've been traveling for the last month all over Europe had a couple of speaking engagements there took a little bit of time off about two and a half three weeks there as well went from Czech Republic to Italy to Poland I felt like it was in like every country but I'm back at our corporate headquarters in Scottdale Arizona and you want to tune in to this episode because we are going to introduce you to a client we do client interviews every single week with different clients from different Industries and we pull apart their sales process we help we have them promised to give you gold nuggets that help you sell more of your products and services I've been told that is the biggest reason why our podcast has grown from zero downloads per day to now record-breaking 112,000 plus downloads every single day in the podcast you're definitely want going to want to stay on here for the next 25 30 minutes while I interview this client and break down their sales process and kind of go over some of the results they're getting all right Jeremy Miner here welcome to the Facebook live so every week we interview a client from a different industry and we break down their sales process and have them give you some golden nuggets to help you sell more so so this gentleman today has only been in our training program less than six months he's going on around a six month with us started in January uh and let's bring him out because nobody cares about me they only care about what we're going to talk about today so Andrew are you out there I'm here my friends okay perfect all right my man okay so uh well let's let's break this down so it's Andrew Anderson you've been one of our clients here you started in January into our npq training programs more of our advanced stuff and where do you live Andrew I want don't you to tell everybody where you live real quick um I live in simy Valley just the suburb of Los Angeles okay so you're in Semi Valley and why don't you tell everybody what industry you're in what do you actually sell so I sell sleep systems iend mattresses adjustable sheets that kind of thing so uh mattresses like if I walk into like a retail store it could be uh the the soft mattresses the hard I don't know what you guys call them therapeutic mattress it could be all over the board right right we carry a wide range of materials Comfort um just a fairly decent large store um with lots of selections okay perfect all right and how long have you been in that industry for um so I been um doing it for about a year and a half now okay about a year and a half all right now and what did you sell before you were in the mattress industry or like retail um yeah so I've kind of jumped around I kind of um started doing food samples at hold at Whole Foods um you know your $5 bag of chips yeah um graduated into like working at Co at Costco and Sam's Road shows okay I was just being taught that sales is a numbers game there's a new Prospect every 30 seconds um but what I learned and even trained people on was pressure techniques okay old school ways of doing business um but it resulted in like a high return rate like I remember one commission check was like 35% okay of prospects return the product Oh So 35% were cancelling so you were high pressuring them into it but then almost four out of ten would ask for refunds and obviously exactly that kind of hurts you financially when that happens right you get charged back as well your commission or whatever you made on that okay exactly so so six seven months ago where did you where did you find us like how did this even start for you you know I um I think I just saw you on Instagram okay so you started following me you saw some like basic reals or something like that and yeah I joined a lot of the like free um your free little sessions that you do I on Tuesday yeah so you started follow me started getting some basic stuff what caused you to feel like hey like I I need to get into like the training courses like I really need to learn these skills if I'm Really Gonna sell more what what went through your mind that caused you to feel that way what caused me to feel that way um so at the time yeah I wasn't doing well I was I mean I was doing average I was closing about 30% of the deals okay but in my industry is it's such a high ticket high and there's it seems like there's a new mattress store sleep store popping up every day sure um there's sometimes days with two clients one client there there's been weekends with zero people popping in okay um with the state of the economy right now and it I knew it wasn't getting any better I knew inflation was going through the roof and I needed to pay my bills and I needed um working in commission I need to make sales yeah if I can't control the traffic coming in yeah so if you got fewer people coming in the store you can't control that but you can control what you say and what you ask to the people that do come in that is one thing you can control right exactly okay so you got into the training you get in a few months what do you start to notice starts to change with the prospects you're talking to compared to before neq first off there was no guesswork I was throwing mud at the wall um suffering from um opium yeah just thinking things would change and then now I have an established rubric and you don't NE I don't want to sound script this I don't say exactly the same question I have like two or three connection questions two or three situation questions that we rotate throughout yeah um but just having a framework and an established system just allows the clients to open up and to put their guard down and to you learn quickly from the training courses that you learn quickly how to how to disarm the prospects how to get them to let their guard down now is it easier for you to sell when you've learned how to get them to let their guard down compared to before when their guard was up I will tell you my anxiety is far far less um because it's not only easier it's just less stress yeah there's less drama there's it it it is so fun when you can disarm a prospect so much and they walk in the door saying they're not going to buy today and what are or they're only going to spend $500 yeah and then they walk out realizing their problem is not a $500 problem yeah it's a much bigger problem that you can solve right okay so you learned how to disarm them now what would you like before neq when a prospect would walk through the door before npq what was the first words out of your mouth if you can remember well first um it was the wrong energy it was like welcome yeah so glad to see you how's your day going yeah and what would you notice most prospects would do when you did that there there was definitely a mismatch of energy but not the good kind of mix M miss m yeah because we don't want to we don't want to ask the same questions that prospects are used to every salesperson asking right like hey how's your day going how you doing today how's the weather out there because the average Prospect they generally don't believe that you're really interested in how their days going and why do they not believe that because every salesperson that's ever tried to sell them many starts with how's your day going and because you sound like everybody else your prospect typically treats you like everybody else right unless they're a laydown sale they like how often Andrew when when a salesperson would try to sell you something and ask you how your day was going would you believe that they were genuinely interested in how your day was a total stranger I mean I you my one of my favorite horrible games um is messing with salespeople and being like you know my day is horrible my grandma just died right and watching them come back from that yeah because even if you generally are interested in every prospect's day that you're talking to which I would be highly suspicious if any of you watching here are really interested in how every prospect's day is going highly suspicious if you were even if that's the case your prospects don't believe you because they're just used to every sales person asking them the same predictable questions okay so what is a a good connection question that you're asking your prospects when they come through the door now and and what is changed on how they react to that yeah so my connection question generally when they walk in the door now is just asking them if they're having fun out looking around the day yeah and why do we do that that's actually an objection prevention technique why why is that so important especially in retail yeah in retail um the rule is well um the general rule is once you um once they walk out they're gone for good yeah I have a higher than average return rate because I sound different now and like I've never had a return customer be before I um joined neq yeah well it's true because when when a prospect comes through let's say if you sell for a car dealership or you sell mattresses uh you sell like mattresses like you do or let's say you sell Furniture anything retail the objection you're dealing with from the very first is hey welcome into the store today how are you doing today or how's your day going or hey welcome into the store today how can I help you what does the average Prospect say oh just looking and now what do you do to that you're kind of like uh yeah it's just looking this is only my first stop yeah so instead we're going to give them that objection in the first question where we help prevent it from happening in their mind so everybody pay attention what we're doing here hey welcome into the store today are you guys just kind of out looking around see we're GNA give them the objection you know what they're GNA say what do they say yeah yeah yeah we're just kind of looking around and you know what you're you know what you're possibly looking for and where do they go um they generally say like oh no this is only our first stop and it's like oh not not a problem happy to give you a tour um but I should go into like a situation question yeah so if they said because I typically what you would do is like hey welcome into the store today are you guys just kind of out looking around yeah yeah okay you know what you're you know what you're possibly looking for see how I'm verbal pacing the question out and I say possibly looking for see I still want to be neutral in the very beginning because how much trust or credibility do I have with the prospect in the first 20 seconds zero so if I start assuming some prospects will say like oh well we're just kind of uh we're just kind of this is a first store we're not really going to buy anything today but if I say do you know what you're possibly looking for and I start to motion over to where I'm going wherever the stuff is you're selling you'll see that prospects will typ well we're kind of looking for and then you're right into it and then we can start right into our situation questions now maybe give us an example of a situation question we trained you to use and how it works now because there's several you have give us one example yeah so um the first thing I want to know is what they're sleeping on now yeah I want to know how long they've had it because a lot of times people um for example have a mattress that is broken down so and they want to overcorrect like they like a medium mattress but they think they need something concrete firm because the well their mattress is going to break down yeah so part of my job is to prevent problems because when a mattress comes back to us we can't resell it at least in our state sure okay so you're asking you're finding out what type of mattress they have now how long they've had it and and not only that is not only is that important for you to understand so you know how to better position your mattresses you sell but more importantly we're asking situation questions to help the prospect start to understand their real situation because most of them don't really think about it that much right they just don't they don't really understand what the real situation is okay so there's other other questions you're going to ask there in situation stage but then we're going to go into our any neq problem awareness questions and that's where we start to build a gap and help them find problems that maybe they didn't realize they had why is that so important um so it's very important because if they don't have a problem you get that it's to expensive um objection at the end because um Your solution is only as good is the problem sure and you give the example that if you think you have um like you go to the doctor and the doct and you think you have a cold and you just need a tyel but then he says oh you have a tumor what are they going to do you're going to find the money you're going to find a way to get the treatment you need and a lot of my customers come in with like back pain they come one with serious problems lack of sleep causes a multitude of Health um of health issues yeah we have to disarm the prospect to get them to let their guard down right so we have to so so once we find out what mattress have so I mean John the you know first problem War this question for your industry depending on what they say I'd have to tweak this but let's say I find out they have an XYZ type of mattress okay whatever that is so I mean the mattress you guys are sleeping on now I mean that's a it's a fairly decent mattress I mean what's caused you to feel like you might want something newer or what's caused you to feel like you might want something softer if it was a hard mattress okay yeah now when you ask that question what does the prospect do the prospect opens up because um it they tell me what's going on what their problems are because there is no one-size fit saw like mattress the more information I have the the the easy it is to put them on the right mattress the first one and that's one of the things that neq helped me out the most with is instead of jumping around five 10 mattresses generally from the questions I ask and the problems they've had and what issues they've had with XYZ mattress in the past I'm able to put them on the first matress yeah and like five minutes have them make a decision yeah it's nice and easy so what that question is instead of saying well what are some problems that you're experiencing because that question is very vague and generalized and they know where that question leads so the prospect emotionally shuts down so if I read language the question I reformat it and I it's like I almost push them away with that kind of a confused slash conern tone like I'm confused why are you even here I don't say that but my tone implies that what it does in the prospect's brain is it gets them to defend themselves on why they want to change right why they want to get a different mess see I could do that for any industry so the I mean the mattress you have now I mean that's a it's a fairly decent mattress I mean besides having a little hard time sleeping at night and you repeat back whatever they said so far that maybe they didn't like what's caused you to feel like you might want something different well don't get me wrong we like the mattress but and then they start telling you what they don't like but more importantly they start telling who what they don't like themselves and that is what's called self-persuasion now is it more persuasive for you the salesperson to tell the prospect why they should buy your thing or to get the prospect to tell themselves why they should buy your thing I think everybody knows the answer by now right now uh let's talk about this a little bit because you were before nbq you were closing around 30% which is not horrible yeah kind of kind of right in the middle for your industry where are you at that's on the lower end of the average okay um but now that I have prospects um um that come in I'm higher like I'm in the 80s the 84% okay that's what you were the last quarter so you went from around a 30% closing percentage to you're saying about 85 84 okay so if 8 four out of a 100 people come in they're walking out with the mattress congratulations that's a lot better than 30 a lot better than 30 but what's even crazier is I go from the industry average about 12 to, 1500 yeah to last month having an average transaction of O over $4,000 okay so instead of selling a $1,500 mattress which is the average you're now selling a higher ticket that's over 4,000 and I'm assuming the yeah about four times more so the company you're you're working for is I'm assuming forced to pay you a higher Commission on a four grand mattress than a $1,500 mattress yeah and now they want me to train people okay well there you go you better get paid for that I love that all right well let's let's you know there's there's a lot of other you know situation inq situation apq problem orti questions we have to learn to ask but what's a good question that we've trained you how to use to get them to start seeing what the future looks like once the Newfound problems are solved like the second half of your solution awareness questions yeah so like suppose we find the um right mattress today because I'm still neutral um like what would that do for you yeah let's say that we're able to find you the right mattress I mean in your mind what you know what what let's say that we able to find we you know let's say that we're able to find you the right mattress where you can start sleeping at night you know you can start doing this besides all those things how do you see the the new mattress benefiting you the most though so I can also Rel language it that way and then what does a prospect typically say to that how do they respond to that type of question um a lot lot of people tell start telling me um things like they have they'll have more energy and then that always helps because reframe I can ask what they're doing for energy now and often times people are relying on things like coffee and energy drinks to get through the day when we're really treating the symptom not um we're treating the symptom instead of the CA and the cost lack of good quality sleep yeah which is affecting their health right okay and there's other solution Wess questions you have to ask before and after that what what type of consequence question are you using that we've trained you to get them to defend themselves on why they want to change to help build urgency in the sale yeah so a consequence question um is like um suppose we uh um you know like you could um yeah the solu this tempor Pedic is by far like a temper um the highest end Rolls-Royce Lamborghini of mattresses like what makes you want good quality sleep and instead of just being like the 10% of people that buy a mattress online solution awareness I like that and then you can lean in and say so what if you don't do anything about this and you keep staying on that XYZ mattress I mean how is your back going to get better if you just stay on the same mattress you've always been on if that was the case if their back was bad because of a hard mattress see whatever they say is bad about what they already have I'm going to tie that into a consequence question that implies that what happens if you don't change this right I'm not saying the words that way but I'm Rel language it or I can simply do this so for you why look at doing this now like why not push it down the road like a lot of people do who end up staying on the same mattress and they keep having to go to that chiropractor every week because their back keeps going out if that was their thing that they had to keep going to the chiropractor because their back goes out because of the bad mattress see whatever they say I'm plugging that into the consequence question and now it feels relevant to the prospect it feels like I understand their unique situation now because your prospects feel like you understand their unique situation how do they start to how do they start to treat you they they treat me as an authority and for example like I had one customer the other day drive an hour away because they were told that I am the mattress expert they probably passed a hundred other stores yeah all right if you're on here watching right now type in me if you want to acquire the skills uh that this client is that Andrew is where prospects literally are driving an hour away or they're only calling you or they're reaching out to you because you're known as The Trusted Authority The Trusted expert in your industry type in me if you want to acquire those skills now we're not going to go into like your presentation stuff like that we don't have time to do that um what is your what do you feel like has been your biggest thing that we've trained you that's helped you the most go from 30% closing to 84% closing percentages what's the one biggest thing the biggest thing is objection preventing okay tell us what you mean because you um so like that that inry question the um asking them if they're having fun out looking around to day yeah well they're going to say no they're going to tell you their pain um and sometimes even then sometimes people are like I got to think about it well how long have you been thinking about getting a mattress I'll ask that is like my second question because at the end they it's funny when they like look for a way out but their mind is telling them like I have this problem this solves the problem there's like what because sometimes they they just they're like psychologically prone to going to three stores usually they've told me they've gone to three stores or they want to go to three stores and shop around but it's like well what are you hoping to find another store but that this doesn't solve yeah and by getting to the root of the objection and getting it early yeah like I literally the other day I got my first I got to think about it objection in like a month I literally had to go into the training because I'm like we' I've gone so good at preventing objections that I like stumbled on what to say yeah the funny the great thing is is like if you want to get to a much higher level in sales ability you know you got to get better at a lot better at preventing the objections you're currently getting because it is a myth if a sales trainer tells you the more objections you get the more interested the prospect is think about the logic behind that what about all the laydown sales that gave you no objections that were easy to close so so how does that make sense you're getting the laydowns they don't have any objections but now all of a sudden the prospects that give you the most objections are the most most interested it makes zero sense let me let me reframe it for you the more objections you get the more uncertainty the prospect has in their mind that you can actually get them the results you say and you are less likely to get them to buy okay so you want to learn how to prevent a lot of those objections from happening and when you do get an objection now as Andrew knows it's a lot easier to help the prospect overcome it because now they trust you they don't look at you as like trying to sell them you know and manipulate them they quite literally view you as like the expert who's there to solve their problems and get where they want to go so there's so much trust there that a couple we can ask a couple questions like well I guess you could I mean how will your back be fixed if you keep staying on the same bed you're at now though see that's a simple howto question like and they come up with well I guess it wouldn't be able to well you want to keep having the back problems because our clients that are on this bed they don't have those same problems would it help you more is it going to help your back if you're sleeping on this bed where you don't have the back problems see I can ask a couple reframing questions and they just resolve the concern themselves and they're ready to go what have you found is easier overcoming 12 different objections per Prospect or preventing most of them and maybe they have a concern or so at the very end that's easy to answer easier to just handle concerns yeah but like it's so crazy because like N I I I don't I I think like I don't I I'm getting less than like 10% even having a concern yeah and if so many times they're not qualified like they don't have money they they want a $200 twin we don't deal in low-end stuff yeah 100% well congratulations on your results um I know I know I've got a hard stop here for a second um advice what would you give a brand new salesperson uh what advice would you give like a brand new salesperson just starting to get into sales in your mind what what's your best piece of advice you you give them um the best piece of advice I was given was to track your objections yeah um I was tolded that very early on at seventh level and because there's something you're doing that's the root cause of an objection yeah wakes up in the morning it's like you know when I go into that store or when i that that salesperson calls me or when that salesperson knocks on the door or when I meet them on Zoom I think about four minutes in I'm just going to throw out hey can you tell me I'm going discuss and I'm going to tell you if I'm interested did they plan that out or was that something that is a triggered reaction based on you the salesperson and what you're saying and how you're saying it and what you're asking that's triggering their brain to go into fight or flight mode see the difference big difference big difference now what would you say to a vet who might have been in sales for five 10 15 20 years what would you say to them that they're going to need to do to get to the next level practice yeah I I thought I was on top of my game I was using old school methods um I was really just shoving things down people's throats yeah and I think you say it best that we need to turn our focus on if there's a problem and if we have the solution then be a product um not be a product Pusher yeah be a problem finder not a product Pusher well what's what said my man congratulations congratulations on your results uh number one ranked salesperson in your company I'm going to go on a limb and say you're probably one of the 0.00001% top reps in your entire industry closing 84% at a 4,000 plus uh ticket level with the mattress industry I don't know that for sure but I'm gonna go on a limb and I'm I'm pretty sure that you probably are at that level yeah I'm get I'm getting there I'm getting there congratulations and the great thing is you only been in the training programs as a client for six months and say sales is not something you master in six months I'm still mastering it and I had a probably a pretty successful 18e sales career before I retired and started seventh level about six years ago so if I'm still learning that everybody probably should be learning and tweaking and getting better because I always you know sales people always ask me what's the number one you know what's the how how can I gain more confidence as a salesperson and and I'm like well it's really simple like if you want to gain more confidence as a salesperson you got to gain more skill level because your skill level causes you to sell more when you sell more where does your confidence level go it goes way up how can you have a high confidence level with a low skill level you can't because at the end of day you can get pumped up every single day with music whatever you listen to personal development videos but if your skill levels down here you can get pumped up in the morning before you go to work but when you start getting kicked in the face in the teeth and you don't make a ton of sales and you're high pressure and there's a lot of drama your confidence level goes back down to where your skill level is nothing more nothing less so if you want to raise your confidence level you simply got to acquire much better questions than you're asking now you got to acquire how to ask those questions much better than you like your tonality you've got to learn body language you have to learn pre-f framing looping framing objection prevention when your skill level gets as high guess what you sell way more which in turn as you know Andrew causes you to have more confidence you can't start selling five times more than you are now and have low confidence that just doesn't mix and vice versa you can't hardly make any sales if you if you don't make many sales your confidence level can't be high it's your skill level that equates to your confidence level nothing more nothing l no you posted a video um the other day um that you know with a restaurant Meme and the person was like well if you're not selling it you have a broke mindset and The more I've been in the game The more I've realized that it the mindset and that's what I love and honestly it's helped me most at seventh level it's just getting in the mindset of what problems we solve yeah having that value yeah and then being able to transfer it by asking the right questions it's very simple what problems do the prospects have what are the consequences if they don't get solved for the Prospect and how does your solution solve those that is how you know companies always ask sales people as how are you able to duplicate in every industry how is seventh level being able to go into every industry on the planet and get these results where we have tens of thousands of testimonies from clients well it's because of that formula it's very simple once we understand what problems prospects have in that industry and then we understand the consequences of what happens if those problems don't get solved for them whether it's a company or an individual B Toc or B2B or b2g the government and then how does our how does your solution solve those it's really easy for us to wrap around connection questions situation questions problem awareness solution awareness consequence presentation commitment and how we're able to duplicate so Andrew well done I just wanted to congratulate you and well done you know you're certified in in inq now so you're able to move up into more of our Advanced training programs and uh learn the skills to even sell more than where you're at now good job okay thank you well done all right everybody thanks for being on uh we'll be live here in the Facebook group next Tuesday as well and make sure if you haven't picked up a lot of you have been asking me hey where is your new book I heard you had a new book I don't even know where the new book is it's somewhere you got a new book yeah we got a new book so you got to go to uh let's see go to barnesand noble.com go to barnesand noble.com and pick up the book where's it at it's gone here it's off my shelf the new model of selling it's called the new model of selling selling to an unsellable generation oh it's right here there you go all right so if you guys youve been asking me where do you go where do we go just go to Barnes noble.com we'll have a link here uh in the footnotes go to barsen noble.com and pick up the new model of selling selling to an unsellable generation uh Jerry Acuff who is a uh owns a big uh sales consulting firm on the east coast and uh me authored this book it's a Wall Street Journal bestseller Barnes & Noble bestseller and an Amazon bestseller we we did this uh I think we published this about eight months ago nine months ago so Barnes ov.com you want to pick up the new book and if you are wanting to acquire the advanced skills that Andrew is talking about simply message us directly you can message me directly in our Facebook group sales revolution. grroup and uh whoever responds to could be me or one of our coordinators in there because we've got several in there I get pretty busy sometimes I respond here and there but somebody respond back to you and we'll let you book in a call with one of our account managers just like Andrew did and uh you can kind of tell them maybe what problems you're having okay with closing more deals and based on what you tell them uh they'll show you the different training programs that you can be involved in that will help you sell uh the most the soonest right Andrew how was that experience is it crazy dude that experience was incredible I I I I would I I and I just want to say like a lot of people like that I talked to in the group were like afraid of money yeah and the reality is I was saving for like a vacation for two years yeah pop down that I use that funds to acquire the skills and it paid for itself the very next month congratulations it's probably a lot better financially for somebody to go from a 30% closing rate to an 84% closing rate and be able to sell product value that's worth four times so well done assuming you can probably go nicer vacation shortly so well done thank you my friend all right Andrew get out of here we'll see everybody we'll see everybody next week thanks everybody all right all right Jeremy Miner that was a great episode now you want to start acquiring more skills here's your next step you can always join our free Facebook group go to sales revolution. grroup sales revolution. grroup at the time of this podcast I believe there's about 140 some thousand professional sales Pros in there are always willing to help you thousands of those are our clients always willing to help you guys and you can always get our bestselling book you can go to barnesand noble.com go to Barnes & noble.com this is just published a while ago it's a Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble bestseller and a Wall Street Journal bestseller the new model of selling selling to an unsellable generation with me and Jerry aov my good friend Jerry aov and we break down really why selling has changed and maybe why you're losing some deals that you feel like you could be making and we're going to show you why you're losing those but more importantly we're going to show you what to do about it not just goal setting and pumping yourself up to Mo be motivated I'm assuming you're already a motivated individual that's why you watch this show that's why you listen to me on this podcast so now that you're motivated what's the next step you got to learn the skill level to get you to a higher sales ability that helps you sell more and that's what this book introduces you to so go to Barnes andy.com to get the book obviously you can always hit us up in our Facebook group if you uh want to get in some of our Advanced sales training programs we already train companies and individual salespeople in your industry in fact we train 161 out of 163 Industries right now according to Forbes Magazine there's only 163 different indust it's crazy and we're in 161 of those in all the subcategories so we love you thanks for being a valued uh a valued person that follows our show that listens to the show and can't wait uh can't wait for our next episode that you're going to hear very shortly talk to you soon