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The company organized training for new sales staff and invited me to give a keynote speech. I summarized the following ten suggestions, hoping to help salespeople become outstanding in their companies and even the industry.
Build Your Reputation You need to make yourself known in your territory, in your industry, and especially among your existing and potential customers. There are many ways to gauge your reputation; one test is to search your Chinese name on Baidu or Google. If you can't find it, your reputation is insufficient. If you find it but it's on page ten or later, it's still not enough, because few people have the patience to browse through dozens of pages online. What's the most painful thing in sales? You visit a customer or call them, introduce your product, and they are impressed and interested. You ask about an order, and they say, "Sorry, we just made our purchase last month." You ask when the next one is, and they say, "In three years." But if you have a bit of a name in the industry, customers will definitely include you when choosing suppliers.
Be Fully Prepared Before any sales action—whether a call, a visit, or an email—do your homework. Understand which company you're visiting, what products they make, what they care about, what value you can bring, and whether what you offer is helpful. Do extensive preparation before contacting customers. If possible, make a checklist of what you need to prepare, because preparation varies by industry, customer, and the person you're meeting.
Find Common Ground Find common points with your customers. You've done extensive preparation and learned a lot about the customer, but if all you know is their energy-saving or cost needs, that's somewhat relevant, but our customers might care more about security, safety, fire prevention, and escape. So find materials related to that or to their industry. For example, on January 6 at 20:30, a serious fire broke out at the Shanghai Agricultural Products Wholesale Market at 2000 Hunan Road, Pudong New Area. The fire caused 5 deaths and 14 injuries. Think about how this fire relates to your customers. As incomes rise and basic needs are met, more customers care about safety; life and property safety are increasingly the focus of families and government agencies.
Ask Questions Use questioning to deeply understand customer needs. Some needs customers know; others they don't. The challenge for salespeople is to collect insightful, passionate questions that engage users and uncover deep-seated needs. Different customers have different needs. For example, the fire I mentioned is a need, but a hospital or hotel manager might say, "We've never had a fire here." But think about what would happen if a fire occurred. Look at the building, consider the consequences of a fire, and then tell them, "If people die, what would happen?" They might know or not. Additionally, many enterprises have a need for access control and attendance systems. When you introduce an access control system, they might say it's not related to attendance. But ask a few more questions: many units have attendance needs, especially if the company has hundreds or thousands of employees. These companies often assign HR staff to count how many people came to work and how many didn't. Calculate how much those two people are worth. Ingersoll Rand provides these customers with the most cost-effective attendance systems. If you don't ask, they might not know, because it's an HR matter, not related to the office or security department. By asking more questions, you can uncover such needs in many companies.
Find the Decision-Maker How to find the key decision-maker? The premise is that you understand who decides on this project, this engineering, this purchase. Otherwise, you might talk to many people and still not know the decision-maker's thoughts and requirements. New salespeople, or those entering a new industry, might not know the customer's decision-making process and who makes the decision. I've been in sales and led sales teams, and I've seen that new salespeople often go through a painful process: you discuss a project, and they say they'll talk to their supervisor and sign with you. But when the bid results come out, they neither buy from you nor from your main competitor. Because the salesperson doesn't understand the whole process or who decides, they spend a lot of time and fail. As salespeople, we must try every means to find and meet the decision-maker.
Obtain Referrals From now on, collect, organize, and keep customer referrals. Saying how great your company is or how good your product is helps, but customer referrals are more convincing. If you start now, collect a referral for each deal you close. But the prerequisite for getting a referral is customer satisfaction. If you close a deal but the customer is unhappy with product quality, delivery, or after-sales service, will they write a referral? It's good if they don't file a complaint. Close an order, serve a customer; serve a customer, ensure their success; ensure success, collect a referral. Write down what they say and think, and ideally record a video.
Expand Relationships Don't just meet one or two people at the customer. Decision-makers are important, but for larger projects, decisions are often made by a bid evaluation committee, not one person. Sometimes there are two committees: one for technical, one for commercial. So if you only meet one or two people, that person has only one vote, even if it's an important one. Often the committee has seven or nine votes, so one person isn't enough. Learn how to build relationships with relevant departments and people, because our projects involve design institutes, general contractors, decoration, and customers—four units, each with several departments, each with several people. If you have good relations with only one, two, or three, it's not enough to convince them to buy. So salespeople need to learn how to identify stakeholders and build and maintain good relationships with them.
Become a Trusted Friend Initially, sales is about promoting our product and company. Over time, salespeople should shift to recommending solutions, services, and designs based on customer needs, becoming a trusted friend and advisor in certain aspects. I've reaped many benefits from this. In 1990, I started selling construction machinery. At the time, I was in charge of product exports. From 1992, many salespeople and even sales managers from import-export companies came to me for help. Most of them had language or trade backgrounds and didn't know much about machinery. I studied technical German and spent a lot of time learning about construction machinery manufacturers, products, and applications from chief engineers and sales managers. I knew which Chinese manufacturers made what, so when import-export companies got overseas bid plans for construction machinery, many would consult me about where a certain excavator was made, which factory produced a bulldozer, or where a truck crane was manufactured. At that time, I was mainly responsible for rollers, because our company only made rollers and pile drivers, but the list often included other products. I'd tell them, "For this machine, contact XCMG; for this one, contact Liuzhou; for this, Guiyang Mining..." But whenever the list included rollers, they'd definitely recommend our company's products. Within just two years, our company's construction machinery exports grew fivefold. Think about it: in sales, make some customers come to you no matter what, even if we don't have the product, they'll still find you.
Be Diligent in Summarizing Every sales experience is a chance to practice and grow. Diligently record details of customer interactions: who you met, their preferences, interests, competitors, competitive advantages, etc. Our company provides a CRM platform to help everyone record daily information, building a solid customer information foundation for yourself and the team.
Have Firm Beliefs The last and most important point: you must have firm belief in yourself, your product, your company, and your team. Every company has room for improvement. Apple has problems now; Samsung seems better, but does Samsung have no issues? Every company has areas to improve. If a company's products had no problems, salespeople would worry because the company wouldn't need sales; if products were perfect, there'd be no need for service. Any salesperson must have firm belief in what they sell, and that belief must be conveyed to customers. I believe anyone can be in sales, whether eloquent, technically skilled, or with an endless capacity for alcohol. But there are two prerequisites: first, believe in yourself, the company, the product, and the team; second, attitude—attitude determines everything. We must deeply understand that customers need not just products and services, but someone who understands their situation, can provide reliable, safe solutions, and hopes to be their helpful friend.
I hope everyone can achieve rapid sales growth by learning and applying these ten tips.
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