|
Selling to a group has many similarities and differences to selling ‘one on one.’ With selling to a single decision maker, you only have one person to focus on. However, you’re also stuck with that one person if they should happen to be negative about your product. With selling to a group, you now have 2 or more individuals to focus on, but you also have the advantage of leveraging your ‘allies’ in the group to help you accomplish a sale!
To qualify to sell to a group, you MUST be on top of your game. I’ve stressed repeatedly that you should know your sales cycle and sales talk forward and backward, but if you want to ‘master’ the art of group presentations, you HAVE to be sharp enough to give 150% of your attention to the group. You have to literally be able to constantly pulse every member in the group. Who are your allies? Who are negative? Which ones aren’t even paying attention and how do you get them
engaged?
The very first rule to group presentations is to arrive EARLY. Obviously you always want to be punctual, but if you know you’re going to be presenting to a group at a meeting, attempt to arrive 20 to 30 minutes early. Why? Because you want to attempt to enlist at least one or two of the individuals of the group prior to presenting to the entire group. If you think about it, the first one or two people who are ready for the meeting are normally the “A” personalities. They’re the same people who are early and ready for EVERY meeting. These are the people you want to spend a few minutes building great rapport with! You don’t want to get into a demo, you just
want to build rapport to gain their trust. These are going to be your most important allies in the meeting. If your group’s going to take a vote or decide on the purchase, you definitely want several people lobbying on your behalf to help overcome any objections.
When you’re ready to present to your group, make sure you stay in complete control through the entire process. Normally, the individuals you have to worry about are the individuals who are not paying attention. I attempt to enlist everyone in my group with questions a dialogue. Even the largest group I’ve presented to (about 100 people), I had to make sure I had everyone in on the demo! One great technique you can use when two or three people are talking among themselves and not paying attention is to simply stop talking. These people will eventually ‘hear the silence’ and start paying attention. Even though this can be perceived as a negative tactic, your allies will normally applaud your efforts! The people who don’t pay attention are normally the same people who NEVER pay attention! These are the same people who showed up late in high school or college and sat in the back of the classroom!
When presenting to your group, you still follow the same tactics as demoing a single individual. When you go to qualify your group, you ask the group for the consensus to make a decision. I usually say, “It looks like everyone’s here! Are you guys the ones who will be ultimately handling this project?” And they normally look at each other and all nod ‘yes.’ Then I say, “Do we need to get anyone else in hear?” If they say “No,” then I have a qualified group!
The procrastination objection again can be the trickiest part, but again, you have to go for it! I say, “If you guys were really excited about what I’m going to show you, and you felt it could save you time or money like it did for Joe, Sherry, Mike, and Todd,
is there anyway you could possibly take a vote on it today?” They’ll usually look at each other and give you an answer! And just like demoing someone one on one, if they don’t give you a ‘yeah,’ you can ‘recycle’ again through your presentation to try to qualify them again! Your whole goal is to get them to commit to voting! I’ve also been able to qualify groups by saying, “Well, if you guys felt you definitely weren’t interested today, is there anyway you could possibly give me the thumbs down?” Then you’re at least working towards a commitment.
Beating Objections with a group
One great benefit to group selling is that you can use your allies to help you beat objections! If you’re getting an objection from a negative participant, simply look to one of your allies to help you answer the objection. Say one person is stuck on the price, but one of your allies is totally sold. You can say, “Sherry, help me out, tell Bill how you feel about the investment or why maybe the investment would more than justify itself within time.” And if Sherry’ really on your side, she can sometimes push or even stand up to the person giving the objection which is infinitely better then you trying to beat the objection yourself!
Closing The Group
After you feel you have the group above the buy-line, go into the close! You’ll be closing the group, but make sure you ‘buddy-up’ next to one of the allies to help you fill out the paper work and sign the deal. While you’re spending time with the ally, you can give an assignment to the group to keep them preoccupied while you work out the details and payment arrangement. You could pass out brochures and ask them to start splitting into teams to handle the different parts of the project, or you could ask one of your strong allies to start conversation with the group to outline the immediate goals of the product or who will be in charge of the installation!
|
