Ask A Sales Leader: Ayham Al Masri

Ayham Al Misri in Dubai Frb 2016-1_resized

In this month’s Ask A Sales Leader we are pleased to hear from Ayham Al Masri. Ayham is the Sales Manager for RS Fitness in Dubai, UAE. Ayham and his team just went through our program, and read below to learn more about how his team is improving results in the field.

  1. Describe how your customer facing teams use your organization’s sales process.

By spending a longer time on solution development, learning as much as we can about the client and the project, understanding better the key players and their primary business objectives and the challenges.

We then try to show the client the financial impact of these challenges and provide solutions to address them. After that we can move into presenting the solution and provide added value to our offer.

Once we have established value, we can then later negotiate and close the deal.

  1. What is your Management’s approach to Coaching sales reps?

Our approach to coaching revolves around making sure that our salespeople complete what is written above, and then being well versed with the products and services we sell, and how they help the customer meet their business objectives.

I also help my team to create valuable relationships by putting ourselves in the buyer’s position. This is the key to effective Coaching.

  1. How do you reinforce sales skill development for sales reps?

To open up to learning new things related to the industry, and being committed to the products and services they sell by being more involved in events and training programs.

  1. What advice would you give to other sales leaders/reps?

My advice would be that if Sales reps don’t want to learn new things, its fine. However, if your thoughts and mindset cannot catch up with time, you will be eliminated by the industry and competition.

Those who refuse to learn and improve, will definitely one day become redundant and not relevant to the industry. They will learn the lesson in a hard, expensive way and I don’t think anyone would want to put themselves in that position.

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Give your Prospect the O-K to say N-O

No_picIf you’re in sales, at some point, you have probably challenged yourself with the attitude that when a prospect says “no” that’s when “real” selling begins, because “no is just the first step to yes”.  Our type A personalities are programed to believe that a “no” is a failure.  While it can be disappointing, it is inevitable if you have a career in sales.  Review these tips to remind yourself that N-O is O-K.

1.  Be open to the fact that not everyone is a perfect fit for what you sell. 

This realization will keep your objectivity clear, reminding you that you are not a failure for not selling to everyone.  In fact, if you push the sale when “no” is really the best answer for a prospect, you can be pretty sure that “no” would have been the best answer for you too.  When the customer realizes that they were “sold”, your persistent push to “yes” can become your biggest nightmare for the next few years, when trying to satisfy an unhappy customer who wasn’t a good fit in the first place.

 2.  Re-evaluate your role. 

Instead of thinking that your job is to convince people to buy from you, take a customer-focused approach, having a desire to help a prospect solve a problem or reach a business objective…with your product or service, of course.  The ultimate success is when a prospect starts convincing you that he has a problem and needs your help.  When your approach is to understand their needs, the dynamics change dramatically, and you end up with a happy customer who tells one person, and they tell another, and so on.  Now that’s a “yes”!

3.  Any sales technique that puts the buyer at a disadvantage is inappropriate.

When your goal is to resist a “no”, you create an atmosphere of pressure that will turn an interested prospect into a defensive prospect. Buyers hate pressure. Pressure kills rapport and trust.  A wise sales person will try to remove the pressure and build trust by actually giving a prospect the opportunity to say “no” early in the conversation. Interestingly, the more opportunities you give a prospect to say “no”, the fewer “no’s” you will actually hear.

4.  Provide an easy exit. 

Although this behavior is contradictory to what a prospect would expect from a sales person, give this a try:

Susan, we may get to the end of our meeting today and find out that our company and our potential solutions may not be an appropriate fit to your business challenges.  If it is apparent that there is no point in continuing this discussion, I want you to understand that I am okay with you telling me that.  I will not try to convince you otherwise if that is your decision.

There are two winners in every sale:  The one who wins the business, and the one who gets out the earliest, realizing that they will not win the business.  It’s simple but true:  N-O is O-K.

 

 

 

 

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Sales Kick Off Services

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Our customers have relied on us to enhance the impact at their Sales Kick Off meetings with a dynamic speaker sharing a similar, but outside-of- the- company perspective. Focusing on the core areas for selling success, some of the topics we cover include:

  • Prospecting
  • Referral Prospecting
  • Discovery
  • Getting to the Decision Makers
  • Establishing Value
  • Identifying Buying Influences
  • Negotiating

 

We assimilate the information and techniques that top performers are using to win business, and put it into a simple process that all can follow. This allows attendees to take away the steps they need to be successful right after the meeting. Management also has a blueprint for what to look for in the near term, and our follow on services show Managers how to Coach to the skills described.

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