Selling

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The Danger of the Two Sales

Posted on by Jason Kanigan

The Danger of the Two Sales is a straightforward but not well-known marketing and sales problem that kills many new businesses.

Here's what happens to produce it:

Someone has a brainwave and makes a new product or service.

You see this all the time in the agency and Software-as-a-Service world...but you'll also see it in products, such as a condiment.

Then the creator goes out and tries to sell the thing, and discovers nobody wants it.

"Why don't they understand how great this is?" they shout. After all, it's clear as day to them why people need whatever it is.

But the public, the target market, other people... everyone else just doesn't get it.

The now-frustrated creator gives up.

the danger of the two sales, unable to sell, positioning problem, marketing problem

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

Understanding What Causes The Danger Of The Two Sales

What happened here?

The new business owner, fired up with the enthusiasm for their innovative idea, has dangerously bypassed the first problem in sales and marketing...

...identifying a problem people admit they'll pay to have solved.

This is the first of The Two Sales. You must make this first sale, and it is best if that sale is implicitly understood by your prospective customer before you begin talking to them.

In other words, the first sale is that your prospect admits there is a serious problem to be solved: one that they will pay money to fix.

If you haven't achieved this, you run a great risk of having your "solution" sound unnecessary or, even worse, nonsense. You'll ever make a sale in this situation.

The second of The Two Sales is that YOU are the best provider of solutions for this problem.

Can you see how if you blindly try to rush past the first of The Two Sales, that your target market agrees there's an issue here worth solving in the first place, your prospect will blink at you in confusion when you try to show off "your baby"?

Making Use Of The Two Sales

You might be astonished how often this situation comes up. If you keep the Danger of the Two Sales in mind as you begin, though, you'll be able to make use of it.

As a for-instance, I pre-qualify prospective clients for people who already believe that a metrics-based approach is good. For them to already be demonstrating they value numbers because they're collecting their own data—and aren't afraid of math.

So many newbie business owners are afraid of a little math.

When I do talk to someone about our services, I know they're already on board with doing some math...that they speak the language of marketing and operations results. I do not have to risk falling into the situation of trying to sell someone who just isn't into numbers and probably never will be. What a frustrating experience that would be!

Do you see how this directs your marketing?

Your marketing is best deployed in filtering in those people who already believe as you do. Then you can talk to those who qualify—those you've made The First Sale to—further about the details of your amazing solution.

Of course there are situations where a new problem and a new solution are very real. But you'll still have to deal with The Two Sales: before you'll ever make a sale you'll have to educate and convince someone, or get them to agree, that there is a serious problem in this area. Then you can move on to you being the best solution provider.

Many, many businesses have died an early death because their founders did not understand The Danger of the Two Sales. I encourage you to not be one of those founders. If you have deals that unexpectedly stall, this is likely a big reason why.

2023 Update on The Danger of the Two Sales

In reminder...

The First Sale (from the buyer's point of view): Is this a good idea for me in general?

The Second Sale: Is YOUR solution the best one for me?

Rush past the first and you'll have a lot of trouble making the second.

Take your time to make the first, and now that you've got your buyer's ears open, you'll have a much easier time with the second.

>> Jason Kanigan is a business strategist and conversion expert. To book a session to speak with Jason, click here. <<

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Getting Real Or Not Playing

Posted on by Jason Kanigan

Getting real involves challenging lazy thinking and penetrating façades, games, defenses, fears, and illusions." ~Let's Get Real Or Let's Not Play by Mahan Khalsa

let's get real or let's not play sales book mahan khalsa

Let's Get Real Or Let's Not Play is one of my favorite sales books: I've been referring to it since first discovering it in 2010. The premise is that buyer and seller need to cut past the baloney and posturing, and get down to a real, emotional, in-depth discussion of what's truly going on and how help may (or may not) be available.

As the salesperson, you have to be completely willing to walk away. If the prospect won't admit to having a serious problem that you can fix, you politely end the conversation. If they won't open up and let you into their world, at least a little, you don't continue.

By the same token, you as the salesperson are not walking around with a hammer looking at everything as a nail. If your solution isn't the right fit for this prospect, YOU TELL THEM SO.

Yes, it takes bravery to sell this way. And getting real is totally worth it. The price of honesty and open discussions will give you much better client relationships.

The Power of Getting Real

"As trust goes up, speed goes up and costs go down. As trust decreases, everything slows and costs rise." ~Mahan Khalsa, Let's Get Real Or Let's Not Play

Speed may not be a shocker here, but costs?

It's worth thinking about, isn't it: that when trust is low, costs go up. Think about implementation alone. People drag their heels. They spend time looking for other options, or trying to shoehorn their own pet solution into place in direct competition. Nobody tells anyone else what's going on, so things break. And of course there's the opportunity cost of dilly-dallying when you could go ahead and get the problem corrected.

Effective ways of gaining trust are to ask a lot of questions, and not push your solution a The One And Only. We ask the people who'd like to work with us a lot of questions. We're not sure, at the start, whether we're a fit for one another just yet. We don't want anyone and everyone to sign up.

How has trust been impacting speed and costs in your projects? Have you been getting real?

2023 Update for Getting Real With Your Prospects

A few months back as 2022 was ending, I was doing a series of (mostly) daily videos. These were a part of Wes Schaeffer's 12 Weeks to Peak sales accountability program. Doubled my income for that quarter, by the way. And during the series I chose Mahan's book as a topic. At that point I realized while I owned the book, I no longer had the audiobook version read by Mahan himself.

Now the topic of the video was "Eating your own dog food". That meant I had to do it. So I did. I went and got the hard-to-find original audio version of Let's Get Real Or Let's Not Play. It's in a nice boxed set of CDs and I'm enjoying them now. You can watch that video here:

>> Jason Kanigan is a conversion expert and sales trainer. To book an appointment to speak with Jason, click here. <<

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Tangible vs Intangible Selling

Posted on by Jason Kanigan

Tangible vs Intangible selling is a conceptual question. Every offer is primarily either tangible or intangible. But can an individual salesperson sell something of this type?

Tangible items for sale already exist. They are sitting there on the shelf, or the showroom floor. You can walk over and see them, touch them, maybe even pick them up. Examples are washing machines, automobiles, and jugs of milk.

Intangible items to be sold are not yet physicially present. They exist in the minds of the prospect and, more significantly, the salesperson. Some imagination needs to be used on both sides for this sale to happen. Examples are custom programmed software or being a bestselling co-author in a forthcoming book. Surprisingly, perhaps, a customized sign made for a shop.

sign, custom sign, reach for the moon, intangible selling, intangible sale

Photo by Designecologist from Pexels

I first discovered I was good at selling the intangible in the mid-2000s while running a metal fabrication shop. Turned out I'd been doing it all along—general contractors would want a custom bracket made of 3/4" steel, let's say, to hold up the beams of the huge open concept cabin they were building. This kind of thing was a gnarly, heavy, this-time-only-angled and drilled connector. Especially with signs, though, specifically the collaboration we'd do with a sign manufacturer, was where it was really pointed out to me that what we were selling was intangible.

The Difference Between Tangible vs Intangible Selling

Alarmingly, the salesperson at the sign shop said, "People have no idea what they want when they come in here. There's no picture in their head of the outcome. They're trusting me to come up with something." She paused, then continued: "And they're handing over thousands of dollars to me on that belief that we'll come up with something good."

"Huh," I thought. I saw her point immediately. In the metal fab world I was more familiar with, it seemed easier. People wanted metal letters, or a gate or railing. Or wrought iron fencing. Or that kind of structural steel I mentioned earlier. That felt necessary. It wasn't hard to visualize what the outcome would look like.

But a sign? That could be anything. Therefore, I realized the prospect was placing a lot of faith into the seller. Should the sign be round or square? How much wood and how much metal? Should the frame be metal, and the lettering routered in relief out of the wood, then painted to stand out? Would there be a picture, maybe of some trees and a mountain? Or should the design go more abstract? Ought we to focus less on imagery and more on style?

The Trust Scale for Selling The Intangible

Subsequently, I realized there was a sliding scale for buyers when it came to trust of the seller's ability to provide a good experience with the intangible sale.

On one side you've got the fully trusting, "I know you: I like you, I trust that whatever you come up with will be excellent and I don't have to worry about it". This could almost be considered abdication of responsibilty; however, I view it more as transference of responsibility, or delegation. Even if the buyer deep down is not in love with the final outcome, they believe the seller knows best.

On the other side you've got minimal trust. "I want to see this every step of the way along. I emphatically want control over what happens." For those selling the intangible, this can be a genuine source of frustration. "Why won't the customer leave me alone to do what I'm good at? Why won't they let me run according to my own internal schedule, rather than trying to worry me along? I know how long these things take. I know the steps to do them in. Why must I explain everything?"

When selling the tangible, you obviously have the thing right there to point at. Features and benefits are available to rely on. If the prospect doesn't follow along, it's readily apparent: you can stop, go back, and find out what's missing.

Selling intangibles...not so much. You must dig. Get to the heart of "Why" this person wants what they want. Likely you'll have to uncover factors they weren't conscious of, preferences they didn't know they had. Unfortunately, it's easy to blow past key sales factors if you don't notice the prospect sitting there nodding mechanically, eyes glazing over.

Deciding whether your firm is focused on tangible vs intangible selling can even have a big tax implication.

Risk Factors In Tangible vs Intangible Sales

In selling tangible offers, you run the risk as the salesperson of falling back on features and benefits. Reliance on these factors is a lower level of selling: it's less effective. Often you'll miss the prospect's "Why" and not get the sale.

As you sell the intangible, you can easily run past the prospect's true reasons for buying. Trying to fit the individual prospective customer into a "one size fits all" process will cause that to happen.

Unless the prospect is well educated about the offer before they arrive, and has a personal sense of urgency about taking action on it, the fact is that the intangible sale is going to take longer. Significantly, what I have observed over a long period in the sales field is this: some people simply don't seem to be able to make the intangible sale.

Whenever hiring into an organization where the intangible sale is a requirement it is not enough that you look at candidates with excellent sales histories. You must find out if they have a history of successfully selling intangible offers.

What Needs To Happen In The Intangible Sale?

A transference of imagination, from seller to buyer, is necessary to make the intangible sale. I'll come back to this in a future discussion, but I want you to understand this for now. Depending on where the prospect is on that line scale I described above, evidently it can take some time to solidify that image and make that transference happen. There's a process to this, of course, but for now all I want you to understand is that this is what happens. Get clear on the concept: tangible vs intantible selling. Which does your organization focus on? Do you have the right people for the role?

>> Jason Kanigan is a sales force developer and conversion expert. Schedule a consultation with him to focus on your specific situation <<