Helen Kensett - Sales Mind: 48 tools to help you sell

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Helen Kensett is a sales expert. She runs the Convince Consultancy, which helps complicated businesses in crowded markets create compelling sales and marketing campaigns. Increasingly, she is using her sales experience and keen interest in human psychology to build highly personalised digital buyer experiences. She is on a mission to enhance sales activity by using tech, not to make sellers redundant but to make them more intelligent about their approaches. This is about using technology to raise empathy, enhance customer-centricity and ultimately raise standards.

Through her brand Sales Mind, she equips national and international sales teams with the mindset and skills to sell more, more often. Clients include some of the worlds most exciting and innovative technology firms, through to more established companies, including Channel 4, Google, Ogilvy, the Telegraph and KPMG.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Kat Leuzinger was born in Zurich, Switzerland, to Swiss and Japanese parents. After studying graphic design at Central St Martins, she helped establish digital agency unit9 in London, later deciding to dedicate her time fully to illustration. Kats clients have included Kenzo Parfums, Penguin Books, GAP, Microsoft and Honda. She has collaborated with several merchandise distributors and independent luxury fashion labels throughout Europe, Australia and the USA and has participated in several international group shows and exhibitions. Kats work has been widely recognised by international awards including D&AD, Creative Circle, The One Show, London International Awards, Cannes Cyber Lion and BIMA.

SALES MIND

TOOLS TO HELP YOU SELL

HELEN KENSETT

ILLUSTRATED BY KAT LEUZINGER

For Emily, Hannah and Gracie. My best work.

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
Profile Books Ltd
3 Holford Yard
Bevin Way
London
WC1X 9HD
www.profilebooks.com

Copyright Helen Kensett 2016

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN: 978 1 78283 245 4

Illustrations by Kat Leuzinger
Text design by Matt Wilson

THE 48 TOOLS

PART I:

THE GROUNDWORK

The sales profession has changed beyond recognition and even experienced sellers, yet to catch up, are failing to close the sale.

What are they doing wrong?

More crucially, what should they be doing right? Is there a secret which sets the rapidly decreasing number of successful sellers apart from the rest?

Yes, there is. And this book sets out the formula. Its something the best sellers have always known.

The Shift from Techniques

Theres no shortage of guidance available on how to succeed at sales. Bookshops and blogs are brimming with advice which promises that, with application, well move our unsuspecting prospects from cold to sold. Whether were selling software, advertising or expertise, theres a plethora of tried and tested techniques setting out what to say, where to say it and how often.

But we live in a climate where buyers are tired of clichd techniques; in a complex, competitive, budget-tight market where buyers have more than enough of what were all selling; in a sales environment where one day theyre picking up the phone, and the next defaulting to voicemail; in a market where being struck by lightning is more likely than a response to a sales email. In a market like this, a market just like the one were experiencing today, outdated techniques wont work. We cant hang our hat on these techniques alone and still expect to deliver. The challenging reality for sellers is that the more we try to push for the sale in the traditional sense, across outdated media, the quicker we fail.

to Mastery of Your Sales Mind

In todays challenging environment, one thing above all others is keeping the successful sales professional buoyant: mastery of their sales mind.

Surprising as it may be, all of us possess the mental software to deliver on any conceivable sales challenge we face. We are all furnished with an inbuilt, inherent range of mental mechanisms which translate into the right skills we need in order to achieve almost any sales task we set our minds to. To master your sales mind, you must perfect these natural human skills for selling.

But thats just half of the battle. Whilst these are inherent skills, accessing and utilising them still takes effort. As well discover, there are many obstacles in the path of true sales success and achieving it has become increasingly challenging. Our innate ability to sell our wares has been clouded by the life we live today. And its not getting easier.

One of the biggest challenges we all face is dealing with the overwhelming volume of information we receive. Were distracted and often default decisions to autopilot. With our minds in this mode it is almost impossible to make an impact. In this mental state, were effectively asleep on the job.

Its unsurprising, then, that many sales approaches are failing to produce whats required in order to secure the sale. Failure in sales today is not due to a lack of experience or even a lack of confidence, but increasingly down to an inefficient sales mind.

This book provides an account of how to understand and master the most amazing apparatus at your disposal: your very own sales mind.

AN ENTIRE SKILL

When we examine sales activity across different markets and products, it is enlightening to discover that selling can be described as an entire skill. An entire skill is something which, to the untrained eye, appears to be a single skill (like fishing or drawing), but which can actually be divided into simpler, more manageable steps, each of which can be mastered separately.

The three uniquely human mental skills which make up the entire skill of selling are: to see, to think and to improve. We must perfect these three skills in order to deliver an effective sale.

These distinct skills can be mastered individually and combined to make selling more accessible to us all. By breaking down the entire, seemingly opaque skill of sales, we make explaining how to do it, and more importantly actually doing it, much more straightforward. Once you have learnt this entire skill, you can then use and improve it for life.

Skill 1: To See

We are all observing machines, built with a natural mental toolkit for sight that has helped keep humans at the top of the food chain for generations.

But using our ability to see in order to sell involves much more than just a rapid response to a visual stimulus. First, it involves the active process of seeing all the materials available to us, using our innate abilities to see the absolute truth in the situation that confronts us. This includes your buyers complete reality, which is not static but in flux, changing constantly, and every detail about your product and offer.