Self-confidence, honesty, constant training and of course, product knowledge, are some strategies that will allow you to overcome obstacles in closing the sale of a security project.
by: Adhir Uscátegui
Even in safety, sales can be compared to an obstacle course. There are several situations that we have to face and the problems that we must solve to reach the goal that is the closing of the sale.
In this article we want to identify the main barriers that we have managed to detect during these years of interaction with sellers and professional advisors in electronic security in the Latin American field, and show you how to overcome them effectively, know the process and structure of a security project.
1. The fear of failure due to not knowing how to present a project: this is one of the most blocking barriers to achieving a positive result. Fear is one of the great inhibitors of human potential, it is paralyzing and obfuscating the brain, making the integration advisor or seller wrong in his presentation of the solution, it also prevents him from transmitting security to the potential client to conquer the sale in something as delicate as an Integration project.
Algorithm = Integration project: ordered and finite set of operations that allows to find the solution of a problem.
When in security we have a problem or situation, we offer a process and we get a solution that does not necessarily have to be long-lasting. Although we use many of the same technologies, for each project the result is different.
The solution: confrontation. Fear flees before a person who faces it. When you do, it is minimized and you can easily beat it. It can also entrench in your mind the real fact that failure does not exist, there are only learning opportunities. When a journalist asked Thomas Alba Edison " Mr. Edison, do you feel like a failure after 12,000 failed attempts in one of your experiments?" he replied, "I have never failed, what I have had are 12,000 positive learning experiences."
Do not be afraid of failure, there is no such thing, there is only the learning that leads to success.
2. Lack of empathy
Many times we are dealing with ex-cops, computer engineers, security experts. If you don't have the ability to "put yourself in the client's shoes," you have serious difficulty closing the sale of a project. As a security advisor we have to keep in mind that the solution encompasses or complements the functions of the security director within the solution.
This is a very subtle barrier, often imperceptible. Sales is an eminently psychological activity. The professional salesperson should receive good training in this area, even much more than in sales techniques.
This is the solution. The practice of looking beyond the client's appearance helps tremendously. It's like specializing in "reading the mind" of the customer: what their mood is, what their most important needs are, and how you can sincerely help them, all of the above leads the security advisor to the unfailing achievement of closing the sale.
3. Guilt
For some time it was thought that to be successful in sales you had to tell some "lies". Some security advisors accepted this idea and almost unwillingly to do so transmitted that system of "deception" to get the sale closed. This aspect became a huge obstacle to the effective achievement of negotiation, especially in our industry.
Human beings have a very solid moral structure that makes when we deviate from ethics, guilt occurs as a defense mechanism, which is nothing more than feeling uncomfortable, sad or depressed by the awareness of the subtle deception that was made to the client.
Security managers today are highly trained and realize this flaw, so they automatically reject the solution, the sale and the sellers.
The solution: always seek to live with the truth. Develop honesty and integrity. A sale made with these parameters is a firm negotiation and also provides us with more customers recommended by the satisfied buyer.
4. Ineptitude
We see a lot of this on our continent; a salesman thrown on the street without the proper training will have a lot of difficulties to get the desired closure of the sale of a project. When the sales professional cannot answer the questions of the potential client correctly, he is in trouble to achieve optimal results.
The solution: continuous training. Nothing can replace effective sales training. A security company that wants to be part of a successful sales team must determine to invest a good portion of its budget in the continuous training of its force in sales.
5. The taboo about money
This is one of the most frequent obstacles in this sales process. It's having the wrong paradigm that it's wrong or immoral to ask people for money. That's when the seller hesitates at the time of asking for the money or the commitment of the customer in the purchase.
The solution: recognize that business is done with money. It is impossible to make purchases and sales without being clear about the fundamental principle of exchange.
When you offer a service, you are determined to receive sufficient compensation for your work. All professionals charge for their services, the professional security advisor or sales advisor can not be the exception.
Jumping over these obstacles makes the professional salesperson a permanent winner who achieves the results that grow his company and increases his income satisfactorily. Salespeople are special beings designed to succeed.
For any presentation of a project, a gradual document of each step is generated that we will call descriptive memory, which entails the objectives that you want to achieve from the different interested people, training of the personnel who will be in charge of operating, generate the results and reports, requirements that are needed to execute the project, time that is estimated to be carried out with its possible inconveniences, fixed and unexpected costs, risks in all areas and difficulties, quantities of each of the products, quality of the products and how they can be integrated into the rest of the system, programming of the software that will be implemented throughout the project, knowledge to reach these conclusions and technology.
Obviously, we cannot capture in this article the whole process to have an effective result in a security integration.
To learn more about the process of any integration project, even the most complex, you can contact me.
You can write to the author at the email [email protected]
