5 Reasons Clients Do Not Buy

“I have the money to buy and the time to discuss with you because I want to get this solution now from your company.” said no client ever. But you would love to hear it, right?

This phrase compresses the result of overcoming the 5 most common reasons that clients invoke when faced with a business proposition:

1. Money. The client usually states he does not posses the money for the service or product you are proposing. Actually, just a small amount of businesses do not have money for investing in development. The other ones have the money to buy but do not understand the benefits of your product or service yet. If it brings value to their business be sure they will invest in it.

2. Time. This reason is even more unbelievable and can be counteracted also by demonstrating the value brought by the solution. A business owner or manager will always make the time to increase the productivity and bring more money to the business. So that makes this reason obsolete.

3. Need. There are two types of reactions you get when proposing to a potential client: he knows he needs your solution or he doesn't. If he knows, it's simple to move on with the discussion, but if he doesn't, a demonstration and proof about his need is required. He has to understand clearly why he needs the service or the product. Follow the 3 steps rule or use a trigger event, which is an event that can make a person realise that (s)he needs something.

4. Urgency. The client overcame the money and time problem and he knows he needs the service or product, but why now? In this situations you need to create the sense of urgency depending on the service, product or business relationship. The client needs to know that if he does not get the service or product now he will lose money, he will not make as much or he will miss out on a great opportunity.

5. Trust. Went through with money, time, need and urgency? The client knows he has to buy the product or service and he has to take quick action, but he still does not buy yours. This is the time when the credibility question is raised. The client needs to know he can trust YOUR product or service, not a competitor's. Conquer their respect and earn their trust.

Knowing the 5 reasons clients do not buy can make you and your sales team feel prepared for any business interaction. Being always prepared will make you trustworthy and will ensure growth for your business.

What other reasons have you or your sales reps heard while proposing to a business owner?

Zimplu CRM at CeBit 2015

Industry 4.0 was the title of the 2015 edition of CeBit fair. Economy and The Internet of Things were the main themes of the event and discussion rolled around digitalization. Nexus Electronics felt at home between the tech solutions presented the past week. Zimplu CRM, The Uncomplicated CRM Solution got to stand straight in front of visitors among great competitors and represent proudly our company and Romania.

The official site of the trade explained in the after show report that “The beneficiaries of this year's enhanced business focus included some 3,300 exhibitors from 70 nations.” You can also see other numbers of CeBit 2015 in the infographic on the right.

Top managers and CEOs used this opportunity to do business more then ever, and so did Nexus Electronics. A lot of visitors stopped to see our delicious cake print and engaged us in interesting conversations about all of our solutions. We spoke with visitors from all over the world about our CRM software and explained the benefits of an uncomplicated solution for their business.

CeBit 2015 was also the perfect occasion to launch the mobile version of Zimplu CRM which makes the software even more accessible and easy to use. Now, our clients can handle sales teams, contacts, client support and meetings from anywhere at any chosen time. The only requirements are a smartphone and internet connection.

The participants expected innovation, networking and enlightenment and CeBit 2015 delivered. The experience was as great as we expected and we felt like being a part of an empowering international conversation about technology, digitalization and economy.

How to Measure Client Retention Strategies

When it comes to growing a business, many entrepreneurs focus on getting new clients and forget about client retention strategies. Not attending your existing clients' needs can cause your business to downgrade revenue significantly. It is possible to keep it going constant for a while, but not for long.

New clients coming and going will taint your reputation and cannot take your business to a satisfying, peak level. We discussed some strategies concerning this issue in a former article about clients' loyalty.
But how do you know if your strategy is fruitful?

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The basic formula for measuring client retention is pretty easy: ((E-N)/S)) x 100 where:

E(nd) = number of customers at end of period

N(ew) = number of new customers acquired during period

S(tart) = number of customers at start of period

The notations can make the formula seem quite complicated, but it is not. Let's take an example:

You can start measuring from the existing, let's say, 400 clients and choose a time frame as you please (week/month/year/other period you choose). During that time frame you lose 40 clients, but you gain 80 new ones. At the end of the period you have 440 customers.

Putting that into the mathematical formula, you get:

440 - 80 = 360; 360/400 = 0.9; 0.9 x 100 = 90. Your retention rate for the chosen period was 90%.

Is 90% a good rate or not? It depends on your type of business, your goals on a certain market or industry.

There are some managers that get their business growth from new clients, like businesses based on subscriptions or memberships, but on the long run the market will be extinguished and the same businesses will have to attract the same old clients and make them pay again for the membership.

Most business owners understand the importance of retaining clients for a long-term partnership. They also love to talk about winning new ones, but dislike talking about loosing any of them. The reality of business world must measure both sides of clients' management. Tracking the client retention rate lets the business owner put both those metrics in perspective and provides an easy way to measure your results over time.

So, to what extent do your clients stick with your services?

How to Train Your Sales Dragons

On the business battlefield, the salespeople are your knights, the force that brings you the victory of signing a client. But first, you have to train them well about how and when to attack.

The manner of selling by following those three steps is applicable to almost 90 percent of the situations. Your salespeople can be taught to follow these steps, how to adapt to different situations and how to be prepared for a meeting with a prospective client.

For a successful sales meeting train them well to:

1. Find out what the client's needs are.

First impression is a weapon that few know how to handle. To be successful, your salespeople need to know how to act, talk and command respect from the person in front of them so the sale will take the path of a trustworthy discussion.

Teach them to hold the product's or sale's details for later and learn about the client's need. They should ask about the internal processes, the methods of organizing the company's activity or any other information that can become a stepping stone for introducing your product.
The representative of the client won't expect for a salesperson to care about the backstage of his business. He will be surprised and intrigued.

He will respond and explain his well-thought processes with the pride of a business owner and your representative will understand what his business needs.

2. Find arguments on how your product meets the needs of the client.

At this point we can agree that the salesperson understands what the client's needs are. Now (s)he has to pick up the client's weapon and show him how to use it better, faster and more productive.
The sales rep should choose several important points in the story, then rewind to the beginning and tell the same story, but this time with the product involved.

This will provide the client a simple approach on the improvements your product or service could bring to his business. The next step is to prove him that your story is as simple as you told it, it's real and it's viable.

3. Exemplify and demonstrate.

The sales representative showed the client what he can do with the weapon, but now (s)he has to let him try it. Explain exactly how the product or service works, show it to the client, create a demonstration based on some internal operations of that business. Let the client enjoy the benefits for a minute before going back to business.

This is the time where the salesperson can prove (s)he did his homework, as well. There are two keywords for this conversation: adapt and become memorable. The sales rep has to emphasize the benefits of the product or service that this client needs most. This is what Victor Antonio calls “provide insight” or “information beyond the obvious” in his video “Sales Tips - Insight, Questions and Use of Language“. The information comes from the previous conversation, which means adapting, and also from a strong background research, which provides the knowledge to be memorable.

This is also the moment to steal his attention and present the whole special business package you sent for him. Be careful! Teach them not to lose themselves in details or bombastic promotional approaches. They do not have to show everything your product or service can do. Too much information can clog the business owner's mind and make the product or service seem complex, but too complicated.

Training your sales dragons to follow these three main steps will benefit their personal approach and your business. You will learn about your clients, you will make them feel listened to, you will intrigue and then surprise them, you will make them feel good about choosing you as a partner and, of course, you will sell.

EQ or How to recruit salespeople

As a business owner, you probably do realize that more and more people pass the technical and psychological test in your recruitment process, but hiring them does not seem to bring more value to your business. There is still the 20% of your sales team that provide the 80% of revenues. The 80-20 is a valid rule, but you should wonder why this is happening and what makes the 20% special. Believing it or not, it’s emotional.

We, at Nexus, started by interviewing salespeople and following our instincts or just trusting them for the job. Turned out that many of the trusted persons left the job shortly after being hired. Then we decided to recruit by testing their logical skills and the results were similar. By trial and error, we found the best way to expand our team: we now test for logical thinking and a high EQ.

EQ or Emotional Quotient got into the spotlights as studies showed that this quotient is most inclined to influence success and business growth than personality or IQ.
The EQ reveals that a person has a set of competencies that prove he or she has the ability to recognize self behavior, moods and catalysts, and to respond best according to the situation.
According to Mike Poskey from Zerorisk HR, Inc., there is a set of five emotional intelligence skills that studies proved to be more important in the workplace than skills achieved by education or personality traits combined. 

In his article, “The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in the workplace: Why it matters more than personality”, he divides the EQ competencies in social competencies which determine how people handle relationships and personal competencies which determine how people handle their own behavior. Social competencies include intuition and empathy, political and social skills and personal competencies include the three Selves: Self awareness, Self regulation and Self expectations & motivation.

The EQ test results portrait the person that will come later to the interview and makes it easier to test the accuracy of his or her answers or if the person fits the needs of your company. And he or she has to fit. One unfit, influencer type employee can harm the productivity of a whole sales department and can decrease the company's incomes. On the contrary, suitable sales people can increase revenues even if they are fewer. So keep this in mind: more employees don't necessarily mean bigger profit. We actually experienced situations about 2 times more salespeople and 40% less sales.

Furthermore, experience taught us that any recruiting tests also need to be verified by personal interaction through an interview after you have in mind the characteristics of the perfect candidate. But you have to know exactly what you need! Start from this and only afterwards focus on finding emotional intelligence tests online, training your HR team to apply and interpret the tests or even externalizing the process.

Also, the beauty of this set of five competencies is that they can be trained and improved. After you get the right sales people, you have to invest continuously in their soft skills by training and coaching them to overcome their limits and develop their emotional intelligence.

If you care for other success stories, have two more great examples:

A Texas-based Fortune 500 Company had utilized personality assessments for candidate selection for a long time with little results in reducing turnover and boosting revenues. After switching to an emotional intelligence-based assessment and EQ training and development program, they increased retention by 67 percent in the first year, which meant $32 million extra from reducing turnover costs and increasing sales revenues.

Also, a large metropolitan hospital reduced their critical care nursing turnover from 65 percent to 15 percent within 18 months of implementing an emotional intelligence screening assessment.

Furthermore, one study conducted by a Dallas corporation measured the productivity of employees with high and low EQ scores. Turns out the ones with high scores were 20 times more productive than the ones with low EQ scores.

So maybe it’s time to change the way you recruit your sales people and hire only persons that can increase that 20% percentage, nurture them, help them grow and be patient at least 3 months to see results. Be sure your business will thrive and your employees will be optimistic, empowered and productive.
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