In this hard-core article, Patrick Valtin presents vital principles of selling as it applies to chiropractic. Recognized as an international expert in sales strategies, Patrick Valtin has held hundreds of lectures on the subject of bringing more patients to the practice. Here, he presents how you can help patients view nutritional supplements as a natural and needed complement to chiropractic service – hence sensibly increasing residual income…without pushing!
 

You think your first mission is to handle a body misalignment? Or to take care of your patient’s back ache that has been killing him or her for years? Think again… the patient who arrives at your practice believes one thing: you should be more able to handle his pain than pills and drug prescribers! You might not realize it fully, but your image, from a patient point of view, is high – no matter their attitude or manners toward your service.

Do you know what people instantly respond to? Your willingness to help, your desire to understand! Rest assured: you don’t need to transform your table into a couch… You have the tools and the products to help, besides your hands-on intervention.

For example, do you have nutritional or supplemental products in your practice? What portion of your income do they represent? The average in the profession is 4%. Let’s assume these products are good. Let’s assume you believe in them.  Why don’t you sell more of them? Well, the classical answer is: I don’t like to sell. Or: I don’t like to push. I am a technician, not a salesman…

There are a lot of wrong opinions about this wonderful passion that selling is. If you look at the old definition of the word, you will realize that it had originally ONE meaning: to help. Then about one thousand years B.C. that definition was modified and its new meaning became “to cheat” or to betray.  Check the definition in a good dictionary…

My purpose in this article is to share with you the results of 20 years of observation, work and experience in the field of sales strategy. I had a chance to evaluate and train more than 40,000 sales professionals in 27 countries. The areas of expertise of these people were extending from computer systems to industrial equipment or consumer products… and chiropractic medicine.

Observing and working with these people led me to detect progressively the attitude and behaviors of those who were much more successful than others. I was very interested to find out if one could define a routine “pattern” or “technique” used by top sales people in their approach. What are these top professionals doing that others are not? What tricks or what magic are they using that makes the customer or patient want to buy from them?

My conclusion was that selling had nothing to do with “special techniques” or any magic. The fact also that “one needs to be born a salesperson” in order to succeed proved very wrong in my own observations and evaluations. What follows is just a snapshot of these observations. See how it can apply to you.

Click here to continue: What do you start with?

So your challenge is to find out what can trigger an impulse or a strong, unbearable desire to make the buying decision IN YOUR FAVOUR. Your success in selling your treatment or products depends on your ability to make the customer want to buy from you and not from a [cheaper} competitor.

The first thing he buys has nothing to do with quality or warranty or even price. First he buys TRUST. He buys confidence about your ability and desire to help him resolve a problem, some pain or some discomfort. If he does not trust you and does not feel confident with what you say he will go find what he is looking for at another place. The challenge is thus to demonstrate, early in the call, that you care more for him and for his sake (his health, his body condition, his comfort, etc.) than you care for his money. How do you show that you care? By showing your talent? No…

Continue here: What makes the sale?

You got it: the patient gets confused, skeptical.

Relying on your best argument does not make you any different from the competition. So then what do you use to make the difference? There is one factor which is much more impinging on the patient’s buying process – or call it a major “buying factor”: the certainty of making the right decision – or the anxiety of making the wrong one (usually much stronger!).

Can your arguments help in either increasing his certainty or – better, decreasing his anxiety/fear related to his decision? Absolutely not. So what do you need then?

You need ATTITUDE. Because that is the first thing he buys. He buys your conviction and certainty in your ability and willingness to help him; he buys your dedication to find the right solution for his pain or discomfort or concern; he buy YOU first. See, most salespeople fall in a big trap: they work the customer in a superficial zone: the zone of logic. They do not understand that the major buying factor has nothing to do with logic – where your arguments stand.  Buying is ALWAYS more emotional than logical, especially in the field of health and body condition. So using logical arguments usually do not trigger the desire; they trigger only “thinking” or counter-arguments (have you ever had a patient asking to buy right after you placed your best argument?).

You thus need to “convert” your arguments into emotional triggers by finding out what emotional subject can be related to your special treatment – or a specific supplement. For example: you have a great superfood-based product, known to reduce fat AND environmental toxicity (two good arguments). Your patient is overweighed and suffers from respiratory problems – besides having a chronic low back pain.

How do these body non-optimal conditions AFFECT your patient in life? In other words, why could it be emotionally important for this patient to use such a product? Well, what impact can his weight issue have on his social life? Could you ask him that? Or: How often does he feel tired during the day, unable to focus while choking out of his coughs? These are examples of emotional subjects related to the product.  If you can find out what emotional subjects would your patient react to and if you can demonstrate that your mission is to help him handle or resolve these emotional issues, he will want to buy from you!

Continue here: What is THE most important quality in selling?

All these qualities are definitely needed and vital to succeed. But today there is one quality required, more than any other. Without that one, you will fail to create the desire to buy…

That quality is: curiosity!

Look up the word in a good dictionary: you will find out that the first definition of “curiosity” is INTEREST. Great salespeople are curious, they are interested. They want to know so many things about their customers or patients, about their need of course, but more importantly, about their personal desires, fears, concerns. They want to find out what makes the patient “go in life“. They want to find out all about them. They also want to know all about their past good and/or bad experiences with similar products or services.

In my research and evaluation of all these great salespeople, this is the ONE quality that I found. This is THE difference that I could detect between most salespeople and the great ones!

Great salespeople are curious. They want to know. They do not try to bombard the customer or patient with arguments. They try to find out 1) “who is this person I am treating”, 2) “what are his problems, concerns, and what does he like?”;  3) “what are his desires, concerns or fears, related to the subject of my product/service?“.

As a matter of facts, if you should remember one thing about this article, remember this: the more you know, the more you sell. It is not “the more I talk the more I sell”, as many of us have been educated into believing. Consider this: on average, a salesperson will ask 5 to 8 questions before starting to talk and argue (about his product). An observation of successful salespeople revealed that they would ask up to 5 times as many questions, before presenting and arguing about their product. They are genuinely interested.

So you could put up a list of questions that would help you answer this one: “What do I want to know from this patient?” Once you work with that attitude, you will see a big change in your profession – as well as in your life. You will soon realize that “one is as successful as he can grant importance to others”.

And for your patients, guess who the most important person on this planet is?

Patrick V. Valtin,
Patrick@NewEraSelling.com

Is it or isn’t it workable?

Email marketing gets a bad rap. The controversy about email marketing is a quagmire that leaves many business owners in confusion in its wake.

According to a new study by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing delivers the highest return on investment of all media available to marketers. The study also projects that email driven sales in the United States will show a compound annual growth rate of 14.9% between 2006 and 2011. But, statistics like that only bring about real understanding when the outcome of email marketing impacting long term customer-relationship-based revenue streams is fully known.

Patrick Valtin, sales & marketing expert, President of M2-TEC USA, INC. and founder of one of the largest consulting company in Europe called U-MAN BELGIUM claims email marketing is highly profitable if done correctly. The main mistake is trying to convert a prospect when embarking on email marketing, he says. The direction one should take is instead is trying to attract a qualified prospect.

Attract first, don’t try to convert. It’s actually common sense if you think about it. What if some one came up to you and said …

Click here to read the full article in National Business Association’s web site.

Here is a selection of successes and testimonials people have reported from my seminars.

Host: This is the Central Valley Business Times audio interview. And now, to today’s interview. Patrick, when you mention sales and you mention marketing, to the average person, they sound the same, but there’s a big difference, isn’t there?

Patrick Valtin: There is a big difference and that difference is actually getting bigger for the main reason that a lot of companies have that experience with their sales team. What has happened over the last five to eight years is the return on investment with the sales force has been going down against the return on investment with marketing efforts. We can talk about the reason about that in a few minutes, but yes, there’s a big difference and then fortunately, that difference is not perceived properly by a lot of small businesses.

Host: Well, let’s see if you will for our listeners, define the differences as you see them.

Patrick: Well, you know, when someone does a marketing campaign, he or she hopes to basically attract potential customers. The purpose of marketing is to create a desire in the eyes of the customers. When you put a piece of promo in a magazine or in a paper, when you put an ad on radio or on TV, the hope is “I hope this customer remembers my product when he thinks of buying it.” Problem with marketing is you may actually create a desire for that kind of product, but they never tell you that it creates the desire for yours. Now, that is where salesmanship comes in, and that’s where the big difference is. The job of a good salesperson is to make sure that the customer having been invited, having been attracted by your great marketing campaign is going to remember that it should be YOU that he chooses when he makes up his mind.

Host: Well, that certainly sounds like the ideal world, but I would imagine many of our listeners say, “That isn’t my business.” What are some of the problems that you see?

How to EDUCATE sales people

Patrick Valtin: I tell you what, the first problem is – and that’s one thing that I’ve personally observed in the US market as well as in Europe – how to educate the salespeople. I understand we’re talking about small businesses, and in many cases, the best salesperson in the business is the business owner, right?

Host: Well, sometimes. At least the owner will tell that.

Patrick Valtin: Yes. Well, when it comes to getting other people do the sales job, the big challenge to do that is to really educate people that selling has nothing to do with your product anymore. I mean, the key to getting the buyer to buy your product – and I want to re-emphasize this – is not related to your product or to your service. Selling has nothing to do with your product. Marketing has everything to do with your product, but selling has everything to do with something else that unfortunately too few people are aware of. I’m guessing you when you ask me the question…

Host: Exactly. What exactly are you talking about here?

The HUMAN FACTOR in selling

Patrick Valtin: Well, you’re going to tell or you’re going to think that what I’m going to say is not really new. But, what is new is the answer is that we need to put on that factor which is the human factor. Whatever people sell today, there’s always someone else on the market who can do it cheaper. Whatever best argument a sales person is going to present to sell his product, you can bet that there’s always someone else who can do the same argument even if it’s not 100% true. Today, the most important buying criteria – I’m not talking about the selling criteria – for customers, the first one, more than ever is, “Can I trust the guy who’s selling me his stuff?” Because of the competition, because of the market being what it is, there’s so much choice today in finding what you need and want. Because of that, the customer, unfortunately, is more and more, I would say, confused or diluted in his choice. He does not know what choice to make. You and I, when we have to buy something, the question is not, “What am I going to buy?” But the question is, “Where am I going to buy it?” The rule tells me that I’m not going to get screwed because I could have found the same kind of product cheaper or with a better guarantee in another place. So, market conditions, competitive conditions basically have developed a state of mind, a frame of mind of the customer that makes the buying decision more and more difficult.

Host: If a small business has to make a choice of allocating its resources between marketing and sales, what is that choice supposed to be in your mind?

Allocating resources between marketing and sales

Patrick Valtin: All right. Now, that question deserves two kinds of answers. First of all, if there’s a wrong marketing, you cannot have a good sales. The best salesperson cannot do anything with the wrong marketing, we all agree with that. What needs to happen though is a much better, much stronger coordination between the marketing message and marketing effort and the salesmanship attached to it. Marketing can attract a lot of leads, Doug, but I know a lot of customers, too many of them, who cry for losing the leads. I don’t know if you have experienced that, but there’s nothing more frustrating than spending a lot of money on good marketing to find that your leads are “unqualified”. Now, one thing that I always say in my lectures, if someone gave you, for example, his mailing address or his e-mail address, he is not unqualified. Nobody today is going to give you his e-mail address or his mailing address if he’s not qualified. Curiosity by itself is a qualification, and a lot of small businesses don’t understand that. Now, the point is, there needs to be much stronger coordination of efforts between marketing, marketing strategy and salesmanship. I can give you some examples, for example, when we help our customers doing their marketing campaigns, they get a lot of leads. They get very few closes, and the first reaction is, “Patrick, those needs were not qualified.” We need to do a better e-mail marketing campaign. So, I started to dig into those bad leads, and what I found out is it was a salesmanship problem. A lot of those small businesses, they are not so savvy with Internet marketing, e-mail campaigns. So, they basically give a lot of money to “experts” who will indeed give them the tools to do a good Internet marketing campaign. Guess what? As long as someone has not sold something, nothing happens in the business. So, I think that we need to give back a little bit on the basics of salesmanship and make sure that those marketing efforts are indeed properly followed up, knowing that there are new rules in the market today. There are rules that did not apply five to eight years ago or they do not apply that much. Now, not only they apply but they are hurting us. They are hurting small businesses because a lot of them still operate their business as they would have about five or eight years ago. I would tend to say, Doug, to give a good word for salespeople, I would tend to say that they need to put some basics on salesmanship and realize that in today’s society where electronic commerce dominates, some salesmanship basics need to be put back in. The most important basic is, even if you do business on the Internet there’s the human touch that needs to be present, and unfortunately, in the current marketing campaigns that I see, people basically, they rely too much on this marketing message. Again, I want to focus on this. Marketing can attract people, it does not close them, it actually sometimes will close your potential customers to buy the product from your competition, and that’s dangerous.

Host: That’s more than dangerous, that’s rather disheartening!

Selling so that you don’t lose customers to the competition

Patrick Valtin: Yes, it is, and when I said that, you know actually, a lot of customers will recognize that they try to follow up on a customer who was reaching through a marketing campaign to learn a couple of weeks later, that the guy has bought the kind of product that they are selling from the competition. When you ask them, “Why did you do that?” Guess what is the first answer that comes out? “I was not properly followed up. I never heard from you, guys, when I needed it.”

Host: So, that’s lesson number one, the biggest lesson that every business should know. But what are some of the others?

Patrick Valtin: The first point is the human contact, the human touch needs to be put back in this age of electronic commerce. And the other thing that needs to really be emphasized, and for small businesses, this is very, very important. What makes the difference between your business and another one? Again, it’s not so much related to your product. It is again related to everything else. Successful businesses today don’t show off so much before the sales is gone, but they show off much more when the sales is done after. What you do after the sales will dictate if you are going to keep that customer or not. And a lot of people tell me, “Patrick, to make the first sale is so hard.” I remember 10-15 years ago, as a sales trainer, I used to say, “Listen, it takes five to eight times more to make new customers than to keep one.” Today, Doug, I tell you. It’s reversed. If you think it’s easy to make a new customer, it is actually pretty easy. But to make it again and to get the guy re-order and come back to you, you’ve got to really, really deserve it. So, in terms of marketing and money, there’s also some marketing money that is needed to keep your customers buying from you, to keep him coming back. Marketing money is not only to attract them, but you need to put marketing money to keep them coming back, to keep deserving them buying from you.

Host: Patrick, I wonder if you would take a move at this point to tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your company.

About New Era Selling – the company.

Patrick Valtin: Sure. As you can hear, I was not born in America, I was born in Belgium. I’ve been a sales trainer with big companies and smaller businesses for the last 23 years, and I’ve been a sales trainer for business owners of very small businesses over the last 15 years in Europe and in America. What I do, I travel all over the world and what I’m trying to do, I’m trying to reconcile the conflict in businesses between the marketing team and the sales team. That has been my motto for the last 15 years. My forte is to really coordinate the efforts between the marketing money and the sales money. How do I do that? I work with sales teams, with business owners and what we do together, we really analyze what is going on in their specific market. My specialty I would say, is not so much on the product side. I’m not a product expert. My expertise is regarding the human relationship between the potential buyer and the salesman, and today, that human relationship has been changing tremendously. I can tell you just one hint about it, people are more motivated to buy something not based on what they want, but mostly based on what they don’t want. You and I, when we are about to buy something, we are looking at what we don’t want more than what we do want. The fear to make a wrong decision drives the buyer much more strongly than the desire to obtain something today. A lot of businesses don’t understand that, and proudly promote and advertise positive aspect of buying their product. Today, with the market conditions, with the competition, I tell you what, the customer is more driven by negative motivation than by positive ones. If you can understand that, you are going to use a lot of potential customers. That’s my specialty.

Host: Where can our listeners get more information about you and your company?

Patrick Valtin: You know, one thing they should do, in a few weeks, I’m going to host a marketing and sales workshop with PostcardMania, located here in Florida, and I work with them. They could go to www.PostcardMania.com. They will see what we’re doing. In two weeks, we are actually hosting in Orlando a marketing boot camp. They would get all the links to me and they would find out what I’m doing and how I’m helping people to make a lot of money and a lot of happy customers.

Host: Now, Patrick, you’ve been very, very generous with your time. But, let me ask this, is there anything that you want to emphasize or bring out that we’ve not talked about?

Patrick Valtin: Well, I tell you one thing. I’m assuming you are addressing small businesses, right?

Host: That is correct.

Patrick Valtin: OK. My advice to all the clients that I have who are business owners, I always tell them, you really have to reconnect with salesmanship. Marketing and new marketing strategies – and there are a lot of marketing gurus our there to give you great marketing tips, and it does work under one condition – don’t give up salesmanship. Put back some basics of relationship because per observation and surveys, everywhere in America where I go, the number one missing factor is the human relationship. You know, there was a survey done by the New York Sales Club a few years ago. They were trying to find out what was the main reason why you lose a customer. In 67% percent of the answers to that survey first reason is, “I got not in touch anymore with my supplier. We lost contact. Once they did the sales, they’ve forgot about me.” Sixty-seven percent, Doug. If you would actually just handle that one, you would actually recover maybe 50% of those you were losing. I actually proved that by working with a customer in Florida here, by just asking the customer to informally, every two weeks, call their existing customers to find out how they are doing. We hired a couple of young ladies, and the only criteria of hiring those people were, “OK, can they talk? Do they have a smile? Can they be nice with the customers on the phone?” By just doing that over six months, that company reduced the loss of existing customers by over 60%.

Host: You’ve been listening to an audio interview on CentralValleyBusinessTimes.com.

The second reason is: the customer is getting more confused than ever. The more choice there is, the less easy it is to decide. And, you have noticed, today the customer is more skeptical than ever about anybody who pretends to have the right solution…

There is a third reason: old-fashioned, classical selling does not work anymore. Whatever “great” argument you present, someone can present a “better one”. Whatever “best” logical proof you provide for your product or service, it may convince the customer yet it still does not guarantee that he will buy…from you!

Thus selling has a bad image in America today and for this reason, businesses are focusing more on marketing. The apparent solution to the sales dilemma is to replace it with marketing. But is it working?

Click here to read the full article.

Selling becomes a tougher challenge every day because of too much choice, too much competition and not enough prospects. How do you outrace your fiercest competitors is what this radio talkshow is all about.

How do you earn the confidence of professional and/or skeptical buyers? How do you speed up the buying decision process in the customer’s mind? How do you make the difference?

Patrick Valtin reveals that selling has nothing to do with your product or service. You may raise the customer’s interest by talking about your product, but you will never trigger his decision. Find out in this interview what does trigger the buying decision.

Click here to listen to the full interview (56 minutes).