I Basic Cognition and Mentality

Emotional Intelligence & Empathy

• Embrace emotions: Be good at identifying and understanding the emotional state of your customers and yourself, and see emotions as an effective tool for communication and influence, rather than as a hindrance. Good negotiators know how to accurately identify and use emotions to improve the effectiveness of negotiations, as highlighted in "Never Split the Difference", "emotions are not an obstacle, but a means".

• Tactical Empathy: Actively listen to and deeply understand the customer's perspectives and emotions, build trusting relationships through empathy, and achieve deep heart-to-heart connections. "Never Split the Difference" points out that tactical empathy is an active engagement in the sense of hearing, a manifestation of "listening as a martial art" that helps to open up the inner world of the other person.

• Convey understanding with "labeling": Summarizing and responding to the other person's emotions through words makes the customer feel understood and recognized, which can help release emotional stress and move the conversation in a positive direction. This is one of the practical negotiation techniques that can effectively reduce the opponent's defenses and promote the establishment of a cooperative relationship.

• Regulate self-emotion and stress: Have the ability to stay calm in high-pressure and complex negotiation scenarios, avoid being held back by the other party's emotions, ensure rational judgment and scientific decision-making, and improve the success rate of negotiations.

Positive mindset and resilience

• Have the strong motivation and perseverance of the "10 times rule", dare to keep trying and face failure, and pursue excellent execution with continuous high-intensity actions. The 10X Rule emphasizes that exceptional success comes from a hard-working and unwavering mindset that goes far beyond the ordinary.

• Flexibility in adapting sales strategies: Ability to quickly adapt approaches based on customer feedback and market changes, recover from rejections and setbacks, maintain sales process coherence and momentum, and demonstrate resilience and adaptability. New Sales Simplified reminds salespeople to gain a deep understanding of the customer's decision-making process and motivations, and to adjust the pace to move deals forward effectively.

• Focus on customer-centric communication, uphold patience and discipline, and continuously follow up and nurture customer relationships, demonstrating long-term vision and tactical patience

II Sales Skills Segmentation

Demand insights and customer profiling

• Empathy from the customer's perspective: By cultivating emotional intelligence and tactical empathy, we can deeply understand the real needs and emotional states of customers, avoid mechanical questions, and reveal potential pain points and motivations with the help of emotional connections, so as to achieve accurate customer profiling and demand mapping.

• SPIN Questioning Method: Adopt a four-stage coherent questioning strategy of Situation, Problem, Implication, and Need-Payoff to help customers consciously discover and expand their pain points, and gradually stimulate the internal motivation to buy. SPIN techniques use a combination of open and closed questions to effectively drive customer thinking.

• Future Pacing: Guide customers to actively imagine the positive changes after adopting a product or service, and increase purchase intent through positive emotional connections. This technique is both visual and emotional, enhancing the confidence and urgency of the client's decision-making

Communication skills

• Language Arts & Storytelling: Use vivid storytelling to combine cold data with real-life customer cases to create compelling situational stories that improve emotional identity and information absorption. The story structure should be closely related to the customer's interests and emotional points, and avoid empty expressions.

• Accurate feedback and retelling: Use techniques such as "labeling" and "mirroring" to accurately retell the core ideas and emotions expressed by customers, generate a sense of "that's right" identity, build trust and affinity, and avoid superficial claims or simple echoes.

• Active Listening and Appropriate Silence: Strengthen the art of listening, listen more, less is more, give customers space and time to express, and occasional silence can prompt customers to deepen their expression, release more information, reflect respect and understanding, and enhance the quality of interaction.

Objection Handling and Negotiation Strategies

• Emotion-guided non-resistive objection resolution: Do not avoid the emotions behind the objections, first "label" the emotions, express understanding, create a sense of security, make customers willing to express their true thoughts, and then carry out rational persuasion to promote emotional relief.

• "That's right" instead of "yes": Encourage customers to self-convince rather than reactive by getting them to repeat and agree with their ideas. This technique can activate the customer's inner cognition, reduce resistance, and increase the likelihood of closing the deal.

• Combination of soft and hard closing skills: First, by depicting the future vision and value, the soft guide the customer's psychology to approach the transaction, and then combined with clear and specific transaction action requests (such as signing a contract, placing an order, etc.) to improve the transaction conversion rate.

Data-driven and technology-driven

• Use data and case evidence: Combined with the decision-making characteristics of rational customers, provide detailed digital data, industry benchmarks, successful cases and customer testimonials to enhance persuasiveness and trust, and promote scientific decision-making.

• Technical tools to assist process management: Use CRM system, sales automation tools and data analysis to quantitatively manage the sales funnel, finely track customer progress, rationally allocate resources, improve overall sales efficiency and forecast accuracy, and achieve customer-centric refined management.

III Strategic Thinking and Business Insight

Market & Customer Insights

• A deep understanding of the market's industry trends and competitive landscape is the foundation of effective strategic thinking. By analyzing purchase patterns and customer behavior data and transforming it into accurate recommendations and market positioning, customers can eliminate doubts in the purchase process, enhance customers' trust in products and brands, and thus promote the formation of purchase decisions. Transparent exchange of information plays an important role in building trust at no cost in this process.

• A keen understanding of market segments, especially the "long tail" market, can help companies identify niche customer segments and underlying needs that are not fully met by the mainstream market. This strategic perspective expands the market boundary, enabling enterprises to implement a "harmony but difference" product strategy in a market with almost unlimited capacity, avoid falling into the dilemma of zero-sum game, and provide diversified and comprehensive products and services to meet the individual needs of different customer groups.

• Develop a strong "social mapping" ability, that is, the ability to quickly judge and understand the relationships and dynamics in customer groups and their social networks, just as agile as a waiter "reads the table", this social intuition helps salespeople accurately adjust strategies and communication methods to improve the pertinence and effectiveness of customer interactions.

Build a value proposition

• The value proposition of a product or service needs to be based on three dimensions: emotional value, insight value, and logical value. Emotional value focuses on the customer's sense of security and trust and is the cornerstone of building a long-term relationship; Insight value reflects the competitive advantage and unique insights that the product can bring to customers, and helps customers achieve business breakthroughs; The logical value is supported by specific data, performance indicators and technical parameters to show the superiority of the product to customers in a rational way and improve their convincing.

• Transform from a mere sales pitch role to a partner in customer success during the sales process. Salespeople should tailor personalized solutions by gathering comprehensive customer intelligence to identify the customer's core and secondary needs, potential problems, values, and past experiences. Such a partnership emphasizes the maximization of customer benefits rather than one-way product output, enhancing customer engagement and dependence.

• Manage your own and your clients' emotions with Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and use them as a communication and negotiation tool, rather than a hindrance, when appropriate. Accurately identify and tag customer emotions, and build a healing interactive experience through active listening and emotional feedback, so as to promote customers to open up, reduce defense, and improve the efficiency of negotiation and cooperation.

Customer Relationship Management

• Maintaining long-term customer relationships requires a systematic customer management system that expands customer lifetime value by improving customer satisfaction and repeat purchase rates. High-quality customer experience and continuous value output are the cornerstones of developing word-of-mouth marketing and introduction sales, which help to form the company's brand reputation and stable market position.

• Adapt to different customer communication styles and preferences and avoid a "one-size-fits-all" sales strategy. Salespeople with high emotional intelligence are able to flexibly adjust their strategies to respond to rational customers in a data-based technical style and attract emotionally oriented customers with emotional communication, thereby reducing relationship fractures and lost opportunities due to style mismatch.

• In actual business development, focusing on discovering and gaining insight into customers' latent and unarticulated needs, that is, the ability to "find problems" is more critical than the traditional simple "problem solving". By proactively guiding customers to think about and recognize the challenges in their own business, salespeople are able to deliver truly high-value solutions that strengthen customer relationships and foster ongoing collaboration.

IV Personal Charm and Influence

Charisma expression and trust building

Self-management and learning ability

1. The Customer Decision-Making Process

1. Identify the stages of requirement The customer is the first to realize a problem or opportunity, and the demand for a purchase is generated. This stage often involves pain point identification and status quo analysis.

2. Information gathering phase Customers are beginning to proactively seek information about available products, services, or solutions. Common channels include web searches, industry reports, expert consultations, and peer referrals.

3. Programme evaluation phase Customers compare solutions to assess their strengths and weaknesses, cost-benefits, and risks to meet their needs. This phase emphasizes both quantitative and qualitative analysis, focusing on the ability to solve the customer's core "business problem".

4. Decision approval stage There is an internal approval process involved and may be subject to multiple levels of review. At this time, the decision-maker makes the final choice based on factors such as the value of the solution, risk assessment, and budget constraints.

5. Implementation & Feedback Phase After the decision-making enters the execution stage, the customer continuously evaluates the effect of the plan, adjusts the strategy and gives feedback, and the decision-making process may generate new needs and room for improvement, forming a cycle.

2. Key Decision Makers

1. Economic Buyers Stay on top of budgets and funding approvals, focusing on return on investment (ROI), cost-effectiveness, and financial risk. They are often the final approvers in the decision-making chain.

2. End Users People who use the product or service directly, focusing on product performance, ease of use, and impact on workflows. Their feedback and needs often play a key role in the design phase.

3. Technical Buyers Responsible for the technical feasibility assessment of the solution, focusing on compatibility, security, technical support, and maintenance costs. They ensure that the solution meets the technical standards and specifications of the enterprise.

4. Influencers While not having the final decision-making power, they play an important role in opinion formation and program recommendations, which may be department heads, industry experts, or consultants.

5. Gatekeepers Controlling the flow of information and access to key people, such as administrative assistants or purchasing departments, and reasonably responding to the restrictions imposed on sales communication by doormen, is one of the techniques that influence the decision-making process.

3. Decision-Making Criteria

1. Value and benefits Whether the solution can solve the customer's core business problem and bring measurable benefits and competitive advantage is the primary consideration.

2. Costs and Risks Covers procurement costs, implementation costs, maintenance overhead, and potential risks such as technical compatibility issues, supplier stability, etc.

3. Adaptability and flexibility Whether the solution has the ability to customize according to the specific needs of customers to support future business expansion and adjustment.

4. Supplier credibility and support capabilities Including past service records, customer evaluations, after-sales support system, and whether it can become a trusted partner of customers.

5. Compliance and Standards Compliance Meet industry regulations, security standards and enterprise internal control requirements to ensure legal and compliant operations.

6. User Experience and Ease of Use Pay attention to the end-user acceptance, ease of operation and training cost, which affects the actual application effect.

V Practical application demonstration

1. Initial Contact: Arouse interest and show understanding (emotional value) through emotional resonance

2. Demand Mining: Use SPIN questions to show tactical empathy and identify customer pain points

3. Future depiction: A scenario that uses the future foresight method to make customers feel benefits and happiness

4. Respond to objections: Don't deny customer sentiment, label emotion, and redefine the problem

5. Soft Closing Order: Invite customers to recognize and give them the opportunity to try or experience

6. Data Support: Strengthen logical trust through cases and data

7. Continuous follow-up: Regularly maintain relationships with the CRM system to promote repurchase and referrals

1. Initial contact: Use market segmentation and data analysis to target customers and obtain potential leads through precision digital marketing.

2. Demand mining: Use the SPIN model system to ask questions to collect customers' clear needs and potential problems, and update customer information in real time in combination with CRM.

3. Solution demonstration: Use AR/VR technology or online demonstration tools to demonstrate product functions and features, highlighting product performance and unique selling points.

4. Solution matching: Recommend the best product configuration and service plan with the help of sales automation tools based on the customer's business background and problems.

5. Objection Handling: Respond positively to customer concerns through logical reasoning and data analysis, and enhance persuasiveness through use cases and industry data.

6. Direct closing: Accelerate the transaction process through the digital contract signing platform, and judge the best time to sign the order based on customer behavior data.

7. After-sales service: After-sales management system is used to automatically remind maintenance and customer return visits to promote customer satisfaction and contract renewal.

📎 Reference

• Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook Signed Edition: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World - Gary Vaynerchuk

• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - Malcolm Gladwell

• To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others - Daniel H. Pink

• Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable - Seth Godin

• New Sales: Simplified: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development - Mike Weinberg

• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It - Chris Voss and Tahl Raz

• The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure - Grant Cardone

• The Silicon Valley Sales Method: How the World's Fastest Growing Companies Sell - Aaron Ross & Jason Lemkin

• SPIN Selling: Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff - Neil Rackham

• Difficult Conversations (How to Discuss What Matters Most) - Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen, Roger Drummer

• Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling: Master the Art of Persuasion, Influence, and Success - Jordan Belfort

• Zig Ziglar's Secrets of Closing the Sale: For Anyone Who Must Get Sales to Close - Zig Ziglar, Kevin Harrington

• Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling - Jeb Blount

• The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism - Olivia Fox Cabane

• The Long Tail, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More - Chris Anderson

• The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea - Bob Burg, John David Mann

• Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com - Aaron Ross, Marylou Tyler

• The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from 0to100 Million - Mark Roberge

• The Wolf of Wall Street - Jordan Belfort

• How to Get People to Do Stuff: Master the Art and Science of Persuasion and Motivation - Susan M. Weinschenk

• The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation - Matthew Dixon & Brent Adamson

• The Psychology of Selling: Increase Your Sales Faster and Easier Than You Ever Thought Possible - Brian Tracy

• Selling to the C-Suite: What Every Executive Wants You to Know About Successfully Selling to the Top - Nicholas A.C. Read, Stephen J. Bistritz

• Dark Psychology 7 in 1: The Art of Persuasion, How to Influence, and Manipulate People - Robert Dale Goleman, Daniel Brandon Bradberry, Travis Greene

• How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling - Frank Bettger

• How to Win Friends & Influence People - Dale Carnegie