Printable Link: Here

General Sales Training

These notes are general tips that have been picked up by our Eval Pro team over 1000’s of evals and appointments. Learn these and take them to heart and your closing % will be sky high and you will help SO many families and dogs.

The 5 Sales - Made In Exactly This Order

When you go to someone’s home, there are a handful of micro-sales that need to be made along the way to win the big sale. Here they are…

1) The Personal Sale - This sale is made by getting them to like and trust you. This needs to be done first and foremost. If they don’t like you or they don’t trust you of course they won’t be buying from you. So get them to like and trust you. Smile. Shake their hand. Compliment them and their dog.

2) The Company Sale - This sale is made by getting them to know that we are legit and credible. That is why at the beginning of the eval we give them the quick run down of how we are as a company. We let them know we are in-home trainers and #1 in Memphis.

3) The Concept Sale - People don’t buy things they don’t think will work. This sale is made when we convince them that the methods and concepts we use work. We do this by explaining what we do, how we do it and the addition, subtraction and muliplication.

4) The Solution Sale - Next, you have to sell them the solution to their problems. This is done by presenting them a program that will work for them and solve all their issues.

5) The Authorization Sale - Lastly, this sale is made by getting paid and getting them through the sign up process.

Mirroring (Video Below)

Body Language

When working with someone in their home we want to make sure they are comfortable with us, right? This goes into the whole make a friend, make a sale concept. Body language plays a huge role in subliminal communication. Hence why body language is so important.

2 Ways To Use Body Language To Your Advantage:

The first way is to mirror them. If they are leaning back on the couch with their leg crossed, do the same. If they are leaning in slightly really interested, do it as well.

The second way is to do the opposite of them. If they are too relaxed and uninterested, use your body language to be more engaging and leaning in and using hand motions. If they are too forward with their posture and over doing it, relax them by relaxing in your posture and settling in.

The dichotomies of body language. There is such thing as overdoing all these situations. If they are relaxed and you kick back and put you feet on the table, its too much. If you have your arm up on the back of the couch then that is overdoing it as well. There is also overdoing it by leaning in too much. You can make people really uncomfortable by leaning in too much.

Act As If They Are Buying

Lots of Eval Pros and sales people in other fields will “talk” as if their prospect is buying. Think about a car salesman saying “where is the first place you are going to go in your new car?” Or cheesy comments like that. This is cheap. And normally when people use this way of talking as if their prospect will buy the prospect is actually turned off by it.

A better way to be is to ACT as if they are buying. Go in with confidence and act like they are buying, not through your words but with your demeanor. There is a huge difference and it will come off in the way you speak.

When They Talk Too Much

We like people who are engaged and are chatty, right? They make work and training fun! But there are a handful people who cross the line when it comes to chatting. They cross the line by talking ALL the time, not letting you speak, taking everything you say and turning it into a story, etc.

These people make it difficult to move down the eval sheet because they have a five minute answer to almost every question. When dealing with people like this, you need to politely interrupt them with the next question and push the interaction further. The good news about these people though is that they BUY!

Tonalities

What To Say When They Say They Want To/May Get Rid of the Dog

Sometimes when we get to families houses they are beyond frustrated and really ready for a big change. Sometimes this is the last stop before the dog gets the boot and kicked out of the house.

Sometimes they make it sound like a joke, but most jokes contain a hint of truth, right? If they say something along these lines I will generally respond with “Well, what if we can get him trained? Would that make you want to keep him?”

If they are serious I will say in a serious manner, “I am sorry it’s come to the point where you want to get rid of the dog. I know that’s no fun. Let me ask, if we could get him trained up quickly to the point he was good would you be willing to consider keeping him?”

Pro Tip: If the dog is on the verge of getting booted, offer them the accelerator option for free in order to get the dog trained quicker. Note: This can not be done with puppies younger than 16 weeks due to the age of the dog.

The One Liner of All Sales

I read this in a book one time and since then it has really stuck with me and I wanted to include it here for you. This statement is true and if you can embody this as you present, you will help so many families.

“People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help them throw rocks at their enemies.”

So what does this mean? This first part is to encourage their dreams. If you can encourage them on their journey to having the dog they want, then you will be there. So if they want off-leash, let them know we can do that and encourage it.

What does it mean to justify their failures? This goes into the sales principle “No Judging”. Justify their failures by letting them know it is okay to struggle with the behaviors they are seeing. This is hard to do. Training dogs alone isn’t easy. Justify that and make them feel like not a failure and they will love you for it.

And to allay their fears? The definition of "allay” is to calm or pacify, to set to rest. This means taking their concerned and making sure they are answered. So if they are concerned about the collar make sure you allay those concerns.

How do you confirm suspicions? Most of the people who call us call because they want what? In-Home Dog Training. So what are they suspicious about? Board and Trains and sending their precious baby off to a board and train for two weeks. So confirm that and allay the fear with our service. Note: This doesn’t mean talk bad about competitors. And if someone is suspicious of a particular competitor, DO NOT talk bad about them, rather talk good about us instead.

Finally, how do you help throw rocks at their enemy? There may not really be a proverbial enemy because we are training dogs, but sometimes a spouse may act as an enemy. The spouse may be the one hounding them to get the dog trained (pun intended.) Sometimes their spouse is telling them that if the dog doesn’t get trained the dog has to go. You get the point. If the spouse is the “enemy” in this case, always address it in a joking manner and have fun with it.

As You Go Up Or Down In Value

As you know or will come to find out, we have three main programs. We sell On-Leash, On-Leash+ and Off-Leash. On-Leash is the least expensive, On-Leash+ is just a bit more and Off-Leash is the premium program we sell.

As you go up on the value of the program the effort of the human goes down. As you go down in value the effort of the human goes up. And in certain cases the level of results go down as we go down in value.

For instance if a dog is barking it’s head off all the time and an owner lists that as a concern, if we sell them On-Leash with no remote collar, that will be very difficult to fix for the owner.

Another angle to this is that as you sell Done-With-You, the effort of the human will be greater. As you sell Done-For-You the effort of the human will be lower because it is all done for them.

Dealing With High Net Worth Individuals

As we make hires, we hire Eval Pros of all different backgrounds. Some have been around wealthy people before and some haven’t. If you fall into the latter category, that is okay. When you go into really nice homes for the first time you may almost be shocked at how nice some of them are. You may be shocked by the decor, the area, the cars, etc. While it is crazy the first handful of times you experience this, one of the key things here is to not make it a huge deal. It is fine to say “Wow. What a lovely home.” But what you don’t need to do is act like you don’t belong there or act like you haven’t ever seen something this nice before. Who knows, if you work hard, that could be you one day. Just remain composed, act respectable, treat them like normal people and don’t act like they are any different than you. They aren’t different than you. They just happen to have a lot of money.

Don’t Count Your Eggs Until They Hatch

This may be a southern expression, but it simply means don’t act like a deal is in the bag until it is all they way. There is a major difference between someone saying, “I am going to do this!” and paying you money to get their dog trained by us. And the people who tell you they are going to, don’t count that as a deal until they pay. But once they pay, mark it down! It is real at that point. We write this from experience. All of our new Eval Pros will take a “Yes, we’re going to buy from you” and then get excited then get bummed out when it doesn’t happen.

ABR - Always Be Relating

“Make a friend, make a sale”. Ask yourself this, why do you like the people you like? Why do you hangout with the friends you have? Because you relate to them. Part of making friends is relating and being relational. So if someone you are doing an eval with brings something out, try to relate. If you can’t relate, show interest in what they say. So if they talk about how they went out on a hot air balloon ride and you haven’t ever been on one, ask them questions about it. Talk about it. Treat them like a friend and make a sale. Easy.

No Sunglasses In Appointments

What is one of our biggest sales principles? Make a friend, make a sale. In order to make friends we have to like and trust the people we meet. To do this they need to be able to see your eyes. So no sunglasses in appointments. The only exception to this would be if the eval is outside. But even then when you meet the family first the glasses need to be off so they can see your eyes. Note: This includes wearing sunglasses on your head as well. This seems way too casual and we aren’t there to be causal we are there to be of service to them!

Inspire Confidence in The Eval

The consensus from prospects when you are there with them is that we, as Wonder Dog, can handle whatever they have going on with their pup (unless for some reason we can’t, then be honest). What this means is reassuring them we have dealt with this before, letting them know that their stubborn dog will probably take to the training easily, etc.

We want to make them feel inspired. We want them to feel like they, and their dog are in good hands. Especially if they decided to work with us.

Avoid Phrases Like THis…

“To be honest”, “I’m gonna be honest”, etc. Phrases like this are subtle and fly under the radar most of the time, but at the core, they imply you have been dishonest previously. This is really common lingo for most people and apart of our daily vocab. If this slips out, it isn’t a huge deal and not the end of the world, it is subtle, like mentioned above.

Don’t Apply Your Bias To Someone Else

If you grew up and most of your life you haven’t been of means, it is likely you have biases around money. Even if you did grow up with money, you have biases too. We all do and it is part of life. One thing that can be an easy trap though is applying your biases to someone else. For instance, you may not be of the type that would ever hire a dog trainer for $2000 or $4000 or $6000, but people do it all the time. You will have a hard time selling a $4000 program to someone if you go into your pitch thinking this “This is a lot. They won’t say yes to this because it is so expensive.”

If this is your mindset, let it go. It will be hard to and some effort will be required, but let it go. Don’t project your mindset onto them, because if you do, you won’t pitch as hard and you won’t sell them.

There is evidence all around that people buy stuff all the time and spend lots of money on stuff they don’t NEED but they WANT. Task your brain for looking for evidence of why people can rather than why they can’t.