SIDNEY — The Sidney Rotary Club hosted its weekly luncheon, May 22, where the speaker was Doug Borchers.
Borchers provided Rotarians with insights into sales skills and techniques he has learned from his work experiences, education, and prior training.
Borchers’s background includes spending his first 11 years out of college at Eaton Corp., which is a Fortune 500 company, while living in Milwaukee and Cincinnati. After that, he made his way to Dickman Supply and finally, to Superior Aluminum Products Inc. Through the years, Borchers stated he has participated in numerous sales training courses. The one in particular that Borchers focused on and discussed was the Sandler System.
“Whether you are making a product, or providing a service such as an attorney, accountant or in public service, this service applies to everyone,” Borchers said.
He told how the traditional selling system differs from the Sandler System. Under the traditional selling system, he said, “First you prospect for business, where you describe the products you make or the services you provide, and the things that I do.” After talks with the prospect under the traditional system, “You beg for an appointment and then give a presentation.” Following the presentation, the seller must “overcome objections” by the buyer. “After overcoming those objections, the seller wants to give a proposal.” After making the proposal, Borchers described that many times the prospect won’t return calls or answer emails. “The last step is you chase him under the traditional sales system,” hoping to close, Borchers said.
Using the Sandler System, the first step is to develop trust, Borchers said.
“It starts out with things like referrals from people you are doing business with,” he said. “The best is to get an introduction from a person that you know within the industry, and that person is willing to introduce you to somebody.” After meeting the prospect, “then you enter the bonding and rapport phase, where you want to learn a little bit about the other person.” Before going into a presentation, Borchers would then ask the other person, “If you could take five minutes and tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got to this position here.” “Inevitably, as they are giving you that history, there is something that you have some kind of a tie,” he added.
The next step, Borchers said, is “the up-front contract,” where both parties establish time length of the meeting, setting a tone and the expectations for the meeting. Next, and the most important step, is “finding pain.”
“Your job from here on out is about finding their pain,” he said. Borchers noted that his favorite question when this step is finished, is asking “If you could wave a magic wand and fix all these issues, how would you solve it?”
He then discusses the budget, which involves finding out information on pricing points to get a target. Then comes the decision-making process and discovering who must be included.
“Then we get into the fulfillment and proposal step,” Borchers said. This step involves picking items from the finding pain step, and addressing how you would fix those problems. Borchers’s presentation, he said, was a 20-minute summary of the 20-hour course he completed.
