Selling, like any other job, needs to be approached systematically and the best approach I have found for improving ability is the KASH approach. It is a means of taking any new ideas and turning them into practical skills. It is a way of identifying causes for poor performance and correcting them. It is an almost magic formula for achieving success that is particularly applicable to selling. Quite simply KASH stands for Knowledge, Attitude, Skills and Habits - the four essential ingredients in doing any job effectively,
Learn the right KNOWLEDGE, build the proper ATTITUDE, develop the correct SKILLS and ensure that those skills are applied over and over until they become HABITS. Those are the four steps that ensure success at anything you do. Let's look at each element of the formula in a little more detail.
To be successful in selling you need to learn about every aspect of the job. This includes knowledge of the market, your company. your products and your prospects. Most important is knowledge of how your products help your prospects. You also need to acquire knowledge of each particular sales skill, each marketing technique and the psychology of buying and selling. There is a basic knowledge essential for you to do the job effectively, and in many industries today this is determined by regulations as a statutory requirement.
Fear of not knowing enough is probably one of the greatest stumbling blocks to salespeople's confidence in their ability to sell. The key to confidence is in acquiring the right knowledge. This means understanding the market, the products and their applications rather than becoming a technical wizard.
Henry Ford once said, "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're probably right". If you think that making appointments on the telephone will be difficult then it will be. It is essential that you build the right attitude in everything you do. You need a positive approach to problems, a friendly approach to your customers and an ethical approach to business.
To be successful today you need to be positive and enthusiastic even when the rest of the world thinks gloom and doom. The quickest way to fail at selling is to believe that no one will buy from you. There are any number of reasons to confirm such a negative belief. Its the recession, its the boom, its summer, its winter, its Christmas, its not Christmas. You will fail if your attitude is negative or unenthusiastic.
Successful selling results from the application of a number of skills in sequence. As you will see shortly, I have split the sales process into five separate steps, each with clearly defined skills needed to be successful. Far too many salespeople think that all there is to selling is to go in and tell the prospect about the product. This approach results in pushy telephone techniques and high pressure selling . For each step we need to identify the particular skills needed to achieve the objective. Then we must develop the skills to a professional standard.
But understanding selling is not enough. We also need to understand buying. By understanding the buying process, we are able to apply our skills more effectively. The study of human psychology is probably one of the most important developments to impact the sales professional in the past decade. We need to learn the skills of dealing with people more than any other skills.
An RAF fighter pilot trainer brought home to me the importance of good habits, when he pointed out, "When you are traveling one mile every five seconds and you make a mistake, you don't often get a second chance". In selling, all that happens if you get it wrong is that you lose the sale. However, if you lose the sale enough times. you will probably lose the job or you will leave the company. Selling is about numbers. If you do the right things enough times, you will be successful. Most salespeople fail because they do not make a habit of doing the right things enough times. .
If you have ever taken a young child for a walk you will know just how much training it needs just to learn how to cross the road safely. Over and over again we repeat the same drill. We instil fear into the child if they breach the rules with a sharp warning. This is one lesson that cannot really be learnt the hard way. It is really no different in selling, or in any other job, for that matter. Success in selling requires that the skills are practised, drilled and rehearsed, until they become an automatic process in our daily routine.
The most important principle in of the KASH formula is that each of the four ingredients must exist for success to be achieved. Furthermore, the extent of success is arrived at by multiplying together the effectiveness of each ingredient. For example: assume for a moment that ability in each element in the KASH formula can be measured on a scale of 0 to 10 and that a salesperson has a rating of 1 for each element.
K x A x S x H = Success
1 x 1 x 1 x 1 = 1
This is clearly not going to be enough of a success factor for a long term career. Now suppose another salesperson decides that the key to success is knowledge, and therefore focuses all efforts on improving knowledge until it is increased by four units to a rating of 5. Applying the formula:
K x A x S x H = Success
5 x 1 x 1 x 1 = 5
A five fold increase in success Another salesperson decides apply the same amount of effort, four units, but by spreading it evenly across each of the four areas i.e. an increase of 1 to 2. Applying the formula again:
K x A x S x H = Success
2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 16
A sixteen fold increase in success, three times higher than the previous salesperson but for the same overall effort. Now let us see the effect of the formula on a salesperson who works hard at three of the elements in the formula, but does nothing about developing the right habits;
K x A x S x H = Success
3 x 3 x 3 x 0 = 0
Total failure is the inevitable result of disregarding any one of the elements in the formula. The most effective way of achieving success is to consistently develop Knowledge, Attitude, Skills and Habits in every area of your business.
Try to use this approach in all of your sales work. If as a result of reading this book you decide to improve one or more of your sales skills, look at the KASH balance. A little of each element has a much greater impact than a lot of effort in any single element. If you find that sales are not happening, it is a sure bet that one of the elements in the formula is at or near zero. Identifying which element it is and correcting it, will be much more effective than trying to build up any of the other three.
As you can see, it is a very simple formula. But don't let that fool you into thinking that it is just playing with numbers. I have used numbers to illustrate the principle. But the principle works all of the time. The interacting elements of KASH do have a multiple effect.
In the remainder of this part of the book I will look at the basic Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills and Habits needed to Sell Your Way To Success, whatever the economic climate. KASH should be used for each step in the sales process. In fact use it for every technique of selling. For example - if you want to improve your success in making cold telephone, calls follow the formula:
Study the subject first; understand your the market, how to use phone for prospecting, how to develop a script and handle objections, define your targets and objectives. Acquire the basic knowledge about prospecting on the telephone.
Look at your attitude to cold calling and your fears. Turn your fear of rejection around and develop a positive fun attitude towards the task.
Produce and learn your 'script' ,compile your telephone lists, prepare your appointment planner etc. Then practise, drill and rehearse the basics until you have mastered the skill,
Now set out a plan of regular activity and make sure that for at least thirty days, you stick to the plan. Get into the habit of telephoning until the skills starts to become second nature; until, like crossing the road, they have become instinctive.