While not everyone wants to admit it, if you are responsible for bringing in revenue, you are in sales. In 10 or 20 years, it might be called something else, but for today, it’s sales! From many of the professionals that I talk with, many don’t like to think of themselves as a sales person as it seems to have a negative connotation!
Once you wrap your head around the fact that you are in sales, here’s a few ideas to consider to make each prospect more successful.
HAVE A SALES CALL PLANNING
Before you meet with a prospect, what are you going to say? What questions are you going to ask. Seasoned professionals know that the more prepared you are, the more successful you will be. Sure, it’s easy to think you can wing it, but that’s usually not the best strategy.
As you plan for your meeting, what are the right questions to ask for finding the ‘hot’ button. When meeting with a prospect for the first time, the right questions will help you determine if it is the right prospect to work with. So many times, new sales people just want the business so they’ll take anyone.
The irony of this is somewhere down the road the new sales person realizes that they have some clients that really don’t fit the ‘ideal client’ category, so they end up ‘firing’ them. Sometimes you can avoid wasting a lot of time by pre qualifying them up front and staying focused on prospects that fit the ideal criteria.
Each time you meet with the prospect throughout the sales process, have a sales call meeting to map out what you want to accomplish during the meeting and what ‘hot’ buttons you can focus on. These hot buttons will also be the solutions you can offer them, either through your own products/services or through an introduction to another vendor that can assist.
Think of your sales call planning meeting as a ‘role playing’ session. Ask the questions out loud. Rehearse the process you want to go through. Saying it out loud, or recording yourself if you are brave enough, will have a huge impact in your results!
PROPOSAL TIME
Without question, the meeting where you are presenting your offer is the most important time for your sales call planning. If possible, meet with someone else to go through your presentation with them. Role play. Have them ask questions and provide feedback at the end of what felt right and what felt uncomfortable.
UNDERSTAND PERSONALITIES
There are many personality tools such as Myers Briggs and Bank, but regardless which you subscribe to, as a sales person, its essential to know the personality type you are dealing with. If they are someone that just wants the facts, if you go through an in depth presentation, you’ll loose them at Hello! If they are the accountant type, you’ll need to give them all the details. The more you can assess the personality type of your buyer, the more you can position your presentation to their personality, in essence, speak their language.
Get in the habit of planning each of your presentations and you’ll see a big difference in your closing rates.
Author: Debbie DeChambeau is the founder of Select Business Team, the host of three podcasts, The Business of Insurance, Divorce Exposed and Select Business Team Podcast and a co-author of the book Renewable Referrals.