Increase sales effectiveness by not getting sidetracked. Sometimes, being sidetracked is good. A railroad system uses sidetracks to enable faster trains to pass slower trains on the same line. Without the sidetracks, there could be no fast trains. Trains would have to use the same track one and a time. The speed of a locomotive would be irrelevant if the locomotive has to wait for a slower train in front of it. However, in sales, being sidetracked is not good at all. It means we are pulled off to the side in our pursuit to achieve our goals to close sales. We get sidetracked from increasing business by our busy schedules. We get sidetracked from our cold calling by a need for others to like us. We get sidetracked from maximizing the use of our selling skills by always serving other people’s goals instead of focusing on our own. The optimal salesperson treats his or her day like a high speed railroad track, moving at lightning speed from one goal to the next, not taking any time to waste time on a sidetrack.
Archives for May 2016
Being the expert can cost you sales
I know you are the expert in your field. But you can’t increase sales by telling the prospect out right that you know best. It can come across as arrogant and can cause the prospect to argue with you. You may win the argument … but you run a high risk of losing the sale with that approach. Many salespeople feel they have to demonstrate their expertise to win the sale. They tend to do that with spiffy (love that word) presentations and demos and even with well-crafted leading questions. They try to tell the prospect what needs to be done in no uncertain terms. The real sales pros (I like to call them optimal salespeople) know that the real sales skill is not in selling the prospect on buying from you. But, rather, in having them discover on their own (with some help from you) that they should buy what you have. This is done not by being argumentative or using their powers of persuasion. The optimal sales person has a high closing rate because they use their expertise to anticipate the problems the prospect might have and then to ask good hard tough and timely questions with humility and sincerity to get the prospect to share the their problems with them. Don’t argue and don’t persuade, just lead the discussion to the compelling reason to buy and sales will increase, wasted time will decrease and your life will be less stressful. Here’s a link that goes into it in more detail.
