Archives for June 2018

It is getting harder and harder to connect with people. I have seen numbers varying from 8 to 15 attempts to finally connect with a decision maker. Inability to connect adds time to the sales cycle increases the stress level of the salesperson and wastes valuable time that could be used in more productive and revenue producing activities. There is a simple fix however. All you have to do is ask your prospect how they want to be communicated with for future calls. Ask how the calls should be set up. Some prefer email and some like phone calls. This obviously does not help with getting connected the first time, but it shortens the time it takes to connect every time after the first. My favorite question is to ask if there is “any trick to getting hold of them”. You would be surprised at what they will tell you. I had one young lady take her card back from me and give me direct dial number then she told me that “I don’t give this to people”. It made my job easier but I was afraid to ask what she considered me if not “people”.

Stress is never a good thing. A little nervous tension may heighten your senses and allow you to perform better. But stress does nothing but waste energy and make it harder to focus on what is important in the moment. When you experience stress what you are doing is either anticipating the great and wonderful things that will happen if the call goes well or dreading the devastation that will occur to your quarter or your year or your career if the call goes awry. All that added pressure degrades your performance and makes it less likely that you will be successful. What you should realize that any sales call no matter how big or important is only a conversation between you and another human (or two). And, you are skilled at having conversations. When you realize that you have an effective sales process, the conversation will be successful whether you get the outcome you wanted or not. More importantly, you need to realize that there are plenty of other prospects out there to replace this one if you lose. Ironically the less stressed you are, the more successful you will be, and you will have less to be stressed about. However, if you insist on putting extra pressure on yourself you will fail more often and have more to be stressed about. So, break the cycle of stress and relax. You will sell more and have fewer gray hairs.

Extrapolating is always dangerous. In math to extrapolate is to extend a curve beyond the known datapoints. When you get outside of the known data points you run the risk of the curve having changed shape and any inference you may have made from the extrapolation is thus invalid. Many experienced salespeople who have been on hundreds of sales calls with similar clients start to believe that all the problems sound the same. The problems of company A sound pretty much the same as the problems of company B. So, when they hear the beginning strains of the problem, they stop listening thinking they know where this is going. What they have inadvertently done is to extrapolate to what they think the pain is without hearing it from the prospect directly. They think they know what the pain of the prospect must be without actually knowing it. In fact, even though the problem may be the same, how the prospect feels about it (Pain) can vary dramatically. The solution to this problem is simple. Don’t jump to conclusions. Keep asking questions until you get to the real pain.

“What have you tried so far to fix the problem?” This is a great question to ask a prospect after they have shared a problem with you. There are some reasons why this is a great question:
• It keeps you from jumping in and starting to talk prematurely
• It keeps the prospect talking
• It helps you understand their thought process
• It keeps you from coming up with a suggestion that won’t work
So after a short discussion of what they have tried you can ask “why do you think that didn’t work”? this will give you more insights into their thought process and lead you further down the path to uncovering their compelling reason to move forward. These are both discovery type questions. They are designed to get you more information and insight into the prospect and to keep you out of trouble.