Archives for September 2018

Pre-planned questions are a bad idea. First when you go into a meeting with pre-planned questions you tend to focus on yourself rather than on the prospect. You will tend to just look for an opening slip the question into rather than let the conversation flow naturally. When your questions are planned in advance (especially if they are written down … or worse in questionnaire format), the language used is usually more stilted than you would say it when talking to the prospect. All of those and more are good reasons not to pre-plan the questions you will ask. However, that does not mean that there should be no pre-planning. I strongly urge you to plan the answers you need to get from the meeting. If you go into a meeting with 3 or 4 answers you need to get, you can lead the conversation to those topics and you might not even have to actually ask the questions. The answers may just flow naturally from the conversation. When you are at the appropriate time the form of the question will come to you and you will ask it. Planning what answers you need is much more effective than planning the questions you will ask.

Do you want to get to another level? Then take a risk. If you always stay within your comfort zone emotionally you will stunt your growth professionally as a sales person. We avoid things we are afraid of. The reason we avoid doing certain things is not because of the “danger” inherent in the action, but the perceived problems that will befall us if we take the action. We are not afraid of actually asking for a referral. We are afraid of the consequences we imagine that will accompany the ask. We might be afraid the client will see us as presumptuous, or pushy, or too salesy. We might be afraid that they will reject us. We fear the imagined consequences of asking. Here is how growth works. You face the fear and do something you have been avoiding. You get a result. Most likely what you are afraid of does not happen. There is no rejection. The client gives you a referral or explains that as much as they would like to give you one, they don’t know the type of people you are asking to be referred to. You notice that the stuff you feared the most either never happened or was not as bad as you imagined it would be. The next time you think of asking for a referral the fear is not as bad as it was the first time. The same result occurs. Eventually you realize that there is nothing to fear in asking for a referral and it is a natural part of your sales process. Most of your work starts to come by referral which is a much easier way to sell. Your pipeline and your income grow and you are at a new level and ready to get out of your comfort zone again to get to the next level.

Are you proud that your price is high? Or, do you constantly seek to justify it to prospects. If you think your price is too high, you will be vulnerable to rice objections from the prospect. The minute the prospect even hints at putting downward pressure on the price your inner voice will say “I KNEW IT. Our price is too high just like I have been telling management!”! If you have belief in your product or service and are proud to be one of the higher priced options in the market, when the prospect mentions that your price is high, your inner voice will say “and worth every penny and then some”! Something else will come out of your mouth in response to the prospects statement. Whatever that is will be powered by the belief that your product has value worth paying for. If you are not proud of your price you need to sell yourself first that your product is worth what you are asking for it. This is a simple but very powerful concept that will pay huge dividends.

You generally avoid what you fear. In sales what you fear rarely happens. If you avoid making sales calls because you fear that bad things will happen and horror of horrors you will get rejected, the rejection won’t happen, but neither will the income that would result from the call. Even if the rejection happens, the hurt is temporary. However, when your income is not what it should be, you may regret that you did not push yourself out of your comfort zone for a very long time. It is a fact that hardly anything really bad can happen on a cold call. The worst that can happen is that they don’t buy from you. And if you are rejected, so what? Your parents still love you, your kids still love you, your spouse still loves you and if all else fails your dog still loves you. Don’t live your life regretting sales calls you wish you had made. The hurt that you fear is very temporary, but the regret will last a very long time.