Archives for February 2019

Knowing how much time you have for your sales call is vital to its success. It is frustrating to put all the work in to set up the meeting, not to mention time and travel expense, only to have the prospect cut your meeting short. You may have scheduled an hour, but the question is, “does the prospect still have that hour to give you”. Or, has another “emergency” or higher priority shown up between when you set the meeting and the time you got there? If they cut the meeting short, you will be rushed at the end, key people may have to exit the meeting early or the meeting may just end abruptly with no warning. There is a straight forward way to eliminate this problem. Just ask the prospect in the first few minutes of the call how much time they have set aside for the meeting. If they mention a time shorter than you were expecting, at least you know in advance and can plan the call accordingly. You can make sure you cover the most important topics and end the meeting in an appropriate way. Having a half hour meeting instead of an hour may be frustrating but knowing it in advance allows you to end the meeting in a natural way.

The closing skill is over rated. Too much attention is paid to closing techniques and overcoming objections to get a signature on the dotted line. Not enough attention is paid to the front end of the funnel. Closing should be the natural consequence of everything that comes before it. If you hunt regularly, sell consultatively and qualify prospects effectively, your pipeline will be full of prospects who are moving normally toward the close. The key here is to do enough prospecting and qualify effectively. Do not run to the quote and then try to close the prospect. Rather make sure they have a compelling reason to buy from you. Make sure they have enough money and you understand the decision process and what decision the prospect you are talking to has both the authority and the willingness to make. There is one right time to close. Close too early and you will look pushy. Close to late and you may look disinterested or miss the window of opportunity. The right time is decided upon by the prospect so have that conversation with him or her – don’t guess. If you prospect consistently, sell consultatively, and qualify effectively closing will take care of itself.

Keep listening to prospects even if you think you have heard it before. The personal pain of each prospect is different. Some salespeople tend to stop listening when the prospect starts to tell them the problem because they have heard this a hundred times before and they think they know where the prospect is going with this description. If you do this, you will miss the real personal pain that this prospect has. Or at least you will miss the hint they give you which will lead you to ask more and better questions. Even worse, some salespeople interrupt the prospect in mid description with a statement like “Oh I know your problem!”. There is no faster way to turn off a prospect and ruin your chances to develop a relationship that saying that. So, even if you think you have heard it all before, listen intently and you will discover that the key to the sale may lie in the nuances of this particular situation and how the prospect reacts to them.

Talking about your company and your product is not always being helpful to the prospect. At some point they need to know about that stuff but only after you have uncovered the problem and the pain they are in. A much more effective approach is to be helpful to the prospect. Now I believe that every salesperson wants to be helpful, but many go about it the wrong way. One effective approach to being helpful is to ask questions which will uncover issues that the prospect may not be aware of. Effective questions may also help the prospect crystallize his or her thinking around certain issues. Questions are a great way to establish credibility since you tell more about what you know by the questions you ask than by the statements you make. So when you are talking with prospects be helpful. Ask questions that lead them to a better understanding and you can leave the sales talk at home.