Archives for June 2019

Success and familiarity breed complacency. And when complacency sets in you tend to fall back into old habits or develop new bad habits. One of those is the tendency to skip steps in the sales process. Sometimes complacency causes you to get lazy and not ask follow-up questions or to assume you know what the prospect means. You might also forget to ask critical questions because you acquire a false sense of security. You win most of the business with this customer “so I’ll just ask a few questions, mail in the quote and collect the commission” … or so you think. Familiarity gives you an advantage. You know how the customer thinks. You have a history. You have a sense of what they will spend. You know the decision process. You know what they have done in the past. They will share more information with you. You have an advantage over the competition. Don’t squander it by being lazy and skipping steps.
Likewise, success can lull you into a feeling of “I got this”. “Those questions are for amateurs. I’m a pro. I know what needs to be done.” That thought process will send you right back down to the bottom where you came from if you are not careful. Airline pilots who have thousands of flights under their belts still go thru every step of the pre-flight checklist … every time … every flight … they don’t skip anything … EVER. Be like the pilot touch all the bases. Do all the steps every time … every sales call.

If you have a sales question you would like to discuss follow the link to schedule a call:
https://calendly.com/dancaramanico/callwithdan

Contrary to the popular saying, success is not about working smart. It is about working hard on the right stuff. It is your self-limiting beliefs and other hidden weaknesses that make selling so tough. If you have too much need for approval, for example, then you will find asking hard questions to be exhausting and you will avoid doing it. What you consider to be a hard question will depend on what other self-limiting beliefs you have. For example, if you are uncomfortable talking about money and you also have need for approval then the very thought of asking for the client’s budget is stressful. If your sales manager is demanding that you come back from the sales call with the budget, then you will dread going to the meeting. You will waste emotional energy and you will lower your chances of getting the information you need. Eliminating your excessive need for approval is not easy. It requires a commitment to the task, and it requires emotional energy expended over a significant period of time to risk rejection, get rejected (or not) and then deal with the emotional consequences. However, if you put the emotional energy into overcoming this issue then selling, suddenly (and I do mean suddenly) asking tough questions becomes much easier. In fact, they will require no emotional energy at all. You will not dread conversations. You will not obsess about what prospects might or might say and you will be more relaxed on the sales call. This will free up energy to do other things and your success and satisfaction with your sales career will skyrocket. The tricky part is to identify the hidden weakness causing you the stress. The hard part is working through the “trauma” of doing what must be done to overcome the weakness. But, putting in the emotional work to discover and overcome the self-limiting beliefs is the smart thing to do.

If you have a sales question you would like to discuss follow the link to schedule a call:
https://calendly.com/dancaramanico/callwithdan

Connecting with prospects on follow-up is becoming harder and harder. In the past we only had one ore two ways to communicate. You either called the prospect or visited them in person. There was no email. Twitter was a figment of Mark Zuckerberg’ imagination. There was no video chat, no text messages, InMail or instant message. The world was a simpler place. Most everyone had a “secretary” who knew where your prospect was at all times and could tell you when the best time was to reach them. Now it is easier for the prospect to hide behind voice mail which did not involve the secretary lying about you being in a meeting. They can avoid your call because their phone tells them it is you calling. To make matters worse they are a moving target since they can be working from anywhere with there cell phone and fewer and fewer people have administrative assistance that keep track of them. In this environment following up with a prospect can be a nightmare. But there is a way out. The first time you talk to the prospect, all you have to do is ask them how they want you to communicate with them. It is that simple. Some people prefer text messages some prefer that you call their cell some prefer email. Ask them and then get an understanding as to when and how you should follow up. The question that I like is “Is there any trick to getting a hold of you?” When you ask that question directly they will give you the secret formula to getting them on the phone.

If you have a sales question you would like to discuss follow the link to schedule a call:
https://calendly.com/dancaramanico/callwithdan

Your expectation of the outcome of a sales call will most often dictate how successful the call will be. The reason is that you communicate your expectation through your body language and tonality. So, on any call, if you expect to get an answer to a question you will have a better chance of getting it than if you think there is no chance of getting an answer. In a slightly more macro perspective, if you expect the sales call to go well and you expect to close the deal you have a greatly increased probability of doing just that. This translates into your whole career and life. Those who expect to succeed generally do. Those who expect failure generally fail. The main lesson is that you can accelerate the process if you just expect to succeed before you actually have success. In this case the Chicken really does come before the egg. Expect to succeed and you will not be disappointed in the long run.

If you have a sales question you would like to discuss follow the link to schedule a call:
https://calendly.com/dancaramanico/callwithdan