If you want to increase sales then you must be efficient and only spend time where it will pay dividends. One of the biggest time wasters is to NOT talk about money early enough in the sales cycle. 65% of salespeople are uncomfortable having a money discussion at all with a prospect and about 95% are uncomfortable talking about money on the first call.
The video below details a fairly typical example. A client spent 3 meetings and probably $15,000 only to discover that the prospect was not a prospect at all. They could have save most of the time and effort if they had only discussed money on the first call. It is ok to talk about money on the first call. Once they describe the problem, it is the most natural thing to discuss first what the problem is costing them followed by how much they were planning to spend to fix the problem. Alternatively, you could ask how much they would be willing to spend to fix the problem and still a third option is to give them a range of what your solutions would cost and see if that would fit in their plans.
One tip is to avoid using the tem “budget” in your discussions. Budget is a charged word. It is considered proprietary by many and seems like they may be giving you an unfair advantage if they reveal it. Even if they won’t or can’t tell you the “budget” they will probably be able to give you a range of what they might consider a reasonable expenditure. Just for fun read this post to find out the worst time to talk about money.
Links to other relevant posts.
https://optimalsalesperson.com/salesperson-time-waster-1-following-up/ https://optimalsalesperson.com/when-should-you-discuss-money-on-a-sales-call-3/
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