If you have never met the person, and they do not know you, don’t leave a voice mail message. So here’s a question for you. You have a message on your voicemail system. You listen for 5 seconds, you don’t recognize the person but you do recognize what they are doing, namely, selling … trying to get you interested enough to call them back. What do you do? Listen to the full two-minute message and copy down their number so you can get right back to them? I doubt it! You hit delete and move on. So what makes you think anyone is going to listen to your message? Hang up and try again later. Hit “o” and get to a real person. Find a gatekeeper somewhere and find out when your prospect will be back. Ask if there is a better number to call her on. Do anything but leave a message. Lots of young people don’t even check voicemail. Their phone captures the number and if they recognize the number, they hit the call button. Sometimes they do that even if they don’t recognize the number … it might be important! … or interesting?!
Optimal Selling – A Compelling Business Resource
The “Make-The-Sale” series, by Dan Caramanico and Marie Maguire, is an outstanding way for salespeople to learn what the difference is between ‘good’ sales techniques and ‘bad’ in this new business world. With this guide, readers will be able to study the ins and outs of the conversations had by an Optimal Salesperson when they ‘hunt’ for their customer’s reasons for buying a product and/or service.
As we know, we’re in an economic upheaval that has just begun to show signs of balancing out. What may come in the future is anyone’s guess. Our society is very much a 
technologically based realm where consumers head to a keyboard instead of an office when it comes to purchasing products. But, salespeople are necessary! And being a great one – an optimal one – is the key to success.
Opening with “Quincy,” a man who is a literal quoting machine, businesspeople see that even though he can quote like a fiend, research a prospect to the extreme, and find referrals in an instant, he still suffers extremely low production. Hence, he is the man for the preliminaries, but when it comes to selling the product and closing the deal, he is at a loss.
This book literally walks the steps and offers the key techniques on how to understand when a buyer actually NEEDS to buy! Unlike other business books, this goes beyond the norm because the writers have not simply generalized the situation. Such as, they do not simply say all salespeople are the same and by simply doing “this,” you’ll have your dream job, fancy house, etc.. What they do offer are crystal-clear examples that can be used by various backgrounds and attitudes of current and future salespeople. Everything from being able to read a prospect’s body language to being able to take note of the little things that appear in conversations in order to discover what a prospect’s long term problem may be – this book has it all.
Like a sleuth finding the clues to the mystery of what their clients need, this book instructs a salesperson on how to anticipate the need and then ask direct questions – the hard questions – so that the buyer knows they completely understand the issues and want to help…not just make the sale.
This title in the “Make-The-Sales” series will have the business world opening their eyes to the ‘right’ way when it comes to producing successful sales.
A Sales Call Is A Conversation Not An Inquisition
Sales training professionals talk a lot about asking questions. I myself am a big proponent of asking questions. One of my favorite aphorisms is that “you tell more about what you know by the questions you ask than by the statements you make.” Questions get the prospect talking and let us find out information about the prospect. By asking questions we demonstrate our interest in the prospect and foster understanding. Rather than seeing us as a “pitchman”, questions help us establish that we are interested in a relationship with the prospect and we are not just looking for a short term result. Questions are an essential element of a prospect-centered sales process.
There are all kinds of distinctions made about questioning techniques. Trainers tell you to ask open ended questions rather than closed ended questions that can be handled with a one word answer. This is good advice since closed ended questions force you to have to carry the conversation and, as we all know, you can’t learn anything about the prospect if we are the ones doing all of the talking. They tell you to ask “probing” questions to get to the real issues. I am not so sure about this one. Sometimes probing questions can be seen as intrusive and trigger defense mechanisms in the prospect and cause him or her to shut down and make it difficult to get any more information at all. You have to earn the right to ask these kinds of questions.
Questions are a good thing but as is true of many things, too much of a good thing is not always good for you. The problem with all of this focus on questions and questioning techniques is that the sales call starts to look more like an inquisition or an interrogation and defeat the purpose of the sales call. Remember that you are trying to establish a relationship with this person not conduct a “third degree”. If the prospect starts to perceive the interaction as a one-way interrogation of sorts, it will become very hard to develop a bond or a relationship and you will be relegated to getting superficial or even misleading information. The most effective way to conduct a sales call is to establish a conversation. A conversation by definition is a two-way exchange. They ask questions. You ask questions. They make statements you make statements. It is an exchange between two people of equal stature (that’s a whole other topic by the way) trying to get to know each other. It is within this framework that you should ask your questions. They will be received in a much better fashion and give you a higher probability of getting the depth of information and emotion you are looking for. So the lesson for today is integrate your questions into a free flowing two-way conversation. Don’t fire them at the prospect in the form of an inquisition or an interrogation.
No Thinking on Sales Call
Most salespeople spend too much time thinking when in front of a prospect. I am not suggesting that you turn your brain off. But if you are strategizing on the fly about your next move, analyzing what the prospect just said, or thinking about how to solve the problem, you are not listening to what the prospect is saying and you will miss clues or indications that you should follow up with a question. So don’t think! Stay present with the prospect and you will get more and deeper information. click the link to see a short video on the subject.
