Don’t jump to conclusions. Some salespeople are so eager to tell their story that they don’t wait to hear the real problem before they leap in with some statement about how wonderful their product is or a solution to what they assume the problem is based on sketchy initial statements. This behavior on sales calls will cause you to lose control of the sales call or even worse make you look pushy and cost you lots of money in lost sales. A better approach is to relax, listen, ask questions and dig a little deeper to verify that the prospect has the problem you initially assume they have. In addition to the problem, you need to understand the consequence the prospect is experiencing due to the problem and how he or she is reacting to the consequences of the problem. Only then can you begin to think about the solution to the problem. And remember the problem may have consequences you never thought of or it may be more or less important to the prospect than you initially thought.

When you bring people on a sales call there must only be one person who is the principle salesperson. One person should “run” the call. There should be a plan for the call and there should be a role for everyone on the call. If you don’t do this, chaos most likely will ensue. The reason is that people think they have to contribute to the conversation to justify their existence. As an example, the technical person may interject extraneous, though highly interesting, information that derails the salesperson’s line of questioning which was leading to pain.

At the beginning of the meeting it is best to define the roles of the attendees on your side so there is no confusion. Then one person should orchestrate the call. Who does most of the talking and leads the conversation depends on the goal of the call and the stage of the pursuit. For example, if the goal of the call is to engage in a technical discussion with the prospects technical people to determine if our solution will work, then the salesperson might introduce everyone, state the purpose of the call and hand the “baton” to the technical person to carry the conversation. Then, at the end of the technical discussion, the salesperson could wrap things up and close for the next step. However, if the goal of the call is to qualify the prospect, the technical person might just be there in case a technical question comes up. In that case the tech would not have a speaking role if no technical questions arose. Those are two extremes but the major point is that on every call, roles should be defined in advance, made clear to the prospect and there should only be one salesperson on the call.

Have you uncovered a compelling reason to buy in your prospect?
* If the opportunity languishes in your pipeline without moving as it should, maybe what you have uncovered is a “nice to have” rather than a compelling reason to buy it.
* If prospect continually puts you off, maybe what you found out on your last sales call was the prospect was interested in your product but did not have a compelling reason to buy it.
* If the prospect is overly price sensitive, then maybe what you uncovered was a prospect who could find a use for your product but does not have a compelling reason to buy it.
* If your prospect has gone “radio silent” for two months maybe the compelling reason you thought you uncovered was not so compelling after all.
I could go on but you get the point. The lesson here is to make sure that your prospect has a compelling reason to buy your product or service rather than just a need or an interest in the product or service. Make sure that the prospect actually has pain and there are problems with serious consequences that need to be urgently addressed before you label the opportunity as qualified.

It is getting harder and harder to connect with people. I have seen numbers varying from 8 to 15 attempts to finally connect with a decision maker. Inability to connect adds time to the sales cycle increases the stress level of the salesperson and wastes valuable time that could be used in more productive and revenue producing activities. There is a simple fix however. All you have to do is ask your prospect how they want to be communicated with for future calls. Ask how the calls should be set up. Some prefer email and some like phone calls. This obviously does not help with getting connected the first time, but it shortens the time it takes to connect every time after the first. My favorite question is to ask if there is “any trick to getting hold of them”. You would be surprised at what they will tell you. I had one young lady take her card back from me and give me direct dial number then she told me that “I don’t give this to people”. It made my job easier but I was afraid to ask what she considered me if not “people”.

Stress is never a good thing. A little nervous tension may heighten your senses and allow you to perform better. But stress does nothing but waste energy and make it harder to focus on what is important in the moment. When you experience stress what you are doing is either anticipating the great and wonderful things that will happen if the call goes well or dreading the devastation that will occur to your quarter or your year or your career if the call goes awry. All that added pressure degrades your performance and makes it less likely that you will be successful. What you should realize that any sales call no matter how big or important is only a conversation between you and another human (or two). And, you are skilled at having conversations. When you realize that you have an effective sales process, the conversation will be successful whether you get the outcome you wanted or not. More importantly, you need to realize that there are plenty of other prospects out there to replace this one if you lose. Ironically the less stressed you are, the more successful you will be, and you will have less to be stressed about. However, if you insist on putting extra pressure on yourself you will fail more often and have more to be stressed about. So, break the cycle of stress and relax. You will sell more and have fewer gray hairs.

Extrapolating is always dangerous. In math to extrapolate is to extend a curve beyond the known datapoints. When you get outside of the known data points you run the risk of the curve having changed shape and any inference you may have made from the extrapolation is thus invalid. Many experienced salespeople who have been on hundreds of sales calls with similar clients start to believe that all the problems sound the same. The problems of company A sound pretty much the same as the problems of company B. So, when they hear the beginning strains of the problem, they stop listening thinking they know where this is going. What they have inadvertently done is to extrapolate to what they think the pain is without hearing it from the prospect directly. They think they know what the pain of the prospect must be without actually knowing it. In fact, even though the problem may be the same, how the prospect feels about it (Pain) can vary dramatically. The solution to this problem is simple. Don’t jump to conclusions. Keep asking questions until you get to the real pain.

“What have you tried so far to fix the problem?” This is a great question to ask a prospect after they have shared a problem with you. There are some reasons why this is a great question:
• It keeps you from jumping in and starting to talk prematurely
• It keeps the prospect talking
• It helps you understand their thought process
• It keeps you from coming up with a suggestion that won’t work
So after a short discussion of what they have tried you can ask “why do you think that didn’t work”? this will give you more insights into their thought process and lead you further down the path to uncovering their compelling reason to move forward. These are both discovery type questions. They are designed to get you more information and insight into the prospect and to keep you out of trouble.

What you think you heard may not be what the prospect thought they said. This leads to a lot of mis-communication and mis-communication leads to a lot of wasted time effort and ultimately heartache. The prospect says they want to get started right away and you interpret that to mean they want to start this week. What they actually meant was this quarter which is anytime in the next 3 months. You forecast a sale and mobilize the troops only to have things be “delayed” and management to get impatient with you. There is a simple fix. For important information all you have to do is confirm what you think you heard. It might sound like “So Mary I hear you saying that you want to start this week. Is that correct?” In this case she would say, “No, I want to get started before the end of August”. Your forecast is accurately noted as this project starting sometime in August and your credibility remains intact. This is a very simple concept and will keep you out of a lot of trouble.

I’ll say it again closing is not the most important sales skill to develop. What good is someone who can close but who can’t prospect? What good is a closing skill if there is nothing in your pipeline to close? If I set you up with 5 appointments next week and all of them had a compelling reason to buy. They all had enough money to fix the problem and they were decision makers and they had agreed to make a buying decision based on what you had to tell them, how many could you close? The answer most groups give me is that they could close all 5, or they could at least close 4 of them. I get that answer even from novices who don’t know how to close for an order. What this thought experiment proves that anyone can close if the prospect is set up properly. It turns out that prospecting, qualifying and discussing money are far more important skills to have than the ability to close. If you have to start somewhere, work on those top of the pipeline skills first and closing will take care of itself.

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Prospect’s know immediately when you drop into sell mode. As soon as they recognize that you are selling they get defensive, deny the existence of problems and actively try to extricate themselves from the sales interaction. So what triggers the sales shield? Anything that appears to be aggressive will do it. Asking direct probing questions will do it. Asking leading questions will do it. In fact, anything that sounds like a traditional feature and benefit sales pitch will do it. The optimal sales approach is to be consultative. This means you must break the traditional buyer-seller relationship and establish an open trusting relationship where the prospect trusts you enough to share what is really bothering them and what they are really going to do about it and what they might really like to spend to get it done. This is not easy since they come to the interaction from a position of distrust. That is due to the hundreds of salespeople they have interacted with in the past. It is a gradual process but one that needs to begin from the very first interaction you have with the prospect.