In this post I am going to offer a sales tip that is great to do but have to actually put into practice. I recently had a chance to chat with a guy who had just moved into a sales role with his company. Fun to see how he was keen and excited to go out and make an impact and prove to his boss and others he had been the right choice. He was so pumped he was going out on a couple of first meetings. He was telling me all about his presentation and how he had worked really hard on it and …. well you get the picture.
Who is in Control?
What he was doing was absolutely not a mistake. He had also compiled a list of the information he wanted to glean from the prospect. His plan was to use this info to ‘shape’ how he presented his offer. For someone new in sales he was off to a pretty good start! Would could have made it a GREAT start? Here is a good sales tip you can put to use right away.
In offering advice, I asked him one question; “did you know that whoever is asking the questions is in control of the conversation?” Have you ever played this ‘game’ with people? Regardless of how they answer you ask another question and so on and so on. Depending on how agile they are, at some point they will start to answer your question with a question. It usually ends when you have a good laugh together.
And yes it is true – whoever is asking the questions is in control. The key or the secret to this is HOW you come across. You have to be sincere, genuine, transparent and authentic and most of all you have to be CURIOUS!
Sales Tip – Remember your Outcome Objective
Another good sales tip is to remember that each step in a sale process has it’s own unique target outcome. Yes, the ultimate goal is to make a sale. If you reach too far too quickly you will often fail miserably. When you pick up the phone, whether you are cold calling a new lead for the first time or a long time happy customer to launch a new product or service, the objective is very often the same – to get an appointment. Every step has to either add value or pique interest. Otherwise you will not get the meeting or what you are trying to do. It really is that simple yet too many salespeople overthink and over complicate it.
Give This a Try
On your next prospecting call why not try this? Hi Ms Prospect, my name is Wayne with XYZ Company. I am curious – how satisfied are you with your incumbent supplier of Product ABC? Rather than droning on about what you sell and why it is better and why they should meet with you or listen to your pitch why not simply ask a couple of open ended questions that lead your prospect to naturally accepting your next step invitation?
It does not stop here. Every time you are having a conversation with a customer or prospect you should be curious. Hey Bill, how much use is your team getting out of that service add on you purchased recently? Is it as good as we talked about? I am really curious as I like to provide great feedback to our product team!
Think back to your last few customer interactions. How curious were you? Did you do all the talking? Did you get the result you were looking for? To improve your performance and results why not try this idea or strategy for a few weeks and see how it works for you. And remember to constantly measure, monitor, adjust and adapt to continually improve.
Have a great week but before you go be sure to check out my online courses at https://www.takeactionsalesacademy.com
Also get my Daily 2 Minute Leadership and Sales Thought videos on my Facebook Group ‘Raise Your Sales IQ’ at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/399906394125860/about/
