
Slowdown to make more sales
Slowdown to make more sales seems counter intuitive. Sales is about working hard and fast. One sale and then onto the next. Well, yes and no.
The difficulty is we are always feeling pressure to make the sale and move to the next. I get it. I’ve heard it! Sales managers are always pushing. “It’s near the end of month. You need to get some of this stuff closed thats in your sales funnel!”
So what is the proper way to handle this? well, to slowdown does not mean to go slow. Wait, what?
Consultative Selling
Having a process in selling and following it will keep your funnel full and begin to close sales. If you rush, you will get a lot of “I’ll think it over”, not ready yet… All of the excuses that we accept when we go too fast.
So what do we do? How do we close more sales but slowdown as well?
Here is how to follow a process that will move more sales forward but only the ones that have a high probability of closing.
A Consultative sales process will give a salesperson confidence. If confidence can be instilled in a salesperson, he would not allow the prospect to take over. He could say what he needs to say and do what he needs to do to successfully close the sale. The process the salesperson follows should include the following:
– Some sort of “ground rules” should be set at the beginning of the conversation. Prospects are often uncomfortable with sales people because they don’t have a plan for the conversation. A prospect likes to have an agenda (not necessarily in writing) of what will be covered.
– One of the most important parts of a sales process is asking questions. Salespeople generally ask a few brief questions, and then move very quickly into their presentation. If they are properly using a process, they will keep asking questions until they uncover the prospect’s real issues and will then be prepared to present properly.
– Discussing the prospect’s budget and/or the investment of your product/service is very important to execute before a salesperson gets to the presentation. Most salespeople do a poor job at this stage in the game. If cost/budget is not discussed until late in the game, it becomes the only thing the prospect is focused on when they see the proposal/presentation.
– Recap. If the sale is not going to “close” in one meeting (which depends on the type of sale), setting a clear next step is imperative to ensure everyone is on the same page with what the next meeting will entail.
– Recommendations need to feel customized to the prospect. A successful sales person knows how to take all that they learned and present recommendations only based on the prospect’s needs.
These steps will help the salesperson gain control at each stage of the sales process, slowing down the process BUT moving the sales forward at each stage.we often feel we are selling because we are an expert or we have a great way with people. All of that being said, there is so much more to professional selling than that. Yes, I believe most of us know this intellectually but do we really believe it? Do we work hard to develop a process? Most often, not. It becomes lip service.