As a professional salesperson, you work extremely hard to generate and nurture sales leads and keep your sales funnel full with good qualified potential purchasers. Prospecting is the life blood of any salesperson’s livelihood. However, having a full pipeline with potential purchasers will get you nowhere if you can’t get the order. That’s the most important part of the process. Your customers or potential customers already know about you, your company and what you have to offer. Buyers today are much more informed as they have the world at their fingertips. All they have to do is ask Mother Google and bingo, there it is – all the information they’ll ever need on you and your company. They can see your corporate website, your personal website, competitive analysis, other blogs, reviews, posts…the list goes on and on. To stay relevant in today’s marketplace, you (the salesperson) need to give up being the product pusher and become a solution provider. Great salespeople are providing their customers with a consultative, value-based solution orientated level of engagement to meet the customer’s current and future business needs. So how do you become a solution provider and not just a product pusher? Ask Great Questions – When I’m in a selling conversation, my goal is to have the potential customer say, “Great question! No one has ever asked me that before.” (It’s a skill that I’ve learned from the great Jeffrey Gitomer.) Your questions are a critical piece to the sale. If your questions are intelligent, engaging and in easy-to-understand terms, the customer will see you as a resource. Every salesperson should have a list of twenty or more great questions in their arsenal ready to go at any time. Listen – Listening is the biggest struggle for a many of salespeople. It’s in our nature to talk and it can be hard for us to turn it off. I’ve seen so many salespeople talk over the potential customer after they’ve asked a great question – only to finish the prospect’s sentence and go into selling mode. Big mistake! Listening is just as or even more important as asking great questions. This is where the customer is going to go if asked the right questions, and will give you everything you need to know to help close the sale. If you’re not actively listening, you’ll miss all the important information you need to close the sale and walk away empty handed. Take Notes – Being a great listener can also involve active listening skills. Taking notes while your customer is speaking does a number of things for you. It shows to the customer that you’re truly listening and that you care about what’s being said. It gives you clarity on what the customer wants after you leave the meeting and provides you with the information that you will need for a powerful and proper presentation. Summarize, Prioritize and Solidify – Summarize what you’ve heard to make sure that you truly understood what the customer told you.
This puts you and the customer on the same page and leaves nothing misunderstood. Prioritize your next steps and ideas. Be clear on what you’re going to do when you leave the meeting and include this in your summary. Solidify the next meeting time. Never ever leave the meeting without a firm date and time. Nothing frustrated me more during my time as a sales manager when sales reps would leave a meeting with the statement: “Great! I’ll call you next week!” That’s when the chase begins of unreturned phone calls and unread emails. By nailing down the next meeting, you’ve qualified that the buyer is truly interested in you and your ideas. Do What You Said You Would Do – Doing what you said you were going to do shows the customer your integrity and reliability. You’ll gain and keep their respect and most importantly, build their trust! By implementing these five steps into your daily sales activity, they’ll become a natural part of your selling style and process. You’ll gain and earn the respect and trust of your customers which results in more sales! BL Brett Meadows trains, coaches, and speaks to salespeople all over the country. For more information on seminars and training, please visit www.brettmeadows.com or contact the friendly folks at Meadows Performance Sales and Strategy via email at info@brettmeadows.com or by calling 289.696.3605 (Brett, 2019)
Meadows, Brett, Solution Provider or Pusher, Business Link, Volume 17, Issue 8, Published on August 2019.
