365 Ways To Double Your Sales – 14

March 11, 2018

Set Mutually Agreed Upon Agendas – 4

The prospect now knows that you are not like the other sales reps with whom they have spoken in the past, and that is a GREAT thing! You’ve just appeared to give them an “out”by saying they could end the meeting at any time for any reason, which puts them at ease. Now you turn around and say,

When I show up it won’t be to give you a fancy presentation or dog & pony show because I don’t know if I can help you, yet. I’m going to have more questions for you about you and your business that you thought humanely possible. You may want to write down a few for me.”

Far too many (98.674%) sales reps show up with brochures, catalogs and/or demo equipment and immediately hand over the samples, the literature, the demo unit and/or boot up their laptops and start telling the poor prospect about their wonderful company and their wonderful founding, and their wonderful patents and their wonderful trademarks and their wonderful support and their wonderful testimonials and their wonderful…(is your mind drifting now? So is your prospects!)

I learned from a good friend of mine years ago in technical sales that “Demo units are a crutch!”

Show up and take control of the meeting with good questions and tell the prospect that questions are a normal part of any good meeting conducted by any salesman worth his salt.

Everyone gives lip service to the whole “consultative selling approach,” which is pure happy horse $h*t spewed by mind-numb idiotic sales people that have read more books than made quota because they can’t ask one, let alone string together 30 minutes worth, of strong, insightful questions that elicit (that means to “draw forth,” vs. “illicit” as in “the Obama administration made an illicit job offer to Joe Sestak AND Andrew Romanoff.”) a head-tilting, brow-furrowing moment of contemplative silence followed by some variation of, “Hmph. That’s a great question. I’m going to have to think about that.”

By putting the prospect on notice that you will show up to ask great questions it will force you to come up with some great questions! That means you’ll have to do your homework.

If you’d like help getting your sales homework done, this is what we cover in the Make Every Sale program in detail.

You can enroll with affordable payments if you take action now. Or you can continue showing up with nice demo units and let the prospect get all of his needs met while he sends you off with a nice pat on the head.