If you are a business owner or sales person, this article will appeal to you. You both earn your income from selling, so I guess you want to earn a few bucks more! What is it that sees two equally qualified people going into similar sales calls, with one of them consistently outselling the other?
I did this when I was in sales, but at the time, I did not know what precisely I was doing right. This sent me on a search of a system; so that I could help other people model this success. What you will read here is a summary of a fool proof system, created from the very best life coaches, sales trainers and business gurus on this planet, both dead and alive!
The Power of Certainty
“You become what you think about”, Buddha, circa 500 BC. In fact all the great Gurus, from Buddha, who had it right all those years ago, to the inventors and practitioners of NLP (Neural Linguistic Programming) all share the same toolbox.
Modern Life and Business coaching has moved from the “positive thinking” era, to one of “positive doing”. What this means is that you set your goal, visualise it, and take powerful action, towards obtaining it.
As you move along your course of pre-determined action, you must constantly take note of the events around you, and adjust your approach accordingly, with your goal still in sight.
So how does one visualise what a P60, double its current net amount would look like. OK, so you guessed it, it’s twice as big a number. No, that’s not what I mean, what will that get you, is the real question.
OK, take a moment and write down, what you could do, own or give with that extra money. Now close your eyes and really visualise what that would look like. What can you hear, smell. What does it feel like to be living that life? What is your breathing like, do you feel excited, happy, proud or grateful that you have that extra money.
But can you do it? If you can answer yes, with absolute certainty, then it will happen.
Approaching a sales call with certainty
Once you understand that you can achieve the very best outcome from a sales call how do you go about structuring it?
First you must understand how you will cope with not getting your desired outcome. If for example, you wanted to get the go ahead for a proof of concept trial. You must understand what NOT getting the proof of concept trial will mean to you. You will get a red light for one of the following 3 reasons.
1. The prospect does not want to proceed.
2. The prospect wants the products, but has a legitimate reason for postponing the purchase.
3. You really messed up the call!
Whichever of these 3 rationales you get for not achieving your desired outcome, you must understand exactly what they would mean to you, and how you can take advantage of the situation.
Once you know how to handle NOT achieving your goal, you will no longer have a fear of failure. This almost certainly will remove the 3rd situation, due to your confidence, and make the first 2 outcomes easy to deal with.
What are the 3 stages of a successful sales call?
With a desire to succeed, a certainty of success, and no fear of failure, once you have the simple tools for making all your customer calls first rate, your earnings will start to skyrocket.
The 3 parts of the ultimate sales call are as follows;
1. Thank your prospect for their time, and really mean it with a genuine smile on your face. Next ask them precisely what THEIR desired outcome from this meeting is. And then listen intently to their answer.
2. Find out exactly how long they would really like the meeting to run for, and spend the remaining time, minus 15 minutes, asking questions about their business, needs and desires. Make a note of how these may or may not be relevant to what your offering is.
3. With 15 minutes to go, suggest to your prospect that you summarise the meeting, as you see it, and ask them to correct or clarify any points you may make. You will then finish with an action plan that INVOLVES both you and the prospect. You will then confirm this action plan within a day in written form.
Now how many of you, go into a sales call, and when the prospect asks you why YOU wanted to see them you go into sales mode.
Well from now on, help your prospect go into BUYING mode, and close more sales, raise more finance and double your income in two years.
This article was written by Peter Lawless, founder of 3R Sales and Marketing – www.3r.ie. For previous articles like this, visit 3R’s Articles. Alternatively, subscribe to Success our free monthly Information Bulletin with sales and marketing articles.