Clients come to you to solve issues. It’s your responsibility to recommend solutions you know will work. Anything else is not serving them or
you.
One of my biggest mistakes early in my sales corporate career (well over 30 years ago) was not having a structure when meeting prospects.
How to control a meeting by setting the frame, ask the right questions in the right order and crucially lead the prospect and not leave things hanging.
I vividly remember the frustrated CIO of a very large steel manufacturer say to me after about the third meeting, “Rashid, we’ve met a number of times. You know what we need. Just tell me what the next step is and I’ll sign the paperwork and get going.”
In our almost two decades coaching salespeople I’ve seen this play out countless times.
Sales is about leadership. While rapport skills, questions, eliciting needs, showing value are all necessary parts of a selling process, it’s your ability to advise and lead your clients that will determine your success.
Leading them to a place where they recognise you are the bridge that gets them from where they are to where they want to be.
But here’s the kicker.
Some personalities are simply better suited to taking this role than others.
Many salespeople are natural “pleasers”. They want to build relationships but that’s where it stops. They rarely actually make recommendations and ask for the order.
Others are fine with naturally taking an “advisor” role and making recommendations just flows as part of their natural rhythm.
But what if you’re a pleaser or employ them in your salesforce?
One solution is to have a sales structure which “forces” pleasers to take each stage one step at a time. So when it comes to “advising” the prospect re the next step, it’s a natural part of the process.
Of course, this is equally applicable to natural advisors as well so they cover all the bases.
We’ve refined our methodology (How to sell with integrity and authenticity) over 30 years by combining NLP language patterns, questioning methods which elicit values, beliefs and emotional outcomes as well as leading systems like SPIN and Miller Heiman.
Will it always work? No. But having a structured process allows you to provide the framework for the meeting, control the agenda and close far more business.
Right now we’d like to share this with you as a gift without charge. But I do respectfully expect that you will take it seriously, reflect on how you can improve and take action.
We hope it’ll help you appreciate what we do for our clients and that should there be an opportunity to work together you’ll consider us.
You can request the “How to sell with integrity and authenticity” by visiting https://revealedresources.com/selling-with-integrity/
