To be an effective salesperson you must take the lead. Your job is to provide the framework and structure, the prospect provides the content (what’s going on in their world).
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.
Now you may be thinking, “I’m not a leader and I find pushing people uncomfortable.” Relax, this is not about being pushy. This is about claiming your rightful position as a specialist in your field, an authority figure and advising the client in their best interest.
But ineffectual sales people don’t do this. They spend their time building rapport, working out what they want, what they need, what their goals are. They’re making buying signals. You know you can help.
So why you don’t tell them!
“Mr Prospect, given everything you’ve told me, I believe you should do X, Y, Z”.
But most won’t do this and prospects get frustrated and walk away.
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.
Bill specialises in investment property tax accounting.
He gets a lot clients who come for initial advice at a discounted rate, spend a couple of hours and he often never sees them again.
Most of his time is spent in building rapport, finding out the client’s goals and giving preliminary advice.
And at the close of the meeting hoping to sell them more of his time he asks them, “Where would you like to go from here?”
Bad move.
Why? Because the prospect doesn’t know where to go from here and a confused prospect will never buy.
Bill’s typical client concerns are legally minimising tax liabilities, maximising cash-flow and protecting their assets.
His solution should be to lay out a plan of action offering them “Packages”. Package A suites starting investors. Package B for investors with multiple properties etc.
This gives his clients something tangible to consider. “Mr Prospect, given everything you’ve told me, I recommend going with “Package B” to minimise your tax while maximising your returns. This is what’s included.”
Then shut up and let the client think.
If you’ve done your job well, elicited their buying criteria, shown them the value of working with you in ways they can relate to and the investment is in their ball park, they’re likely to go ahead.
Selling is both an art and a science. The art encompasses the attributes above we’ve spoken about the last few weeks.
The science is knowing what to do when. How to effectively elicit a client’s buying criteria, figure out what’s valuable to them, present a solution and recommend a course of action.
If you’re frustrated with your (or your team’s) lack of results, we can help.
We’ll analyse your entire sales process, determine where improvements can be made and recommend a course of action which will improve your bottom line results. Just one tweak could raise your closing ratio by 32% as it did for one of our clients.
Then we’ll work together to implement the changes.
Interested? Call us on 0414-913-334 for a preliminary discussion.
