Sales is the lifeblood of business. Your goal as a leader is to take charge, Lead Your Business to maximise sales revenue while reducing the time it takes for prospects to make buying decisions. That is being commercially smart.
However many salespeople get trapped in a cycle of frustration.
Here are some scenarios which you may relate to:
You’ve had what appears to be a productive meeting and your prospect expresses interest. They ask for a demonstration or even a trial of your solution.
You oblige and while your prospect appears to be satisfied, they simply drag things out. Often there’s no commitment and the deal goes cold.
Another common scenario involves you about to sign the deal. But at the last moment another party in the buyer’s organisation throws a spanner in the works, killing the sale.
Often a prospect reaches out to you and asks for information and you willingly oblige. Then nothing. They ghost you.
And finally, right at the finish line they suddenly ask for a discount. You madly scramble and accede to the request, at the cost of your profit margin.
Over 35 years in a sales career I’ve experienced every one of these scenarios. And I’ve made it my mission to help our clients avoid them!
So what is the root cause of all these issues?
It boils down to trust and your positioning in your market.
Your potential clients have to trust you and your ability to deliver.
But first, they have to recognise their issues and the impact they’re having on their business and lives.
Which is where your sales skills come in. Hinging on your ability to provide insights, explain their current state, the impact this is having on them, their business and personally. You need to help them see their issues through different lenses. Have them experience your understanding of their problem more deeply than they do.
To collaborate and help them manage the changes they’ll need to make to implement your solution. And finally to get commitment to move forward.
And to do this in the shortest time possible while maximising the sale value.
Which is a fine balancing act.
Put another way, you need to move from a low trust position where you’re perceived as a high risk, possibly a commodity, to being a trusted advisor where you have a collaborative relationship and the client implicitly trusts your recommendations and judgement.
So how do you achieve this?
Well, it’s a multi-faceted answer which I can’t go into in this video.
Suffice to say, we help our clients shorten sales cycles and achieve higher revenue via our Lead Your Business programs, which are either bespoke for your organisation or run as group workshops.
You can contact me at RevealedResources.com for more information where we’ll have a confidential, preliminary conversation and take it from there.
Till next time, this is Rashid Kotwal.
