Over a 30 year sales career I’ve probably made every mistake in the book. The biggest one is starting a meeting with a pitch. By that I mean going into a spiel about your product or service right off the bat.
Which is a fundamental mistake we’ve seen countless salespeople make.
Full Transcript
I’m Rashid Kotwal.
Over a 30 year sales career I’ve probably made every mistake in the book. The biggest one is starting a meeting with a pitch. By that I mean going into a spiel about your product or service right off the bat.
Which is a fundamental mistake we’ve seen countless salespeople make.
It’s a mistake because at this point you have absolutely no idea what your prospect is really interested in, so you risk talking about stuff they have no real concerns about. And while they may listen politely, you have no chance of moving the sale forward. Which is a waste of time all round.
So this is what I recommend you do instead.
I start by asking two broad questions.
Why are we here? And what’s the biggest issue you’re facing right now that if you solved would give you the greatest return on time, money and effort expended?
Both questions are designed to give you a framework for the meeting. What your prospect is interested in, so you can drill down.
Here’s what typically happens with the why are we here question.
You’ll often get a relatively broad answer telling you they want to find out more about what you can do.
Do not under any circumstances fall into the trap of telling them. You don’t have enough information about them yet.
Instead move onto the next question regarding the biggest issue they’re facing.
As an example years ago I got a great response.
If you can do X over in this department, I’ll be able to move four people from there to another project I have in mind. That will save me around $500,000 there and the new project will make me $1 million dollars here. Can you do that?
I replied, if we can do that do we have a deal? Yes.
Very often we overcomplicate sales. Sales is about solving a client’s issues. They’ll buy if the value you provide is greater than the investment, be that in money, time and or in effort.
Now obviously there’s far more to a sales process that that. But unless you start on the right footing, you’ll kill your chances right at the beginning.
So if you would like help improving your sales process give me a call at RevealedResources.com.
Until next time, this is Rashid Kotwal.
