In all my years of selling and facilitating (quite a few), one of the things I’ve noticed most consistently about salespeople is that they are so eager to get to the close. We as salespeople have been indoctrinated to believe that sales success is measured only by completed sales. But we could complete more sales by NOT focusing so much on the close.

Stop trying to get there so fast! Getting there quickly means forcing the prospect to make a buying decision based on OUR timetable not theirs – and that simply doesn’t work. We could complete more sales by spending more time — slowing down so we could speed up.

We should spend more time on pre-call planning and formulate powerful questions that would lead us to a prospect’s pain much more quickly and efficiently. We should uncover pressing needs, desires and wishes by spending extra time preparing our questions, and referring to those questions to sell our solutions. After all, isn’t this what our prospects really want?

Investing extra time early in the sales process means having to spend less time later in the sales process – time that’s often spent floundering around in front of the prospect if we haven’t done our homework.

For example, if through my pre-call planning I realize that a prospect is facing certain issues or is likely to be dealing with particular problems, I can develop my questions around these issues or problems. By doing this I focus my sales interview on confirming my information and allowing my prospect to talk to me about his or her situation. The more they talk, the more likely they are to buy (all things being equal).

As I listen to my prospect’s response, I can ask additional questions in a conversational way to demonstrate understanding, empathy, and attention to my prospect’s situation. This enhances trust, rapport and attention and increases the likelihood of closing the sale – which is exactly the goal we set out to achieve!

Submitted by: Richard Dickerson

(3 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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