How to sell like a pro and increase sales
Unlike what many people might think, the successful salesperson is not born with a characteristic or special skill that allows you to develop a sixth sense for knowing who to call to make the next sale. Beyond the innate skills with which one could tell, the successful salesman – and I mean that professional sales leader whose incomes exceed 10 to 1 to seller average and rank it as one of the highest-paid people within your industry – knows that the secret to their success is the result of running with expertise and over one thing: the sales process.
Sales require the precision of a great staging. Theater actors rehearse over and over their scripts, and even who do not fully learned, do not leave the stage. Similarly, sales professionals do not contact any prospect until they have tried exactly what they will say, and like the actors, using improvisation as an additional resource but without straying too far from the original script. This concept is extremely powerful because it allows us to follow a path that we know and that will lead to one place: the selling.
Each of the parts that make up the sales process is extremely important and the most successful sales professionals in the world never skipped any of them. That’s the difference between successful professionals and the improvised, along with a few figures on your check the month.
Understanding the sales process
A process is defined as a set of ordered and repeatable steps that aim to a specific target. The design idea behind the work of sales as a process, perform the steps ordered and again each time and always get the same result: a sale. In reality this will not work well from the beginning, but as we develop the skills necessary to perform each step, we will be closer to the objective. The most common sales process consists of the following steps:
Prospecting. In today’s world, time is very important, so we should not spend it with people who can not, do not need or want to buy our product. I have heard many people boast that everyone needs their products. Let’s face it: not everybody will buy us. For example, cola drinks sold worldwide, but not all people consume, that is, a person carrying a attached power naturism will never buy a Coke. On the other hand, in areas where there are people living in extreme poverty, we could not sell cola because, although these people would like to drink soda, very few would buy it. That’s why a good prospect is one that needs our product, you want it, you can buy and can make a purchase decision. If we want to be more effective in the sales race, we need to invest a lot of time looking for this type of prospects.
Preparation. Once you have a list of qualified prospects, it is very important to have as much information about them as much as possible. For example, if the person is licensed or engineer, age, sex (sometimes the name does not say much and it is better to be safe), marital status, hobbies, personality type, etc.. The more information we collect from our prospectus, we will have more tools to close the sale.
Approach. The only goal of the approach is to make an appointment with the prospect and nothing more. When contacted by telephone, we must give enough information so that the prospect is interested, but not so you can make a purchase decision at that time. Remember, the only goal is to get the appointment, not sell their product over the phone! If the prospect insists that you provide more information, reply with something to “show himself” to decide for it. The demos provide information that should be interesting enough for the prospect think it’s worth having a meeting with us. Sometimes it is necessary to use the “two-step approach, which involves sending a letter telling the prospect that we will call soon and give reasons for it should take our call and give us an appointment. It is very important that this letter be delivered in a sealed envelope addressed to the prospectus and to be sent by mail, as the electronic mail is impersonal for a first contact and it could be confused with spam.
Needs assessment (First interview). Once we are facing the prospect should take a few minutes to introduce ourselves and briefly introduce the company we represent. Subsequently, we must listen carefully to the prospectus, making only the right questions that allow us to discover the specific needs that our product can meet. Listen more than you talk. The more you listen to the prospectus, more information will have to prepare an attractive and complete.
Letter of thanks. Once we left the office of the prospectus, it is important that we send a letter thanking the time we have provided, either by post or email.