Did you come across to a situation when you wanted to give a product brochure to your prospect but could not do so simply because your brochures got exhausted after your previous sales call?
Did you face a situation when you wanted to give your visiting card to the prospect, you search in your pockets and then in your bags but you couldn’t find one and you had to cut a sorry figure?
Have you experience the sheer embarrassment of falling prey to these situations. Later, did you feel guilty? loss of confidence? Did you kick yourself for not being better prepared?
Don’t be surprised when I tell you that the situations described above are a routine to most sales people, and the most unfortunate fact is that they don’t even realize it. They have falling prey to these so many times that they don’t even feel the guilt anymore! Toxic is, when some of them might even start taking it for granted! Believe me there is nothing worse that you could do for your life! While it is a minor callous mistake for you, it leaves a lasting impression on your prospect. An impression that he will base all his buying decisions on!
So it is better to keep a check on yourself and prevent yourself from getting into the habit of such lack of preparation. So friends, are you interested in finding out how to avoid such instances and be more confident and flawless while dealing with a prospect? If your answer is “yes” read till the end!
My name is Rakesh Sharma and I empower the sales people and the business owners to grow their business and maximize their profits.
In this article, I am going to share with you how can you prepare well for an upcoming sales call. What you need to do to be and appear an extremely professional sales champion.
Before I start let me tell you this stuff is potent, and you must practice it for real. Do not act it, but actually do it, take notes and follow the tips in each and every sales call you make here on. Do not fake it, customers are smart enough to sense fake sincerity therefore practice and be actually prepared.
Now let’s begin. W. Clement Stone, once said, “ if you are employed in studying, thinking and planning time daily, you could develop and use the power that could change the course of your destiny”.
Preparation separates the professionals from amateurs. Every sportsman prepares himself for the game each and every time! No matter how many times he has played it. He will still practice! The same principle needs to be followed by a salesperson. Every successful professional sales person also prepares himself extremely well before every call. Lack of preparation kills the sale. Unfortunately, an average sales person hardly ever spends time on preparation and he or she would just go and meet the prospect with whatever they would have. They think that prospect does not notice, but the prospects and the customers are fully aware of the situation. A prospect judges each and every move of the salesperson. Therefore, don’t let this happen to you as you will end up looking like a fool in front of the prospect which might result in losing a big order.
So today let me tell you what all preparation a salesperson must do for going to a sales call
1. Gather information: This is a very important step for a sales person, before meeting the prospect. You should ensure that all the relevant information about the need of the prospect, particularly about the demographics and the psychographics of a customer. You must collect this information beforehand. It is going to come very handy while dealing with the prospect. A sales person must find out about the type of business the customer is having and more importantly about troubles that he might be facing. You must gather information about your prospect in order to find out the answer to- “why should the customer by your product and more importantly why should he buy form you?”. The customer’s reasons for buying and not buying are important. These days a lot of information is available on internet, customers’ websites and social media. A little research shall be able to give a lot of important information.
- Prepare the objectives of your call: As a salesperson you must think through, what you want to achieve from your meeting. Think about what exactly you want to accomplish from the sales call. For example- maybe you just want to deliver a fantastic sales presentation and setup for the next meeting or maybe you want to close the deal, or maybe you want to fix up another presentation with the CEO. Whatever be your objective, be crystal clear about it! If you are clear about the objective of your call your conversation will be planned accordingly. As Stephen Covey says, “begin with the end in mind”.
- Define an agenda for the meeting: On the basis of the objective of your call you should be able to define its agenda. When you meet your prospect before beginning the call you must share the agenda with him so that the conversation flows in the direction desirable to you. Not only this, sharing the agenda of the meeting well in advance will also help the prospect be mentally prepared. Sometimes you might want to include some more people from the prospect side in the sales conversation, if you send the agenda in advance the prospect will be ready accordingly. Circulation of agenda in advance also talks highly about your professionalism. I guarantee that the prospect will appreciate this. All prospects want to deal with a professional salesperson with impeccable work ethics.
- Prepare to deal with potential objections of the prospect: Prospect objections are a common feature of any sales conversation. A professional sales person will always think through the potential objections and questions which may be raised by prospect. If you have thought through and prepared the proper response then you will sound more convincing and you will fiddling around and fumbling searching for an appropriate answer. This will speak volumes about you and your product! It will immediately convince the prospect that he is not buying from a make shift shop rather he is dealing with a responsible professional who not only knows his product but also respects the customer’s concerns. Every sales person knows it very well that if you handle the prospects objections properly then and the chances of getting sale increases multifold.
- Prepare the questions to be asked from the prospect: Successful sales professionals do a proper investigation before delivering the product presentation. This requires them to ask certain questions from prospect. This helps them pitch their product to perfection, suiting the current requirements of the prospect. But the requirements need to be explored first. This is precisely why sales people ask certain specific questions to their prospects related to his current situation, problems and impact of the problem. If you are prepared with these questions in a structured manner and you ask these questions from your prospect you will be able to leave a long lasting positive image on your prospect. Prospects like to deal with the sales people who can understand their problem very well and present a solution accordingly. A sales superstar knows the importance of questions in the sales process and they are always repaired with the exact list of questions to be asked.
- Prepare your Sales Kit: Sales kit is very important part of the sales process. I have seen many salespeople fiddling around their bag searching for the product brochures or product pictures. This is one of the worst impressions you can give your prospect. And believe me, as I speak from my 30years of experience in the business, this too will leave a lasting but negative impression on your prospects! Before you leave for your sales call, you must ensure that you have check list of items to ensure you do not miss out on anything. And you also must remember where, which component of your sales kit is neatly arranged. The critical items like the visiting card, product brochures, testimonials, videos must be all ready in your sales kit beforehand so that you are not searching for these items in front of the prospect. Don’t forget that your sales kit must be well organized and must be good looking and impressive. Also, make sure that you always carry a good looking pen and writing pad to take notes of the information collected from your prospect.
So friends you can see that if you are well prepared with the above 6 components in your armor then your chances of winning a sale become very high! And who does not want to win in a sale? Therefore ensure that before reaching to the customer premises you are ready with all your weapons so that you can win the sales war.
Friends my mission is to empower more than 1 lakh business owners and sales people in coming 3 years by providing them the affordable and quality sales and business tools, so that they can grow their business.
You can also become part of this campaign by circulating this article to all your business friends. Until next time, Happy Selling Friends!
