Once you get rid of your head trash about sales (see video), now you need a process.
Designing and/or teaching a sales process for a business is a 2-3 day venture. Mastering complex or consultative sales is a decades-long investment. Please forgive our brevity today.
Here is a process we have been using to sell for 15 years.
1. Build the RELATIONSHIP first. If sales is a conversation, it only progresses from the foundation of a strong relationship. Study your prospects, be curious, and find a way to connect with and serve them early in the relationship. Humans buy from people they know, like, and trust.
2. REVEAL the pain. Develop a series of powerful questions that help you discover and quantify your prospect’s current challenges. Resist the temptation to do any solving until you have a solid dialogue about the financial and emotional stress of their most pressing issues.
3. RELEIVE the pain. Demonstrate through dialogue, client stories, and examples that you understand the pain. Advance detailed solutions and as much proof of capability to deliver their desired results as possible.
4. RETAIN a commitment. Don’t leave a sales meeting without a commitment to proactive next steps. For many businesses, you can ‘close’ the deal at this stage. For others, it may be to develop and review a detailed proposal. Set the date and time for the next meeting, with perspective action steps, before you end the conversation.
As the owner of an SMB, even if you don’t have primary responsibility for sales, you have to understand and be competent with the process in order to lead your teams.
Sales is a process. It can be learned, it can be taught, it can be improved. Don’t let your head trash convince you otherwise.
You are probably closer to your next revenue breakthrough than you imagine. We will look forward to seeing you on the Xtra Mile. |