One tool that you can use to improve closing sales is a partnership plan. This is basically a document that lists out all of the steps that you and the prospect will take together leading up to the purchase and implementation of your product. Here is an example: This sales tool is just a table with [...]
To determine if the prospect is not giving you the run around, you need to assess if they have genuine intent to purchase from you. To picture what we are talking about here, imagine a prospect who arrives at a car dealership that needs to purchase a new car, has the money needed for the [...]
Authority to purchase means that the prospect has the authority to make the decision to purchase your product. If a prospect has a true need for a new car and has the money needed for the purchase, but it is his or her spouse who makes the final deci- sion on big purchases, then this [...]
One area to measure the prospect’s qualification is his or her ability to purchase your product in terms of having the needed money or funding. If someone has a car that is periodically breaking down, that person definitely has a need for a new car. But if that person is unemployed and does not have [...]
There are times where prospects will seem very interested in what you sell. This is great, but it is important to know if the prospect’s interest is tied to more of a “need” or if it is more of a “want.” For example, if someone has a car that breaks down periodically, this person has [...]
In order to qualify a prospect, you have to be able to measure or assess how good or bad the lead is. To get a more accurate assessment, you can measure prospects in four different areas: Need to purchase Ability to purchase Authority to purchase Intent to purchase For prospects to be completely qualified, they [...]
The third step in the sales process is the Presentation, and this is where you will go into more detail on what you have to offer the prospect. For many situations, this may be an actual presentation of slides and possibly a demonstration of the product. But there are also many products where there is [...]
The second step in the sales process is the Meeting. This is simply progressing from the very short exchange during the Initial Contact to having a longer and more established conversation. The Meeting step can be in the form of any of the following: Appointment: You schedule an appointment with a prospect, and that could [...]
The first sales process step is the Initial Contact. This is basically the first time that you interact with the prospect, and this can take place in any of the following formats: Cold call: You are talking to the prospect on a cold call. Inbound call: The prospect calls you or your company by either [...]
We often discuss three sales process steps: Initial Contact, Meeting, and Presentation. In order to align this qualifying process with those sales process steps, we break the qualifying process into two steps: pre-qualifying and qualifying. The pre-qualifying step is where you try to determine if there is even the slightest fit between what you sell [...]