Adding extra effort doesn’t always improve selling which is the great thing about sales. This is great because there are clear and practical things that can be done to immediately improve results.
1. Effectively Qualify Prospects
We can easily get trapped in the direction of trying to sell to everybody and, oftentimes, even to anybody who will hear your pitch. Now, the problem with this is some prospects fit better than others with what you’re offering, and some prospects have about a 0% probability of buying from you, which means any time spent on them is wasted.
If we improve our ability to qualify prospects to identify those who are very qualified and those who are not qualified, we will spend more time with prospects who have the potential to purchase and less time on prospects who will waste our time. This clear and simple change has an immediate impact on sales.
2. Communicate Value
How a vendor can help make their life better is the main thing that prospects care about. In B 2 B sales, this refers to how a vendor can help the prospect increase revenue, decrease costs, and/or decrease risk. You stand to improve selling by improving your ability to communicate how you can help with those in terms of the value that you have to offer.
3. Prepare for Objections
It’s guaranteed you’ll run up against various objections during the sales cycle. There are really only between 10 to 15 objections that we’ll consistently face, which is good news for us. We can prepare for how to best respond to these objections in anticipation of facing them while in the field. Focus on this step when preparing will have a direct improvement on sales results.
4. Trial Close
We should be trail closing every step of the way keeping in mind that closing doesn’t only occur at the end of the sales cycle. Checking in with the prospect to find out what their thoughts are is trial closing. When this is done periodically during the sales cycle, you’ll gain valuable information that helps you more effectively manage the information you share as well as the direction you go, and this can improve selling.
5. Build Rapport
Building rapport helps improve selling as prospects are highly likely to buy from people they like. Rapport helps with the close rate as well as management of the sales cycle because a prospect is more likely to respond and be attentive to a salesperson that they feel comfortable with as well as have a level of rapport with.
6. Uncover Pain
It’s critical to uncover pain when working on how to improve sales. Something that isn’t working well or could be working better for the prospect is pain. Pain is important because if no real pain exists, no real reason to change exists. The prospect may not be qualified when there is no reason to change. We shouldn’t spend our valuable time selling to prospects that aren’t qualified. Because of this, it’s extremely important to uncover pain in order to improve results.
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