Here is #6 on our list of the top 10 sales tips and that is to try to sell the conversation instead of selling the product.

 

You Always Have Two Goals

At any given point in the sales process, you will have two distinct goals.

  • Ultimate Goal: Sell the product, close the sale, get a new customer
  • Immediate Goal: To get the prospect to progress to the next step in the sales process

We point out these two goals as we try to explain this part of the top 10 sales tips because if the next step in the process is not quite yet to close the sale, then there are two different goals and it can be easy for us to focus more on the wrong one.

Typically, when we focus on the ultimate goal of closing the sale, we try to sell the product and try to create interest on the prospect’s side to a level where they want to buy the product.

If you focus on trying to get the prospect to progress to the next step, this will usually just be trying to get the prospect to agree to have a conversation when you are communicating with them in an early sales process stage, like during a cold call, talking at a networking event, or exchanging emails.

 

Why this Can Help You

There are two reasons why this tip from our list of 10 sales tips can help you.

There is not enough time to sell the product.
When you are talking to a prospect at the beginning of the sales process, there is usually not enough time to fully sell your product. There may be a lot of details that you need to share in order to fully build the prospect’s level of interest so that they are ready to buy, and this can be extremely difficult when talking to a prospect for a few minutes during a cold call or over an email.

But what there is enough time to do is to sell the prospect on agreeing to have a conversation. You still need to build interest in order to close the prospect on talking more, but this level of interest is much lower than what is needed to get the prospect to agree to purchase.

This can greatly improve your ability to get around many objections.
Another reason this is one of the most powerful 10 sales tips is that it can make it easier for you to get around many sales objections. When prospecting, you are likely to hear some of these responses from prospects:

I am not interested.
We don’t have any budget right now.
We already use someone.
We cannot make any changes.

The great thing about this tactic is that, while those are legitimate reasons to not continue forward with your ultimate goal of selling the product, they are not reasons to move forward with the goal of moving to the next step, which is simply to have a conversation.

We hope these 10 sales tips help you to take your game to the next level.