One of the first steps to improving your sales efforts is to try to understand the prospect. By that, we mean to try to understand the person you are communicating with and trying to sell to.
This can help you in two ways. First, by taking a step back to try to understand the prospect in terms of what they are thinking and going through, you will greatly improve your ability to know what best to say and do.
This can impact and improve your cold calls, cold emails, objection responses, and more. In the SMART Sales System training program, we will help you to work on all of those areas and as we get into each area, we will start by having you try to understand the prospect and those factors will influence all of the tips and tactics discussed.
The second way that trying to understand the prospect can help you is that you can share that you understand the other person as a tactic to defuse any tension or get the other person to open up. You can tell the other person that you understand them and when they hear this, they may become less guarded and begin to open up more.
For example, if you are cold calling and dealing with a difficult gatekeeper, you could try to defuse the situation by saying something like:
I understand your situation. You have a lot of salespeople calling and it is your job to keep them all out.
When you say this, you shift from being on the opposite sides of the table with an adversary to moving more to sitting on the same side of the table. Not that this solves everything and it is smooth sailing after using this tactic, but it is one small thing that you can say that can help to defuse and disarm the other person.
Also, Read Commercial Real Estate Cold Call With Analysis and Script