When you “lose” a deal or a sale what do you do?

Do you just dust yourself down and move onto the next one?

Or do you put that “lost deal” lead into a follow up system and then dust yourself down and move on?

Hopefully it will be the latter.

The fact that you lost a sale means that the prospect was interested in your services but for some reason or t’other chose another company to do business with.

Well, you should keep infront of this “lost prospect” every quarter via email or direct mail or through a telephone call just to keep an eye on the situation.

You never know what might happen.

Before we had the capability of being able to train sales people in over 8 different languages we lost a piece of business because of this fact. I was gutted as it was a worldwide programme worth in excess of £150,000 per year. Anyhow, I kept a regular dialogue with the Sales Director and the HR Director and kept them informed of our multi-lingual capability as it grew over the past 2 years and now that the contract is being renewed they called us in instead of the previous firm and we have won the next piece of business.

By keeping in regular contact with lost deals keeps you informed of their progress and of future needs.

I strongly urge you to have a “lost prospect strategy” in place to keep in regular contact with those people who slipped through the net. Out of every 100 lost deals I would bet that you could generate another 5-15 pieces of business by “being there” when the timing is right.

Happy Selling!

Sean Mc

Why say only five words when a thousand will do!

Sounds like any salespeople in your company? It might even be you!

Do you tend to waffle when answering questions from your prospects?

The thing is, we waste far too much time in explaining what we mean.

What we want are precise and concise communications right?

Of course we do!

Well, here is a useful exercise to use to really focus your key messages to really hit home what you want to say to your prospects and clients.

Here’s what to do:

Take one of the key questions you get asked the most like “Who have you worked with?” or “What makes you different?”

Then, write down an answer to the question using 50 words only.

You MUST use all 50 words up.

Then, analyse what has been written.

Next, answer the same question but this time you can only use 30 words and you must use them all up.

Analyse what you have written and explore the challenges and difficulties that you have had in reducing the number of words.

What did you miss out and why?

Did you end up with something completely different?

Did it make more sense than the 50 word explanation?

After you have completed this task do exactly the same process but this time you have got only 15 words to play with.

Go through the results again but this time compare it to the 50 word answer.

I’ll bet that the 15 word answer better explains in a nut-shell what you wanted to say. Obviously you will need to expand on your answer but this will clarify the main points you need to make.

Until the next time, take care of yourself and happy selling!

Sean

Or should that read MAD about prospecting?!

No, I was right the first time!

When you prospect over the telephone do you always get stuck with the people who can never make the decision?

Do you know of the three types of people that you should aim for when prospecting?

Well, the person you should ultimately get through to should be a MAN!

No, not MAN as in gentleman! I mean the acronym MAN.

MAN stands for:

Money
Authority
Need

The people you should get through to should either hold the money in the company and be able to spend it, have the authority to make decisions or they should have the need for whatever you are selling.

If they have all three then it’s SHOWTIME!

Always make sure your calls focus on one of these types. Now, I know you should always go for those people who can make the decisions.

But if you go after the “NEED” person the call should be positioned around influencing them to make the right noises with the people who can make the decisions to go with your product etc. An “insider” on your side can work wonders when you eventually get around to talking with the decision maker.

Happy selling!

Sean Mc

Sales techniques need to change to reflect the new age buyer!

The world of the modern day buyer has changed!

First understand that the modern-day consumer is within him or herself, a technologically advanced, well educated sales person.

We live in the age of an information explosion. Information technology has seen more advancement in the last few years than at any time in history and for all intents and purposes—today—right now–is the future.

Along with these technological and scientific breakthroughs, comes the easy access to worldwide information. The Internet and its development offers instantaneous access to a global knowledge-base and details on almost any subject matter at any time. What this means to you as a sales person is that your customer has access to anything they wish to know—right at their fingertips.

Your prospective customer can look up, verify, confirm or refute almost anything you say within a few seconds. In the past, consumers were left with the need to have to rely almost solely on the words of the sales person. The sales person was the expert and the customer had no way to verify if the sales person’s advice and assessments were accurate. In the past, when a sales person made a claim as to the effectiveness of their product or the reliability of their service or their company’s position in the market place, the customer had no way to prove otherwise.

Not so, today.

Pick up the telephone today to make a cold call to set an appointment with a prospective customer and that customer can have everything there is to know about you, your company, your competition and your company’s performance history, displayed on their desktop before you even get off of the telephone.

Give a savvy consumer a few more seconds, and they can produce a credit report on your company, they can run off your turnover figures, profit and loss and can find out all about your competitors and what they offer along the same lines as you and play you off against one another!

So my question to you is this: “How well are you preparing yourself to match the requirements of the modern day buyer?”

Watch this space because shortly I will be releasing a revolutionary sales training CD programme that will cover just that!

Happy Selling

Sean Mc