photo credit: Torley

Blog expert Daniel Scocco made a recent post about the costly assumptions web developers make when designing a web site. I immediately recognized the connection to the sales mistakes you make. It all starts with whose head you’re in.

If you want to increase your sales success you need to get inside your prospects head and see things through their eyes. When you meet a prospect you must quickly answer these five questions:

1. What do you sell?
2. Why should I care about what you sell?
3. I’m confused, how do I know if what you offer matches what I want?
4. If I know I want what you have, how can I find out more without meeting with you?
5. If I’m honest with you, can I trust you to help me make the best decision for me?

Sounds simple, yet you don’t answer these questions the way the prospect wants you to answer them. When a prospect asks what you sell they’re not asking about products or services they’re asking about outcomes and solutions. They want to know what problems you fix, or results you produce.

They want to know more about the outcomes they want. They don’t want to know about you, or the products or services you’ll use to get those outcomes until they’re sure you can produce the outcome they want. Only then will they want to verify you’re the real deal.

Even though you recognize a match between what you offer and what a prospect needs the prospect can’t see the connection. You need to help them through the thought process so they can discover the match on their own. When you do the prospect is on board and ready to go to the next step.

When you can help a prospect move closer to you rather than pushing them to move closer to you the prospect is more willing to take action. The more actions they take the closer you are to earning a new client. And you’re strengthening your relationship throughout the process.

When you’re willing to work solely on the prospects concerns at their pace you increase their trust. The more they trust you the more likely they are to do business with you. Plus their more loyal.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under sales coaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.