Why Not Set Yourself Up to Win Every Sales Deal?

Jan 08 2010

Why Not Set Yourself Up to Win Every Sales Deal?

There are two sides to winning any sale. There’s the work you do on you, and the work you do to best prepare for your new potential client. Daniel Waldschmidt is a vivacious dude with some great perspective on what you can do to work on the YOU side of the equation. What I’d like to do here is work on the prospect’s side of the equation.

Dude! It Ain’t About YOU!

If you haven’t gotten this concept through your thick skull yet I recommend you get one of those Nerf bats and keep hitting yourself in the noggin until it sinks in. When you contact a prospect and start off the communication about you… you are done before you start. There’s no point in even making that contact.

The first utterances of any communication must communicate in no uncertain terms….

RELEVANCE

If what you have in mind is NOT relevant to me you can save us both a lot of frustration by exiting stage right in an expedient manner. The only things that are relevant to me are the things I’m already looking to invest in to solve a problem, produce an outcome, or achieve a result. “If you don’t fall in the relevant group don’t call, don’t email, don’t send me something in the mail just leave me the heck alone”, says Mr. Prospect!

A recent email provides a perfect demonstration of what NOT to do.

“Hi cheryl,

I hope this finds you well! In effort to earn a conversation with you, I thought I’d email as that might be a better way to reach you.

I’d really like to explore blogging and Compendium as a lead generation, client acquisition and organic SEO tool for measured success inc .

Can we schedule a brief call to discuss the webinar you’re signed up for to make that time more valuable?

Thanks,

Julie”

First, this is obviously an auto-generated email, but our friend Julie here didn’t even take the time to fix the capitalization which is a one click thing to do.

Then she starts off with that ridiculous milk toast statement. Email demands fast. You have to start off with exactly what’s in it for the reader no dilly dallying around if you ever want anyone to respond to your messages in a POSITIVE way.

The rest of the message is all about her and what she wants. Julie uses the pronoun “I” 4 times in as many sentences. Plus her message isn’t relevant to me. Probably the most embarrassing thing of all is she’s sending this pathetic email to a sales coach. If this is the best she’s got she certainly needs coaching, and I strongly recommend she find a coach that works with sales reps.

Thus poor Julie doesn’t even make it past step one, making contact. If Julie had written a even a half-decent email message it might have read something like this…

Hi Cheryl,

You already have a good online presence through your website and blog. Would you be open to exploring some ideas that could increase both the number and quality of leads and clients you get through your website?

If it makes sense, perhaps we could schedule a brief call prior to the webinar you signed up for so we can make that time even more valuable for you?

Thanks,

Julie

Once you make contact and gain a sales appointment there are 3 questions you must answer quickly, and better than the competition:

How does what you offer get me what I want better than my other options?
How do I know I’m making a good decision?
How do I know I’m getting a good deal?

Dude! It’s All About ME!

Revisit the communications you make and make sure every communication IS all about me, the prospect, not you the seller. Fine tune and revamp the way you say it until your message is all about me the prospect. You’ll notice two things immediately.

First, you’ll get more appointments. Second, you start the contact without triggering the potential buyers defenses so it’s easier to transition from stranger to buyer.

Coach Cheryl

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 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.