Do you make sales calls all by yourself? If you do, you may think you can work all alone. But you really shouldn’t. Your management has a role to play in your selling and a responsibility to help you sell.
How should you sell?
Some managers think that when they hire salespeople they should know how to sell. It’s almost like thinking someone will figure out how to swim if they’re thrown into the deep end of the pool– it’s kind of scary. And it’s the same in sales. What you get is trial and error selling.
Trial and error is frustrating. You might learn from your mistakes or you might not; the frustration could be overwhelming. That’s where your management comes in. It’s management’s job to provide you with your sales process.
Sales is like an assembly line. You would never expect someone to start work on an assembly line with instructions from management to “put things together however you want.” Sales is no different. Your job is to follow the process that management recommends because they know the most efficient and effective way to produce sales results.
But what can you do if you don’t have a sales process? Ask your manager for input on the best prospects, the best way to approach prospects, and what to say when you meet.
What does it take?
Your job is to move the sales process forward. I’ve been in too many sales meetings where management sits and listens to status reports from the sales teams. One by one salespeople report to management that deals are going to close “soon.” At one company, this went on for weeks until I put a stop to it.
First, the word “soon” is known as a gray word–it’s open to interpretation. What does soon mean to you? A week? A month? A year? Who knows? Your job is to provide a time frame for when the deal will close. Yes, you can give a range like four to six months. Soon is not a range.
My next issue was the salesperson didn’t know what needed to happen in order to move the deal from one stage to the next, until the customer signed the contract. It is management’s job to provide the stage requirements so everyone is speaking the same language.
Here’s an example. The first stage of a sales process is to qualify the buyer. This means that he has a budget, you have identified the decision maker or decision makers, and the customer agrees that he has an issue that needs to be addressed by a product or service that you sell.
At the sales meeting, management may ask, “What stage are you in with this prospect?” If you respond, “Stage 1,” your manager may want you to verify you have completed this stage and are ready to move on to Stage 2. He might say, “Who is the key decision maker and how do you know?” You could reply, “I’ve asked the question, ‘Who along with you makes the decision to buy?’ and my customer said that he alone has the authority.”
Just know that some customers are uncomfortable telling you that they are not the only decision maker. That’s all right. Take your customer at his word. While some customers can mislead you, trust has to start somewhere. More customers are trustworthy than not.
Your management has a lot of work to do for you before you reach the customer. Just make sure they’re doing their work so that you can do yours.
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