Good morning everyone
I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and ate lots of food. I may have eaten a little too much, but have to keep it at may because Thanksgiving is one of my favorite days as an individual and I through all workout / healthy eating out the window. I truly just go for it...All In! :)
So enough about my eating habits and let's start with the first step of the selling process. This is the first of nine steps the correspond with the five buying decisions that your customers have to walk through.
So let's get to the first and hardest sometimes for sales people to accomplish. It is "Commitment" You need to get the potential customer, prospect, person that comes to the door, or dreadfully the person on the phone.
I have to work to not get angry when the sales person for extended car warranties call my phone. I keep telling myself to give them a chance. One guy the other day had such a great approach that I said I would listen. Even though I still do not own the 2013 Jeep Wrangler. He was that good so I stayed on the call.
So on to commitment and how do you gain it. I have had to make cold calls in new territories in the past. In my recent past I have used Linked in to study the potential customer, and anything else I could use to gain intelligence on the buyer I was about to meet.
I tend to use the Columbo approach. I would passively wander around the area until the curious potential buyer would walk up and ask me what I was doing there. Sometimes if I was able to I would walk in through the service area. In experience at one of the Big 3 I would ask around to find out who the engineers were for a specific commodity.
I would use the first time to review the customers products, the engineer's cube, the manager's office, etc. I would try to build a little rapport by finding common ground as much as I could to and schedule the follow up call to gain the commitment to state I have some information that I would like to share. Typically when you state you have intelligence to share with the potential customer they are more than willing to have you come back.
Keep in mind that for each selling phase you will need to ask for commitment to enter into the next stage / contact. So, it goes back to being open to asking for something. They need to commit so you can move on to the next stage. Think of it like asking the cute girl out or the fact that you wanted to and never did. How did you feel. Take the initiative because the worst thing that could happen is they say yes and now you have to bring the value. :)
Try making as many commitments as you can. Sales is a numbers game.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
Sales And Leadership Enterprises