Good morning everyone,
I would like to take a step back and talk about Commitments that you will need throughout the sales process.
Each step of the sales process will require a new commitment. Now they won’t look identical word for word as I put on the screen, but they will be in the general area. For instance, if I say that your commitment for the second step in the sales process “Rapport” is Building Rapport, it may not look like that when you approach your customer or potential customer. It may be bringing back information about the area for top 20 customers he or she might be interested in.
What you are really looking to do is get them to commit to building rapport with you and you will need to offer value to them to you to have that time for building rapport. This is the early part of the sales process where the customer is feeling you out and trying to see if you are genuine or if you are just trying to push your product.
I had to spend multiple visits to the northern area of Florida to build rapport with the prospects up there. They are as close to the south vs. north stigma that is out there. They can literally sniff out a northerner a mile away and they are very protective of letting some guy come in a have trust just given to them.
To mitigate that I had to do a lot of intelligence work in the area to uncover who did the most work in the area, what they valued most about the product, who they were, who they chose to do business with, and why some would drive to Georgia to do business with landscaper shops rather than use shops in their area. A great deal of time was spent on obtaining the data needed so that when I asked for the commitments they were seeing the value to them and let me work to help them.
I will work to have all of the commitments laid out for each step and how they look for single owner operator businesses as well as larger corporations where multiple people / teams come together to make a decision. Unfortunately, how the two businesses function there is kind of a separation in how you have to look at the sales process and commitments or commitment objectives.
I will do my best to have most of that laid out for you next week. That is my homework for this week.
I will also let you in on a little secret. I am working to put together a book, so all of this will be in one location for you. I will have visuals in it and help you understand the different aspects in the sales process. More to come on that.
For now, enjoy the weekend and I will have more value for you next week.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
Sales and Leadership Enterprises