Symptoms:
Linda was frustrated by her prospect's unwillingness to make a decision. Her prospect said he needed some time to digest the three options outlined in her proposal before making a decision. The prospect added that he was pleased with the proposal and that she had done her job well. Now she found herself in the "chase" mode because the prospect wasn't returning her calls.
Symptoms
Melody and her boss just couldn't understand why she continued to struggle to close business. She was a very outgoing person who was extremely well liked by her customers. She went out of her way to be friendly to everyone and appeared to possess a good knowledge of her product and the selling process. Her failure to excel was confusing to everyone.
Good morning & Greetings, here's this week's selling scenario to think about.
Symptoms:
The silence was deafening. Both Valerie and her prospect sat there looking at each other waiting for the other person to speak first. Valerie had finished her presentation of the new products' features and benefits and was expecting the Director of Operations to give her some indication of how well she had done. Since the training she had received on the new product said any prospect would be blown away by all the new bells and whistles, no one had ever bothered to consider what to do if that wasn't the case. Valerie had covered everything and found herself stuck not knowing what to do or say next. Was the sales call over or was something else supposed to happen?
After having been in the same role for over 5 years, Ted was stuck. "What else can I talk about with these people that we haven't gone over all ready?" was the question Ted kept asking himself (with no answer) after he did a review of his clients. He knew he didn't want to be the pesky salesman that just made a meaningless follow up call, or who stopped in to drop off donuts and see what orders might be around to pick up, but he was also very aware that his manager expected him to keep growing the territory and expanding the accounts.
I often debrief sales calls with my clients and hear of the great opportunities they’ve just uncovered, but the longer we discuss what happened the reality about the greatness of the opportunity changes dramatically. One particular part of a successful call tends to be missing when the salesperson shares the details of the call. That missing element more often than not is that no deadline of timeline has been agreed to or even discussed. And for my money, when you don’t have a deadline for a decision there is not much of a chance of completing a sale.
