Don’t be afraid to ask questions that will help you understand your customer’s situation. Don’t be afraid of what objections your prospect might bring up. You will actually make your sale much easier with the good fact-finding. You want to uncover your prospects needs and wants even if they don’t realize he or she has them at this point.

Also you will probably hear some negatives from your prospects, and by uncovering those objections you will be able to tailor your presentation to deal with those potential negatives in the most effective way.

A good fact-finding shows that you are concerned about the customer’s needs and you are not like every other sales person who is simply trying to sell the product to him.

 To quote myself from the book Trigger Events, “All needs are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”

Remember: Fact-finding IS selling.

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Get the book Trigger Events today and start selling to new customers tomorrow!

Fact-Finding Is Your Mission is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

Consequently, through unorganized, hit-or-miss methods, his cost of selling is high simply because his methods are not as efficient as they should be.

This does not mean you shouldn’t use your instincts and training well. But it does mean that your sales assumptions must be based in a finding of facts, not guesses.

Using the dart game in the sales profession can lead to failure. You have limited time on your sales call to a prospective buyer and your darts must hit their mark. It’s even more crucial when you use the phone for your sales prospecting activities: many telephone sales calls miss their mark as being off-the-shelf calls that aren’t developed with a specific buyer in mind. Dartboard selling is a quick way to go broke.

Top notch salespeople advise that 75% of a successful sale is due to the pre-flight work. You must make sure you know what direction you want to go in, and you have to ask precise questions that will lead you to confirm needs you recognized through trigger events. You must know what direction to fly before your takeoff.

Most sales people out there are making a huge mistake meeting (or talking over the phone) with their clients unprepared. They think it is enough to schedule the meeting and they will work their magic and close the deal. They will try to break the ice with the customer by talking about the stuff in his office. Then the next misstep is to ask a few questions and not even wait for the answers, but to start with the same old sales pitch.

This kind of salesperson knows all the answers and few features and benefits later they will ask for the business. After hearing few “No’s” from customer they may give up and leave the office with the promise of a follow up a few days later. Unfortunately, the down side is that the customer will probably never return their calls.

Big number of sales people doesn’t take the time to have a conversation with their customers, because they assume that every other customer is like all the others. You will discover that your previous assumptions in sales were fatal many times. Keep those times in the past. It was necessary for you to learn a lesson every salesperson needs to learn, and now is the time to grow and develop your skills and knowledge. You will do so in developing your knowledge about trigger events. It is time to replace assumptions with research.

When you start learning how to recognize trigger events, rather than trying to assume or guess at them, will not only enhance your professional sales career and knowledge, but will increase your sales savvy to what the customer needs.

It is mind-boggling to receive a sales telephone call and the caller spits out a menu of mechanical words. The customer isn’t even, it seems, invited to be part of the conversation. It’s all about the need of the seller. Now when you contact your customers with information collected from recognized trigger events, you will have right questions to ask them, and all you need to do is listen to their answers and reshape your presentation accordingly.

Start with understanding customer’s actual situation and have their needs on your mind, but also find the way to put them on the market by making them realize their yet uncovered needs.

I hope you realize how often you barked up the wrong tree in your prospecting activities, talking to companies without the real need, following up and leaving numerous messages to someone who doesn’t see the value in your product. It is time to move on. Of course, at one time when we were starting sales, we all may have wasted our time that way, calling people from the long list of unqualified prospects we got from our manager, simply because they were in our territory or vertical market.

Now you will have a very powerful tool to change your approach to selling.

You have to understand the positioning of the company, what are they needs, does not matter if they are hidden or visible to public eye.

You need to do this ahead of the first contact as part of your trigger events research. You have to know the customer’s situation better than perhaps they know it, because at the time of presentation of your product, you will have their needs on your mind and prepare your sales presentation accordingly to information you hold.

Think value. Give to the customer what they ask for; give them what they need and more, drive the conversation to the customer’s wants and needs.
Impress them with the depth of your understanding of their position on the market and recent events that can trigger buying process, and they will sign on dotted line.

Very often you can hear how selling is a form of art, how sales people need to be creative and use their imagination, but I am not agreeing with that – sales is more science than anything. Yes you can use imagination and creativity, but after using tools available to you. With the proper tools and techniques you’ll replace guesswork with success.

Even if your company does not have automated system to generate new leads for you, when you learn more about trigger events, you will be able to find your next customer by your own. This will send the message to your manager that you care about your job and you really want to develop your career further, without waiting for someone.

Becoming best in team is an achievable goal and your self-confidence is growing as you establish a competitive advantage towards your colleges and towards your competition.

You don’t need to use old sales excuses anymore, like “territory is too small”, “need more training”, “inadequate sales tools”, “marketing provides no leads”, “we are over priced” etc.

Numbers of sales people who lose their jobs or miss their quota each year are not really important to you anymore, because you are more confident that you know what you doing in your sales role and all thanks to getting new customers from trigger events.

Now you are becoming a real Sales Professional. And it is a good feeling having control over your sales career, isn’t it?

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Get the book Trigger Events today and start selling to new customers tomorrow!

Hit or miss doesn’t work in selling is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer

The importance of the preliminary preparation of the salesperson in knowledge of his products or services has already been emphasized in the preceding posts on this blog. Now we are to realize that knowledge of his territory and of his prospective customers is equally necessary.

Many salespeople consider prospecting in a very narrow way. They are on the lookout for the names of people who might buy, but do not realize the broader aspect of prospecting. They do not seek comprehensive knowledge of conditions in general throughout their industries or territories, but only “hot tips” that are likely to lead to orders.

I frequently meet salespeople who regard systematic prospecting as the sales manager’s job. These people think the company should comb the field with marketing messages and keep the salesperson supplied with prospects to follow up and sell.

Let us realize the wider salesperson meaning of prospecting, and appreciate that prospecting is the salesperson’s job -  practically all of the responsibility rests on him for doing it well. We get the right idea if we understand that the salesperson should comprehend for whom he is working primarily — himself.

Don’t start your selling cross-eyed. The business in which you are engaging is your business. Attend to it yourself if you would have it taken care of in the way that will be best for you. The company risks very little on you, compared with what you have to lose. Therefore make your investment of yourself wisely, with forethought and care to insure the highest degree of effectiveness in your sales efforts.

Do not think of what you do as temporary or a makeshift. Search for the materials with which to build your business permanently. Act from the start of your connection with a company as if you expected to spend all your life in that relation, developing from year to year. You may have other plans in view, but conduct yourself as you would do if the company was really your own.

Aimless, hit-or-miss prospecting is never very systematic effective. The salesperson must determine exactly what he or she wants to know. If you are just looking for the names of buyers, you will find your prospecting like bacon, with a streak of fat and a streak of lean. But if you systematically seek fundamental knowledge of your industry or territory, and are motivated by a definite purpose all the time, you will accumulate a fund of facts that will enable you to do most of your prospecting inside your own mind.

You won’t need tips. You will know the conditions in your field which influence buying, and at the right time will be guided by your knowledge to the very places where business is to be had.

Don’t let your internet presence have an effect on your sales.  Make sure you have the right website hosting service.

What is Sales Prospecting? is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Mayer