Sales Meeting: Does Your Prospect Enjoy Buying From You?

Use this information to decide if your current prospect sales meeting structure is helping you close business or kill opportunities…

Your prospect will NOT buy from you if they are not happy during the sales process!

Try as you might, the bored, irritated, grumpy, confused and annoyed buyer is not someone you should bet on.

All those emotions, valid or not, will stop them going ahead with the purchase with you.

It might not be anything you’ve done, per se.

BUT the fact that your pitch didn’t lift them out of this ‘cloud’ is grounds enough for me to confidently say – ‘maybe let’s not put this one on the sales forecast’

The truth is – most prospects will likely be in some form of discomfort before they make a purchase – this is what can drive the purchase…they don’t have a red car, they want a red car, they are unhappy with their white car, so the chance to sell them a red car is there, and will be more than evident, as long as you ask the right questions….simple example but you know where I’m going

So, some degree of ‘pain’ or distress is the driving force in the purchasing process….

Before we start, let’s consider the needs of the buyer…

Do Your Prospects Enjoy Being Sold to By You?

They should!

They need to get delight in HOW you lift their personal pain, and replacing it with the joy of their potential new purchase – the red car.

ALSO – whilst you’re  taking their money BECAUSE YOU’RE DELIVERING WHAT THE PROSPECT WANTS, the prospect needs to feel they are giving their hard earned cash / or precious budget gladly and willingly….and to YOU versus an number of other reps that could be jostling for the same opportunity.

YOU and how YOU sell plays a big part in that….

And, in some instances, HOW you sell will be the key decider of whether your prospect buys, so every prospect touch point, interaction, prospect sales meeting. prospect email…needs to be geared up to position you as the ONLY viable provider

In many ways, HOW you sell is far more important to the buyer than WHAT you sell – it’s a key part of your sales differentiator

How Can You Make the Sales Meeting and Sales Process More Engaging?

Very simple – from every sales email to sales meeting, sales presentation to final quote, you follow this:

• Explore
• Educate
• Entertain
• Expert

The 4 critical pillars to making sure your prospect enjoys your sales process, gets the most out of sales exchanges, is uplifted from your sales meeting, see’s you as a person of value, and WANTS to spend money with you!

Get it Wrong and ….

Have sales interactions that don’t fit this and you’ll likely struggle to change the prospect’s state (enough) over the course of your sales interactions and sales meetings.

Which means that they have no increased motivation or desire to spend with you.

No increased urge to:

• Take action
• Buy
• Give you their cash or budget

After all…

…most people like buying but few people like being sold to

Because even though the prospect wants that red car – they have choices over HOW they get that red car and who from…

The change of state in the prospect can come about via many different ways, but your initial sales meeting and subsequent sales meetings are opportunities for you to really shine

All of them related to what we’ll talk about next…

Your Sales Meeting: How to Create Happy Prospects….that Buy!

If you’re expecting to make a sales you have a responsibility to deliver an experience to your buyer over and above the product or service their pay for.

You have a responsibility to make your sales process, sales delivery, sales meetings and any sales engagements better than that delivered by your competitors…

This is critically where you can build a key element of sales differentiation into your sales process.

Here’s what you can do to help them (and you) get more value, engagement and joy from your demo, your fact find, your catch up meeting, your meet the team meeting, your sales meeting, lead generation, the sales process, negotiation and generally every contact or touch point they have with your organisations

Let’s look at each of these in depth:

Explore 

Make ever single interaction about the buyer, in every prospect sales meeting you are their counsellor, therapist, and generally the person they confess their deepest wishes to….give the buyer the space and time to get everything they need out their system. Do this right and watch how the dynamic between you and the buyer changes…they will relax, start to share, trust, and slowly start to ask for your advice, opinion and insights…..

Educate

If your buyer is looking to buy a red car or a piece of software or machinery, before they get to the stage of engaging with reps like you they will have done their homework, which means your first task is to find out

• • what they know
  • where their knowledge stops
  • what burning questions they have

After that, your next task is to show them things that extend their knowledge, give them more insight, more information and valuable wisdom that will further help them decide what they need, and also prevent them from making the wrong decision and wasting time, money, resources, as well as losing credibility and status…

Entertain

You have to make this information you share, that helps them buyer a great deal, fit the following. It must be:

• Fun
• Easy to digest
• Relevant
• In context
• Complete

You can do this by looking at

• HOW you present the information – text, infographic, video
• WHY – pick you time and drip feed information as needed – overwhelm can kill a deal if confusion sets in
• WHEN you present it – in a meeting or via a shared platform, in a group, or 121 session
• WHO you present it to – your buyer might want to be the smartest person in the room so they don’t want every bit of info you share sending to everyone

Expert

At this stage, and having done all of the above, now is your chance to share all of your EXPERT experience from working with orgs just like you’re buyers, suffering from similar problems and pain points to your buyer.

At this stage maybe you need to bring in other experts from your organisation, maybe technical people, logistics, implementation or trainers – to demonstrate that your prospect is in good hands when buying from you

In conclusion

The 4 E’s are the pillars of getting your prospect to a happy place where they feel comfortable, confident and compelled to buy from you…

The question is: how does your sales process score against these 4 critical criteria?

• Explore
• Educate
• Entertain
• Expert

So…

How Do You Rock the Sales Meeting?

Surprisingly, some sales reps haven’t cottoned on to the fact that sales meetings need to be a ‘show’ for the prospect, leaving them excited, engaged and keen to work with you.

Instead, these sales reps tip up, spew out the generic sales pitch and sales deck and wonder whey they het ghosted!

These are the same sales reps who:

• Let the prospect run the sales meeting!
• Fail to provide a tailored agenda
• Allow the agenda to get hijacked by the prospect
• Doesn’t share anything new
• Fails to ask questions
• Doesn’t display expertise, wisdom of insights

The Result?

It’s easy for the prospect to think he doesn’t need that rep, their product, their service or these time….that’s it! Ghosted and locked out.

You know what that means?

You’ve just lost the sale….(and the prospect thinks you’re a drip, but nothing I can do about that).

So, if you’re running your prospect sales meetings on auto-pilot, here’s your wake up call…

Hopefully Now You Know a Better Way to Run Sales Meetings?

Research done a few years ago said that story telling was the key to this.

Sadly, many sales people take that statement at face value and wonder why their sales pipeline collapses.

Think of story telling in this context as being where your prospect is the hero in their own story.

They need to conquer a challenge – that might be ethical disposal of goods, better supply solutions, more user friendly IT systems – whatever it is – they have a challenge.

You job is as their guide – using what you know, how you’ve helped others – to help them navigate their way to the best solution.

In a x-box scenario – you’re helping your buyers to power up, see over the hill, know what’s coming, and prepare for it.

Always remembering your prospect is the hero in their story!

You might be there to save them falling off a cliff BUT you are never the hero!

You don’t save the day – they save themselves by selecting to work with you.

That’s how you get the deal….

So, It’s Story Telling…but not as we know it.

You’re stories have to be;

• Short
• Client focused
• Results/outcomes orientated
• Educational
• Expert level
• True!
• High on influence and persuasion techniques
• Emotional so that it changes the state of the buyer
• Relevant, appropriate and
• In case you missed it the first time – THE BUYER HAS TO BE THE HERO

This blog Storytelling Sales Pitch Structure  talks about how your whole sales pitch should be scripted like a story – take a read. I’ve used lots of this in training and myself and it works very well. Try it.

As with any story – it’s got to stir the emotions – it’s got to take the listener (or in this case prospect) through a process of a changed emotional state – so a sales person who can influence and persuade during the retelling of a story is sure to be a step ahead of the rest of the pack – take a look at Sales Storytelling that Converts to see how to make it work for you.

And if you really love the idea of being able to influence and persuade in more detail you can also check out Robert Cialdini

Blast the Boundaries

Other people might say push the boundaries, but that’s if you want to play it safe. Do you?

Sales is a transfer of energy….if you’re sat there with barely enough energy to light your own bulb, how much of that energy will you be able to transfer to the buyer? Near nothing…..and your buyer will feel that.

Imagine how that translates in their mind? Maybe they think…

• You don’t care
• You don’t rate them
• You don’t have confidence in your product/service
• You are expecting to be rejected because everyone else has

Thing is – these might not be conscious thoughts for your buyer – they could just be a feeling them something is not quite right….

Either way you’ve just killed your chances of making the deal!

Conversely, contrast that with another kind of sales prospect meeting, especially with energetic and ambition sales reps and sales leaders…everyone is buzzing, the prospect is excited about what you can do, you’re excited because you know this buyer is just about to conquer their challenge and become a hero….

So, that challenge is for you to build a vision, play around with ideas, make sure minds are open, present the buyer with new relevant information to support their thinking, build fluid conversations….nothing is off limits when it comes to making the buyer a hero.

Get comfortable with…

Knowing it’s ok to push and challenge the prospects thinking.

It’s perfectly acceptable to test out their commitment to their existing ideas.

Invite them to look at things in another way

Share and show him some alternative perspectives

Ask permission to play the ‘what if’ game.

Of course, you still might come back to a nudge past where he was before.

And that is ok, because you’ve been a person of value.

You’ve stretched their mind.

You’ve challenged their believes.

Given him food for though…

All of which will have made sure they valued your input.

As a result the prospect may feel even more committed to his original, possibly revised, solution, either way they’ll have a more rounded view…because you helped him sense check is vision.

Be the Smart Cookie

If you’re not the brightest person in the room…go home and work until you are!

You have to (you must!!)  know more than the buyer about what you offer and how it works in his industry and his sector.

That’s just a fundamental must.

It’s also why sector or vertical sales works better than geographical selling….think about that next time you’re prospecting!

If you’re selling in a vertical you’ll get to know the industry, the key players, the sector challenges, the competitors and the alternative solutions inside out and back to front…in which case you’re value to the prospect has just sky-rocketed.

You’ll be, or should be, an expert in your solutions in your buyers sector. Kerrrrching!

Use Your Sales Meeting to Ask the Questioning Questions

By this I mean proper questions…and if you don’t know what those questions are – go read these

Solution Selling

Sales questions that convert

Lots of sales people ask the questions they ask because it leads them to where they want to be in their sales pitch.

You know the prospect knows what you’re doing, right?

That’s why most sales pitches are boring, unimaginative and unproductive.

It’s ok to go off piste with your questions, chase the rabbit if the prospect comes up with something left of field, ask them to explain, feel free to explore how their mind works, give them a chance to vocalise their thinking…you’ll be helping them and you’ll be helping yourself.

In truth, it’s in sessions like these that you’ll uncover the real decision making process, you’ll gain insight into how the prospect thinks and what his key concerns are as well as helping you understand how he buys, why he buys, and why he should buy from you…what more reason do you need for exploring and deviating from your pre-prepped sales pitch…?

Who knows what you might find out…(that none of your competitors will ever get to know)

And lastly…

Make sure you enjoy it too…sales is hard enough, without doing business with people who don’t  respect or understand the value you bring to the table.

The Sales Improvement Workshop

If you think you’d like to develop your skills in this area, then we cover every single skill, technique and structure you need to build a high converting sales system that works for you… you can find out more details here – The Sales Improvement Workshop

If you want to discuss how sales training can help you and your team – contact Carol on 0779 002 1885 to book a free consultation

Working in sales can be fun, rewarding, and the best job in the world, but only if you have the right skills, mindset, structure and techniques – we cover them all in the Sales Improvement Workshop – come join us!