50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #13 – Why You are There!

August 3, 2015 Selling Comments Off on 50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People: Habit #13 – Why You are There!

The June newsletter completed Part One, the twelve Organizational Skills, and it is time to move to Part Two, Sales Skills.

Top Performers have developed these skill sets to the point that they are second nature and a part of who they are and what they do. These skills have become habits.

For those who are not Top Performers, these are skills that need to be developed.  These sales skills provide the basic tools to help salespeople become more successful and get to the customer’s/prospect’s needs as fast as they possibly can.  The purpose of these skills is to save the salesperson’s most precious commodity, time, and make more money for them and the company.  Let’s look at Habit #13 – Why You are There!

Open every sales call clearly stating why you are there and confirming the reason for the sales call, because something may have changed and you want to find the change as quickly as possible.

Let’s set the stage; the salesperson is making a sales call, they have talked about the weather and their favorite sports team, and it is time to start the actual sales call.  So what do they do?  It is surprising how many salespeople go into the history of the company, what’s really good about the company, the strengths of the company, how great their sales team is and God knows what else.  In other words they immediately go into presentation mode.  WOW!

What they should do is summarize what’s been agreed upon and what the accepted benefits have been to date (if any) and tell the customer/prospect why they are there.  If the sales call is the first call of the sales cycle there will be no history to summarize, so they can simply begin with why they are there.  In the case of an introductory call they simply say. “I am here to introduce my company and see how we can bring value to our relationship” or something similar.

If it is a continuing call, they recap the sales cycle by summarizing the benefits that have been accepted by the prospect to date. They should continue by relating the accepted benefits to the need and extent of the need (THE PAIN), and then tell them why they are there.  In this case, the purpose of the sales call might be to pick up the purchase order, so they would say, “I am here to pick up the purchase order”.  Some might think this is brash, others might think this is not aggressive enough.  This approach informs the prospect of the salespersons purpose for investing their time and the company’s money to be there at the appointment.

More importantly, telling the prospect/customer why they are there sets the stage very early in the sales call, and it does not waste a lot of time (and money), and provides an opportunity for the customer/prospect to tell them if they are wrong in their stated purpose.  This puts them in a position to gather information as to why they are wrong and pursue the reasons why they are wrong, so they can understand the road blocks and problems and propose a solution.  Or on the brighter side, just pick up the order.

Another critical reason for opening the sales call with why they are there is because something may have changed between the last sales call and the present sales call.  If something has changed, it’s good that they know early in sales call so that they can adjust their sales call approach and move into interrogatories to determine what has changed and why.  Knowing this allows them to adjust their sales cycle to address the issues that have changed.

Telling the prospect why they are there at the beginning of the sales call is critical to the salesperson moving through the sales cycle. It is the difference between getting an order or killing a bad opportunity before they waste too much time and money.

“Simple is best.”

“A Habit” is not work, but just a thing that is done every day and telling the customer why you are there can easily become a Habit.  Develop the process, complete the reports and submit them.

TIME MANAGEMENT.  For Top Performers, every task is planned and focused on the goals that earn results.  Top Performers plan and then engage.  They act on their plans, they work hard and they get results.

Coaching these skills is a critical part of what we do.  We are here to help you develop and implement your Strategic Plan and coach and develop the skills to implement the plan successfully.

We are having great success coaching and implementing these methods and skills and our clients love it!