Sales is a mental game and the right preparation can ensure your state of mind is positive and confident. You are the chairman of the meeting, whether on a call, face to face, or Skype type conversation. All conversations need preparation. Even the coldest of calls (yes cold calling is still alive and well) requires preparation. Too many sales professionals are in the mindset of “taking” instead of “giving”. Service first, sell second. Get yourself in the mindset of offering insight, offering value. And not just generic value, but value that resonates with that role in that company in their vocabulary.
- Document your value proposition that will resonate and understand it so well that it sounds like you’re having a conversation with a friend.
- This narrative should have a clear assumption behind it — how you believe you can improve your prospect’s world.
- Prepare your favorite questions to bring out the real symptoms and consequences in evidence at your prospect’s site.
- Take pride in really understanding your customer. Build a dashboard that pulls from various sources, Voice of the Customer (VOC), basic facts and figures, customer support records, sales conversations, site visit notes, latest press releases. Insight brings credibility and trust. Sound like if you care because you do.
- Practice putting a cost on the type of problems that might exist in your prospect’s business. (Hint: The real cost of a customer’s process is often 2x when all costs are identified)
- Prepare questions that really help you understand what your prospect regards as success.
- Build little spreadsheets of ROI logic for each deal. Price can’t be cheap or expensive. Price can only be a low or a high ROI%.
- Always prepare well written summary documents before formal proposals. Final proposals that contain mistakes carry an unreasonable importance.
- As a sales professional, always be learning. Constantly seek more knowledge about the technical capabilities of all your products and services.
- Understand all new products and why you launched them. Understand their relative competitive performance.
- Be aware of all key blog posts/press releases/white papers published by your company.
- Memorize key competitor key facts and be ready to explain on merit why you offer a superior performance and return in this specific situation.
- Understand common issues frustrating key managers within your industrial sectors.
- Understand all case studies and highlight them to bring credibility to your sales conversations
- Memorize the top 20 companies in your customer’s sector and sub sectors.
- Understand the FAQs asked by your customers when implementing your products.
One of the key issues to scaling businesses is a repeatable set of processes and checklists within the sales process. Each sales professional needs mentoring to scale their accounts whether the sales team is three or 3003!
