The Sales Archaeologist

I decided to start this new series of articles with a very clear purpose. Every month we help individual sales people with hundreds of scenarios and why not take just one of those and make it a sales lesson for the month. So every month I will now post one article entitled “sales tip” and share something short, sweet, effective and manageable. Hope you like it and I hope it helps!

I am also working on monthly original guest posts and you can read my first guest post here

Getting back to my sales tip for September.

When you are selling to a prospect what are you selling? Now I don’t mean what product or service – I mean what is the prospect buying?

Before they buy anything else they buy you! That said I am amazed at how many sales people I help are in the habit of not selling themselves first. The client asks a question about delivery and we say “our drivers”. The person asks about quality and we start with “our patented research by hundreds of engineers”. The client wants to know about expanding or upgrading and we say “our company policy ensures”.

These responses might all be true and might all have intrinsic value on their own. But what I want to hear and what most prospects want to hear is what will YOU do?

So here is my tip of the month. Whenever you have a chance to answer questions for a prospect do this. “Mr. Prospect there are two answers to your question and I would like to answer them both”

Then proceed to first explain what you are personally committed to do to ensure success. Then move on to what your people, the company or your support team will do. Demonstrate this personal commitment to your prospect whenever possible and watch what happens.  I heard Dan Heath author of Switch and Made to Stick speak last week and he was talking about change. As sales people we are basically helping our prospects transition from one way of doing things to another. A personal dedication to help our prospects, when expressed to them convincingly and at the right time will help facilitate that change – and it will be painless.

If you enjoyed this tip and would like help getting better take a look at this program it might be a great option for you.