By Paul Bunn
High Probability Selling
“The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital.”
Joe Paterno
A great number of salespeople pride themselves on being able to think on their feet and come up with the perfect response for whatever a prospect says. Upon closer examination of the consistent top performers in sales, there’s more to it than just picking up the phone and having conversations, hoping they’ll lead to business or making a sale. It takes preparation.
If you want to improve the results of your next prospecting session, and turn that into an effective prospecting process, the following are four things to have ready before you make your first call of the day:
- A clearly written offer – whether you call it an offer (our preferred term) or script, or pitch, having what you are going to say written out ahead of time makes it easier to listen to your prospects. This also makes it easier to find what’s working or change what isn’t. This takes preparation. It may feel more comfortable to wing it, or “go with the flow”, but improvement nearly impossible.
- A statistics form or some type of consistent written record of prospecting activity. You can only improve upon things that are measured. Peace of mind comes from knowing, not just having a feeling of, what works, when it works, and what the results are likely to be from a given activity. Excellence in prospecting is about the process, and you are not only as good as your last call.
- An easy-to-read display of the your best responses to your market’s most common answers or questions that you hear when prospecting. This helps you maintain control of the conversation and virtually eliminates the need to keep thinking of what you’re going to say next. Result: You can listen much better and the prospects sense that you are paying attention to them…because you are.
- Have a recording device. This is to record your side of the call only.
Recording yourself speaking will accomplish two things: 1) Make it very easy to adjust your tone and clarity on future calls (hint – you don’t want to sound like a salesperson) and 2) catch those moments when you make an unintended change that can improve your offer…and you find yourself saying, “that was different…if only I had written that down”.
Whether you’re working off a list of current customers, seminar attendees, information requests, or a new list of names or contacts from a list broker, these are the basics of structure needed to prepare so you can prospect efficiently.
Coming next – Now that you have some structure in place, you have to be willing to use those things in a way that has a high probability of success.
Note added later: take a look at this example of a prospecting-activity-record-2009-06-22
If you want to learn the process and mindset of top producing salespeople, you want to learn more about High Probability Selling.
Until Next Time…Sell Well
Jacques Werth – High Probability Selling
Copyright 2007.
Tags: How+to+sell, The+secret+to+selling, Selling+and+Persuasion
