10 Secrets To Winning Your Customer’s Love, Part 2

Be prepared!

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? So why in the world would most sales professionals show up unprepared? You see it all the time–they dash in from the parking lot with a handful of color product samples and catalogs but no plan on how to engage. Or they relentlessly work the phones only to discover that they’ve offered nothing more than hollow chit-chat.

Why do sales reps fail to prepare? Because it is easier to talk about the products than it is to prepare to have a conversation about the client.

Yesterday, Promotional Consultant Today shared five ways to prepare for your next sales call. Today, we pass along five more hot sales tips.

6. Plan questions that establish your expertise and get them to think in new ways. The more thought provoking your questions are, the more your prospective buyers will respect and remember you.

7. Communicate an outline of your meeting prior to the appointment. Ask them to review and provide you with feedback. Getting their buy-in before you walk in the door is critical, and it demonstrates your commitment to delivering value.

8. Identify the resistance that you are most likely to encounter and prepare ideas, case studies, testimonials or expert opinions to help reduce their reluctance to move forward.

9. Plan how you will end the meeting or call and decide what agreements you need to ask for.

10. Remind yourself to be warm, friendly and courteous to everyone that you encounter. Your prospects are constantly deciding how much they like you, how much they believe you, how much they trust you and how much confidence they have in you. It takes time—often a long time—to build your personal brand. And it takes only a few seconds for it to be destroyed.

The determination to win is important in selling, but the determination to prepare to win is an essential part of getting to the top.

Source: Tim Wackel is one of today’s most popular business speakers who has mastered the ability to make information entertaining, memorable and easy to understand. He combines more than 20 years of successful sales leadership with specific client research to deliver high-impact programs that go beyond today’s best practices.