[email protected]

Sales training and sales consulting to increase sales.

Call For A Sales Consultation

972-380-0200
  • About
    • What We Do to Increase Sales
    • Sales Philosophy on Hiring Salespeople
    • Clients
    • Customer Comments
    • In the Media
    • Contact Us
  • Speaking and Training
    • Sales Coaching for Performance Improvement
    • Professional Speaking
    • Sales Training
    • Sales Consultant for Business Development & Increase Sales
  • Sales Products
    • Books
    • Audio CDs
    • Webinars
    • E-Books
    • Manuals
    • Booklets
    • Merchandise
  • Free Resources
    • Videos
    • The Selling Newsletter
    • What is your Selling Issue?
    • Recommended Reading
    • Free Reprint Articles
    • White Papers
    • Sales Pro
  • Upcoming Programs
  • Membership
You are here: Home / Blog / Are you ready for your next sales call?

Are you ready for your next sales call?

May 14, 2018 By maurasf

prepare for your sales call
What work do you do before your sales call so you get the best sales results?

Do you want to easily improve your sales results? Why not consider how you prepare for your sale calls? There are a few things to consider that will not only make you less stressed for the meeting, but will also make you more successful, too.

Who is in charge?

It’s your job to control the sales conversation. That does not mean that you do most or all of the talking. In fact, you should be judging your sales call success by whether your customer is doing most or more of the talking. Why? You can only learn what you don’t know when your customer talks. So how do you control the meeting? Your questions control the sales call.

It’s not like you’ll sit down in the office and start talking about your customers business. That’s even the case if a prospect or customer starts the meeting with, ”So tell me what you’ve got.” Do not launch into a sales presentation despite your prospect’s instruction! Instead, your reply should be a question that gets the prospect talking about his business.

Your question should be an open ended question that cannot be answered by yes or no or just a few words. This means that a question about sports or the weather is not a suitable transition question. I often refer to this question as a pinball question because a good pinball question get the sales conversation started and going back and forth between you and your prospect. This back and forth is much like the ball in a pinball game. You must plan your Pinball question before your sales call to ensure the meeting will be a success.

What do you need to know?

The purpose of your sales call is to learn what you don’t know about your prospect or customer so you can determine why he should buy from you. Customers buy when they have problems needs, and wants that your products and services can solve. Of course, that’s not enough for them to buy. Your customers have to believe that the effort to make a change is worth the effort and cost involved. That’s a later strategic step for you to work on. First, you have to uncover the problem, need, or want that your prospect has. You do that with your questions.

Every sales call has some basic preparation about your prospects existing situation. This preparation indicates what you know and what you don’t know and need to know about this prospect. You might even have enough sales experience to know which questions you need to ask your prospect during your first sales call to uncover the problems, needs or wants that most companies like your prospect might have. Those areas might be about operational performance, employee issues or product performance. You have work to do if you do not have a general idea of why your prospect should buy from you.

Prepare differently.

I have a basic rule that the more important the sale, the more sales research you should do for the sales call and especially the first one. This preparation and research is critical for your sales call success. Too many salespeople make the mistake of thinking the sales call starts when they’re sitting down in the chair in front of their prospect. You will ask better questions when you have done your research. You will avoid wasting time on questions that you could have found the answers to had you researched them before the sales call. Remember that your prospect is judging you by the questions you ask. Better questions gain you more respect and generally more time and trust built with your prospect.

Do you want your next sales call to be a success? Start your sales call well before the meeting with preparation so that when you’re at your sales call you’re leading the conversation and making progress on the sale.

Tweet
PinIt

Filed Under: Blog, Preparation Tagged With: preparation

THE SELLING E-LETTER® SIGN UP

Social media

  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Selling Tips

*What was your last “mistake?” Did you make it before? There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes in sales provided you are making different mistakes. (You are learning from them!)

About the principal

Would you take auto mechanics classes when you buy a car? Maura did because she wanted to be able to work on her car. She takes that same approach to selling. She can show you how to get below the surface of selling to learn why and how different strategies work. She will show you which skills to implement that will shorten your sales cycle and increase your sales. She was Mobil Oil's first female Lubrication Engineer in the United States and one of Chevron's top 5 salespeople in the country. She knows what works for sales.

"I would recommend your work to other sales organizations who want to get better results from improved selling strategies."
Jamey Rootes
President
Houston Texans

Sales Expert at Allbusiness.com

Selling is the easiest job in the world. Just ask anyone who is not in sales. Read Maura’s ideas on “more brain…less mouth” selling to make your selling easier and more successful.

Maura’s Allbusiness blog posts

Recent Posts

  • Sales Is Not Fair
  • Less Stress Selling:  What You Can Do to Reduce Sales Stress
  • Segment Your Prospects and Customers. Are Your Largest Prospects and Customers the Most Important?
  • Women In Sales: Beware Mansplaining and other gender stereotypes!
  • Sell In A Recession

Search

Copyright © 2023 · [email protected]