In today’s corporate world, your sales process is a powerful cycle that can help you turn potential prospects into customers. It is one of the critical keys to closing deals – helping you and your team establish themselves as natural sales professionals. But what are some of the important elements to a good sales process? Specifically, how are you going to attract more consumers and corporations to purchase your products and/ or services?
There are 7 important elements in a sales process – Finding leads, Connecting, Qualifying leads, Presenting, Overcoming objections, Closing the deal and Nurturing. Often, a salesperson tends to ignore one part or some parts of this process which is often reflected in their failure to close deals.
Although the skills required for each element is different, they are considered all parts of selling from a salesperson’s viewpoint. Understanding how each individual element works and practical application will transform your selling skills, converting potential prospects into customers aka business turnover.
Why do consumers dislike being sold to?
If the deals often fall through to your competitors and your prospects tell you “no” hundreds of times to the point it seems like a normal response, it is recommended to put a brake on closing deals at the moment and turn your attention to analyzing the situation, brainstorming on possible reasons for failure to close deals and maybe even redesign the overall sales process.
The art of listening
Most people think that to be a great communicator, they need to possess great speaking skills but the reality is that listening is just as important as speaking in the communication process. Our ability to listen properly will give us insight into the rationale behind decisions made and a better understanding of what the other person is trying to achieve.
We need to ask customers better questions and understand what they need before presenting them with the appropriate solution. The art of listening is an important skill that every salesperson should possess and when mastery of this skill is there, deals will be closed automatically as a result.
Having a poor sales pitch
One of the very first interactions with your customers always involves a great sales pitch. And the truth is, salespeople are, more often than not, judged by how they say things than what they say. This is a common error for many when they choose to treat their sales pitches as a presentation of facts, figures and results. This alone, is not enough to convince or persuade even in a room that is full of potential customers.
Think of a “push sales pitch” and you get what we mean. Picture a roller coaster. Then picture yourself getting on the roller coaster, not quite sure what is going to happen next. Similarly, when the salesperson begins his pitch, his audience is usually excited to listen to what he is about to say, until the “joy of the ride” begins to diminish when they find his pitch below their expectations. Talk about anti-climax!
No sense of urgency
One of the reasons why people hate a salesperson with no sense of urgency is because they feel that they have to call and follow up on the other person in order to land the business on his desk. Often, this will kill a customer’s enthusiasm, energy and trust. It is also one of the top 10 deal killers in today’s global sales community.
In many cases, losing deals is unbelievably easy. Customers usually won’t continue their commitment when it comes to renewal and they will find another company who can give them great customer service. As the saying goes, hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
Lacking of a solid sales funnel
Today, it is impossible to sell without execution of a sales funnel. A sales funnel creates so many powerful attributes. It provides a journey of solid confidence for your customers from the ‘awareness’ stage to the ‘purchase’ stage. At the end of the sales cycle, the client walks away confidently with a smile on his or her face.
Lacking a solid funnel is a nightmare for many potential prospects. They may find themselves lost when they are visiting the product pages if the funnel is not built artfully to guide them from the landing page to checkout. To put it simply, there is really no reason on why they should get ‘hungry’ over something that isn’t even going to be good. The funnel should make the whole process seamless and simple to use.
What are the traits of a good salesperson?
When it comes to building a sales team or making improvements to one, you usually see two types of salespeople: “hunters’ and “farmers”. Hunters hunt for new businesses. They work best outside of their workplace and return consistently with new accounts. Farmers, on the other hand, work best in their workplace, and often excel in improving current customer accounts.
Knowing the traits of your salespeople and where to deploy them are important because you will want to give your customers an awesome experience with that wow effect.
Good at handling objections
No matter what kind of presentation you are giving, it is inevitable to find yourself coming face-to-face with objections. Sure, you will need to work to uncover the real reasons behind these objections, but while this may help you to increase the probability of deals closing, it’s really not enough.
That being said, there are various ways to transform objections into opportunities through using these techniques – Listening, Understanding the reason for the objection, Providing a solution and Daring. Additional techniques such as asking your prospects with open-ended questions will help you unravel all the objections before you can proceed to provide them with a solution.
Offering a solution
Customers are complex. If you are a salesperson, recognising your customers’ needs and problems can be a vital component of sales success. Learning how to identify their needs and problems makes them feel that you genuinely want to help them and have their best interests at heart.
When they come to you with a problem, take it as an opportunity to offer a solution and enable easier progression to the next stage of the sales process. Once you have given them the solution, it will increase your chances of closing the deal.
Delivering an awesome customer experience
Have you ever felt extremely happy after a positive buying experience? If so, what contributes to that emotion? In many cases, this could be due to great customer care, follow up and/ or attention to details. At times, it might prove to be the extra preparation that the salesperson has made to better understand the features and benefits of the company’s products and services.
Having all these strategies helps in providing a good customer experience. Yet another point to add to this list is Buyer Personas. It is a partially-fictional dossier of characteristics like motivations and pain-points of actual customers. The collection of these data are then used as insights to help plan and execute your strategies for delivering an awesome customer experience.
Do you wish to tackle sales challenges with ease and drive business turnover? Write to us at info@businessacademia.co
Business Academia’s Vision
Our goal is to connect the space between Business Goals, Results and People’s Engagement with consultancy services, tailored experiential workshops and training. We use effective facilitation methods such as Design Thinking to define, together with you, how to engage and motivate people to the desired Change and Action.
More information @ www.businessacademia.co
