As the saying suggests, “walk a mile in their shoes” before making judgments and recommendations. Before you can really understand what your prospects want or need, you must understand what they feel.

Respect their point of view, even if you don’t agree with it. Learn to empathize with them. This doesn’t mean that you give up your own point of view; it only means that you can understand theirs.

Caution! Don’t confuse empathy with sympathy.

Understanding someone’s point of view and thinking process allows you to more fully grasp their situation or problem. You are then in a better position to determine if you can help and exactly what type of help is most appropriate.

However, when you allow your understanding of the prospect’s situation to affect your own position, you move into the realm of sympathy. When that occurs, you are likely to lose your objectivity, your focus, and quite possibly, the sale.

© Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Jeremy Rawitz 347-385-8500

Call to attend a Class

Greetings,

When used at the wrong time, your product knowledge and expertise can be intimidating to your prospects.

If you use buzzwords, technical terms, or industry jargon early in the selling process, before determining if your prospects are familiar with those terms, you run the risk of making your prospects uncomfortable.

At that point, they have two choices: They can be up front and tell you that they don’t understand some of what you said and ask you to explain (which might make them more uncomfortable). Or, they can remove the source of their discomfort - YOU! What would that sound like? “Well, Tom, I didn’t realize that we would get into such detail today. I’m running a bit short of time. Why don’t you leave the information and give me some time to review it and then I’ll get back to you.”

Your product knowledge and expertise enhances your confidence. Having a vast amount of information about your product or service may increase your comfort level with and control of your sales meetings. But, that doesn’t mean that you have to flex your intellectual muscle in front of your prospect. Product knowledge should not be used to overwhelm or wow your prospect.

During sales meetings, be sensitive to your prospect’s facial expressions and body language. If you suspect that you’ve made your prospect uncomfortable, back up. Here is what that might sound like: “Bill, I just ran through that information much too quickly. Let me back up.” Then, review what you’ve just said using more appropriate language. © Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Join a class on August 18th from 9 to 11 am.

Call Jeremy at 347-385-8500.

Sales Strategy Corp.

An observation of sales organizations operating at maximum capacity reveals a common strategy: They track their business development efforts.

I’m not talking about tracking their opportunity pipeline or revenue. These successful companies track the activities they perform to find new clients such as the number of times they ask for a referral, make a prospecting call, attend a networking event, speak at an association, or have an appointment with a new prospect.

Why is something as simple as tracking activity so important? Perhaps it’s because you can’t tell where you're going unless you know where you are.

Following are some reasons to track your business development activities.

• Regardless of your closing skill, you’ll never generate substantial revenue if you’re not talking to a substantial number of new prospects. Tracking your prospecting activities and measuring them against new sales will tell you if you’re making progress.
• Tracking the number and frequency of successful activities creates a roadmap for others to follow. Handing new hires a template for success will help them get a jump start.
• Tracking activity holds people accountable for effort, independent of expertise.
• Tracking allows you to analyze what’s working and what’s not. Tracking new business development activities is not a magic bullet to success, but it just might be the something extra that puts you ahead of your competition.

Join us for a class on August 18th from 9 to 11 am. Call the number below.

© Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Jeremy Rawitz

Sales Strategy Corp.

347-385-8500

How many sales are you hoping will close between now and the end of the month? If you get 90% of what is in your pipeline, will it make you happy? If you get 10% will it make you sad?

Obviously we want to close as much business as possible. Ironically that desire is what may be causing us to fall short of our abilities. You see when we become emotionally involved in a selling opportunity it causes us to "HOPE" which can derail our process. I recently lost an opportunity to make a sale to a friend. I thought because we have a professional friendship, I did not have to follow my defined selling process.

Guess what, I got emotionally involved and when it appeared I was not going to get the business I said things like, "You are a friend and I just want to help you". Guess how that made her feel?

If you want to improve your sales and even more importantly, how you feel about yourself at the end of the selling opportunity, leave your emotions at the curb.

On a sales call, especially a prospecting call, you must be emotionally unattached to the outcome.

If you become attached to the goal of turning every prospect into a customer, you will surely be disappointed. Disappointment leads to frustration, which can lead to procrastination -- and so, the downward spiral begins.

Selling is a sorting process. Initially, you separate out the unqualified prospects (suspects) and retain the qualified ones.

Next, you sort out the prospects who are qualified to graduate to the customer level from those who aren’t. Obviously, the goal is to have as many prospects as possible reach the customer level. However, many won’t make it.

So, be “attached” to the process, not the outcome. As long as you focus on and work the process, the desirable outcome will follow.

© Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Jeremy Rawitz

347-385-8500

When you really want (or possibly need) to close a sale, it’s easy to drop into “convincing” mode. You begin to sound like the stereotypical “high-pressure” salesperson explaining the benefits of the various features of your product or service and “justifying” the costs.

These are precisely the things you shouldn’t be doing. Why? Because, when you drop into “convincing” mode, you talk too much --- which will decrease your chance to closing the sale quickly, or perhaps closing it all.

Less is more --- relevant. Prospects don’t need to know everything about your product or service, only those aspects that directly address their concerns, problems, issues, goals, and objectives.

Overloading them with additional information may raise doubts or bring to the surface additional elements they need to “think about.”

During a sales call, the objective is to help prospects discover how you can help them solve their problems, meet their challenges and reach their goals, not tell them. Learn to educate with questions and third-party stories.

Also, recognize when the sale is made, and then stop “selling.” Salespeople who talk too much soon become victims of the 5/55 rule --- they make the sale in the first 5 minutes of the meeting, and then spend the next 55 minutes “buying” it back.

Once the prospect has made a buying decision, trying to reinforce the decision by adding additional information will most often do more harm than good.

© Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Jeremy Rawitz

347-385-8500