A Better Approach to Selling and more Profitable

A better approach to selling and more Profitable

Is a lead is a name from a list? No, absolutely not. A name from a list is, at best, a 'suspect', it is effectively a total stranger that may or may not meet some criteria (e.g. age, occupation, sex etc.).

Customer Profile

A real lead matches your customer profile AND has expressed an interest in your offer. It is normally true to say that the lead has responded to one of your marketing messages. Possibly an email, a print ad, a piece of direct mail, a webpage etc.

The best sales professionals only contact someone once they have become a lead. So you have your lead. How do you convert this into a sale?

Well for one thing you must make contact with them. They have responded to your interactive marketing item and the ball is in your court. You would be amazed how many businesses drop the ball right here. But what is the best approach?

Whatever you do please don't call the lead and say, "I'm following up....." This is the approach of a poor sales person and shows a lack of understanding of the sales process.

The phrase "I'm following up" basically means to your lead, get ready to be pitched. Your lead automatically gets defensive (no one likes to be sold to) and your chance of a sale is close to zero.

Interested Advisor
Rather than this, just take on the role of interested advisor and have a conversation. Contact your lead and think about why they responded to your marketing item. If your marketing offered them a free report on how to maximize the income from their investments then use this when you contact them.

After introducing yourself briefly, go on to explain that you are contacting them because they requested your report and showed an interest in having more return from their investments. Ask is that still of interest to them? Only talk about what your lead has stated they want i.e. more return on investments, your initial task is to engage your lead, not to talk about your products.


Can you help them?
Now you have a constructive conversation going don't blow it by diving into details about what your company offers etc. Again this alerts your lead that a pitch is coming and they close you. What you do say is, "I'm not sure if I can help you just yet, may I ask you a few questions about your investments. This approach disarms your lead as they hear you are not sure if you can help.

Next, you ask intelligent questions about what's important to your lead. This is very important as you are trying to find the emotional triggers your leads sees as important to them and then get them to visualize them.

forget about the features and benefits
So the best thing you can do here is forget about the features and benefits of your product because your lead does not care. He cares only about what's important to him. So to really listen as your prospect reveals answers to your questions, and proceed to asking deeper questions to reveal their emotional desires. Questions like:

How does that make you feel?
Why is that important to you?
If you could have that, how would it impact you?
If you don't solve that, what's the long term cost to you?
Are you satisfied with that?

Since people buy emotionally, you must get them to reveal what motivates them emotionally. Until you do, do not proceed to the next stage as you will fail.

Too many sellers ask for an appointment or for the order too early and they get objections. First, get your prospect to reveal what motivates them emotionally and then you ask if they would be interested in a solution to that problem/opportunity. Only when they says yes, do you proceed to the next step.

Set down the logic trail
So your next step would be to ask.."if there were a solution to that problem, what would that be worth to you? Here you are laying the trail of logic as people need logic to back up their emotional buying impulse.

"So if you could have the solution for only 10% of that amount, you would want to know about it? Great, then set an appointment, or begin to, close the deal."

Great sales people are client focused or customer focused but poor ones are not. They are product focused and self focused. If your personal or company mission is to really help someone, then it becomes easy to turn leads into sales.

Change your agenda to get the order
Your objective changes from "getting" people to buy your product to "finding" people who want what your product offers. You can only determine that by asking questions. And when you encounter someone that does not have an interest in your product, you move on.

The key to turning a lead into a sale is to leave your agenda to the end of the conversation and get your lead to reveal their emotional agenda first. Then you have the relatively simple process of showing your prospect how your product fits their emotional desires.

If it doesn't then move on.

Author: Steve Wardle - CEO, The Business Builder Club

By Steve Wardle - Founder of TheBusinessBuilderClub.com
http://www.TheBusinessBuilderClub.com