We talk a lot about making sure each phone call has a specific call to action. The most frequent call to action is an agreed to time to meet next. But there is far more you can do and should be doing. When a prospect agrees to meet with you again, it does not require enough on their part to guarantee they will become a customer.
More on engaging your prospect below:
Yes, an agreement to meet again may turn into your prospect becoming a customer, but wouldn’t you feel better if you were guaranteed they were going to become your customer? The approach I have personally found to be most helpful over the years and as I train other is to get the meeting scheduled and then engage them in an activity they are to complete on their own time.
There are two key ways to ensure you do this with excellence. You can either use information they shared with you or you provide them with additional information to create an activity of interest. Let’s look a little closer at how this could unfold.
The first approach is simple. As you conclude your call and are gaining the commitment for the next meeting you say: “I will email you a short document tomorrow and I would love to get your input on it before we meet.”
What you are now doing is asking the prospect to invest their time to read and respond to you. If a prospect has zero interest in buying from you they will not do it. But if the prospect has interest in moving forward with you, they will be highly likely to follow through with your request. This is an easy approach to help you begin to determine the quality of a prospect.
The second approach is to send the prospect an email after your initial meeting and restate a comment they made in the meeting and add additional insight to it or some further information. You conclude the note by asking for them to respond to you before the meeting as it will help you in making the next meeting even better.
There are certainly many variations you can use. The key here is to keep the prospect engaged even when you are not there. This is especially critical if the time between your two meetings is several weeks. When there is too much time between meetings you run the risk of the prospect losing interest. Only the most motivated prospect remains engaged on their own. Your objective is to not only qualify better but take the prospect who is on the fence and move them to your side.
A key benefit to implementing this approach is the effective use of your time. Relying on meetings either on the phone or in person as the only way to move a prospect along does not allow you to optimize your time. Using this approach allows you to make each meeting with a prospect that much more valuable, which in turn, typically allows you to close the deal faster.
If you missed the first parts of this series, be sure to check out the blog posts and videos below. In the coming weeks I’ll be sharing more!
Blog post and Video: Week 1: How Can I Tell If I Have Qualified Prospects or Just Bad Leads?
Blog post and Video: Week 2: How Can I Tell If I Have a Qualified Prospect-Confidential Information
Blog post and Video: Week 3: How Can I Tell if I Have Qualified Prospects-Knowing the Customer’s Timeline to Buy
As we talk about this subject over the next several weeks, I suggest you take 2 important action steps. First, buy my book, High-Profit Prospecting – available in paperback, audio book and Kindle. Second, join my High Profit Sales Coaching program. I promise both will yield valuable results for you and your business.
Copyright 2019, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Result
