Slow down your sales process and you’ll speed up your closing.
One of the big issues I find with salespeople is they race to get to the proposal, to the presentation, to show the customer everything that they can do.
Hold it, slow down! You’re neither doing yourself nor your customer a favor. Who knows if the demo is even right for them? When we do not slow down the sales process at the beginning to really understand the needs the customer has, we cannot be sure that what we recommend to them is even the right solution.
Before you get in a rush, try these six slow-down techniques.
1. Don’t play customer service.
Salespeople are very quick to provide customer service. The customer says, “Tell me about your business, tell me about what you guys do.” And we start foaming at the mouth and wind up stepping all over ourselves.
How do we even know if what we are about to share with the customer is relevant to them? So when the customer tells me, “Hey, tell me a little bit about what you guys do.” I say, “You know what, I’d love to first understand and learn a little bit about your challenges, about your business.”
I automatically turn it around and get them to share with me.
2. Don’t respond to price quote requests.
Do not respond and play customer service early on in the sales call. This is the same thing when the customer says, ”Hey, just give me a price quote.” No, my response is, “We have a lot of solutions, a lot of things, and I don’t want to see you waste your money. So I’m not even sure if what we have is the right thing for you. Can you answer a few questions for me?” I always turn it around.
Not only am I turning it around, but I’m investigating deeper.
3. No empty proposals.
When I put the proposal in front of the customer, if I’m not able to wrap that around their challenges, their problems, their issues, then my offer is hollow.
However, if I can take my proposal and wrap it around the challenges, the needs, the pains, the problems, the opportunities that you, the customer, are looking for, I have a much greater chance of success.
But I can’t wait and find that out when I’m about to put the proposal across the table.
4. Ask questions earlier to avoid negotiation mode.
If the customer knows that I’m about ready to put the proposal across the table to them, guess what? They begin moving into negotiation mode and it changes all of their responses. It changes who they are, and what my objective is.
Back up the bus and have those conversations at the top of the sales funnel so the customer is more relaxed, and not threatened because of negotiation. The relaxed customer is going to reveal more information, which allows me to go deeper.
5. Ask more questions to close more deals.
You see, my objective early on is to be asking more questions. Here’s what I found in working with sales teams for so many years: the salespeople who ask more questions have a much higher close ratio.
They don’t race to the demo. There’s a time for that, but only the elements the customer finds absolutely relevant to them. If you show them everything that you do, you have a tendency to confuse the customer.
A confused customer does not buy. A confused customer will say, “We probably need to look at some other options.” It slows down the process. Instead, slow down at the beginning to ask questions.
6. Use those questions again.
Some of those questions you ask on say, the second call, and you probe down deep—come back to those questions again on the third and fourth call. If you’ve got a long, complex sale, I want to come back and ask again. I’m not going to ask the exact same question, I’ll word it a little bit differently, but what I want to hear if that’s still an issue. Because if you talk about an issue twice, then it’s an issue.
If you only talk about it once, that’s just a passing moment. You may have just had an itch that you wanted to share, but if you talk about it over two separate meetings, two separate calls, then I know I have a real issue.
I’m looking for the critical need, the critical problem that you have as a business or as an individual. It makes no difference if it’s B2B or B2C.
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Not everything that can be measured needs to be, but some data can teach us a lot about our business.
Listen to Ep. 235 out now! Find it wherever you get podcasts.
Strategic Networking &
Saas Mastery w/ Kristie Jones
How can the people around you make or break your sales career?
What hurdles can you expect when transitioning into Saas?
Learn all this and more in this week’s podcast.
Copyright 2024, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of A Mind for Sales and High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results.
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One Response
I agree Mark. Slow is the new fast. It is especially true online no that everyone is exploring the use of AI. Perhaps a good time to reread, your book.