Every salesperson has had at one time or another a prospect who just won’t move forward and buy.
It might be time to put the conventional selling process you use on hold and break out what I refer to as the “engagement process.”
What makes the “engagement process” work is you and the customer become engaged to one another.
The objective with the process is to get the customer to participate with you in an activity that allows them to see the value they will receive from what you’re offering, as well as confidence in you.
Best way to understand the engagement process is by giving you an example.
Let’s say you sell security systems for commercial buildings. To create an engagement you might provide to the customer 2 websites you want them to look at to review what insurance companies look for in security systems.
Notice the engagement is not to get them to look at your site but to look at something else. Objective here is to be able to engage the customer in dialogue after the sales call.
The next step in this process might be for you to provide the prospect a worksheet with some diagrams of how systems might look in their building.
Objective of the diagram is to get them to now see first-hand the operational aspects of the system. Notice here where the second step is now engaging the prospect in an activity that does pertain specifically to what you’re selling.
Key with this step is to provide them with a couple of very specific questions they need to answer for you. Again, what you’re doing is engaging the prospect.
Take whatever it is you sell and begin to develop a list of things you might be able to engage a customer in doing as a way of moving them to a sale.
One item to note: I’m not a fan of doing a test with the prospect, where you give them what you’re selling and allow them to “try it out.” Reason I don’t like this approach is some prospects will use the test as a way to get you to lower your price.
Testing is fine but only if the prospect has skin in the game, and by this I mean they’ve already made a financial commitment to you.
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
