Five Simple Ways to Sell More
The word “simple” means that something is not intricate. It doesn’t mean that something is without difficulty. Selling is hard. Here are five simple (but not simple) ways you can sell more.
Focus Less on Closing and More on Being Effective at Every Stage
Salespeople house far too much accent on closing. The problem with focusing on closing sales is that you are focused on the scoreboard as a replacement for of on playing the game well and playing the game to win.
As a replacement for of spending your time on the eventual outcome, spend your time, your effort, and your energy on prospecting effectively to open new relationships, on making effective sales calls that lead to an advance in the sale, on building the consensus necessary to selling your solutions, and on building a compelling presentation.
Spend your time and your energy on ensuring that you are effective at every stage, and the notch will take care of itself.
Focus More on Solving Business Problems
Making more sales means solving more business problems. Making larger sales means solving larger sales problems. Becoming the lifelong partner and provider of choice means solving the most challenging problems your customers face, and in doing so, helping them build a competitive advantage in their space.
To sell more, spend more time learning these problems and helping your clients solve them.
Stop Selling to Prospects Who Can’t Buy
Your time is restricted. You have to use fantastic discretion in how and where you spend your time. There is no reason to spend time with prospects that cannot buy. The quicker you can qualify prospects out, the quicker you can go on to prospects and clients where you, your company, and your products and services can be of value and of service.
This means that you cannot pad your endeavor with sales calls that will result in no sales simply to make the endeavor goals. In the long run, your time is far better spent doing the heavy lifting and prospecting like idiotic to identify prospects that can buy.
Study and Practice the Fundamentals
Sales isn’t about gimmicks, tricks, shortcuts, or secrets. If something sounds to excellent to be right, it is. You should leave it alone. The only certain way to success in sales, and to selling more, is to study and practice the fundamentals.
As a replacement for of resisting the fundamentals, embrace them. Go to your bookshelf and pull off all of the books on sales whose titles include the word “never” or “secrets” or “closing“ or “shortcuts.” Take these books to your fireplace and burn them. You may as well search your computer for all of the similar PDF’s you have downloaded, as well. You don’t have to burn them, but you sure as Hell need to delete them. Let this purging give as a clean break from any of this kind of thinking that may have crept into your thinking.
Embrace prospecting. Embrace cold mission. Embracing studying sales. Embrace writing a set of needs analysis questions that demonstrate you know your business and your client’s business. Embrace learning to be a masterful listener, and masterful presenter. And most of all . . .
Learn to Close and to Obtain Commitments
Closing is not the single event at the end of the sales cycle. Closing is the ability to question for and obtain the commitments that go a sale forward. These commitments have to be gained from the time you question for the commitment to meet for an appointment all the way through the execution of the sale when it is eventually closed.
Closing should be natural and simple—if you have made value during each and every sales encounter. Asking for the commitment to go forward together is as simple as saying something like “I believe we have learned sufficient to be confident that we can go forward from here together. Can we schedule to take this next step together, or is there something you would still need from us?”
Is it perfect? No. Do you have something better? I am certain you do, and I hope you’ll share. But is it a Hell of a lot better than the Ben Franklin close? It’s not even a contest.
Conclusion
To sell more, stop focusing on the scoreboard and play the game. Spend you time solving your clients most pressing business problems, and stop spending time with people who cannot buy. Forget the shortcuts, the tips, the gimmicks, and the tricks and spend your time learning the fundamentals. Following these first four thoughts will help you make the value that makes obtaining commitments natural and simple. Now go sell more!