Say the Magic Phrase and watch your sales soar!

Revisiting this golden advice from Chris Lytle who wrote "The Accidental Salesperson":

Your target prospects buy the way you sell before they buy what you sell.

The sooner you sell your prospect on how you are going to work together, the faster they will buy your products.  This is a simple, yet profound concept that is a key to top gun selling.

So, the magic phrase is, "This is the way I work", which communicates to the prospect that you have an organized, planned approach to sales and to solving their problem.  Understanding that sales is a process and being able to articulate the steps in your process separates you from the pack and positions you as a professional. (Very few agents actually do this!)  If you cannot sell the prospect on your sales process, you will not be effective selling your products.  Too many agents try to take shortcuts; if you try to sell your product before selling them on your process, you are going to get a lot more objections.  So, tell your prospects how you are going to sell them before you try to sell them any product.  Tell them exactly what is going to happen and when it is going to happen.  A client who has bought the way you sell will buy more of the things you sell.  When the client knows exactly what is going to happen, they can quit being guarded and participate in the process.

Does your process include learning certain things about the prospect?
Does it include understanding what similar products they may currently own and why?
Does it include educating them and advising them in a certain area and answering all questions?
Does it include one or more face to face meetings?
Does it include presentation of alternative solutions to solve their problems?
Does it include follow up service?

While this is not an all inclusive list, and your sales process may change for different target prospect groups, take the time to define how you will work with the prospect and tell them up front.

"So Mr. Prospect, I want you to know how I work with my clients; first.......then.....etc....
Is that fair enough?  or Does that make sense to you?"

When the prospect says "Yes", you have built professional credibility and already closed a product sale the vast majority of the time.

www.jlsmarketingconceptsltd.com

Failure as Teacher

A book called Art and Fear shows how failure is tied to learning.  A ceramics teacher divided his class into two groups.  One group would be graded solely on quantity of work - fifty pounds of pottery would be an "A", forty would be a "B" and so on.  The other group would be graded on quality.  Students in that group had to produce only one pot - but it had better be good.

Amazingly, all the highest quality pots were turned out by the quantity group.  It seems that while the quantity group kept churning out pots, they were continually learning from their disasters and growing as artists.  The quality group sat around and planned and theorized about perfection - and worrying about it - but they never actually got any better.

It appears that trying and failing, learning from failure, and trying again works a lot better that waiting for perfection.  No pot, no matter how misshapen, is really a failure.  Each is just another step on the road to an "A".

In the field of selling, continual education and training are vital to being among the best, but Top Guns don't obsess about perfect scripts and presentations before they act.  They know that there is no perfection, only progression.  Make the calls, set the appointments - with each call and each appointment, you can learn something of value to make you better and more effective.  Focus more on quantity and learn from your mistakes, and watch your quality continually improve.

Jeffrey VanCleve
www.jlsmarketingconceptsltd.com