It is time to stop begging for business. Stop running around doing everything the prospect asks you, giving them every ounce of knowledge you have, sending thank you cards and trinkets because you think all of that “extra-mile” activity will get you sales. Stop sending out proposals and offering presentations to anybody and everybody who raises their hand and/or feigns interest in your product or service. Stop cutting your price or increasing the offering at the same price in order to entice the prospect to say “Yes.” You simply don’t have the time or the money to do all of that extra work for every prospect that winks at you. In other words, get up off your knees and start selling like the professional you are.
Establishing a Salesperson’s Bill of Rights will help you in sorting your prospects. Come up with a list of rules that the prospect must follow or you will get up and walk out on the sale. You heard me right. Not everybody deserves to have the privilege of buying your product or service and it is better to identify the bad prospects early in the sales dance.
To help you with this, I will share with you my Salesperson’s Bill of Rights:
No Trust –This one is an easy one to understand. Prospects will never buy from a salesperson they don’t trust. It is not difficult to see that there is no trust in the call. The body language and tonality of the prospect will give him/her away. Therefore, if you sense that the prospect does not trust you or what you are saying, save yourself some time and start ending the sales call.
No Qualification – There are a lot of prospects out there that want to hear about the value you provide but at the same time have no intention of buying anything. Unless prospects can prove to me that they have a real need for what I sell, have money to pay for it and can make a decision about buying it, they stand in violation of my Bill of Rights and I start ending the call.
No Time – Sometimes I show up to meet with a prospect expecting to meet for one hour, because that was what we agreed to when the meeting was scheduled, and they tell me they can only spend 15 minutes with me. If the prospect won’t give me the time needed to rightfully assess the fit of my product, then what’s the point? I ask to reschedule or end it all together. Often times, right here, the prospect magically finds the hour we had originally agreed to.
No Chasing – Following up with prospects is a huge waste of time in my opinion. This activity is what I call chasing and I refuse to do it. Prospects need to give me clear next steps at the end of the sales call if they are going to remain in my pipeline. They will agree to schedule another meeting to continue the evaluation of my service; they will tell me they want to buy it or they will tell me they don’t want it, but they can’t tell me to “call in a week after I have thought about it.” That puts me in the chase mode and my Bill of Rights says that is not allowed. At this point the prospect must give me a yes or no, or a clear description of the next step in the selling process, or I start to end the sales call.
I have other rules in my Bill of Rights, but hopefully what you have read so far will help you build your own Bill of Rights. If you set some good rules that prospects must follow in order to have your product or service and then are disciplined in adhering to the rules, you will have made a big step toward professional selling. No longer will you be selling from your knees; rather, you will be facing the prospect eye to eye, which is how professionals do business.
by Karl Schaphorst, President
Sandler Training
402-403-4334
www.karlschaphorst.sandler.com
Sandler Training is a global training organization with over three decades of experience and proven results. Sandler provides sales and management training and consulting services for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) as well as corporate training for Fortune 1000 companies. For more information, please contact Karl Schaphorst at (402) 403-4334 or by email at kschaphorst@sandler.com. You can also follow his blog at karlschaphorst.sandler.com.