Andy Mccreadie

There is often a dilemma with small and growing businesses - they get busy servicing clients, neglect to focus on generating new business opportunities, then end up panicking and looking around for work. It can be a vicious circle – being needy does not leave you in the best mind-set to build your client base with the ‘right’ sort of clients.

Think about how you buy something. If you stopped reading now and wrote down your buying process, would it look like this: Decide what I want; find it; buy it? Probably not, but that’s what we want our potential customers to do. We want them to make decisions. They often don’t, or want to do so at their own pace, and that can be frustrating.

True story - one of my clients told me that every time she went near her phone to make a call, it changed from a tame domestic cat into a fearsome tiger. She broke into a sweat just thinking about making a call.

Too often people hear what is being said in a conversation but they are not really listening intently. That can be frustrating to the person talking in a social environment but potentially a reason not to do business with someone in a selling situation.

Have you ever wondered how come there are so many terrible salespeople calling on you? Surely their bosses know they are so awful? How would they let their good name be tarnished by commission-hungry, pushy salespeople who cannot seem to bring in enough business?

I read an article recently that slammed salespeople for using the “hard sell” tactic of asking for a decision at the end of a presentation.

In sales, if we are not careful, we can give away a lot of free consultancy - in our attempt to win the business. Some see it as inevitable, and resign themselves to writing multiple quotes, most of which do not close.

Let’s face it. Cold calling / or nearly cold calling is part of growing a business. No calls, no sales. Poor calls, fewer sales. Exceptional calls, great sales. So why then do so many salespeople treat calling like some antagonist they’d rather avoid? Hard to tell.

Salespeople invest time developing their pitch, formulating questions, and preparing responses to expected questions and objections from the prospect. They rehearse, refine, and rehearse some more.

Sandler Training clients learn how to set an ‘Up-Front Contract’- a clear, mutually accepted set of outcomes and next steps through which a buyer and a seller determine what will constitute a successful outcome of the meeting and the next steps to be taken. Sometimes that means the salesperson has to take a deep breath and resist the buyer's attempts to manipulate things.