If you can master these, you’ll be well on the way to turning sales disasters into triumphs.
Don’t fall into The Features Trap and risk boring or at worst alienating your customer - find out why features are dangerous in the wrong hands, including how to recognise them and what to do about them.
Ever wondered why the customer has suddenly gone quiet, or the project’s been cancelled, or the budget’s been cut? Well, you wouldn’t be wondering if you’d done your homework on all the people involved in the customer’s buying decision process.
And the next time you come out of a meeting with the feeling that you don’t really know what’s going on, or vaguely uneasy that you’ve missed something, remember The Art of Questioning, and next time make sure you’ve filled in the Question Matrix.
Of course you might have asked the right questions, but if you didn’t listen mindfully to the answers, what’s the point?
A huge part of listening is not only done with the ears. You should be also be aware of all the visual clues you are receiving (and transmitting), in other words the non-verbal communication, including body language.
And at some point of the meeting the customer’s going to ask you questions or object to what you’re proposing. As at every stage of the sales encounter, there is a tried and tested method for handling these objections.
Finally you need to make sure that you’ve just had a sales meeting, and not just a cosy chat. The difference is that at the end of a sales meeting there is some kind of commitment. That’s commitment from the customer to do something which moves the sale forward.
