Sales professionals learn how to Optimize and Maximize their – Golden Hours of Selling

And there is some language that needs to be defined.

There is Sales Language around the Activity of Selling

Last week covered the first five:

6. Discovery and Rapport

You have a very specific agenda for your Discovery and Rapport appointment.

YOU are the Driver!

This is exactly what you are doing:  Discovering needs and building Rapport

Rapport begins the second you great the prospect.

Then you ask, “is there someplace we can sit down”. That was a game changer.

Get to know the prospect – Rapport, AND find out how you can best serve them – Discovery.

How do you find out how to best serve them?  ASK them.

We call it the key question.

This is the most important part of Discovery because they will tell you how to sell them.

“There are many different benefits of a live plant program – From YOUR perspective as a Country Club GM, what’s the most important benefit to YOU?”

Then when you begin to create your proposal, you make sure you are including that answer

7. Proposals

Begin with the end in mind when creating your proposal – You have to Present this to the prospect.  How to make sure the presentation is a win

There are two big problems with creating proposals – and they are opposites ends of the same stick

The second one first:

A winning proposal has considered the unique needs and desires of THIS prospect and When they present it – the prospect knows it.  The language of the presentation is obviously connected to your Discovery process.

Spend the time customizing and tailoring it.

The other problem is spending too much time – comes from not having a Process for creating proposals.

There are a lot of elements in the proposal writing activity that can become a process.

Not only these, but even more – the Realization that you only have so many quarters today – how many quarters are you going to spend creating a proposal?

If you’re spending too much time creating proposals – ask yourself, “am I doing this bc I don’t want to do the other work of prospecting and phone calls?”

And, “Am I busy being busy?”

8. Presentation

The presentation is the time you are pitching your big ideas – with the Expectation you are going to get a Yes!

Zig Ziglar – “you have to plan to win, prepare to win and expect to win.”

If you go into the presentation and expecting them to say, “well… let me think about it”

Here are the key words I think of for presentation:

Those are the Soft Skills of presentation

The hard skills are the order and neatness of your sales materials

9. Most sales don’t close bc the salesperson does not ask for it

You have to have some type of closing question – or questions

The close happens smoothly when you have done all the other sales activities

10. Follow Up

Not every sale will close on the first attempt.

You have to have a follow up process.

Follow up also applies to the First sale – selling the appointment

“do not underestimate the amount of effort it takes to close a sale”

The appointment OR the sale.

It is phone calls

There is a balance:  You are a welcomed Guest – Not an annoying pest.

With this Language and this kind of approach to your Selling Activities – all of your prospects will be in one of those stages – and the Best part – you’ll know which one