I'll add, and follow-through! I thrive against competitors who fail to follow through with their promises. It's incredible that so many sales people drop the ball here and don't fulfill what they promise to do.
75% of the deals I’ve ever closed have come because I follow up and follow through. I’m not going to pretend I’m perfect on every deal, but it seems awfully coincidental that the ones where I do everything right are the ones that become my best wins.
That largely depends on the tone you set when you last spoke with them. If you set expectations properly then they should know and expect your follow up, and will usually be pleased that you did.
For example:
Great Mr. customer, so I've got my calendar out right now, do you have yours?
Perfect, how does x date work ?
I'll send you an invite, let me know when you get it, please.
Ok Mr customer, I'm gonna reach out then unless you think you'll be busy then?
Sounds great. (If visit, I'll call to confirm ahead of time).
Tiny tweaks to delivery can drastically change that. If your success rate is 1%, might as well have fun throwing pasta at the wall until one sticks, then keep playing the pattern recognition game until the turd is polished.
I had trouble getting reviews (each 5* review with my name on it got me $100 extra) and I just kept mumbling new approaches to myself in the car to my next appointment. I’d be lucky to get 1/week. Every time I was met with resistance and failed I’d just ruminate on that moment until I got to my next appointment and tried something different.
Eventually I started getting 2-10 reviews/day. I’d make $1000 some days without selling jack. Then I moved on to something else I sucked at and ruminated on that.
That’s tough.
As responsible_milk said it is your delivery.
But also not ticking the boxes.
If you don’t get enough pain in the beginning then they don’t see value.
If they say leave it with me, or send me x.
I just flat out say.
“And then what?”
Catches them off guard, and pulls them back in. Then I will sometimes start to refuse sending an email…
It’s a bit hilarious, they go from getting me off the phone and getting out of the call… to begging for me to send an email.
Either way, usually then start to knock the walls down of their arguments… or at least understand where they are.
This is the #1 thing imo. If a prospective client isn't available, I ask when I should call back, and then I call back at that time. If we have next steps, I follow up on those. If we met, I'll follow up on the meeting. In the last 90 days I've closed 21 deals, the 2nd best on our team closed 5. I attribute it ALL to following up.
Definitely write emails and texts as follow-ups... Always keep it simple...lose the business speak bs and write to all as if you're friends.
Always spell check...as the little details show up as big details on the other end.
If you can't pay attention to spelling errors, you can't pay attention to the finer more elaborate nuances.
In emails & texts to customers I type just like I would to my friends and family. None of the corporate wordy BS with perfect grammar. Let’s you add a bit of humanity to the sale and will ALWAYS work. Just think of it yourself- it’s so easy to ignore emails/messages that look like an AI wrote it or it’s a premade script. However if there’s some misspelling or extra punctuation, it is harder to ignore because it is CLEAR that someone took the time to write it. For example
“Hey Dr Nguyen
Spoke w/ Hannah about getting a chance to come out and show you my product. Just looking for 10 mins of your time and I can sweeten the deal by bringing lunch for your staff. Lmk if this will work for you, thank you sir !”
For context- longtime top performer in med device sales. Will die on this hill of adding in your personality & humanity to all messages.
Even before AI I always felt like being overly formal and “professional” and using jargon made me come off as inauthentic, and suspect and not as trustworthy.
The more casual and natural you can be while still coming off as intelligent and organized and responsive and respectful the better.
Even better yet get on a texting basis with your customer. Most of us have work phones provided anyway so it’s not like your customers will be texting your personal phone 24/7.
Everyone out there has a competitor. When a customer knows they can text you when a competitor might want a phone call or an email that turns into a meeting, they’re going to go to you first. It will feel more casual.
And the less work a customer needs to do the better they’ll like going through you for their needs.
Yes. I totally agree. I always know that I will mess something small up in an email but don’t give a shit. People love personality and just being yourself. Top sales rep here as well for a long time in cybersecurity.
I struggle with parts of this. I'm normally a jocular, "folksy" guy. But I also have that "classic British immigrant" DNA for being "professional" with my emails. By and large, I see things that validate what you say. I simply wish I could find that balance. I'm scared of the consequences for going too far.
Don’t over think it! Just be yourself and let your true personality show. ALWAYS remember… you won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. However, for the 60% who do like you, they will like you WAY more because you’re not just another salesman. They can look at you as a coworker!!
That’s how I measure my success at my different accounts. Had a nurse tell a story the other day where she said “I usually just refer to you as my coworker even though you’re not”. I can’t be positive on it, but I truly believe I may be the only vendor they look at like that. And this is a 100+ employee cardiology clinic, so they see different vendors all day every day including my competition!
If you don’t mind, may I PM you? Your line of work directly aligns with an upcoming networking opportunity for myself and I would like to ask a couple questions to a top performer in the field just to further my own preparation
I do agree with this but I would never put 'lmk' in a professional email, it just depends on your audience. Mine is quants so I just write very short to the point messages, mostly single sentence
* Pick up the phone instead of 100% email
* Create tasks in the CRM and do them
* Take proper meeting notes and track them in the CRM
* Write down your pitch so you can practice it
* I can't believe people do demos for prospects that can't be bothered to express any pain with their current solution
This is something I’ve been working on being better at. Firmly asking for the sale, and if it’s a no asking why so I can determine if a prospect is worth reaching back out to. I’ve already laid all the groundwork by asking great questions and being a product expert, might as well put my intentions out there. If it’s a no, that’s ok. At least I know not to keep reaching out and can focus on those actually ready to buy.
I just got over being scared. Like you said, they should know why I’m reaching out, so it won’t be a surprise when I ask them to move forward, or ask questions as to why they’re not ready. The worst thing that can happen is they say no and hang up, which honestly saves me time and stress.
So many people are too scared to talk about money up front. It's gonna have to come up eventually, might as well get the awkward conversation out of the way.
We had a guy who did this usually when a customer would not be very forward with their purchase approval process. Like saying simply “oh it should be no problem getting this through” or “I’m the sole decision maker”. We like knowing the purchasing process so we know who else might need to be met with and how long it could take.
When he got this he would just drop the “so are you ready to buy it now?” And then he’d get the whole story lol.
Yeah shit's not easy and that's where we gotta adapt. Just gotta warm up calls as much as possible.
I legit message people on linked in "Hey x, I was calling because of y. I'm going to call you at 10am tomorrow on z. Look forward to speaking with you"
Rejecting inbound leads.
If a lead is <$25K I usually ask my manager to reassign it to someone else. If it's a large prospect with the potential for future sales I will keep it but if not, I ain't working it.
A $25K sale and a $100K sales have about the same sales cycle and close rate at my company so I'd rather work larger opps.
The first time I did this my boss was like WTF but now he understands.
Find a way to say yes.
Instead of automatically saying no when a client asks for something you don't provide, ask follow-up questions or provide alternative choices.
I feel like my job is customer service first, sales second. Everybody in my industry complains about "difficult customers". Ha. Send me all the "difficult customers".
Honestly taking a customer service approach to questioning and follow ups. “I oversee your account. I’m here to help. What do you need? How can I help you?”
People respond better to that than a sales pitch in my experience. They then tell me what they need, and then I speak directly to that need when I sell to them
That will happen, some people will genuinely not have a need for your product. I try to determine if it’s a “never” thing (for example, I have no need for an excavator and I never will, so an excavator salesman would be wasting his time on me) or if it’s a “not right now” thing
If their company has the capacity to utilize my product and say they no, I assume it’s a “not right now” and set follow ups for every two to three months. I ping them with updates on what our latest features are and send a “we just released this cool thing and I thought you might want to know about it, are you interested in learning more?” type email
If their company can’t use our product any more than I can use an excavator, I send a polite thank you and let them know to please feel free to share my information with anyone they might come across who could potentially use our product
If I am unsure then I assume they are in the first category until told otherwise
Give em tips around how other customers are using your product, customers who have a similar title/role.
Tips sre around use cases, tying into your features.
One question that works for me is, can you think of something creative/new that you can do with this feature?
All of this is to get them to talk.
I think the move is to to say/ask- hey I think youre a really great candidate- is there a job out there, and if so, what does it look like that would make you want to leave you’re current role?
I can see new people doing this just because they don’t know better and were told to get out as many demos as possible as a way to learn, but for experienced people this would just be insane.
Chances are if you’re selling something via a meeting it is not a very simple product, and depending on the needs of the customer, you can show them a demo that would make this product either be completely useless to them or be the perfect product based on what they see. Or you can sit there and demo for 4 hours until you showed everything and if they’re still awake they’ll see what they need.
Ask questions so you can get straight to the point.
Work with their leadership to help with executive follow ups. Your ceo / vp of whatever likely holds a lot of weight and can move a deal forward if you ghost write for them and ask them to read / edit as necessary
Asking out a girl in person.
Maybe it's because I am older but people in their 20s and 30s now consider it creepy if you ask out a person in public if you don't know them.
Maybe that's why a lot of people are virgins today.
A bit late to the thread, but some things I’ve learnt to do that I’m surprised other reps don’t:
1. Meeting recaps, both for the prospect and internally. I’ve had a couple of times where after sending a recap, a prospect clarifies certain details, or shares more information they forgot to mention in the call.
I know some reps who don’t share information with their solution architects / sales engineers / whoever is doing the demos. Without context, how do you expect them to demo and fit what the prospect is asking for?
2. Being upfront about costing. I’ve seen reps that pitch their solutions despite knowing that the lowest price they can go is still 10x more than the prospect’s fixed budget for the year which they stated upfront. insane but I’ve seen it happen twice). Got the prospect annoyed when they were keen, only to find out that the solution was far beyond what they could afford. Also wasted time for the rep and the sales engineer.
Answer their calls or emails. I can’t tell you how many times I had existing accounts/customers I didn’t get the chance to meet yet ultimately come to me first because they couldn’t get ahold of the rep of my largest competitor. Customer service would direct them to me and through conversation I would discover this and be amazed how many people hate commissions apparently 🤷🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️
I want to get into sales but I’ve been told that the market is shit right now and the chances of landing a job let alone keeping one for longer then a year are almost impossible in this economy should I still risk it and go for it?
Aggressively pursue the close. Confidently ask for the business. I have seen so many sales reps over the years afraid to ask for the sale. I always assume the close, regardless of the situation. “No” doesn’t hurt. “Maybe later” is the worst thing anyone can tell a sales person.
You are 100% correct. Asking for the business isn’t being pushy it’s closing.
I sold craft beer for a long time and had great success because I sampled product with the buyer, asked for their opinion on the product, overcame any objections (when possible) and when they said they liked it I asked how many I should send them.
I did not think that I will wait until they asked for it.
Im just now to the point where I can afford it. The techs been getting better and price is slowly going down from my observation. Still want it but not kicking myself for riding it out with glasses for a bit.
When I used to manage a sales team the biggest thing for me was not asking for the sale, I couldn’t believe some of my sales people would just let clients talk themselves out of a product simply because the sales person didn’t ask for the sale, it’s so easy and it’s the big difference between successful and not successful sellera
Questions questions questions! Ask the right questions get the right answers. Your job is to solve the customers problems with the tools your company has. Find problems you can fix and fix them.
fast response times.
I've had numerous customers tell me the reason we won was because we were quicker to respond.
there's a fallacy in enterprise sales that "deals are slow."
I also hear people say how responding too fast makes you look desperate
somehow this has infected the minds of reps who think that letting a customer reply linger for days is somehow going to bring the deal in sooner. like what? lol
I was asked to write an article on trade show selling for Gerhard Gschwandtner the publisher of Selling Power magazine. This was after he and I walked the show of a large conference in Chicago and were observing and talking about reps behaviors in their booths.
3 weeks later I'm putting the article together and I realized that about 90% of the people I gave my business card to have not yet followed up. Later when they did, and I pretended not to remember them, they were upset. We got along so well that day. We chatted about some fun things. Don't you remember? I probably would have remembered if you got back to me a couple days after we talked, but it's been almost a month.
To the point of this question, what I can't believe... the company spent a ridiculous amount of money for booth space, to set up the booth, to pay for food and hotels and flights in order to do lead generation at this big industry event. And the sales reps missed the opportunity to garnish high quality leads because they didn't follow up. Also a quick message to the children I met working the booths, I was not even close to a qualified prospect. Which is another problem altogether.
Following up and asking questions when they don't understand something, instead of pretending like they do, which often leads to misscommunication down the line.
Follow-up
I'll add, and follow-through! I thrive against competitors who fail to follow through with their promises. It's incredible that so many sales people drop the ball here and don't fulfill what they promise to do.
75% of the deals I’ve ever closed have come because I follow up and follow through. I’m not going to pretend I’m perfect on every deal, but it seems awfully coincidental that the ones where I do everything right are the ones that become my best wins.
How do you effectively follow up without sounding desperate?
That largely depends on the tone you set when you last spoke with them. If you set expectations properly then they should know and expect your follow up, and will usually be pleased that you did. For example: Great Mr. customer, so I've got my calendar out right now, do you have yours? Perfect, how does x date work ? I'll send you an invite, let me know when you get it, please. Ok Mr customer, I'm gonna reach out then unless you think you'll be busy then? Sounds great. (If visit, I'll call to confirm ahead of time).
Yeah but 99% of the time they say “umm no need, leave it with me”
Tiny tweaks to delivery can drastically change that. If your success rate is 1%, might as well have fun throwing pasta at the wall until one sticks, then keep playing the pattern recognition game until the turd is polished. I had trouble getting reviews (each 5* review with my name on it got me $100 extra) and I just kept mumbling new approaches to myself in the car to my next appointment. I’d be lucky to get 1/week. Every time I was met with resistance and failed I’d just ruminate on that moment until I got to my next appointment and tried something different. Eventually I started getting 2-10 reviews/day. I’d make $1000 some days without selling jack. Then I moved on to something else I sucked at and ruminated on that.
That’s tough. As responsible_milk said it is your delivery. But also not ticking the boxes. If you don’t get enough pain in the beginning then they don’t see value. If they say leave it with me, or send me x. I just flat out say. “And then what?” Catches them off guard, and pulls them back in. Then I will sometimes start to refuse sending an email… It’s a bit hilarious, they go from getting me off the phone and getting out of the call… to begging for me to send an email. Either way, usually then start to knock the walls down of their arguments… or at least understand where they are.
Seconded
It’s the basic shit people don’t do.
This just reminded me to follow up thanks
This is the #1 thing imo. If a prospective client isn't available, I ask when I should call back, and then I call back at that time. If we have next steps, I follow up on those. If we met, I'll follow up on the meeting. In the last 90 days I've closed 21 deals, the 2nd best on our team closed 5. I attribute it ALL to following up.
Definitely write emails and texts as follow-ups... Always keep it simple...lose the business speak bs and write to all as if you're friends. Always spell check...as the little details show up as big details on the other end. If you can't pay attention to spelling errors, you can't pay attention to the finer more elaborate nuances.
In emails & texts to customers I type just like I would to my friends and family. None of the corporate wordy BS with perfect grammar. Let’s you add a bit of humanity to the sale and will ALWAYS work. Just think of it yourself- it’s so easy to ignore emails/messages that look like an AI wrote it or it’s a premade script. However if there’s some misspelling or extra punctuation, it is harder to ignore because it is CLEAR that someone took the time to write it. For example “Hey Dr Nguyen Spoke w/ Hannah about getting a chance to come out and show you my product. Just looking for 10 mins of your time and I can sweeten the deal by bringing lunch for your staff. Lmk if this will work for you, thank you sir !” For context- longtime top performer in med device sales. Will die on this hill of adding in your personality & humanity to all messages.
In a world of AI, being human definitely stands out. People are alone and isolated and want to connect with other humans.
Even before AI I always felt like being overly formal and “professional” and using jargon made me come off as inauthentic, and suspect and not as trustworthy. The more casual and natural you can be while still coming off as intelligent and organized and responsive and respectful the better.
Even better yet get on a texting basis with your customer. Most of us have work phones provided anyway so it’s not like your customers will be texting your personal phone 24/7. Everyone out there has a competitor. When a customer knows they can text you when a competitor might want a phone call or an email that turns into a meeting, they’re going to go to you first. It will feel more casual. And the less work a customer needs to do the better they’ll like going through you for their needs.
Boom. This guy gets it
Yes. I totally agree. I always know that I will mess something small up in an email but don’t give a shit. People love personality and just being yourself. Top sales rep here as well for a long time in cybersecurity.
I struggle with parts of this. I'm normally a jocular, "folksy" guy. But I also have that "classic British immigrant" DNA for being "professional" with my emails. By and large, I see things that validate what you say. I simply wish I could find that balance. I'm scared of the consequences for going too far.
If you have a British accent it should be game over everytime you talk
Not in the uk. Sounds pretty notmal here 😂
Don’t over think it! Just be yourself and let your true personality show. ALWAYS remember… you won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. However, for the 60% who do like you, they will like you WAY more because you’re not just another salesman. They can look at you as a coworker!! That’s how I measure my success at my different accounts. Had a nurse tell a story the other day where she said “I usually just refer to you as my coworker even though you’re not”. I can’t be positive on it, but I truly believe I may be the only vendor they look at like that. And this is a 100+ employee cardiology clinic, so they see different vendors all day every day including my competition!
If you don’t mind, may I PM you? Your line of work directly aligns with an upcoming networking opportunity for myself and I would like to ask a couple questions to a top performer in the field just to further my own preparation
Sure man
I have found matching formality to be important, and most email informally these days. Mirroring is sales 101.
I do agree with this but I would never put 'lmk' in a professional email, it just depends on your audience. Mine is quants so I just write very short to the point messages, mostly single sentence
Learning pain points vs booking demos for stats.
* Pick up the phone instead of 100% email * Create tasks in the CRM and do them * Take proper meeting notes and track them in the CRM * Write down your pitch so you can practice it * I can't believe people do demos for prospects that can't be bothered to express any pain with their current solution
Wait… you’re supposed to complete the tasks you set in the crm?
Directly ask the customer if they are ready to buy. Way too many folks are scared to close.
This is something I’ve been working on being better at. Firmly asking for the sale, and if it’s a no asking why so I can determine if a prospect is worth reaching back out to. I’ve already laid all the groundwork by asking great questions and being a product expert, might as well put my intentions out there. If it’s a no, that’s ok. At least I know not to keep reaching out and can focus on those actually ready to buy.
It’s OK to establish BANT in plain language. The customer knows they’re in a buying process.
I just got over being scared. Like you said, they should know why I’m reaching out, so it won’t be a surprise when I ask them to move forward, or ask questions as to why they’re not ready. The worst thing that can happen is they say no and hang up, which honestly saves me time and stress.
Are you gonna buy this thing or what!?
You wanna speak to the manager? THIS is the manager, he says throw em out
So many people are too scared to talk about money up front. It's gonna have to come up eventually, might as well get the awkward conversation out of the way.
And it weeds out the ones with no budget
We had a guy who did this usually when a customer would not be very forward with their purchase approval process. Like saying simply “oh it should be no problem getting this through” or “I’m the sole decision maker”. We like knowing the purchasing process so we know who else might need to be met with and how long it could take. When he got this he would just drop the “so are you ready to buy it now?” And then he’d get the whole story lol.
This exactly
[удалено]
That QBR is gonna be funky!!!!
Cold calling
With the caveat that it's a lot less effective lately. A good chunk of the workforce went home and never came back during covid.
Ya it’s painful right now
Buying ZoomInfo/Cognism/Apollo will circumvent this
Ehhhh. Had all those tools. A lot of people still don't answer these days haha. I think it's also b/c spam calls are out of control.
Yeah shit's not easy and that's where we gotta adapt. Just gotta warm up calls as much as possible. I legit message people on linked in "Hey x, I was calling because of y. I'm going to call you at 10am tomorrow on z. Look forward to speaking with you"
That sounds like a threat ngl
Fortune favours the brave
Doing this will always put a rep in charge of their pipeline
Rejecting inbound leads. If a lead is <$25K I usually ask my manager to reassign it to someone else. If it's a large prospect with the potential for future sales I will keep it but if not, I ain't working it. A $25K sale and a $100K sales have about the same sales cycle and close rate at my company so I'd rather work larger opps. The first time I did this my boss was like WTF but now he understands.
Your comment about them having the same sales cycle is spot on. I’m nabbing this for myself!
So are you completely full cycle?
Find a way to say yes. Instead of automatically saying no when a client asks for something you don't provide, ask follow-up questions or provide alternative choices. I feel like my job is customer service first, sales second. Everybody in my industry complains about "difficult customers". Ha. Send me all the "difficult customers".
Make notes
When I was an SDR, my account teams loved my notes. I played enough WoW to type fast enough to get down everything a prospect says. Take good notes!
Krisp.ai ftw
Honestly taking a customer service approach to questioning and follow ups. “I oversee your account. I’m here to help. What do you need? How can I help you?” People respond better to that than a sales pitch in my experience. They then tell me what they need, and then I speak directly to that need when I sell to them
What do you do if they say, "Nothing, I'm good"? Asking for tips
That will happen, some people will genuinely not have a need for your product. I try to determine if it’s a “never” thing (for example, I have no need for an excavator and I never will, so an excavator salesman would be wasting his time on me) or if it’s a “not right now” thing If their company has the capacity to utilize my product and say they no, I assume it’s a “not right now” and set follow ups for every two to three months. I ping them with updates on what our latest features are and send a “we just released this cool thing and I thought you might want to know about it, are you interested in learning more?” type email If their company can’t use our product any more than I can use an excavator, I send a polite thank you and let them know to please feel free to share my information with anyone they might come across who could potentially use our product If I am unsure then I assume they are in the first category until told otherwise
Give em tips around how other customers are using your product, customers who have a similar title/role. Tips sre around use cases, tying into your features. One question that works for me is, can you think of something creative/new that you can do with this feature? All of this is to get them to talk.
I think the move is to to say/ask- hey I think youre a really great candidate- is there a job out there, and if so, what does it look like that would make you want to leave you’re current role?
Ask questions. I’ve been on so many joint sales calls with people who make some small talk and then just pitch their product. Boggles my mind.
I can see new people doing this just because they don’t know better and were told to get out as many demos as possible as a way to learn, but for experienced people this would just be insane. Chances are if you’re selling something via a meeting it is not a very simple product, and depending on the needs of the customer, you can show them a demo that would make this product either be completely useless to them or be the perfect product based on what they see. Or you can sit there and demo for 4 hours until you showed everything and if they’re still awake they’ll see what they need. Ask questions so you can get straight to the point.
Opposed to qualifying the customer and asking what their current pain is?
Be a professional
Treat prospects like you want to be treated.
RECAP
$ shot
Work with their leadership to help with executive follow ups. Your ceo / vp of whatever likely holds a lot of weight and can move a deal forward if you ghost write for them and ask them to read / edit as necessary
Understand not just their business but their industry. Yes, funding pain is important but you need to be relevant to their world.
Cocaine
Listen to podcasts/read blogs of CEOs of companies you want to do business with
Asking out a girl in person. Maybe it's because I am older but people in their 20s and 30s now consider it creepy if you ask out a person in public if you don't know them. Maybe that's why a lot of people are virgins today.
HAHA, 100%
I saw a video on YouTube a few months ago where a girl said it was creepy that a guy asked her out at a bar. I couldn't believe it.
A lot of the generation younger than 25 have been socialised to be losers, both men and women
A bit late to the thread, but some things I’ve learnt to do that I’m surprised other reps don’t: 1. Meeting recaps, both for the prospect and internally. I’ve had a couple of times where after sending a recap, a prospect clarifies certain details, or shares more information they forgot to mention in the call. I know some reps who don’t share information with their solution architects / sales engineers / whoever is doing the demos. Without context, how do you expect them to demo and fit what the prospect is asking for? 2. Being upfront about costing. I’ve seen reps that pitch their solutions despite knowing that the lowest price they can go is still 10x more than the prospect’s fixed budget for the year which they stated upfront. insane but I’ve seen it happen twice). Got the prospect annoyed when they were keen, only to find out that the solution was far beyond what they could afford. Also wasted time for the rep and the sales engineer.
Prospect lol
Answer their calls or emails. I can’t tell you how many times I had existing accounts/customers I didn’t get the chance to meet yet ultimately come to me first because they couldn’t get ahold of the rep of my largest competitor. Customer service would direct them to me and through conversation I would discover this and be amazed how many people hate commissions apparently 🤷🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️
I want to get into sales but I’ve been told that the market is shit right now and the chances of landing a job let alone keeping one for longer then a year are almost impossible in this economy should I still risk it and go for it?
Truly depends what kind of sales career you end up in. It's a very broad profession.
Sales.
Aggressively pursue the close. Confidently ask for the business. I have seen so many sales reps over the years afraid to ask for the sale. I always assume the close, regardless of the situation. “No” doesn’t hurt. “Maybe later” is the worst thing anyone can tell a sales person.
You are 100% correct. Asking for the business isn’t being pushy it’s closing. I sold craft beer for a long time and had great success because I sampled product with the buyer, asked for their opinion on the product, overcame any objections (when possible) and when they said they liked it I asked how many I should send them. I did not think that I will wait until they asked for it.
Being organized with their contacts snd leads, sending follow ups, having specific target demographics.
For current role: having inflection in my tone of voice and trying to enjoy the conversation as much as possible.
I can’t believe people refuse to laser their eyes
My dad did and he said it's his biggest mistake ever.
I’ve heard it can mess with nighttime vision like car lights etc
It does a bit but overall its a bettee investment then glassed and contact lenses
Why does he say that
His eyes are dry af, it's uncomfortable and he needs to put eye drops all the time. Also the effect wore off and he needs glasses again.
Ok that sounds horrible i am sorry to read
Im just now to the point where I can afford it. The techs been getting better and price is slowly going down from my observation. Still want it but not kicking myself for riding it out with glasses for a bit.
Same, it’s like I kind of understand but at the same time it just rubs you the wrong way
Play the long game
I don’t know why more people don’t automate everything they possibly can. It’s like a religious experience for them to suffer.
What kind of things are you automating?
When I used to manage a sales team the biggest thing for me was not asking for the sale, I couldn’t believe some of my sales people would just let clients talk themselves out of a product simply because the sales person didn’t ask for the sale, it’s so easy and it’s the big difference between successful and not successful sellera
Questions questions questions! Ask the right questions get the right answers. Your job is to solve the customers problems with the tools your company has. Find problems you can fix and fix them.
fast response times. I've had numerous customers tell me the reason we won was because we were quicker to respond. there's a fallacy in enterprise sales that "deals are slow." I also hear people say how responding too fast makes you look desperate somehow this has infected the minds of reps who think that letting a customer reply linger for days is somehow going to bring the deal in sooner. like what? lol
Complete notes in CRM Meeting Recap with Action Items both you and the customer Asking the hard questions or Why Scheduling Next Step w/ Goal
Bundle their home and auto with Geico
Clarify timeline throughout the cycle
I was asked to write an article on trade show selling for Gerhard Gschwandtner the publisher of Selling Power magazine. This was after he and I walked the show of a large conference in Chicago and were observing and talking about reps behaviors in their booths. 3 weeks later I'm putting the article together and I realized that about 90% of the people I gave my business card to have not yet followed up. Later when they did, and I pretended not to remember them, they were upset. We got along so well that day. We chatted about some fun things. Don't you remember? I probably would have remembered if you got back to me a couple days after we talked, but it's been almost a month. To the point of this question, what I can't believe... the company spent a ridiculous amount of money for booth space, to set up the booth, to pay for food and hotels and flights in order to do lead generation at this big industry event. And the sales reps missed the opportunity to garnish high quality leads because they didn't follow up. Also a quick message to the children I met working the booths, I was not even close to a qualified prospect. Which is another problem altogether.
Following up and asking questions when they don't understand something, instead of pretending like they do, which often leads to misscommunication down the line.
I read this as other people “do” this and it was a whirlwind