Increase Closing Ratios Through Relationship

I once heard a great definition of the word Leadership from best selling author John Maxwell. He defined leadership as "being willing to do things others are not". This is also a key to increasing your sales numbers. Every industry is different, every sales environment is different, but one thing remains the same no matter what. If you can find a way to BE DIFFERENT while adding value to your customer you will get noticed and close more sales. Don't we all want to win sales based on value or filling the need the customer has the best and not on price? Well the word of the day is perspective. Take a step back, take a deep breath and put yourself in your prospects shoes. The sales professional who can think most like their customers will win every time.

Let me give you some examples. I have sold technology before, and while selling technology most of my competitors sales presence was engineers playing a sales persons role. If you're a sales engineer don't take this wrong, but learn from it. My number one goal in that job was to see customers face to face. Why? Because my competitors wanted to talk to the customer about a widget, or programming languages and I did more listening then talking and only talked to the customer about what ever he or she wanted to talk about. Most of the time it was a completely unrelated item and when it was related they didn't care about my products or services. They cared about getting rid of a specific problem that was hurting the way they were compensated and performance reviewed. When you can find out what your competitors do not know and apply that to your sales strategy you will win more times than not. It only needs to be one thing too, it doesn't have to be three or four things. How can you do this...

1) Listen and ask questions- go into a meeting with a client having spent at least 10 minutes thinking about their business, put yourself in their shoes and create 3-5 quality questions that will allow you to get to know them better and their business. It will also let them know you care about them and their problems.

2) Find a way to let them dominate the conversation. You have two ears, two eyes and one mouth, use them in that proportion. If you're talking you are not learning what your advantage is.

I will have more tips in future articles on this subject. Feel free and comment if you have any subjects you'd like to see covered or have any questions in general.