Bumps On the Road To Easy Street
Last weekend I opened up a Chinese fortune cookie and the little slip of paper inside said, “There are a lot of bumps on the road to easy street.” DA! No kidding. What else is new? This expression certainly applies if you are trying to sell professional services.
So, how can you smooth out the road to Easy Street? Here are some suggestions:
- Be different. Don’t act like a sales person. Don’t come across like you’re hungry. Leave the marketing material and the power point presentation at the office when meeting someone for the first time. Don’t be too quick to diagnose and try to close the sale. Act like a doctor. Ask lots of questions.
- Get out of your comfort zone. In spite of what you may believe or feel, you’re not on easy street yet.
- Create value. Offer ideas that create perceived value to your prospect.
- Focus on the relationship, not on the sale.
- If you can’t meet with the decision maker, save yourself the trip. Second runner up doesn’t work. If you are going to a sales meeting, make sure that the person with check writing authority is in the room.
- Focus on what your customer wants… Not what you want.
- Use testimonials on a regular basis to gain credibility with new prospects. Do you have testimonials posted on your website?
- Take the risk out of doing business with you. Consider offering a 30 day pilot program to be sure that everyone can work well together.
- Prospecting is the lifeline of your business. Are you reactive or proactive? Do you have a proactive prospecting program in place that you work on every day? If your pipeline is not full of possibilities, you probably want to invest more time working ON the business rather than IN the business.
- STOP making excuses for poor results. If you want the real reason for poor results, look in the mirror.
- Be relentless. Be persistent. There is NO finish line in sales and marketing.
- Have an answer for the question “why should I do business with you?”
- Ask tough, powerful questions which will make the prospect answer in such a way that they will think of you.
- STOP doing free, unpaid consulting.
- Stop chasing prospects. If they want you, they know where to find you
- Commit to new business development. Too many business owners turn to business development when the well is dry and there is nothing in the pipeline. It’s too late then. If you are not spending an adequate amount of time on your business development efforts, don’t be too surprised if, in the not too distant future, you find yourself with nothing to do. You will be scratching your head, wondering where the next project is going to come from.
- If you hear any form of “maybe, we’ll think it over, we’ll noodle on it, we need to speak with the other committee members, we need to speak to John and he will be returning from his African Safari in 2 weeks,” accept the fact that it’s probably over. Move on!!
- Take responsibility for results. Don’t blame poor sales results on the economy, the person who never called you back, the mysterious committee who never could reach a decision or the prospect that said your fee was too high. If the sale does not close, there’s only one person to blame. Guess who?
- Be willing to risk failure. NO RISK…NO NOTHING.
- Get away from the negative people in your life.
- Debrief each sales call thoroughly. If you meet with 10 people and close on 2-3, take the time to understand what went wrong with the other 7 calls. Figure this out and your sales will grow exponentially.
I’m confident that if you embrace these concepts, the road to Easy Street will smooth out. Reject these ideas and it’s going to be a very bumpy ride.
Go have your best sales week ever.
Good selling!!
Ken
Ken Levine
Impact Business Solutions, Inc.
508-845-8849
SELL MORE BY SELLING LESS
www.ibs4sales.com
