SalesMotivation.net

by Tessa Stowe

Do you rely on prospects finding you, or do you actively look for prospects?

You will make more sales faster, at higher prices, and have a lot less competition if you find your prospects before they find you - or your competition.

Why is that?

Let’s look at two scenarios and you’ll see why.

Scenario One

A prospect decides he has a problem that he wants solved, and he approaches several vendors, each of whom offer a potential solution. The prospect spends time evaluating each vendor’s solution and, once he decides on his preferred vendor, he uses the other vendors he has been evaluating to help get his preferred vendor to lower the price.

Does this scenario sound familiar to you? In this scenario, what happens to the speed of the sale? Will there be pricing pressure? How hard is it to make the sale?

As you can see from Scenario One, if a prospect approaches you, you can safely assume he is approaching your competitors as well and that the sales process is going to be drawn out while the prospect evaluates everyone and gets confused comparing all the various solutions and options.

Is there a way to avoid this? Read on to Scenario Two, and you will see that there is a better way.

Scenario Two

A prospect decides she has a problem which she wants solved and, just as she has decided she wants to solve that problem, you contact her - before she approaches your competitors looking for a solution.

You show her how you can solve her problem and, because she trusts you - and this is critical - she decides to save herself the time and effort of looking at alternative solutions and to buy from you.

If, for due diligence reasons, the prospect must evaluate others before she finally decides, she will do what she can to make the required evaluations quickly and will ensure that the evaluation criteria favors your solution.

In this scenario, what happens to the speed of the sale? Will there be pricing pressure? How hard is it to make the sale?

Scenario Two is obviously the ideal, but how do you find prospects before they go looking for a solution and contact your competition? And, as a backup strategy - just in case you miss contacting them when they are triggered - how do you get prospects to contact you before they contact your competition?

You can make both of these things happen if you implement the following four steps:

Step One:
Determine who might want and/or need your products and services. Who is your ideal client in your target market?

Step Two:
Determine what causes your ideal clients’ circumstances to change such that they need your products and services. What would cause them to want or need your products and services today, as opposed to yesterday, when they were not interested? What needs to change? What are the “triggers”?

Step Three:
Build relationships and awareness of your solutions with potential prospects. You want them to think of you and contact you first when they are “triggered” by circumstances to need or want your products or services.

Step Four:
Put systems in place so you can detect when these “triggers” happen with your ideal clients so you can contact them before they go looking for a solution.

If you implement these four steps, you will not only find prospects before your competition does, but you will also have a back-up plan in place whereby ‘triggered’ prospects will contact you before your competition.

Implement these four steps if you want to make more sales faster - at higher prices. You do, don’t you?
©Tessa Stowe, Sales Conversation, 2009

About the Author

Tessa Stowe teaches small business owners and recovering salespeople simple steps to turn conversations into clients without being sales-y or pushy. Her FREE monthly Sales Conversation newsletter is full of tips on how to sell your services by just being yourself. Sign up now at www.salesconversation.com.