Many sales professionals believe their biggest selling roadblock is that they “Don’t Ask for the Order.” When sales managers review their team’s progress, they ask, how many times did you attempt to close the sale?
An old sales myth is that you must hear NO! 10 times before you get to YES.
Here are some of the “excuses” sales managers hear when dissecting a lost sale.
- I guess I didn’t ask for the order at the “Right Time” or use the “Right Words”.
- I was afraid they’d say NO.
- Rookies blame customers who didn’t allow enough time to listen to the whole sales pitch.
- Some reps use the excuse that “I caught the customer on a bad day.”
I believe that a significant portion of the customer sales reluctance is because the sales rep did not gain the customer’s trust.
We live in a rush, rush, close the sale quickly world. With email, voicemail, virtual meetings and on-line presentations, digital contract signatures, and a plethora of non-face-to-face sales tools, we constantly hear about efficient selling.
What I find is that many sales people do not invest the time to conduct face-to-face meetings. Some say that driving to an appointment for one prospect is a waste of time. It’s smarter to have a virtual meeting with many prospects every day.
Last year, I taught a Body Language workshop for 75 real estate professionals from a large brokerage in my part of the US. We discussed reading their seller’s Body Language. The agents admitted that they ‘re not great at reading Body Language because they usually only get in front of a customer one time. They said that most customer communications were via phone or email. They rarely saw their sellers or buyers.
If the prospect was a seller, they met that individual at the time of the formal “Sales Presentation.” Big Money Realtors have real estate assistants who looked at the seller’s property, talked to the customer and did information gathering.
I was shocked at learning this. The slam, bam, thank you ma’am technique was not new to me. However, when dealing with the biggest asset a family will ever own, could the investment in up close and personal time to establish trust and build a relationship, be an antique idea? How about in your organization?
My husband sold real estate for 20 years. He always took the time to get to know his buyers or sellers over a cup of coffee. He visited them in their home, met their pets and maybe their children. He took time touring and admiring the sellers home. He laid groundwork for a trusting friendship.
He was known as the agent who could save his fellow agents deals when it looked like all was lost. I believe that was because he had honed his skills at reading customer’s silent signals and knew how to gain trust quickly. He knew that Trust Takes Time.
How about you? Are you getting to know your prospects? Are you letting technology keep you from gaining your customers trust?
As Zig Ziglar, the first motivational speaker I ever heard said, “If people like you they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you.”