Your weekly disruption

Last week we looked at the model that aims to recapture or love for sales. Refer to blog http://www.superiorsales.com.au/for-the-love-of-sales-part-1/. This was in response to the CEB research that states that 76% of all salespeople do not like selling, there is a challenge for anyone to rise up this ladder. Technology has definitely changed the way we do business. But sometimes there is no substitute for actually sitting in the same room as someone, being able to look them in the eye and have a real conversation. And the sales meeting is definitely one of those times. The following process looks at how to manage a sales meeting powerfully and respectfully – in terms of your mindset, your energy and your conversation.

We want to develop the right thinking (mindset), the right tone (energetic state) and what you need to say (conversation) for each and every selling conversation. This applies to each stage of the conversation before (what happens prior to the sales meeting), during (the body of the meeting) and at the decision point (the end of the conversation where the prospect is choosing whether or not to do business with you). Today we are going to look at what occurs during a meeting: selective, dance & clicking.

Outside of being a Key Account Manager and you have been allocated an account you cant avoid a la Coles or Woolworths; we often have the opportunity to get clear before you meet about the type you want to work with, what sort of work you do, and how you want to work.

So when you go into a sales meeting, make sure you are choosing your clients. Have part of your sales system be the point where you choose. Have a strategy for rejecting the clients who aren’t a fit.

During the meeting you are interviewing the prospect just as much as they are interviewing you. You are determining if they are someone that you can help, and that you would want to serve. If not, be prepared to walk away. Paradoxically, if this is authentic, it makes you more attractive. If it is clear that you won’t just work with anyone and there is a bar that the prospect has to reach to become your client, the prospect of working with you does become more attractive. However, this has to be authentic – please don’t do this as a sales technique.

Michael Port in his book Book Yourself Solid calls it the ‘red velvet rope policy’:

Choosing your clients is easy to say, and easy to agree with in principle, but it takes incredible courage to implement it in practice. Particularly when you need the sale.

During the sales conversation the energy is that of a dance. While you have prepared what you are going to say about how you work, the problems you solve and what your great product is, you can’t recite this like a written speech.

You need to dance with the energy of the conversation, play with how much to intervene, what advice or mentoring to give, and how deep to go quickly – and have fun with it. Be present and be joyous with it.

One of our intents for any sales meeting is that the prospect walks away having received incredible value, whether or not they buy from us. This does two things. First, it means that in the future, if circumstances change and the time is right for them, they are much more likely to come back to you and become a client at that point. Second, they will refer business to you, even if they aren’t a client themselves. So make the opportunity to make the bigger contribution that you can.