Are you finding it tough to sell on the phone right now?
Do your phone calls start off OK but then but soon squiggle off into nowhere?
Imagine if you could gently nudge your buyers back on track and get more deals done.
Well stay tuned because that’s exactly what I’m going to show you how to do in this video.
Salespeople are often given mixed messages in their training
Be a consultant, build a relationship, ask questions they’re told. But also be aggressive and push for the close. This always confused me because they’re polar opposite approaches.
On one side is being passive, the other aggressive.
They don’t take into account what the buyer wants either. At some points of a conversation the buyer wants you to give them insights, at other points they want you to help them break through the status quo and get your product implemented.
So a better way to think about selling on the phone is to try and nudge the squiggle. Let me explain…
#1 ALWAYS HAVE A GOAL
When you’re selling on the phone, you should always be moving towards the next close. You should not be having “check in” or “relationship building” conversations. They are worthless.
When you jump on the phone with a potential buyer, you should have the goal of closing them on something. It could be closing a date for the next meeting or securing more information about the decision makers within the account.
You should always be closing something.
#2 NUDGE THE BUYER
Now when you get on the phone, it’s not always as simple as that. Your buyer will try and pull you in all kinds of different directions.
Think of the call like this – You have a starting point and an end goal. Your buyer is going to want to go all over the place and your job is to keep nudging them in the right direction.
You can do this many ways. Often salespeople try and use statements rather than questions to nudge their buyers but they often get this process wrong.
#3 POSITIVE VERBS
So tip three is to use “positive verbs”. I’ll explain this with an example that I know you’ve experienced before…
How many times have you seen a sign that says “don’t” do something and found yourself wanting to do it? This is human nature.
Lots of salespeople on the phone will try and nudge the conversation by saying “I wouldn’t do X…”. But by saying “I wouldn’t do X…” you pull the buyer into asking questions why they shouldn’t do it. This is called a negative verb statement.
The smarter move is to use verbs positively. So instead of saying “I wouldn’t do X…” when you want to nudge the buyer towards another option, you could say “Y is a better way to do this…”. Then the buyer is much more likely to accept the nudge in the right direction and not question it.
#4 TAKE CONTROL
The final tip is to take control of the conversation as soon as it starts by sharing the common challenges you are seeing in the buyers marketplace rather than asking them what their problems are.
If you ask the average buyer what their problems are you’ve no idea what crap they’re going to come out with.
But when you start the conversation off by sharing the 3 pain points they’re likely suffering from right now, you again keep the conversation on the pathway to the close.
For me selling our Salesman.org sales success platform to sales leaders I often start my calls with:
“So we’re working with hundreds of sales teams right now. The most common pains that sales leaders tell me they’re in are #1 measuring their teams sales skill and #2 coaching their team to success. Would you say you face these issues as well?”
So at once I’ve taken control of the conversation and I’m nudging it towards two problems that I can help that sales leader with.
So there you have it, you can now nudge the squiggle back towards the close too.
