After weeks of trying, Sean finally got the company president on the phone. He tried breaking the ice with some small talk and asked some basic questions to warm up his potential client. “Listen,” said Ms. President. “I don’t have time to give you information that you can find out in 2 seconds on our Web site. We need people who make us time and money, not waste it.”

Planning & Preparation
Successful salespeople are always prepared. They understand the client, the industry, the company and the specific pain the client is dealing with. Prepared sales professionals go into every sales call stocked with background information, ready to ask intriguing questions and give meaningful examples that shine a light on the solutions to the customer’s problems.

Put simply, sales professionals are problem solvers, much like a physician trying to understand the reason for an illness sales professionals know how to ask the correct and pointed questions to understand the issue and move immediately to problem identification and resolution. And if a sales professional gets stumped for an answer they know where to go to get it. It is not too often that sales professionals at least prepared ones will know how to get an answer and where to get it from.

Planning is one of the most important parts of sales preparation. Selling without planning is much like going on a blind date. You do know that the person is male or female, they want to meet you and communicate with you yet that is all. One cannot be a problem solver if you do not understand to whom you are speaking and how you can understand the issue.

Specifically there are three resources that you can use that cost no if little money to better understand client issues and how you can aid them.  They include the annual report, news and company and industry information. For most companies, this information can be found online.

Susan sat down at the conference with the market development team of a Fortune 500 company. After receiving the invitation to meet, she’d spent weeks researching the company, their competition and their corporate culture. She came prepared with an approach that dovetailed her research into her company’s products. She also came prepared to take the lead on the meeting. The meeting began with introductions and then the director said, “Well, Susan. Here’s what were looking for, why don’t you take it from here…”

Purpose & Passion
You must have an intention for each and every conversation, call, proposal and action you take. Not to say that all is calculated but you must have a reason for why you are doing what you are doing.

Purpose helps you to answer three vital and dynamic questions:
•    Who is the client?
•    What do they need?
•    Why me?

Your ability to reply to and have good content to these answers will assist you with understanding what you bring to the table and how you can assist the client to derive pleasure from the current pain. Your purpose gives you direction as if the compass and helps you to drive to the shortest destination in the least amount of time.

Successful sales professionals love challenges, are exceptional about adversity and love the product or service that they represent. They are never shy, they are never non-conversant and you can sense their spirit and their passion when they speak. In fact, I heard a South Aftrican word the other day, enbutu, meaning from the spirit. Successful sales professionals have an aura of spirit, of love, of passion, of commitment in everything and anything that they do. The more you can create enbutu in your sales presentations and your sales day the more energetic and more representative you can be for your client.

Your passion will also help you with persistence. The successful salesperson is someone that is willing to go the distance when fatigued or stumped so that they create value, vision and viability for the prospective client that yearns for a resolution.

2008. Drew J. Stevens All rights reserved.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 7:40 pm and is filed under Sales Management Training, Sales Training, sales help, sales skills, sales techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.