Your calls and follow-up efforts have paid off, and now it’s time to meet with the prospect in person and make your sales presentation. How to ensure that you will be successful? Four elements could determine the success or failure of your sale:
- Understanding: put yourself on the same side as your prospect.
- Need: Determine the factors that will motivate your prospect to listen to you with the intention of buying.
- Importance: the weight that the prospect assigns to a product, benefit, utility, price or temporality.
- Trust: your ability to project credibility, eliminate doubt, and gain the prospect’s belief that the risk of purchase will be less than the benefit received.
Make an effective sales presentation
We give you a closer look at each step so you can make every sales presentation a resounding success:
1. Before the presentation
Know your clients’ business
Potential customers expect you to know their business, customers, and competition as well as you know your own product or service. Study your client’s industry; Know your problems and trends and investigate who your main competitors are.
Some research tools include the company’s annual report, catalogs or newsletters, publications, directories of commerce instances, and the Internet.
Write your sales presentation
A sales presentation is not something you do in the moment and without planning; You should always have it in writing. The basic structure of a presentation includes five key factors: a common point with the prospect, a description of the business, questions to understand the customer’s needs, a summary of your main selling points, and a closing.
Make sure you talk to the right person
This seems obvious, but many sellers forget it. Sometimes, after you blurt out the entire sales presentation, the prospect tells you that he or she requires permission from someone else. Therefore, when scheduling the appointment, always ask if you are speaking to the right person or if there are others involved in the decision-making.
2. At the client’s office
Create understanding
Before you start talking business, create a bond with the prospect. To achieve this you must do your homework and find out what they have in common or if there is any recent news about the company. It is recommended that you have an overview of both the company and the business to build an understanding between both parties.
make questions
Don’t fall into your speech sales automatic. The best way to sell is to ask the prospect a few questions and let them direct the conversation. Your questions should be carefully selected in order to identify the prospect’s needs so that you can show them how your offer can help them.
You may want to ask questions that require “yes” or “no” answers. Ask questions that reveal their purchasing motivations, their problems or needs, and their decision-making process. Don’t be afraid to ask them why they feel that way; This is how you will understand them.
Take your notes
Don’t rely on your memory to remind you what’s important to a prospect. Ask if it’s okay for you to take notes during the meeting and write down key points.
Make sure you write down your objections; This way you can respond only to them and show the customer how they will benefit from your product or service. These could be saving money, increasing productivity, increasing staff motivation or brand name recognition.
Learn to listen
Salespeople who talk the entire presentation not only bore the prospect, but also end up losing the sale. A good rule is to listen 70 percent of the time and talk only 30. Never interrupt; Perhaps it is tempting to enter the conversation to tell the prospect something that you consider essential. But before you speak, ask yourself if you really need to do so.
When you speak, focus on answering questions. You can improve your listening skills by taking notes and observing the prospect’s body language.
Respond with “you feel”, “I felt” and “I found”
Don’t argue when a prospect turns you down and tells you they’re not interested, don’t have time, or have already bought something similar. Simply say something like, “Understand how you feel. Many of my current clients felt the same way. But when they noticed how much time they saved using my product, they were amazed.” Then ask for an appointment; Prospects like to hear stories similar to theirs.
Go deeper
If a prospect tells you “We’re looking to save costs and be more efficient,” will you immediately tell them how your product will help them achieve that? A good salesman wouldn’t do it; he would ask more to get to the bottom of it. You could say something like, “I understand why this is important, can you give me a specific example?” Asking for more information puts you in a better position to address the customer’s needs.
Find the key aspect
A customer may have a long list of needs, but there is usually one aspect that motivates them to buy. The key to finding it is to recognize that it is something emotional and not something practical; a need for recognition, love or trust.
Let’s say you’re selling memberships to a sports club. For a prospect who will be taking a trip to the beach in two months, this aspect may be losing weight to look good in a swimsuit. For a prospect who recently discovered he had high blood pressure, this could be improving his health.
Eliminate objections
When a prospect objects, don’t respond immediately. Instead, show empathy by saying, “Let’s explore your concerns.” Ask for more details of the objections. Here are some strategies to do it:
- Offers an option: “Is it delivery time or financing that worries you?
- Get to the heart of the matter: “When you say you want to think about it, what specific point is it that you should reflect on?”
- Work on a solution: Every sale should be a deal. win win. The more you get used to making sales, the more familiar you will be with objections. Make a list of them and propose some solutions.
3. Close the sale
There is no magic to closing a sale. If you followed the steps above, all you have to do now is wait for the customer’s order. However, there are sellers who make the mistake of not asking for the final decision.
For some, “closing” sounds like a negative thing. If you are one of them, start by changing your thinking towards something more positive like “deciding.”
Editorial Team The editorial team of EMPRENDEDOR.com, which for more than 27 years has worked to promote entrepreneurship.