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How You May Be Losing Sales Because You Are Pushing Your Prospects Instead of Letting Them Pull You

Written by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Article Overview: Is your sales approach all about pushing your prices, products or proposals onto your potential customers? Maybe it is time to consider another, more effective one?

How You May Be Losing Sales Because You Are Pushing Your Prospects Instead of Letting Them Pull You

Many selling professionals work on honing their sales skills within their sales approach such as:

• Fact Finding
• Asking open-ended questions
• Separating stalls from objections
• Delivering a dynamic presentation
• Earning the commitment (what others call closing)

Through out this process, these fine folks are probably doing a lot more pushing instead of letting their potential qualified customers (a.k.a. qualified prospects) pull them in. The end result is that they are probably losing a lot more sales than they need to be. Let me explain.

Imagine for a moment you are holding one end of a 3 foot long rope and the other end is being held by your potential qualified customer. So you push on the rope with your fancy sales skills and what happens? Probably nothing to next to nothing.

Now what would happen if that person who you really want as a client would pull you closer to her or him? By that qualified potential customer taking the action suggests that he or she is truly interested and wants to learn more. This also implies that an established or beginning relationship exists because people only pull those who that know and want to know better.

Recently when speaking with Jonathan Farrington who shared that he had been approached by a major publisher of business books, I made this observation. Jonathan received a call out of the blue from this major publisher who asked him to write a book to be published by them. What is so cool that Jonathan did not even solicit this publisher. He was unaware that he was holding the end of the rope. Also, he did not know that he had established a relationship with this organization. Given that he has demonstrated sales success with his TopSalesExperts.com website and his blog, this publisher was convinced that Jonathan was the right person to approach. The beginning relationship had been established.

To increase sales demands that those in the selling arena stop pushing so hard and to allow being pulled in. Of course, this may affect the sales cycle time. Hence, this is why knowing all statistics involved within your sales activity is critical.

In today's economy, now more than ever, people want to have confidence in the people that they buy from. Sure, low price may lose you an order once in a while, but when you are committed to developing strong relationships and working your sales action plan, you will find yourself being pulled in far more often. The results will be a more effective sales approach, increase sales, improve customer loyalty and lower costs.

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  Pushing Potential

Article Tags: blog, business books, dynamic presentation, end of the rope, end result, jonathan, jonathan farrington, li li, objections, observation, open ended questions, out of the blue, prospects, relationship, sales success, ul



Related Forum Posts
Top sales skills - Qualifying Fast to Avoid Wasting Sales Time Do you chase after your prospects until they tell you yes or no? Do you ever tell your prospects "No", as in "No, I am not going to sell to you"? There are many things in selling that you do not and will not be able to control. The one thing that you do have control over is your time and how you choose to use it. Motivating Prospects Qualifying goes beyond budget, authority, and need. You want to sell to prospects who *want* to buy from you. Finding prospects that need our products usually is not difficult. Finding those who really want our products though can be very hard if we wait for them to come to us. Selling to People Outside Your Comfort Zone Most salespeople who are "people persons", already think that they are good at this. Let me ask you a question. When you last lost a sale, how was your rapport with the key person who decided against you?
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Simple way to avoid Cold Calling - Gary, A chiropractor I work with hates cold calling (me too!) and he uses a technique to warm people up to using his services - it's so simple! In Sales your dealing with 3 pools of people: 1. Strangers 2. Prospects 3. Returning Customers You need to move people from one pool to the next. We'll concentrate on #1 and #2 as it's most relevant to your question. My Clients does the following (you just have to tailor it to your situation - be creative). My Client (we'll call him Bob) Bob leverages his time and resources to only get people that need his offer (pain relief) to put their hand up. Dealing with Strangers can get expensive and they don't like to be told what to do as they have no trust or relationship built with him. So to get Strangers to put their hands up he writes up an offer with a free report on a particular pain relief - let's say lower back pain (note: he can simply just change lower back pain to neck pain and have a new report). and uses multiple marketing vehicles to promote the Free report - magazines, newspaper, forums, postcards, private clinics etc. The only people picking up this information are the very people Bob would like as customers as they have Lower back pain. Bob's Free report ends with him stating his services and includes a Free in-house Consultation with no obligation. You'd be surprised at how easily Bob converts Strangers into Prospects. Note: They become prospects when they ask for the Free Guide and in exchange provide their contact details. This gives Bob unlimited opportunity to contact them for the Free in-house consultation with no obligation to continue using him. At this stage Bob's ability to close the sale lies in his office providing good customer service, Bob's ability to help the prospect and provide value at the free in-house consultation. Notice, he hasn't had to pick up the phone to COLD-CALL his Stranger pool or his Prospect pool. Hope that example helps to increase your prospecting!
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Re: Email Etiquette - [quote="jvprosperity":24jznj58] The P.S. suggestion is good but it depends on the type of communication (e.g. Autoresponder series verses one off emails to Clients or Prospects)[/quote:24jznj58] Andy, You are right. I was mainly referring to Auto Responder emails. To end a normal email, I attach signatures. Takuya


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