The Ultimate Sales Pro by Paul Cherry

Author:Paul Cherry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AMACOM
Published: 2018-07-10T16:00:00+00:00

14

EMBRACE THE MOMENT OF TRUTH

I’m riding along with a salesperson as he calls on a customer. My job is simply to observe and, later, offer feedback. About six weeks ago, the rep submitted a proposal to the customer. Since then, they’ve had several follow-up meetings and phone calls.

At the meeting, I note that they seem to have good rapport. They chat about sports for a bit. Ask about each other’s families. Catch up on industry gossip. I’m surreptitiously looking at my watch. Twenty minutes have already gone by.

Finally the rep sidles up to the business at hand. “So I sent over some revisions to the proposal, based on our last discussion. Did you get a chance to look them over?”

“I did,” says the buyer.

“And what did you think?”

“We certainly seem to be moving in the right direction.”

“Great. And did you have any questions?”

“Well, tell me about the warranty terms. What happens if something goes wrong, say, two days after the warranty expires?”

At which point the rep launches into a long-winded discussion of the post-warranty service options, the possibility of arranging an extended warranty, which would of course be an additional cost, the value that the rep’s company places on long-term relationships and its willingness to work with customers to find a fair resolution of any disputes, and on and on.

Inside my head, I’m screaming, “Just ask for the order!” But I’m observing. I’m not supposed to say anything.

Before you know it, the buyer is saying, “So why don’t you summarize all that in an email and I’ll just run it by my boss to make sure he’s OK with it.”

Back in the car, I debriefed the rep. “How do you think that went?” I asked.

“I was disappointed that he’s still dragging his heels. On the other hand, we’re really, really close.”

“Why do you say he’s dragging his heels?”

“Well, he came up with that bogus question about the warranty.”

“Yes, because you invited him to. Instead of asking if he had any questions, what if you’d just said, ‘So how about it? Can we get started?’ What would he have said?”

The rep thought about that for a while. “I don’t know. Maybe no.”

“That’s true. He might have said no. In which case you’d be exactly where you are right now. Or he might have said yes. And you’d have a sale.”

I read a shocking statistic the other day. It came from a massive study of more than one million sales calls, and it found that salespeople “ask for the order”—that is, ask the buyer to take the next step—only 13 percent of the time.

Think about that. As salespeople, we all get trained on call objectives. Before we communicate with a buyer, we’re supposed to know exactly what action we want the buyer to take as a result. In transactional sales, it might be a decision to buy. In complex B2B selling, it more often means closing for the next step, which could be a follow-up meeting, an introduction to the boss, committing to a pilot or demo.

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