Struggling to progress your sales cycle? Are any of these sales predicaments familiar to you?
- What is the best way to write this proposal?
- Should I propose Solution A or Solution B?
- What should I prepare for my meeting next week?
- Who should I bring to this presentation with me?
- How can I have maximum impact?
- How do we win this?
You get the idea. Sales offices around the world are jam-packed with sales people and their team-mates or managers all debating the best way to progress their sales cycles, win deals they are working on, solve problems, design proposals, increase their chances and out-think the competition.
Some salespeople have limited support in their organisations so they sit and worry all on their own. Others are part of large team structures with the opinions of many colleagues to draw on, leading to the opposite problem of too many perspectives and more confusion.
Normally the end result of both situations is the same – a formulaic, industry-standard, traditionally managed sales cycle. The customer gets a nice safe proposal, no-one does anything particularly wrong but the deal doesn’t materialise.
The Solution is Simple
The solution: Just Ask. Guess who you should ask? The Customer.
Just ask the customer! Incredible, huh? It is a terrible and surprising truth that when “back at base” discussing how to win, very few sales people consider directly going to the customer to understand the way forward. Worse, many managers don’t coach this either.
I can’t think of many situations where a Sales problem wouldn’t benefit from asking the customer.
- Deal stalled? Don’t know how to progress? Ask the Customer.
- Not sure how to construct the proposal to be really useful? Ask the Customer
- Still pondering whether to present Solution A or Solution B? Ask the Customer
- Wondering who to take to a presentation? Ask the Customer
- Want to know how to have impact and win? Ask the Customer
Seem simple? Too simple? If you do this, probability states you’ll be one step ahead of your average sales person.
Helpful Examples
How you ask is crucial. The Humble Sales way would be to be open and human. Here are some examples:
1: We could really do with your advice. We’ve been reflecting on our progress so far to make sure that we are providing you with maximum help/certain of solving your problem/on track to exceed your objectives, but we’re worried we’re steering off course. Please can we share our current thinking with you and gain some feedback before we progress further?
2: We believe in our idea so much and really want our proposal to be helpful for you. Given that, please can we agree a proposal structure in advance?
3: There are a couple of ways we could solve your problem. To better understand how they may impact your business, please can we discuss them with you prior to issuing our quotation, so that we can eliminate one together and really focus in, with your input, on the best solution?
In future posts we’ll cover proposal creation, progressing your sales cycle and all manner of tips and techniques that will help you win. The key is that a Humble Salesperson doesn’t use gimmicks or short-cuts. They just remain open, authentic and focussed on providing help. You’ll see that genuine collaboration with a customer is the best way to success. For now though, think of this “Just Ask” lesson as your starting point, and the first key to a brighter future in Sales.
Photo by Sebastian Herrmann on Unsplash