Author: Stephen Zarick, CEO, VO Sales Group (www.vogroup.com)
There are some very simple people skills that we embrace to be successful in life, and in sales.
If you spend all of your mouth moving time talking about YOU, then you will likely have few friends. Some might think that you are smart, but they also might just avoid you.
If you are starting out your sales presentations by showing your own web page you are making a mistake. You are making a big mistake.
It’s not about us; it’s about them.
You might have to give a 30 second commercial on what you do, but if you have a meeting based on a prospecting team setting up the meeting they likely already know what you do, at least generally.
Engage them Emotionally
Then….
How you do establish credibility at the outset?
How do you get the prospect to engage when they really want to hear your offering?
How can you be looking at their web page, and not offend with the 20 question drill?
Ask Pertinent Questions to Establish (your) Credibility
How do you do this?
You do NOT wing it first of all, you do your homework and prepare.
You prepare a list of questions that are reflective of all your original WE statements in your old presentations.
The drill is to craft 20 WE statements and then re-craft 20 engaging questions for the prospect. Then put them in order from beginning of a conversation to the end of a conversation.
Take genuine interest and do not read your statements.
Never read your presentation slides, be real, be natural, be interested, know the topic and get to know your prospect.
It’s NOT about US; It’s about THEM
Ask them about the environment that they have today, have they ever looked at a solutions like the one you are discussing, ask them about their team and how it affects them, but do NOT ask them those old sales questions such as “how does that affect you?” These sales techniques are not for the professional sales person and/or the enterprise customer. No one will answer stupid demeaning questions.
What we suggest is this:
- Have your web page up as well as theirs and a few of your customers’ pages up.
- Use a screen sharing conferencing tool (there are many reasons to, but that’s another chapter).
- When the meeting starts have their webpage on the screen. If they ask why they are looking at THEIR page say “we are here to talk about YOU. I would like to understand what you have in your shop and then see if we can help.”
- Most people want to know at that point….how long this is going to take? For that, state that you have questions/topics that you’d like to ask them about and then we will show you what we are about.
- Use your customers’ web pages as reference material so they know you get it.
- When you feel that they want to move on to your presentation …move on.
Listen First. Present Second.
Take notes while they talk and then speak to those topics when you finally do your presentation.
As a rule, at VO Group, my Sales Prospecting company, we typically would do a ONE-HOUR meeting, the fist 30 minutes the prospect never sees our logo. Instead, the first 30 minutes is all about them and making references to how we helped other customers out.
Author: Stephen Zarick, CEO, VO Group, LLC www.vogroup.com
