How To Be a Sales Magnet

By Razelle Janice Drescher

How Effective is Your Company's Sales Process?

My company, Intentional Leaders, helps businesses accomplish their business goals.  One common need that business owners often have is to achieve a better “close” rate for the product or service they sell.  When your sales team is speaking with a prospect, how effective is the way they engage with the potential customer? In this blog, I am going to outline the approach I use to get to the bottom of this common business frustration with the intention of maximizing the close rate.

Target the Market

Find out who the ideal customer is for this procedure. By targeting the market, you focus on the individuals who are most likely to “buy” your product or service, eliminating the ones who are less likely to buy. In this way, you spend your time, energy and dollars more efficiently and get a greater return on your marketing/sales investment. This would involve defining your demographics, (who your customers are), and psychographics, (why they buy).

Understand the Needs of Your Ideal Customers

Make sure you know the needs of your customers; not just your assumptions about their needs. Do some very practical market research by asking some relevant questions to your ideal customer. This could be past customers, current customers or prospective customers.

Develop a Marketing Positioning Strategy Based on Your Ideal Customer Profile

In order for your ideal customer to buy your services, they have to hear a message from you that makes them want to buy. So the words you use when you attempt to close the sale are essential to producing the desired outcome. The Marketing Positioning Strategy contains the basic elements that will communicate the right message to your prospective customer and give you the best chance of closing the sale. This is the part of your marketing development that expresses your uniqueness in the marketplace and gives your customers the confidence to buy from you.

Build the Structure and Content of Your Sales Calls

It is important to decide how many calls you need to close a sale. It may be one or more depending on the product or service you are selling. Paying attention to exactly how you will go about making the sale will ensure the best use of your time and the prospect’s time.  No matter how many calls you decide on, including some questions to qualify the prospect will help you have a more accurate idea of your success in selling your service to your ideal customer. When you quantify your sales information, you can include conversions from all prospects to closed sales as well as qualified prospects to closed sales. This can give you a more realistic way to understand and interpret your numbers. For example, if you receive 100 calls and currently close 30, that may be better than you think if out of the 100 calls, only 75 are qualified leads, fitting the profile of your ideal customer. Instead of a 30% close rate, you now have a 40% close rate.

Once you decide how many calls you need to effectively close a sale, you can build what will be said in each call. This content will maximize the communication of the message that sets you apart in your marketplace and makes your prospects want to buy from you.

Train Your Sales Team in Your Sales Process

There could be many reasons why a close rate is lower than desired. One of them could be related to how your sales people are implementing the process you have in place. The opportunity here is to develop a training that gives your sales team a positive experience of interacting with the customer. A needs-based selling approach, which is the type I’ve described, attempts to make a match between what you are selling and what the customer is wanting. A good sales training effort will teach your sales team how to be effective and helpful in determining that match. It is more a consultative approach than a “hard sell” approach and is a more pleasant experience for both parties.

Manage Your Sales Team’s Efforts

A good sales process and good sales training still don’t ensure the results you want. Good sales management will help your sales team go beyond the roadblocks they encounter in implementing your sales system. It will also help you improve the system as you get feedback from the people who are using the system. You will also be able to track your numbers and approach improving on your results in an organized way.

In closing, it is safe to say that good selling has many pieces and parts. If the desired results are not being achieved, it’s essential to figure out where the system is breaking down and to strengthen that part of the process so it can yield the result you are looking for. If there is no process in place, or if it is sketchy, then the opportunity is to create a solid selling system that targets the needs of your idea customer and communicates your message in a way that makes your prospect want to buy. That kind of effort on the front end can result in the results you want on the back end and is very much worth doing. Once the system is in place and yielding good results, it becomes something you can count on to help you achieve your business goals.

Call Janice at 707-326-5681 if you would like to explore how to improve your close rate or take advantage of a free coaching session.