Prospecting tips

Also known as the MAN - Money, Authority & Need. Same thing different words...

If someone tells you to call back, they do not have the need.

One last point, don't sell to the cleaner, meaning only sell the services to the MAN.

I like the classic ABC - Always Be Closing

I can't agree with "always be closing" or "close early" if you mean in the sense of to get commitment for the sale, because that old notion of hard selling is more and more guaranteed to not get the sale these days... and you know you can't get the sale before value's built nor before that switch goes on in the prospect's mind that says "Buy"... so I take it to mean use language and tone which assumes the sale. As if it's closed.

Qualify first, sell second.

Matthew's point #6 is a good reality check. If you come into calling as a last-minute Hail Mary play with 1 day to go in the month, you're going to crash and burn.

This is great advice that so few follow. It is much easier to sell to the right suspects vs. "any old random" business. Of course what you are selling will determine how much homework to do in advance.

I hate scripts. Yet too many people think it is either use a script or wing it. The truth is 100% what you said it is about having an outline and a plan which you tailor to each prospect. When used correctly that feels natural to both the sales person and the prospect.

Never seen anyone describe it as BANT before. But I am not sure I 100% agree with you.

• Budget: Some businesses will only talk in terms of budget but you likely will not close them. Especially when selling marketing services you need people who think of Marketing as an Investment not a Budget. But yes they do need to be able to afford your service which could be "Budget"
• Authority: It depends on what you sell but often the fastest way to make a sale is to use an influencer vs. a decision maker. So Authority isn't what I would look for as much as the "right person".
• Need: You may need to create a need or want. But limiting yourself to those who "Need" what you sell can limit you. They need to be a good fit of course but how often do you buy things you don't need? Everyone does it. And even when selling to business you are still just selling to people.
• Timeframe: This 100% depends on what you are selling. If your market is full of prospects I understand why you wouldn't waste time on "long game" sales. But for the vast majority ignoring those not yet ready to buy is costing you sales.

This is true but you must remember that with a large and renewable list you qualify people out. But the act of building your original list is qualifying people in. If you spend that much time up front you must be careful that you are not just qualifying people out to avoid work. If you only grab the low hanging fruit you will in time run out of prospects.

This relates back to the long game. Depending on what you sell the long game is where you may make most of your sales. Using auto sales for example. If you don't do proper follow up on those who walk you could lose upwards of 50% of yours sales since only 20% of walk ins buy on the first visit while 60% of be-backs buy. Your follow up is what gets them back in the door.

Sure the car salesman may think it is easier to just take the next up vs. doing follow up but the hardest sale to close in the new up. Smart salesmen work hard to get to the point where they no longer takes up or have to go out prospecting. Now in some sales environments you must focus on always gaining new business. But for most of us we can overtime convert to nearly 100% repeat and referral business.
I commented a bit on this already. But to this specific point I want you to realize that when you ask for the sale you are at the end of the sales process. The fact that closing and objections takes up 50% of your calls is a lesson that you are closing too soon.

Now there are ways to get "yes" along the way but that isn't truly closing. That is merely getting agreement. And most will agree it helps you close once the time comes since you are getting them to not only say yes but to also agree with key points you can later use in the close.

But if you are closing in the middle of your sales presentation that means you are spending the vast majority of your time on the closing and overcoming objections. This is not comfortable for your or the prospect and will lower your closing ratio. Depending on how good you are and how much paperwork there is you can find that closing can often take way less than 5% of the total call.

I'd say personally on most sales in the RV world I spend somewhere around 1% to 3% and there is a lot of paperwork I need to do after they agree to buy which takes up about 50% of that time.
As always this depends on what you are selling. But in very few sales environments can you do none of these. Those kind of sales environments are normally filled with what would be better described as clerks vs. sales people.

I'm not saying work for free. And only you can decide what actions get the best ROI. But have you actually tested your closing ration with and without these? You can and should break down your sales into steps and percentages. Sales people are often surprised that the things that seem to take the most work actually take less work on a per sales basis vs. the things they think are easy.

A classic example is post sales follow up. The vast majority of sales people focus their efforts on getting new sales from new prospects. They fail to see the value in their sold customers. Yet previously sold customers close at around 4 times* the rate of new prospects. And they send referrals that close at 3 times* the rate of new prospects. So why would anyone waste time with new prospects after they have build up their client list?
* Source: Joe Verde Car Sales Surveys (note figures are off the top of my head and may be slightly off)
Depending on what you sell you could sell something today and make money today. My personal opinion is if you are selling full time and you haven't made a sale in the first ten days either what you are selling is bad or you don't have the skill to sell it.

That doesn't mean you give up but it does mean you need to take a hard look at yourself.

It does depend on what you sell and if you are a business unto yourself it may be hard to judge yourself since you don't have others to compare yourself to. But you should go in expecting to make sales the first week. In most sales environments I would personally expect to make a sale the first or second day.
Good classic advice but I don't believe most people understand what it truly means. Even when you sell on price your are selling value. You merely are using "low price" as one of if not the main value point.

Every transaction is a balance between what they receive (value) vs. what they give up (cost). This is true in simple bartering like card trading and it is still true in advanced financial transactions like credit default swaps.

In most transactions we would be dealing with they will be exchanging money [Cost = Price (direct) + Opportunity Cost (indirect)] for our good or service. The moment that Value exceeds Cost they will buy. If that never happens they will never buy.

Let me give you a unique example to truly hammer this home.
Let's say you have a boat for sale. I personally do not want a boat (at least right now). I also think they cost too much to maintain. So even if you gave it to me for $1 I would not buy it off of you.

I know but Aaron couldn't you just turn around and sell it? And yes that is true I could turn around and sell it. You could argue that I buy it not for entertainment but for an investment. The problem is that $1 isn't my investment. I also have the direct costs of maintaining, storing, and transporting it.

I know what you are thinking but Aaron even if that was $1,000 if the boat had a market value of even just $10,000 that would be a $9,000 profit. But there is more to Opportunity Cost than just the dollar value. There would be time itself plus the lost opportunities that the $1,000 and also my time could provide.

There is also the uncertainty of how long it will take to sell and what the final selling price would be. After all I know nothing about boats so maybe I can only get 60% of market value. And while the average boat might sell in 6 weeks it takes me 12 weeks. Or even worse I missed out on selling it before winter and now have to store it over the winter to sell in spring.

There is literally next to zero chance you could get me to buy a boat. The value will never exceed the cost not due to price (the direct cost) but due to the opportunity costs (indirect).

First if price is your most common objection you are either doing something really right or really wrong.

• Really Right = They have no objections and want to buy but don't want to or at least don't feel comfortable just agreeing without a negotiation. I personally love these cases.
• Really Wrong = They have loads of objections and "price" is merely the easiest to discuss. This happens a lot when people close too early. Since value was never built the transaction defaults to being about price. If you see a guy with both a low closing ratio and low grosses you can almost guarantee he jumps to the closing too fast. Some would say he skipped steps in the process but he didn't skip them he just didn't stay in those steps long enough.

I do agree that in many sales environments putting the price out early helps ground the sale. It gives them a number to compare to as you help them build value for the product. Also if you have a "sale price" you can anchor on a higher price and build value in that higher price to make the close even easier once you get there.

Most people do not consciously understand most indirect costs. So they can only focus on the direct cost aka Price. This doesn't mean they don't belong in business. It is our job to build enough value not theirs to know that our product has value well beyond it's price.

Depends on what I need it for. The $10 shirt may at times be the better purchase. For example if I only need the shirt for one night and plan to never wear it again. I may well choose the $10 shirt and give it away vs. the $40 shirt even though the $40 shirt would be more comfortable. The question is when does the comfort level justify an extra $30 or even a trip to another store.

The value in any purchase normally has more to do with the Indirect Costs vs. the Direct Costs (Price/etc).

It's why you couldn't sell me a boat or a trip to Central Africa. No matter how cheap they got the Indirect Costs would always outweigh the Value for me.

Hmmm. Well, that's basically what speakers, comedians and performers do, in having an outline or bullet points to remind them of what to speak on as they go through their presentation because a script is boring to watch being read,hardly anyone can do it well, and god forbid you lose your place or drop your script and its pages get scattered. But their words don't naturally flow so much as they flow naturally because the speaker has fine tuned what they say on the topic having done it or rehearsed it so many times that it appears totally conversational.

But it's still a script, you know? You still need to know which words are more effective; which phrase has more impact, what things must be said in which way that works better than another. What things must be said that result in more sales when they're covered.