I went from a fantastic family vacation in the mountains back to reality.
My reality was a scheduled “minor” surgery on my foot.
The surgery went well, somewhat surprisingly, it’s the post-op therapy that’s the hard part.
One of life’s ironies is that sometimes what we think will be difficult is relatively easy, and what we think is going to be easy is actually harder than we thought.
In business we often think that marketing, getting people in the door, will be the hard part. Then we’re amazed when they leave our sales meeting, or free trial, and never return.
We know they cared enough to take time from their schedule to come in, and we had such a good meeting with them. They assured us they had a good time, and they would be back, but the return never happened.
What happened? What is our next step with them?
There are lots of answers to this scenario, but the bottom line is that they didn’t believe we really had the solution to their pressing problem.
When I work with clients on reviewing the sales meeting, I usually find that the two had a nice friendly conversation and a nice experience. I also usually find that the sales person did not keep written notes, and even more importantly did not discover and explore the real needs of the prospect.
It happens all the time. We’re excited about our new prospect. We like them. We think they will fit nicely into our culture. Without realizing it, we make a lot of assumptions.
But did we discover their fears, motivators, previous failures, and real desires for a different future? Usually we haven’t.
Why? Because we are not trained sales people. Usually we don’t understand that listening is the most important part of the sales process. Secondly, we don’t know what to listen for. Instead we talk enthusiastically about our features and benefits.
It’s easy and exciting to have a sales conversation with an excited prospect. It’s difficult to have an effective sales conversation with an excited prospect.
An effective sales conversation focuses on what the prospect needs and wants. The key is what do they REALLY want. When you effectively connect their REAL needs to your solution, they will become raving fans.
