How to Build a Winning Prospect-Sales Relationship
Have you ever met anyone who’s said: “Gee, I really like receiving sales calls”? We haven’t. But yet, sales calls haven’t gone anywhere. They’re still an essential part of how many businesses start and how they grow. Here are a few top tips!
What’s changed is the method behind the madness. Years of tried-and-tested sales techniques have taught us some valuable lessons. For instance, hounding people doesn’t work. How many good sales have been made by harassing prospects?
A few close-knit client relationships are far more valuable than a hundred pitches to a hundred disinterested people. The crucial word being “relationship”. It’s about finding that sweet spot where you’re not just making a case at someone, but where they’re engaging with you too.
The sales pitch
This is the tricky bit. That first conversation when you know they don’t really want to talk to you and your first goal is probably to stop them hanging up. How do you hook someone in? Well—you stop trying to.
Let us elaborate. If you start barking your sales line down the phone at your prospect, they’ll have stopped listening to you before you’ve got to the end of the first sentence. Throw the script out the window, because, to put it bluntly: no one is paying attention.
The trick is: get them to talk to you instead. Equip yourself with a mountain of product knowledge and then ask them questions about their systems. Find out if they have problems or pain points: what’s the one thing they wish worked better in their business? Do they find themselves complaining about the same thing over and over again?
If they say yes, there’s no turning back. You can use their answer to demonstrate their need for your product or service, and they’ve done most of the work for you!
This doesn’t have to be a thirty-minute conversation. After you’ve identified the problem, acknowledge that they probably have a job to be getting on with. Offer to send them a personalised sales video explaining more about your product and how it can help them. It’s low-commitment for them and gives you time to perfect your pitch—a win-win.
With B2B sales, the sales pitch doesn’t end with your point of contact. It’s likely that the product or service you pitch to them will be shared with colleagues internally. This is important because, let's remember, your initial contact is not a professional sales person. They’re likely to simply describe your pitch, rather than perform it. That means that your sales skills might not comes across to those who really matter.
This is an issue resolved by personalised sales videos. By creating a video sales pitch which can be easily forwarded and viewed by those you need to convince, you never lose the finesse or messaging of your pitch.
Set in stone
The next challenge you’re likely to encounter in the sales process is either:
- Someone wasting your time
- The prospect changing their mind
It’s your job as the salesperson to let neither of these things happen. You need to create a direct path to sale.
Affirm and reaffirm their interest so you don’t spend valuable time chasing this deal only for them to say they’re not convinced or there’s no room in the budget.
Don’t be afraid to ask them outright: “Are you interested in this product or service?” If they say no, you can stop wasting your time.
If they say yes, get the ball rolling ASAP. Get them to agree to a defined timeframe or plan, even if that’s just watching your sales video or having a follow-up call.
If a prospect is interested in your product and wants to know more, the way you go about communicating the information regarding the product or service can be the difference between closing a sale and losing one.
If an interested prospect clicks the “find out more” button on your website, or asks for a follow-up email, make sure you use that opportunity to its full potential–this is your time to show them what your business is all about.
When you think of it like that, another wordy email in their inbox really won’t cut it—you need something personal, innovative and engaging. That’s were personalised sales videos come in.
Videos are a great way to get across what your business can offer a prospect in an engaging way in a matter of minutes. In fact, it is proven that consumers can retain upto 50% more information from videos than from text.
As such, if you’re looking to seal the deal with a prospect, video is a sure way to go.
Always deliver
We really shouldn’t have to tell you this, but we’re going to anyway.
Don’t promise anything you can’t deliver. If they’ve told you that their problem is roadblocks in internal communications and nothing about your product actually addresses this, don’t tell them that it does. Your product or service should be good enough that you don’t have to bend the truth to make a sale.
Sometimes you can accidentally make promises you can’t keep in the moment—it’s the sales version of human error. Sales videos are a great way of getting around this, as you can rehearse what you’re going to say before you say it.
In short, it’s all about engagement. Potential clients need to take time out of their day to consider your proposal. Take as much of this strain off them as possible, and a winning prospect-sales relationship will begin.