The New Year is always an occasion for trying new things and re-assessing what works and what doesn’t work about our work life, and this is especially true for sales people and small business owners.
Reassessing Your Selling Process
As we move forward into 2017, it’s time to reassess your selling process. Here are a few questions to ask to get better sales results this year:
How is Your Sales Pitch?
Do you have a concise 30-second sales pitch for every sales call? It’s called an “elevator speech” for a reason — you need to be able to convey a compelling value proposition about your company in the length of a short elevator ride.
How is Your Sales Call Script?
Sure, you don’t want to be a telemarketer, but having a script for your sales calls really helps! You’ll have a more steady structure and make sure to hit the key points if you work from a script. Write one today if you haven’t already — or work to improve the script that you already have!
What is Your Process for New Sales Leads?
Once you get a new sales lead — whether from cold calling or referrals or an inbound phone call or email, what happens next? The best companies — of all sizes — have a consistent, methodical process for dealing with sales leads. Figure out how to qualify your sales leads by asking upfront questions to figure out which buyers are the most serious and most urgently ready to buy, and then rank and sort your leads and follow-up with the lower-quality leads over time.
What is Your Sales Funnel?
Many companies have not identified their sales funnel — the repeatable process of working with new sales leads from start to finish, from introduction to deal-closing time. You need to identify the steps of your sales process, for example: 1. Introductory phone call, 2. Product demo, 3. Stakeholder meeting, 4. ROI demonstration, 5. Resolution of final questions, 6. Price negotiation, 7. Deal cosing. Different companies and industries will have different steps, and some prospects might require more time than others to work through the steps, but you need to know what the steps are and have a sense of how to work through them.
What is Your ROI Presentation?
In B2B sales, you shouldn’t ever try to compete on price. You don’t want to be the lowest-priced option in your industry. You want to command a healthy profit margin by delivering a premium-quality solution. So instead of talking about “price,” talk about value and ROI. How much money does your solution help people save? How much more productive can you help your buyers become? How much money can your solution MAKE for your buyers? These are the questions that your sale presentations need to answer instead of talking about price.
What are Your Conversion Rates?
Examine each step of your sales funnel and see where you’re getting the best results. Do you have a big dropoff in success rates between the first call and the sales demo? Is the ROI presentation driving customers away? Figure out where are the problem-areas of your sales process and then revise and refine until they get better.
A new year is a new opportunity to improve every facet of your business, starting with your sales process. Reconsider the way you work with new prospects from the first phone call, create consistent processes for nurturing long-term leads over time, and keep your conversations focused on ROI instead of price. Look at everything with fresh eyes and be willing to make big changes. It’s never too late to make a positive difference to improve your sales results.
Sales Presentation Photo via Shutterstock
This article, “How to Get a Better Start on Sales for Your Small Business” was first published on Small Business Trends