Traditional selling systems tend to push the envelope. Maybe that’s why the reputation of salespeople and the hard sell stains the perception that typical salespeople aren’t professional. Now I don’t mean you but you know the people out there who do that stuff and you also know that it’s not very effective.
The concept of “qualify easy and close hard” is about as relevant as the three martini lunch in the professional sales world. It wastes time and causes multiple failures.
When you’re working with a prospect qualify to an extreme level. Most salespeople simply want to know do you need a widget. They are satisfied to uncover only the surface reasons. They never get in depth. They don’t get examples as to why the prospect needs the widget or how long the problem they have has been there. They also don’t find out what they tried to do to fix it in the past and if that worked.
Professionals want to know more. How much has the problem cost the prospect? How does the problem affect them personally and how they feel about the situation?
It is additional information from the prospect that ultimately will give you the slight edge over your competition. If you don’t want to look, act, and sound like a traditional salesperson conduct yourself like a businessperson in sales and not like the other forty people trying to sell the same stuff as you.
Be better… who needs good when great is within grasp?
