If telephone solicitors simply picked up a phone and started selling their product the results would be disastrous. By defining a specific selling process a salesman will be able to apply a system that works over and over again and close more sales more often with less effort. Many companies build out a clear process for their sales agents that, if used exactly as told to, gets results from almost any person doing that job. The selling process involves four basic steps:

• Create Interest With Your Prospect

• Establish What Their Needs Are

• Explain How Your Product Will Satisfy Their Needs

• Ask/Close The Sale

Before someone can determine what their sales process is they should first understand what process their prospects go through BEFORE they buy their products. The selling process should closely mirror the customer prospects buying process.

Typical Buying Process of a Customer

1. Awareness of Needs: Sometimes this is extremely obvious and the prospect doesn’t require a salesperson to tell them about their needs. For example if the motor in my vacuum cleaner suddenly blows up and stops working I know I need a new one. However, your client isn’t always going to be this aware of all of their needs and how your company can satisfy them. Have you ever made a purchase after watching an infomercial? I recently watched a commercial selling workout cd’s that promised to get you ripped in 90 days, no matter what shape you were in. The commercial effectively made you aware of your need to get into shape. People are made aware of their needs in different ways. Some by TV or radio, some by print ads and some by a salesperson. In any case the message is always short and immediately points out the benefit to the audience.

2. Interest in Having Those Needs Satisfied: Once a prospect discovers their needs and benefits of having them satisfied they will be well into to the buying process and will stop at nothing at getting their needs met. This is where they will need questions answered as to how your product/service will best serve their needs. This is a broad subject and will vary depending on what you sell.

3. Preference of Using One Product Over Another: By effectively addressing how your company can meet your prospects needs the customer will choose to do business with one company over another.

4. Commitment: At this stage the customer has recognized their needs and how a specific product would benefit them and now they have made a decision to buy the product/service.

As written the Sales Process must mirror the above buying process. Here is a clear example of how this would flow:

Create Interest - The Opening:

Every sales call must have a compelling opening. When we fail to have an opening that gets the prospect interested then nothing else we say or do will ever matter because we won’t get the chance to.

Think of the opening as a 30 second commercial. Just like television and radio commercials you have 30 seconds to get the listeners interest before they decide if they are interested in hearing more about what you’re selling. The 30 second commercial must quickly and clearly explain the benefit that THEY will get from talking with ME. Most sales organizations often refer to this as the WIFFM, or the "What’s In It For Me". We must understand that our prospect does not care how big our company is, how long we’ve been in business or how many awards our company has won, at least not at this point in the presentation. At this point all they know is that we have interrupted their day and you better have a good reason or you’ll be talking to a dial tone in thirty seconds. Let me give an example of a well written opening. A colleague of mine once worked for a Real Estate magazine that sold display ads to realtors. Her opening was built on the bragging points the company could rightfully claim. So why then for years did she struggle getting past her opening? Let’s take a look at her 30 second commercial. Her original opening sounded something like this,

"Hello, my name is Jane calling for xxx Realtor magazine. For the past 10 years we’ve been the areas largest magazine that showcases homes for sale and the reason for the call is we reach out to over 50,000 potential home buyers in the area and I think we could help grow your business by putting it in front of our readers"

Notice that her opening was talking more about their company and their product and not enough about what’s in it for the prospect? Remember, at this point the prospect does not care about me or my company, but they do care about their own company or needs.

My friend had successfully helped other realtors grow their customer base but her opening line didn’t really grab the realtors attention but after we made a couple changes she instantly saw significant results! Her 30 second commercial now sounded very different. Let’s take a look.

"Hello Mike, this is Jane with xxx Realtor magazine. I’ve been working with Bill, a realtor here the city and he’s been selling an average of 3 more homes per month just from the leads we sent him. I’ve done some research on the local market and I believe that we could produce identical results for you too. Can we talk for a minute?"

Wouldn’t the second opening be more likely to peak the realtors interest to want to hear more about what the salesperson had to say? Of course it would. I can’t emphasize enough times how important your 30 second commercial will be to your success. Make this a huge priority.

Insurance Statement

As written above if we fail to have a good opening then nothing else matters. But even when we have a perfect opening we will hear the upfront "no" from time to time, but it will be far less than the caller without a solid opening.

I think some people are just conditioned to saying no regardless of what you say or are offering. If we opened up enough times by saying "we have a plan that will bring you new customers and it won’t cost you anything. In fact we’ll pay you $100 for each new customer you get, can we talk", I would still guarantee that we would still get a few upfront no’s every day.

For this reason it’s just as important to have an insurance statement as it is a good 30 second opening.

An insurance statement is nothing more (and nothing less) than just rewriting the 30 second commercial. This statement should either address another benefit the prospect has to gain from talking with you or it must address the avoidance of pain that he/she will get from your product/service. Remember, talk about your prospects needs, not yours.

Establish Needs

Assuming that we have successfully perfected our opening statement and our prospect is interested in learning more about how our products/services are going to benefit them, it’s now time to establish their needs. Remember this, we can’t satisfy the needs (or sell your product) if we don’t know what those needs are. We can’t make the mistake of assuming that we know exactly what your prospects need are.

Are their needs to save time? Save money? Make something they do easier? Make something more enjoyable? We should ask ourselves, how can my product meet my prospect needs.

The best way to establish our prospects needs is simply by gathering information by asking our prospect relevant questions. These questions should be carefully thought out in advance and should help to lead our prospect to uncover their needs or create dissatisfaction in our competitors offer. Contrary to what we have been taught, a good salesman has excellent listening skills. In fact, our customer should be doing most of the talking, not us. Ask the question and let the prospect answer without interruption.

Examples of the right kinds of questions to ask have been listed below.

Salesman Type: Health Insurance

Question 1: If you’re like many of my clients you’re pretty healthy, but if you were in a car accident or injured just playing your favorite sport, do you have a plan in place that would cover you and your family and if so can so can you tell me about that?

Question 2: Describe to me what the perfect insurance plan would be to you?

Question 3: If you could change anything about your current insurance program what would it be?

Satisfy Needs

Once we have a clear understanding of what our customers needs are we are now positioned to satisfy those needs which will be key to closing the sale.

In this part of the sales process we want to prove our value by briefly explaining our company’s position in the industry and follow it with an explanation of how our company will satisfy their needs. Remember, satisfying their needs is done by saving them time, money, making things easier or more enjoyable.

Side Note: after addressing the prospects needs follow up with a question that is likely to get a positive response, i.e. isn’t that what you need?

If we used the Health Insurance agent example again we might satisfy needs by saying something like:

Mr. Smith, you told me that the perfect plan for you would be one where you could find a local doctor in the network was not so difficult. XYZ Insurance Agency is accepted locally by over 1,500 doctors. On top of that our premiums are 10% less than any major competitor which will save you time and money. Isn’t that just what you’re looking for?

Whatever happens, we need to make sure we get the prospect to tell us their needs first. We can’t just assume that we already know them. Properly staged questions should uncover those needs quickly.

Close The Sale

Assuming we delivered the perfect opening statement, uncovered our prospects needs and satisfied them it’s now time to close the sale. Warning: Under no circumstances should anyone attempt to close the sale until all of these stages have been successfully accomplished.

The most commonly effective closes are the TRIAL CLOSE, the ASSUMPTIVE CLOSE and the CHOICE CLOSE.

Trial Close:

WHEN TO USE- A Trial close is used when there are several buying signals but you’re not 100% certain that the prospect is ready to buy. This close will usually either get the customer to make a purchase or disclose other objections that are holding them back from buying.

EXAMPLE: Mr. Smith, by being insured with XYZ company your investment is less than $3 a day and your family is covered for nearly any illness or emergency that could potentially bankrupt you. This plan protects you and with a very small investment. What do you think about what we have discussed?

Choice Close:

WHEN TO USE- A choice close is used when there is more than one product that your prospect could benefit from. This option gets them to select a program or bring up objections that would help you to determine which program best suits their needs.

EXAMPLE: Our premium plan runs $250 a month and the deductible is only $50 per emergency visit or if don’t see yourself making many doctors visits for colds and flu’s you might do just fine with the Silver plan which is designed just for emergencies. That’s $180 a month with a $100 deductible per emergency. Which do you think would be the best program for your family?

Direct Close:

WHEN TO USE- A Direct Close is used when you are confident the customer is ready to buy what you have offered.

EXAMPLE: It sounds like the premium plan is perfect for your needs. Why don’t I go ahead and set you up with our premium plan and we should be able to have your family covered by the end of the week. Does that work!

Regardless of which close we are using once we have asked the closing question - BE QUITE. As a general rule of thumb, the first one that speaks loses. Sometimes the silence worries salespeople but most often the prospect is merely deciding if they are ready to buy or if they have any other questions. DON’T interrupt. Be patient and wait for their reply and you’ll be amazed at the results.