The Importance of First Encounters
Gil Effron
Through his books and mentoring, bestselling author focuses on improving your marketing and sales outcomes.
Throughout history and in literature and film, first encounters open the doors to exciting experiences and unimaginable possibilities.
First Encounter Beach in Cape Cod was the first meeting between Pilgrims and Native Americans.
The major motion pictures Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Carl Sagan’s Contact are exciting and entertaining glances at first encounters in the future. Most of us are glued to our seats in anticipation of what comes next.
What About Your First Encounters?
I’m a firm believer that the first encounter businesses have with prospects not only influence the outcome of the #salespresentation and the effortless closing of a sale, but also builds the #trust they have in you –– a total trust in you that leads to a positive lifetime relationship.
In my bestselling book, How to Close More Business in Less Time as well as in my coaching and training, I spend a great deal of time explaining and outlining the steps in the sales process and how to make each step better in terms of the outcome.
The first step in most sales processes is labeled Rapport Building. I refer to it as “Getting to know them and letting them get to know you.” I say it that way because it’s definitely a two-way street and people definitely choose to do business with people they know and like and trust. They’re not buying a new widget; they’re either buying you or not buying you!
For example, I was coaching a newcomer to the remodeling business. He was inexperienced in professional, high-ticket outside sales. To say he wasn’t doing well is an understatement.
We spent a great deal of time talking through the sales process. I’d provide him with ideas to make each step in the sales presentation not only very natural and conversational but, most importantly, highly effective. The goal was to close the sale and start building a relationship in which customers would call him back for future remodeling projects and motivated customers to share their positive experience with friends and neighbors.
Attached is a copy of Chapter 4 from my book, How to Close More Business in Less Time.
The chapter walks you through all 12 steps of the sales process. Most of the business owners and remodelers I share this with find it extremely helpful in sharpening their game and impacting their closing ratio.
Here’s Chapter 4. Enjoy.
Chapter 4: What Your Typical Transaction Looks Like
Every business has a #salesprocess.
I like to think about the sales process as a timeline. It starts at the beginning by engaging a prospect. Then, step-by-step, prospects travel through a number of activities or steps that ultimately bring them to the point where they buy. At least that’s the goal and the desired outcome.
For the fun of it, you may wish to search online for sales process flowcharts. You’ll come across a number of examples and software programs that can help you create a colorful flowchart of your sales process.
You may also want to search sales funnel. Similar to a sales process flowchart, the sales funnel thinks in terms of moving prospects step by step through the transaction. The key to each approach––and what I want you to notice––is that they are orderly and planned. While the plan is always subject to change (and the train can jump the tracks now and then), it’s the way we ideally would like to see things happen.
At some point, you may decide to get fancy and purchase a sales process flowchart or CRM (customer relationship management) software solution for your own team.
For now, however, our mission is to keep it simple. That’s why I recommend the linear approach of the sales process––a simple straight-line timeline that marches along from step A to B to C. (Plus, that’s how my brain works.)
Ultimately, your sales process may incorporate and utilize more or less than the 12 basic steps that follow. They also could be arranged differently with some being considerably more important than others. That’s okay. There’s no single universal sales process that governs all businesses. Each is unique to its own situation. The sales process for an online business is considerably different than for a business that manufactures munitions.
But I feel confident these 12 points not only illustrate the overall concept but also represent the most critical steps in the sales process. Let’s take a quick look at each one.
Keep in mind that while each step seems mechanical, each actually requires a great deal of nuance. That’s where coaching and training helps considerably.
1. Client/customer attraction. New clients or customers are essential to the growth and prosperity of every business. While it’s nice to believe they ultimately find you and seek you out, it is you who must find them.
Think about client/customer attraction is the activity of reaching out into the world of qualified prospects or potential buyers. This reaching out consists of a variety of communication activities whose sole purpose it is to attract attention––to grab the attention of those qualified prospects or buyers.
Each and every business requires client attraction of one kind or another. Most require several. But no two businesses are alike. For one business, a sign above a store is client attraction. For another, so is a yellow page ad, a Google AdWords campaign, a direct mail campaign, knocking on doors, writing and publishing articles, email marketing messages, hanging door hangers on throughout a neighborhood, and asking for referrals.
There is no end to the list. Think of client attraction as a hook––as in fishing or, better yet, as a net. Remember, a hook is a hook and hooks and nets both qualify as client attraction activities. Essentially, these hooks reach out and grab people. For now, think of the things you are using as bait in your client attraction arsenal.
- Rapport building. People do business with people they know and like and trust. While education speaks to the intellectual side of the brain, rapport building speaks to the emotional.
As you build rapport with prospects, you allow them to get to know you and you to get to know them. When done with honesty and sincerity, this relationship building, trust building, and rapport building ranges from simply listening to the prospect’s story to the sincere interest you show them in our initial contact. It includes the patience you express while waiting for them to decide what color to paint the walls or what additional features they want.
To me, rapport building is subtle and gentle, but its purpose is always the same: to propel (to push or pull) the sales process. It engulfs relationships, trust, empathy, mistake avoidance, and much more.
- Information gathering. I believe it’s practically impossible to sell something to someone unless you know about them and you clearly understand what they see as their problem, need, or desire.
It goes without saying that the more you know about them, the greater the likelihood you will be able to close a sale. When I’m working face to face with a prospect, the information gathering is in the form of asking questions and sincerely listening to the answers. It’s from probing deeper and seeking to understand the likes and dislikes the prospect has. It’s in watching and studying everything from the prospect’s facial expressions and body language to studying their environment––the photos hanging on the wall, the trophies on the mantle place, the antique desk, etc.
It’s also in listening to the tales of woe while your prospect relates stories of previous poor experiences of broken promises by a service company or one construction delay after the next. I fully believe that the better listener you become the greater your likelihood for closing more business and, believe it or not, for doing so in less time.
4. Education. Every sales process includes an element of education. In the supermarket, this education is on the side of every can of soup or box of cereal. It’s in the TV commercial or the ad in Good Housekeeping. In a service business, it’s explaining the steps you go through when working with clients. It’s in addressing expectations about installation details. In a store that sells major home appliances, it’s having a competent salesperson point out features and benefits of one brand and model over another.
Today, a majority of buyers begin their education process with self-education––and they do this by turning to the Internet.
What does that tell you? It tells me that buyers are every bit as analytical as they are emotional and they want to compare, read reviews written by other consumers, and to know the details of your money-back guarantee. It tells me prospective buyers may not trust the information that’s being provided to them by a sales agent. It also tells me those businesses that are supposed to be educating their prospects and customers aren’t doing a good job.
5. Handling objections. Objections are the reasons a prospect gives you for not buying now. Let’s call them excuses for not taking action. You want to sell high. They want to buy low.
Regardless of what you sell, you experience objections from prospects throughout the sales process. Regardless of what the objection, all objections have one thing in common. They slow down the decision-making process and postpone getting a signature or a check.
I think a lot of objections are best handled before the prospect asks them. If, for example, you know that price is always an objection, you can wait until the prospect says, “That’s a whole lot more expensive than I thought it would be.”
Or you can be proactive and reverse the objection before it becomes an issue. “I know some people feel our prices are higher than our competition. But that’s not the case when you consider these three things….” The key to closing more business in less time is to anticipate any and all objections that are bound to come your way. We’ll talk more about this in a later chapter.
- Handling the Competition. While competition isn’t actually a part of the sales process in that you can’t directly control it, I mention it here because it’s something you want to deal with and handle.
A prospect may say, “XYZ has something similar, but it’s 10% less expensive.” In many cases comments about the competition are not spoken audibly. Therefore, it’s important for you to be keenly aware of what’s going on in the marketplace. It’s not that you want to speak negatively about how others in your industry cut corners, but that you can use what you know to position yourself and the vendor or brand of choice.
One way or another, your competition is a factor to consider when you’re working through objections and the sales process itself.
- Pricing. The number one objection, the biggest hurdle, the toughest one seems to be pricing. Or is it? I won’t say much more about this now. But you’ll be pleasantly surprised to learn that pricing is NOT YOUR ENEMY.
There are ways to present and explain your pricing and value proposition so that prospects and customers look beyond what they see on the sticker or in the proposal and are thoroughly educated about how to compare apples to apples. In fact, I think when it comes to closing more business in less time, you’ll appreciate the strategies you’ll learn about presenting price and handling objections based solely on price.
- Trial close(s). Although most sales processes and presentations incorporate multiple trial closes throughout the sales process, I mention it here only once. The purpose of the trial close is to test the waters, to ask for the sale as a way of seeing how far along you are in the sales process and how close you are to closing that sale.
While it appears to many that trial closes exclusively occur in a one-on-one sales transaction, this is definitely not the case. For example, in a supermarket, you have a choice of three sizes or configurations: regular, family size, or low sodium. These are trial closes. Instead of asking, “Will you buy?” it asks, “Which would you like?” or “Which do you feel is best for you?”
In an online situation, you introduce several options or offers at different times, price points, packages, add-ons, or discounts as the prospect is clicking about as well as in the shopping cart.
- Closing the sale. A sale is not a sale until someone says, “I’ll take it, here’s the money.” It’s almost the final step in the sales process as it separates the selling function from delivery of a product or fulfillment of a promised service.
The focus of my Extreme Marketing Makeover process is to increase your closing ratio by simplifying the sales process, shortening it, and making it more efficient. I call it streamlining.
As we begin to build your ideal sales process in Chapter 6, we’ll work backward as we not only minimize the number of steps in your sales process but also make sure that each step is well purposed, planned, and executed. But always keep in mind that closing the sale is not the final step in the sales process, or the ultimate goal, nor is it where the relationship ends because there are more steps.
10. Delivery or fulfillment. Every transaction has a deliverable. This is what clients and customers get in return for the money they spend.
You may wonder why it’s included in the sales process. I contend that the delivery and fulfillment should be as smooth, well planned, and carefully orchestrated as the sales process itself. Your job is to make a lasting impression—to reaffirm that the decision your buyer made was the correct one and to build the foundation for doing business with your buyer for many years to come.
An early or on-time delivery is one of the first things people mention when they refer you to their friends and colleagues. A do-it-right-the-first-time shipment in which nothing was omitted. A package that arrives with an unexpected or surprise thank you gift that hadn’t been previously discussed is another one of those things that makes a lasting impression and reinforces the value of doing business with you.
11. Follow-up after the sale. It has always amazed me that businesses willingly spend an inordinate amount of time prospecting and walk diligently through the steps outlined above and never bother to make a simple phone call or drop by to thank the client or customer and/or to survey their satisfaction with the delivery or installation process.
Notice I mentioned phone call or one-on-one visit, not an online survey. Instead, it’s a personal touch or contact from the salesperson or manager that asks, “I saw it in the shop before we shipped. The color was a perfect match. Remember, our tech department is standing by whenever you need them.”
Listening is always the key, so this innocuous follow-up phone call or contact allows the client or customer to reaffirm his or her total satisfaction with the decision and the product and delivery.
12. Post-sale/lifetime value. This is my favorite step in the sales process and the one that I value the most. You’ll see why as soon as you read the entertaining story that follows. below. It’s entitled “The True Value of Lifetime Value” and I include it here because it explains exactly the power of lifetime value and what it can bring to your business or organization. The story describes precisely why the ultimate goal of your sales process isn’t only to make a single sale. It’s to gain a client or customer for life––so completely satisfied with you they would never consider doing business with anyone else.
I sincerely hope this description of my version of the sales process is helpful. I am definitely open to specific questions you have either on 1) certain steps in the process or 2) how you can improve your ability to close more business in less time. Remember, it’s not just the steps, but the nuance of each step that brings about success.
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How to Close More Business in Less Time is available at Amazon either on Kindle or in Paperback from this link:
Or, if a conversation is more to your liking, click here to schedule a no-cost 30-minute call. https://bit.ly/2M6iG3j
Or, if you’re interested in individual or group training, send an email to [email protected]. We’ll schedule a call and get to know each other. I’m interested in knowing where you’re experiencing hurdles and challenges in your sales process.
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? 2021 Gil Effron