The TAO of Sales....
The TAO of Sales...
TAO is a Chinese word meaning ‘way’, ‘path’ or ‘route’. In this week’s BIT, we examine the TAO or ‘way’ to start and conduct a successful sales meeting. Remembering this acronym and using it at the beginning of every sales meeting will help us avoid common sales meeting mistakes. Let’s break TAO down into an acronym we can easily remember in any sales situation:
T – Time A – Agenda O – Outcome
Time: Make sure to confirm with your prospect how much time they have allocated for the meeting. You want to know exactly how much time you have so that you can cover all relevant points, answer all of their questions and leave time to ask for the sale without either of you feeling rushed. The last thing you want is to get what you feel is half way through your meeting, and they look at their watch and say, “by the way, we have to wrap this up in 10 minutes because I have to go and ...”
Depending on how much time your prospect has for you, you may even decide to scuttle the meeting. If something has come up on their end last minute, they may be focused on that distraction and not be able to focus on your sales presentation. You did set a time frame before showing up though right? ...
Agenda: Confirming your pre-agreed upon agenda is crucial to make sure you focus on what your prospect wants to discuss. If your focus for the meeting is other than what the prospect wants to talk about, you will not have their attention (at best) or they will think you are a poor listener (for not understanding them in the first place), and are really there to sell them, not help them. You did set the agenda beforehand when you booked the meeting right?...
Outcome: Be sure at the outset of the meeting, that you and your prospect both know what the possible outcomes of your meeting are. We want to be very clear on this so that we don’t end up with the prospect being surprised at the end of the meeting when you ask for the sale: “Oh, we’re not ready to buy, we’re just looking at our options.. ” Again, you are actually repeating the possible meeting outcomes you outlined to them when you set the meeting up right?... (Are you beginning to see a pattern here of correctly positioning the meeting for success before you ever show up?)
Let’s tie it together with a script that uses TAO to set up a successful sales meeting:
Script: (after some rapport building small talk) “John, is it OK if I go over how I see us running through our meeting today? (Permission) Great. When we spoke on the phone last week, you mentioned we would have a half hour to meet this morning – are we still good for a half hour today?” (TIME) Excellent. We planned on discussing x, y, and z. Would that still be a good use of our time this morning? Ok, good. Is there anything you would like to add to our agenda? (Agenda) Good stuff. So John, as we go through our meeting this morning, we’ll both discover together whether our (product/service) is a match for your needs. And if you feel it’s a fit, we’ll get started (sign you up / order your widget etc.) today, and if not, it’s OK for you to let me know that too. (Outcome) Is it ok if we run our meeting along those lines? (Permission).
Remember to use TAO in your sales meetings and attain a state of ‘enlightened’ results!
Thanks to Colleen Francis for the inspiration to use TAO in sales!