Why You're Worried

A good sized customer of yours is looking to buy elsewhere. You're in a panic.

    Why?

Because you don't have a pipeline full of other customers, leads, and opportunities. If you had 12 good sized prospects clamoring for your time, you'd sleep a lot better. If you had a pipeline with 50 other prospects in it, all at varying stages of development, you'd be in an even better mood. Busy. But happier.

When you need the sale, your desperation shows. Customers sense this and the hard nosed ones will enjoy watching you squirm. That's why prospecting is critical. Setting up first meetings is crucial. Setting up second meetings is critical. Asking the right questions causing the customer to connect their pain points to your solution is beyond critical. When prospects do that, when they connect their own pain points to your solution (they generally only believe their own data anyway), something magical happens ... prospects close themselves.

But make no mistake, there are no prospecting secrets.

Anyone that's seriously been in cabinet or vanity sales for more than 30 days knows what they need to do to create new opportunities. Ironically, those who are only dabbling also know what they need to do, they're just not willing to do it. A lack of some secret knowledge or "hack" isn’t the issue. Product knowledge isn't the issue either. I've seen abject rookies close huge sales. What works? The deliberate, business-like action of following a validated process over and over to connect with prospects on an emotional level is what separates the victorious from the vanquished, the successful from the struggling, the triumphant from the trying.

The successful salesperson helps prospects connect their PAIN (the gap between where they are and where they want to be) with how that PAIN affects them personally (how they feel about the gap, how their boss feels, how their boss views them, how much it costs their company, how much it costs them personally in time/worry/effort, etc.) and help them see the salesperson's solution as the antidote to that pain.

IF there is a "secret" it's this: you need to be doing 300% to 500% MORE prospecting than you're currently doing. How would you feel about a NO or a "you're too expensive" or "we want to think it over" or "your competitor gives us X, Y, & Z" if you had 3 to 5 times more prospects than you do now? Your attitude and approach would be vastly different. Your prospects and customers would sense it and have more respect for you.

• “Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.” ~ Seth Godin

You wouldn't be just another salesperson, you'd be different.

Different gets the sale.

#sales #cabinets #vanities #prospecting