Your sales call is a success if you make the sale. But what happens if your customer doesn’t buy during your sales call? You still can have a successful sales call even if you don’t make the sale.
Set your sales call objective.
I have a philosophy about sales call success. It is that your sales call is successful if you meet your sales call objective. What’s a sales call objective? A sales call objective is what you achieve during the sales call that is more then you had before the sales call.
Use your objective to stay motivated.
Selling is a tough job. And since you know every sales call might not result in a sale, you have to motivate yourself. Accomplishing smaller goals or objectives will keep you motivated.
Be careful how you set your sales call objectives. You cannot control what other people do. You can’t say, “My sales call objective is to learn some piece of information.” Why? Because your customer might not know the answer. Instead you can set a sales call objective to ask the question to learn a piece of information.
Set minimum and maximum objectives.
By setting minimum objectives or the least you will get at the sales call, you can stay motivated. You do want to use your maximum objectives to inspire you. If your maximum objective is to get the sale and your minimum objective is to ask for a referral, both allow you to leave the sales meeting with more than you had. More importantly, by focusing on the maximum you might try even harder to shorten your sales cycle.
Develop your sales call strategy so you can meet your sales call objective.
You probably can see that your minimum and maximum objectives for your sales call will determine your sales call strategy. For example, if you know that your objective is to ask for an evaluation of your product, that will require you to ask about the process for getting a trial accepted, to learn what expectations your prospect has, and to get agreement about expected results for approval.
You can be successful in a sales call even if you don’t make a sale. What you can do is set minimum and maximum sales call objectives and achieve them. That way you’ll be that much closer to reaching your sale.
Best wishes for your sales success!