Antonio Garrido is President and Founder of Absolute Sales Development – Miami’s own Sandler Sales Training organization that provides companies of all sizes with superior business-growth training. Visit: www.absolute.sandler.com or contact: (786)-527 0277
Twitter: @SandlerASDMiami
Most salespeople are taught to “always ask for the order.” Asking for the order many be an acceptable strategy of last resort, but it really shouldn’t be common practice. It tips the balance of equal business standing with your prospect. If you have to ask for the order, then doing business together is not a “mutual” decision. Asking for the order is like asking for a favor.
”Make the prospect give up” doesn’t mean “pressure the prospect into giving you the order.” That, too, would upset the balance of equal business standing. What you are helping the prospect “give up” is his search for alternatives to deal with the concerns your product or service addresses. You are facilitating his decision to “give up” any lingering doubts about your product or service being the best fit for his situation.
Salesperson: If your production team was able to integrate the de-burring and the final machining and polishing processes, how might that impact your production throughout?
Prospect: I’m sure it would have a positive impact, but to what degree… I don’t know.
Salesperson: Would there be any value in conducting a study to determine the impact on production?
Prospect: I suppose so.
Salesperson: We can do that for you. Your investment would be nominal, and the report would provide you with the data you’d need to make a decision about reconfiguring the production line. Is that something you’d like me to do for you?
Prospect: It would be a good first step. How do we get started?
Notice that the salesperson was not pressuring for a “close” so much as continuing to engage the prospect with questions and guiding him to the sound decision to invest in an initial study. The final question- “How do we get started?”- was a request from one professional to another, not a plea from a subordinate to a superior.
Some other prerequisites to making this kind of request work:
- You must develop some rapport and establish a degree of trust with your prospect that will allow him to have an open discussion with you.
- You must be knowledgeable enough about your product and service to know the very best direction to guide your prospect.
- Identify the solutions most appropriate to those situations. Then, develop the questions that will guide your prospects to those solutions.
- Practice, Practice, Practice until you can ask your questions in a casual, matter-of-fact manner.
After you have done all that and laid the foundations of the relationship- ask the prospect what needs to happen next, as one colleague to another.
Sandler Training is a global training organization with nearly 50 years of top-flight training experience. Sandler Training provides training and consulting services for small-to-medium-sized businesses, as well as corporate training for Fortune 1000 companies. With over 250 offices located throughout the USA alone, Sandler’s goal is to help clients initiate substantive, measurable and sustainable growth.
