Verify The Decision
Increasing your conversion rate is one of the key metrics effective sales reps work on. Any lift in conversion rate saves time, boosts confidence and increases profitability. This is why understanding and measuring each step of the sales process is so important. As discussed previously, many people decide to buy from you long before you actually ask for the sale. Your level of care, engagement, knowledge, quality of questions all heavily influence a person. Working the sales process and creating an experience the customer enjoys is a perpetual work of art in the craft of selling.
An essential element in this is ensuring you truly understand what decision the customer needs to make.
If you are in sales, you will inevitably have lost sales and considerable time and focus by failing to ask the 3 basic questions - Clarifying the decision maker: “Who else, other than yourself is involved in the decision making process/What is the decision making process for your organisation?”, clarifying time lines: “When will this decision be made? / When is the product/service required? When will they pay for it?” and clarifying budget: “How much have you budgeted for this?” After hearing several rejections phrased around these, “I need to ask my boss”, “That’s more than we thought it would be”, “We are only thinking of going ahead next year”, reps learn to ask these qualifying questions sooner in the process.
What is not always so easy to pick up and uncover is why somebody wants/needs your offering. People can, and generally do, give genuine reasons why they are looking for what you offer. There are two traps to avoid here - 1) Picking the reason that most aligns with what you want to push and promote (a malady of happy ears - hearing what you want to hear, not what is actually being said!) and 2) Not digging deep enough and taking the time to understand - both the surface reason and underlying factors.
If you sell safety equipment and an enquiry comes through for your product, do you just give the price or seek to understand why the client is looking for this product? The surface answer could hide the driving force for the investment. For example the client could answer that it is a requirement to have the equipment (a begrudging expense). A few more questions could however uncover that there is a productivity problem and the client’s team is objecting to working in conditions they feel are unsafe. Knowing this as the key driver for the decision allows you to bring your knowledge, skill and experience to benefit the client - you are then able to recommend best fit alternatives, add an upsell that will address their real issue - maybe put their branding on the equipment to help the team feel more unified, show additional products to lift productivity.
This concept really landed with me after I read the book SPIN selling and realised I was not asking enough “Need Pay-off” questions (i.e. Uncovering the real reason by understanding what the client hoped the investment would do for them). I received a phone call asking for a days sale training and just before closing the sale I asked a few deeper questions and discovered the new rep would be managing the major head office accounts. A days training would be inadequate. I suggested our 12 intensive week programme and was amazed at the relief and excitement in my clients voice - he had suspected more would be needed and was delighted with the recommendation.
Learning to understand and verify the real reason and end desired outcome could be what you need to lift your conversion rate.
Here’s to your success!
