The biggest sales mistake you could be making
Submitted by kneufeld on Sun, 04/12/2015 - 07:53Presentation Overload
Presentation Overload
Do you agree with the statement that “people love to buy, but hate to be sold”?
Whenever we ask participants for course objectives in our training sessions inevitably someone asks if we are going to cover how you respond to a rate driven client. It’s a very common challenge that many struggle with. What do you do with the client that starts their conversation with you by focusing on rate?
Is your sales process haunted by the ghost of Christmas past?
A recurring theme we have seen all year long is that more and more clients are spending less time in the branch and conducting more of their business online or over the phone. What all of this means of course is we are having less opportunity to discuss financial matters with them in any real and meaningful way.
It seems that some questions are difficult to ask. They must be because we see people taking forever to develop that habit of asking their clients more detailed problem questions.
What are we trying to do?
Selling is not complicated. There are logical steps that we go through when we buy things:
1. We decide were not happy with our current state. Whatever it is we have, or do not have currently, we decide we are not satisfied with it. That dissatisfaction creates a “need”.
I don't know of a financial institution that doesn't need more new business. Everyone is looking to increase their client base and expand upon the number of products per client with the goal being enhanced profitability.
I was in a branch recently speaking with a group of investment people. I asked what sales goals they were working on that week.
There’s something we all know to be an important aspect of the sales process but it’s rarely talked about: Being Congruent
Congruent - the quality or state of agreeing, coinciding, or being congruent.
Do you feel like you’re working as hard as you possibly can to make more sales but somehow you never seem to “close" enough? Chances are you may have developed a few bad habits that you might not even be aware of.
Here are seven bad sales habits that you should drop now:
1. Guessing at what you think the customer wants.