There are 3 stages of buyers you need to be focused on. The right now buyer, the coming soon buyer and the some day buyer. If you don’t identify which one you are communicating with up front, there’s a good chance you will screw up the sale and miss out on a commission.
If you try to pull a right now close on a someday buyer, they will feel unwanted pressure and put you off and most likely never talk to you again. If they are truly not ready to buy today and you attempt to make them buy, they will resent you. No one buys from someone they resent. It’s almost impossible to close a hostile prospect.
If you try the someday close on a right now buyer, you will have missed out on a commission coming on the next pay period that ultimately went to someone else who identified the prospect’s needs and buying timeframe.
When you blow of a coming soon buyer, you forget to follow up in a week and they feel like you don’t care. When they feel like you don’t care, they won’t care to help you earn a commission. If they expect you to follow up in a short amount of time and you don’t they will for sure blow you off for the salesman who followed instructions.
How do you know which category of buyer the prospect is? That’s the big question and in order to determine that, you must ask some questions of your own. Some qualifying questions. Without the proper, pre-existing questions ready, you will miss out on the buying signals that let you know where the prospect is and when you should attempt to close them.
First, you need to determine what those questions are and what buying signals correspond to them. The firs thing I do with all prospects is ask them “what made you decide to reach out?” This is my way of getting them to acknowledge that they wanted my help. This don’t work for cold calling or door knocking, it’s for those of us who live in the 21st century and generate leads that want to speak to us.
After I ask them what made them decide to reach out, I’m listening close to see how “in need” they are. If they say “I’m just checking things out” I’m going to ask “How long have you been checking?” Once they answer I might say “How long are you going to keep checking around, do you have a deadline for the purchase?” Even though these are simple questions, most salespeople fail to ask them and they miss deals because of it.
Second, I’m going to determine how big the problem they want to solve is. In other words, I want to find out how important it is that their problem be solved. If I sell trucks and they just bought a 4wheeler and only have a car, I know that’s a big problem that needs to be solved immediately so they can enjoy their new ATV. If I sell furniture and they just bought a new home, I’m gonna go in hard on them because I know they have a “right now’ problem.
When you first identify their problem, then you can make a good assumption on how fast they need to solve it. If it’s not that big of a problem, they won’t be in that big of a hurry to solve it. On the flip side, if it is a looming problem, they will most likely need to be pressured into making a right now decision.
After you determine their buying timeframe, what comes next is the most important part of the sale.
After you know their timeframe, how you follow up is crucial. If they are a right now, buyer, you need to get on them for the one-call-close. If they are a coming soon buyer, you need to set a follow up time in stone, a short amount of time from the current call. If they are a some day buyer, you need to follow up with them every 2-4 weeks like clock work until the convert. If you mess this part of the process up, you will miss the sale.
Your follow up needs to directly correspond according to their buying time frame. This is why it’s so important to figure out their timeframe up front. If you follow up with a someday buyer too often they will tell you to stop. If you don’t follow up with a coming soon buyer soon enough they will pay your competitor.
Really the key to all of this is to be an intuitive salesman. You need to think about the prospect’s needs. Once you get to a place where you put the prospect’s needs above your own need for a commission check, you will ironically make bigger commission checks. Sales is a game that’s all about THEM aka the prospect. Most people lose the game because they make it all about ME, the salesman.
No one cares about salespeople. We are simply barriers to getting what the prospect wants. As soon as you get that through your head and you focus on the prospects needs, problems and buying timeframe, you will make more money. Trust me, as cool as one-call-closes are, most people have no intention on buying right now. You job is to make sure that when right now arrives, you’re the person they go to.
Lastly, if you get good at identifying when a prospect is likely to buy, you can build a huge pipeline and a follow up machine to go with it. It’s when you reach this point that you get FU money from sales. One way to build that massive pipeline and follow up machine is to have effective lead gen that’s always hard at work for you. You need more leads! The fastest, easiest way to get those leads is by using www.phonesites.com With PhoneSites you can build sales funnels that collect leads on auto-pilot even if you have zero tech skills. You can do all this from your phone in about 5 mins without any formal training. If you an use a mobile phone, you can build a PhoneSite. Sign up today at www.phonesites.com
