(1) Prospecting: Prospecting is when inside sales reps make outbound calls or emails to leads in hopes of creating opportunities for selling their services or goods..
There are three type of people in prospecting:
-People you know
-People your people know
-People you don’t know
The highest conversion rate is from people you know because there’s high trust and credibility then people your people know because here you are leveraging your friend’s trust to his/her own network and lowest conversion is people you don’t know.
(A) People you know: This is your hot market which has highest conversion rate because of they know you for a while so they can trust you also when you spend more time with somebody you develop trust whether you even talk to the person or not.
Here’s a quote by Gracian:
” Recognise when Things are ripe, and then enjoy them. The works of nature all reach a certain point of maturity; up to that they improve, after that they degenerate. Few works of art reach such a point that they cannot be improved. It is an especial privilege of good taste to enjoy everything at its ripest. Not all can do this, nor do all who can know this. There is a ripening point too for fruits of intellect; it is well to know this both for their value in use and for their value in exchange.
This extract in business means that when you meet with anyone first time the first period of your relationship with that person is when you have best impression with the other person and that’s the best time to take favor, you should know when your relationship with the other person is at it’s peak.
(B) People your people know
Here you leverage the trust of your friend Mr.X. What it means is that, you trust your people or friend and they also trust you, also your friends also have their own network or people which they trust. But your friend’s network don’t trust you but they can help you because of the reputation and trust of your friend on you. This market is your warm market which also has high conversion rate.
(C) People you don’t know
These are complete strangers to you. You need to create trust and credibility to go into this market. People buy things from people they know. To enter this market you can use salespeople using sales call script and doing hundreds of calls everyday, social media marketing or email marketing, SEO, Events, Youtube channels, Centre of Infleunce people are some ways to enter into this market.
(2) Preparation
During preparation you need to gather relevant information and doing research in the market and develop sales presentation.
(3) Approach
Here you make your first contact with your client. After you got email or phone number then you are talking to that person whether virtually or face to face.
(4) Presentation
Here you present to the customer how your product/service can solver their problems and ask them dozens of questions to understand their requirements.
(5) Closing
After your client has made your decision then you talk about how will be the payment structure. Also if client say’s “No” then you must have a list of reasons to ask him what’s the reason for your “No” because many times people are not clear what’s the reason for their action and also they don’t want to put energy to think about that. So it’s important to give them a list of all potential reasons for saying know so that they can select the relevant reasons.
(6) Follow Up
“Fortune lies in follow Up”
No sales are done in just one approach or call or meeting, you need to talk or follow up with the person again and again after certain days or time. Manytime customer says that I will be needing your service after 9 months. You need to put in in your calender to follow up with them that day even after a year. When you follow up after a long time it shows that you listened to your potential customer and you value his time.
Sales is easy if you follow up properly. People don’t do follow up because they are lazy and impatient. Follow up requires discipline and patience. Other important reason is that many times people forget that they talked to you, human mind is not made to remember things it’s made to solve problems.
(7) Referrals
After the customer has taken your services or goods then ask them for referrals and keep following up for asking for referrals as well. It takes time for your customer to give you a referral.
(8) Maintaining Relationship
After you sold your service or goods, you need to maintain the relationship with the customer, there should be good customer service and experience.