Creating A Solid Impression In The Sales Meeting
When meeting in person with a prospect for the first time, the first 4 seconds is EVERYTHING!!!
In business, rapport is yet another crucial piece of the puzzle of success. It is a strategy where you share common interests, build trust, whilst establishing or developing a friendship.
Yeah, we salespeople are energetic, positive, enthusiastic, and outgoing type. But this does not mean that every prospect will like us right off the bat. That’s why we need to develop this skill to become someone who has a knack for connecting with clients even over the phone. The key is to establish trust, and create a sense of understanding while talking to our clients. Building rapport creates a common bond in order for us take a lead in our conversation. We’d be able to easily persuade our prospects to the direction that we want.
You might argue that this is somewhat innate or a natural gift – it’s either you’re born to be someone who can build rapport with any people or you cannot. This ain’t true. You can develop this skill naturally, nurture and even improve it, just as you can with any other skill.
So what is this rapid rapport system, and how can you apply it in your cold calling strategy? We’ll discuss more about it in this chapter.
The Rapid Rapport System
Polish Your Communication Skills
Remember, your communication skills are a huge factor. Your ability to communicate effectively with your prospect is critical. You must know how to effectively convey your thoughts via phone. It also depends on how you execute your selling techniques and your desire to achieve your goal – to close the deal.
Research Your Prospect Before the Sales Call
Investing some time to research about your prospect is a good practice. Try to learn about your prospect’s priorities, goals, even objectives. By doing so, you can personalize your sales pitch to your prospect, and you’ll have higher chances of capturing his interest. And hopefully, you’d be able to close the deal.
Start by checking his and/or company’s website and social media profiles (Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Quora, etc.). You should also check the company’s press and media, financial statement, Angelist, Product Hunt, Crunchbase, or Yelp profiles.
You might want to check your prospect’s competitors. By doing so, you’d be able to see and understand your client’s challenges and goals. The key here is to identify what your client does well, and then use it as a source of compliments. And if you found some areas where your client’s competitor(s) are doing better, provide some suggestions for growth opportunity that your offering can provide.
List down all important information and keep an eye out for mutual friends or acquaintances that you can use as your reference on your call. Look for areas of opportunities that align your product offering with your client’s needs. It’s a sure fire conversation starter, believe me. Not only that, it will also give an impression to your client that you did your homework which is proven to motivate a person to help you in return.
Find Common Ground
In business, sales, or marketing, you have to remember the following:
– your client or prospect has various options when choosing a business partner, product, or service
– your prospect is more likely to deal with someone they have a connection with.
That’s why it’s important for us to develop positive relationships with our future and our existing clients.
Remember, “customer or client relations” is the catalyst for success. No wonder, we do business with someone or a company we like and trust. Finding common ground, is the easiest thing to achieve this. How?
First tip is to make them feel valued. Yeah, professionalism is important, but it’s as important to take some time to talk with customers; to ask them how their business is doing, and comment on important things that are happening around in his industry.
Tip number 2 is to listen to your client. Never forget – your main priority is to get to know them. Pick up on your client’s interests and business priorities. Then, establish commonalities to spice up the conversation and allow it develop into something beyond business. And before you know it, you already established a good relationship with your client.
Finally, be sincere. Don’t be someone who agrees to almost about everything. Your client can tell or feel if he’s being taken for a ride. Be the real you. Remember, hard work, perseverance, integrity, and passion got your business to where it is today. Allow this to come through in your sales call, and you’d be able to build a positive relationship with your client before you know it.
Get and Stay Motivated!
Motivate yourself before calling your client is a good strategy to adopt. Just so you know, it takes the first few minutes of your sales call to get focused, so make use of your sales arsenal onset of the call to increases your chances of closing the deal. Talking to your client in a professional manner really helps, but don’t forget to have a little fun or read some sales motivation quotes before you call your prospect – this can help you get energized.
Intimately Understand What You’re Selling
Avoid missing the sale by intimately understanding your product. As a sales professional or as a seller, you must know all the ins and outs of your product, so you can answer all the questions from your prospect about your product or service.
Make sure to outline all the features and product information or review them beforehand. This will make you feel more relaxed and comfortable while talking to your prospect and you would be able to answer all your client’s questions in a jiffy.
Suspend Your Ego – Be Emphatic
To make that sale you must suspend your ego and show empathy to your prospect. You need to validate them unconditionally for who they are as a person – listen and make your conversation about what your client or what he’s going to gain from your product or service.
You need to understand them by putting yourself in their shoes (perceptual positions technique). You need to know what makes them tick, their likes, needs, wants, problems, by asking open-ended questions.
