(By Loyd Ford) How do you improve your ability to be seen as a consultative problem-solver and not just like one of the many sales people others see all day in person, online and in their email every single day? This is how you build a life at work that makes you more of an essential part of your clients’ board of directors helping to guide their business through the choppy waters of the 21st Century.
Prep Before You Visit, Call or Even Email: Having a well-defined plan that is well thought out leads to more positive meetings with potential clients and existing clients, increasing your images as being an authority at what you do, shortens the actual time it takes you to sell individual clients, and will give you better results across time. Planning what your options are and having a highly connective, creative opportunity for potential clients and existing clients will make you look like a Rockstar to them. Know what you are to accomplish ahead of time and make certain that your confidence comes from strong advanced preparation.
Focus On Understanding First: Consultative selling is all about understanding. If you hope to be a legendary seller, you must sharpen your skills in connecting with potential clients and existing clients at a fundamental level through understanding them, having empathy for them and listening more than you talk. You absolutely need to reach a level of openness with them and maintain that openness by asking a full range of questions.
The Way You Recommend Is Important: We must always be thinking about how to position subjects, proposals, solutions where they are easy for the client to understand quickly. This comes from spending the time to make certain that you are thinking customer-first. Not radio station or cluster or company first. You must work terribly hard to make the communication about the solution for your client problem easy and to make certain your company abilities to get the job done is also easy for the client to see. Make it easy to follow and you must be very connected to the value your customer needs to win.
Closing Like You Cook A Lobster: How do you cook a lobster? Slow and steady. The best salespeople learn to make their closing more of a process than a quick yes/no. If you build a process that leads to yes, there is more opportunity for your potential client to see answers from a perspective that makes closing his or her idea. Not yours. This increases the likelihood that you will gain a true commitment from that advertiser that has real meaning.
Bring Consistency To Every Client-Facing Thing You Do: Most salespeople do not follow-up at the level that gives them true consistent success. Consistent value-focused follow-up with the client is one of the fastest ways sellers can build credibility and separate themselves from all other sellers. You want to make certain that your customer presentation is fully leveraged in order to learn and grow revenue success in the longer term.
Most or even all of your competitors will not do the things in this article. They certainly won’t do them consistently. This is where you win. It goes beyond your company. It is personal. More discipline means more productivity. The more you learn how to master each of these items and the more you sharpen your knowledge and skill around each, the more of a Rockstar you will become. It is the path to personal wealth.
Loyd Ford consults radio stations, coaches personalities, and provides behavioral and strategic programming to radio with RPC. If you’re on the Clubhouse app, you can join Loyd’s radio pro encouragement group “The Encouragers.” Reach him anytime. 864.448.4169 or [email protected].
