You’re heading into the home stretch of your sales year, nearing the end of the third quarter, and soon will be starting Q4. What can you do to get some quick sales now? Here are a few sales strategies to help you finish the year strong and meet your sales goals.
Sell differently to speed up the sales process
Face-to-face sales calls take time. Instead of scheduling in-person meetings, why not schedule sales calls by phone to at least start building your sales foundation? Yes, you will find it harder to sell over the phone because you can’t see your prospects and they can’t see you. But what you’re looking for is speed. You have a greater chance of speaking with someone on the telephone than scheduling an in-person appointment with a busy prospect.
Consider a telephone sales call just like you would a face-to-face call. Plan how you will open the call, the questions you will ask, and how you will guide your prospect through the points you want to make or get the information that you need to sell.
Also be sure your presentation is interactive and can be viewed on your prospect’s computer. To reduce the probability of the prospect checking email instead of listening to you, intersperse the presentation with questions that are displayed on their computer screen so that the prospect has to pay attention to you.
Use your existing accounts to sell faster
What takes time in selling? First, it’s finding new prospects who need and want what you have to sell. Next, it’s taking the time for prospects to trust you enough so that they will buy from you instead of staying with their current supplier or buying from a competitor.
Existing customers, on the other hand, already know and trust you, and are more open to listening to your pitch and buying from you. So why not call all your existing customers now to see what else you can be selling them? Most salespeople forget that current customers buy other products, too.
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Your existing customers are your best prospects for when you need to quickly put more sales on the books. A good salesperson always finds out what products customers may be buying from other sources to see if they can supply them with the same product, an alternative, or an improvement.
Lost customers can be new customers again
Yes, it does happen. You lose business. And hopefully it happens through no fault of your own. Even if it was your fault, times do change and people learn from their mistakes. Consider talking with your former customer about buying again if the following conditions have occurred:
First, you should have apologized if you caused the problem that resulted in the lost business. If you were responsible, you should have tried to make amends and can’t be seriously reconsidered unless you had apologized for what you did. Assuming you did apologize, you can then describe what you will do to ensure the situation doesn’t occur again.