If you want to sell more, take your time. The very best salespeople I have run across all have one thing in common — they play the game slowly. Rookie sales folks get into a sales call and start yapping too soon, nervously telling the prospect all about themselves, the product, the company, etc. And eventually they try to ram through a clumsy close.
Buyers do not want to be “sold” to this way, and the way they subtly tell you is by saying they will think about it and never returning your call. They want to talk, to be listened to, to be understood. (Don’t we all?)
There is an easier way, and it takes the pressure off both sides.
On your first sales call, make it clear when you are setting up the agenda that today is all about them and you learning and trying to understand the current situation and what they are trying to accomplish. After today, if it makes sense, you will schedule another meeting to share how you can help solve the issue.
Then, with great interest and curiosity, really try to understand what the problem is. Keep in mind that they usually won’t just blurt it out. They will likely start with a general pain statement like: “We need a better price on our room rate for our customers.” And you may end up hearing from them: “A fair rate is fine as long as I can be sure my customers and my VIPs will be taken care of so they will love coming to our event and will in turn help us grow our business.”
This example actually happened to me when I went to meet Tom Voss who was the new GM at The Hyatt right here in Greenville. Our company had a big user group event every year and we rented out hundreds of rooms for them, along with food and beverage and so on. I was the point person to deal with The Hyatt at the time and when Tom took over, he asked for a lunch meeting.
I showed up and Tom had a nice table at the restaurant set up for us and some wine on the table (he did his homework). Tom was very friendly and relaxed; he is originally from Germany and put me at ease. I immediately started in on the “better room rates” and he said, “John, if it’s OK with you, let’s just relax and have a nice lunch today and get to know each other. Hopefully we will be working together for many more years, so I want to get to know you and vice versa so I can make sure you are getting what you need from the Hyatt. Once I know what you need I’m sure we can come up with fair pricing. Good?”
Well, we never really had to discuss business again. The Hyatt always gave us a fair rate and took care of our VIPs and I never worried about it again once I got to know Tom and knew he would take care of things. Instead of a hotel that just sold us rooms at a good rate, they became a Datastream partner, and by taking such special care of our best customers they helped us grow our company.
That meeting could have gone very differently. Imagine a transactional meeting in which we would have met in a conference room, across from each other, with our henchmen with us, and both of us with a bunch of paperwork to review, last year’s contracts, maybe some printed emails from old customer complaints, maybe some quoted rates from competition. We could have easily fought about something instead of Tom having me relax, and then him understanding what I wanted and how the Hyatt fit into what we were building at Datastream. From that meeting, we continued to use the Hyatt for all of our events and when Tom got promoted to run and build hotels on the West Coast, we stayed in touch and on every occasion that I have been in the San Diego area over the years I have stayed at one of his many hotels.
Tom taught me a lot about sales that day and I hope you can use this lesson to take your time and make selling easier for you and for your customer.
Easy rule of thumb? Wait until the second meeting to present your solution.
Be like Tom; take your time.
John Sterling is the Amazon bestselling author of “Sales for Noobs” and CEO of NOOB School, an online resource for new salespeople. Previously, John helped build and sell Datastream for over $200 million. He has trained and hired hundreds of sales reps globally. Subscribe to his YouTube channel for new sales content every week. https://noobschool.org
