“Take some time to reflect on this now or after a sales call and see if you can improve your listening skills and the conversation.” – Melinda Van Fleet in today’s Tip 1693
Do you keep the conversation tight to help you increase your sales?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: We’re doing the countdown of the Top Tips of 2023. Here’s #5:
You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Melinda Van Fleet. Melinda is a certified life and business coach, business consultant, freelance writer, and small business owner. Melinda sees people for who they are, where they are, and helps them with where they wish to go. She is also the host of the You Have The Power Too! podcast. Here she is:
Melinda Van Fleet: As a salesperson, sales manager, or small business owner, you’ve probably heard the age-old advice not to oversell. In short, listening is essential so you can learn and understand what they need to know about your product or service for what will help them and then be quiet. Sometimes we need to remember this.
This advice popped into my brain because my husband and I were discussing this today. In the conversation, I thought of how kids when asked; Why don’t you want to eat your asparagus? They keep saying, I don’t want to. And that’s that. We often move on. There is an energy that having the confidence to relay a message, keep it tight and move on. My husband and I own a successful fishing charter business in the Florida Keys. It’s been eleven years since we started it from scratch. And I laugh when people say, we are living the dream. Like it’s easy. I have to say; I think the only more challenging field would be the medical industry, such as a heart surgeon.
Client expectations have gone way up over the years. Thank you, YouTube. There is a lot of overhead and costs were high to begin with. Now even more so. Mechanical issues often pop up out of nowhere and can cost thousands. The weather is the boss. Oh, and then you want to catch some nice fish, right? Not teeny ones that aren’t on your bucket list. Occasionally clients ask questions such as; why don’t you offer a four-hour trip? A four-hour trip is an option that we cut out after COVID and our business has not slowed down, it is picked up. Clients tend to ask this so they can pay less, but we found they have the same expectation in a shorter time frame.
The awareness to recognize the energy and intention of the question is important because questions can sometimes bring down a spiral of responses, further questions, and debate, which is unnecessary. More importantly in this case, for example, it can shift my husband’s confidence mindset that he needs on the water. So we don’t offer for our charters anymore because that’s it, we just don’t.
So where in your life or business are you overselling? Where is the conversation exhausting and opens up too many wormholes that may derail you or even lose the customer? Take some time to reflect on this now or after a sales call and see if you can improve your listening skills and the conversation. Keeping it tight may be the best way to make some changes and increase your odds of success. Thanks for listening.
Scott Ingram: If you are interested in 1:1 coaching or business consulting with Melinda, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1457. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!