“Always start with listening to the customer and try to see whether you can help them get what they want.” – Jeroen Corthout in today’s Tip 649
How do you guide the customer to the next step of the buying process?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Jeroen Corthout. Jeroen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Salesflare, an intelligent CRM built for SMBs selling B2B that’s most popular with agencies and fast-growing tech companies. Here he is:
Jeroen Corthout: I never really liked the mantra. Always be closing, that was popularized by Alec Baldwins, character, Blake in the movie, Glengarry Glen Ross in 1992. Until recently, it used to mean for me that as a salesperson, you need to be trying at any moment to get people, to make their final buying decision. It felt like there were saying you’re supposed to force people to buy our stuff at all times. And this line of thinking goes straight against the wisdom that I personally know to be true, that people like to buy, but they don’t like to be sold. It was only when I read Zig Ziglar’s famous book, The Secrets of Closing the sale that I started understanding the word closing as more than getting that final buying decision because S every single thing you do to guide the customer to the next step of the buying process.
To make this clear for all of us, I’d like to rephrase, always be closing, to always be guiding that I believe is our true job as a salesperson. You’re guiding people through the journey that will get them what they want. To anyone who’s new to sales. There’s two pieces of advice that are essential here.
One always starts with listening to the customer and tries to see whether you can help them get what they want. And then two, build on that insight, to guide them to the next step in the sales or rather buying process. That also means that you need to know the usual buying process by heart, that you need to have the next step in mind. They need to focus on getting the customer to that next step. And additionally possess the wisdom of taking the customer along a slightly different path if that makes more sense for them.
Now, what is the best way to make this concrete and walk the walk? To get started, start by mapping out your sales or buying process, or review your existing mapping, know exactly what the different steps are, and set those up as stages individual pipeline of your CRM. And approach up here. It’s best to make sure that these stages represent concrete and actionable steps in the process as this will make it much easier for you to execute the clear it is for yourself, where you want to take the customer next, the better you’ll be at guiding them towards it
Scott Ingram: For more about Jeroen, and links to the Salesflare blog, as well as the Salesflare website where you can set up a free trial, just click over to DailySales.Tips/649
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip! Thanks for listening!