Do you often find yourself getting stuck in sales follow-up hell? That eternity in the sales cycle where you are stuck diligently ‘following-up’ with the promising prospect, who equally diligently replies that they ‘are interested, but are still in the process of making a final decision’… or, something similar.
On and on you ‘follow-up’ and the customer consistently gives you the same response, while you miss your sales target, yet again.
Or, do you find that very ‘hot’ prospect simply disappearing into some black hole where they simply vanish off the face of the earth. Your calls, texts, mails simply go unanswered?
It’s sales follow-up hell all over again.
One big mistake salespeople make is that they fail to pay sufficient attention to road blocks. Roadblocks caused by the required change (a change away from their current way of working). It is a fact that any change brings with it, it’s own set of complexities and the assorted negative emotions relative to these complexities.You end up feeling overwhelmed (whether perceived or real) by the very thought of the complications involved in implementing your wonderful solution/s. This could include:
Any such surprise and the sale quickly descends into follow-up hell
The answer is ‘Advance the sale’. Here are 4 steps that you can take to set things right and get out of the follow-up hell.
Step 1: Identify the complete set of challenges, process systems, people, budget etc. that your customer might be faced with (in purchasing and implementing your offering)
Step 2: Determine all possible mitigants and work arounds to each of these.
Step 3: Learn –
Step 4: The Key Step that you need to introduce as part of your Sales Management Process is:
Once you help the prospect identify and deals with potential roadblocks to purchasing and implementing your offering, two things will happen;
Importantly, you would have hastened the decision making process, in other words you would have shortened the sales cycle.