Control Your Sales Meetings

Copyright (c) 2007 Audrey Burton

Your sales meeting could be a fr'ee consultation, in person
or by telephone, a demonstration, or it could be in your
store. It could be long or short. The big question is:
Who controls the meeting?

Customer service is hugely important, and it starts with
the sales meeting. You are the expert in your industry and
the expert regarding your specific product/service. If you
allow the prospect to do all the talking and ask all the
questions, you lose the opportunity to show the prospect
how well your product will fulfill their needs and solve
their problems.

You are not doing your potential customer any favors by
allowing them to take control. Also, when you come to the
meeting with an agenda you look very professional and
organized.

You can have several intentions with your agenda, but the
main one should be to get the sale! For me, since I so
enjoy my fr'ee consultations, I have to additionally use my
agenda to keep me on track so I keep the length of the
meeting reasonable.

On your agenda, you should have open-ended questions.
These questions do not have a "yes" or "no" or other such
specific answer. Examples of open ended questions include:
- What is it you most want?
- Would you please tell me about _______?
- What problem are you currently experiencing with your
______
- How are you currently handling this problem?
- If you could change something about your ________, what
would it be?
- How do you think I could help you?

Then, if you want more information or if you sense there is
something more to what they have already told you, you can
ask:
- Could you please tell me more about that?
- Anything else?

The most important skill you will need to be a great
salesperson is LISTENING. The prospect will list for you
all their selling points - all the reasons they need your
product. Many people need to be heard. If you really
listen, you may get the sale based solely on this ability.
Also, you may have heard that you should only talk 20
percent of the time, but I think this depends on your
product or service. For coaches and consultants, the
prospect often wants to hear us talk - they are getting
fr'ee advice they would otherwise have to pay for! Just do
not over-do it.

Here is an example of a basic sales meeting agenda -
1. Ask open-ended questions that will give you the
information you need to sell them your product, and will
demonstrate to the prospect that you care about their needs.
2. Tell them just enough about your product or service so
they will begin understanding how your product could
benefit them - resist the urge to vomit information on
them, and don't talk about yourself! Unless they ask, they
usually don't really care about you.
3. Close the sale by putting their needs together with your
product. (What I do is demonstrate my coaching by coaching
the prospect around the issues they mentioned to me,
demonstrating value. I then summarize what we could work
on together and how they would benefit, drawing on the
needs they already outlined earlier.)

One more question you can ask, if it fits into your agenda,
is:
Do you know anyone else who could benefit from my services?

Then you need to ask for the sale!

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Audrey Burton, Small Business Coach, is "The Tigress". Get
her FR'EE Special Report, "Closing the Sale is Not
Complicated!" and her FR'EE monthly email newsletter at
http://www.TigressCoaching.com .