For a small business, getting individuals to buy into your product or service is crucial for survival. Conducting sales is truly a learned art. It takes time and practice to persuade people to support your business. When trying to promote your sales, one sure-fire way to shut your business down is to try to give your potential customers a scripted sales pitch. When in conversation with a potential buyer, they are more likely to shut down and tune you out if you delve into an elevator pitch you have tweaked countless times to get just right. But there is one huge problem with that strategy: you neglect your customers true needs and fail to help them make the connection between your product or service and how it will fill their needs. Your customer will feel as though you are not listening to them or paying attention to what they really need because you are too focused on promoting yourself! Here are five tips to help you conduct a more effective sales conversation:
- Let the customer talk- When it comes to sales, the one biggest factor that you have to keep in mind is that people love to talk about themselves. If you enter into a conversation with a potential customer, focus the conversation 95% on them and only 5% on you.
- Keep your responses short and sweet. Keep your talk to less than a paragraph. The longer you talk, the more your customer will tune you out. Keep your customer talking.
- Be alert and pay attention to what they are saying. The more distracted you are in the conversation, the more you will miss key insights to what your customer needs.
- Get to know you customer as much as is appropriate for your line of business. The more the customer feels like you know them, the more likely they will be converted to your product or service. Knowing your customer builds trust and loyalty. Getting to know your customer may take time, but it is truly worth the time and effort in the long run.
- Keep a flow of “yeses”– Ask your potential customer probing questions that lead to “yeses”, or in return, try to make your negative answers into a positive. The more positives in the conversation, the more you will keep the conversation flowing. A conversation filled with “no’s” will shut down the conversation with your potential customer and leave you lost without a solution and without a converted customer.
