by Jacques Werth (editing by Carl Ingalls)
Do you do whatever it takes to get an appointment with a prospect?
Put yourself in the place of the prospect. Think about how you feel when a salesperson calls you, wants to meet with you, and will not take “No” for an answer. Sometimes the easiest way out is to agree to an appointment that you do not care about, and might not even keep. You and the salesperson have just agreed to a pretense. The salesperson will pretend that an appointment is exactly what he or she wants, and you will pretend that you will actually make the appointment.
Suppose that you actually do keep the appointment to meet with the salesperson, and yet you have no intention of buying anything. Perhaps you are getting something you want out of the appointment, with no strings attached. How do you feel about that? How do you feel about yourself, and how do you feel about the salesperson? Is there any reason for either of you to trust or respect the other?
Without trust and respect, what are the chances that you will allow the salesperson to change your mind during the meeting? And if it does happen that way, what are the chances that you will think better of it and cancel the order later?
Now put yourself in the place of the salesperson. You are on the phone again, doing whatever it takes to get an appointment with another prospect, or you are traveling to another appointment that will probably turn into a no-show or a no-sale.
There must be a better way. The will to do “whatever it takes” is there. For most salespeople, doing “whatever it takes” means working a lot harder at doing the same things they’ve been doing all along.
But what if “what it takes” is doing something very different?
Author
Personally, I have no interest in meeting with a prospect who has little or no interest in what I have to offer, or will cancel the appointment, or worse, no show for no apparent reason. I only want to meet with qualified prospects. Anything else is a waste of my time, as well as the prospect’s time.
Wonderful post, and spot on for a recent ‘appointment’ we set for someone; they told us everything they thought we needed to hear so that they could get something out of us…when in fact what it was had nothing to do with selling them anything –
now trying to re-tool our box with better filters.
any ideas?
The best time to filter your prospects is at the beginning, when you first contact them during prospecting. We teach salespeople how to do that. There are several articles in this blog that talk about prospecting, and being very selective when you do it.
If you are not already familiar with High Probability Selling, a good source for more information is the book with the same title, available at Amazon.com. The first several chapters can be read online, at http://www.highprobsell.com/html/selling.html
Yes i totally agree; we are adding one more question and requirement to our interview – this is a great new way to live.