The latest Tales of The Sales post is a little different than our normal format but for good reason....We all need a laugh these days. Sales is a stressful job in normal times but when faced with things like inflation, covid, supply chain issues, a war, and a skilled labor shortage the stress level can be 10 fold.
This post would not be possible without our friends at Sales Humor. If you are in sales and you are not following Sales Humor on their Linkedin or on Instagram you are for sure missing out. They provide laughs we can all relate to using hilarious sales focused memes. They make me smile on the most stressful of days and below are a few recent gems. I have also added a little Tales of The Sales twist with a quick lesson after each meme. We can have a laugh while learning a little at the same time! Hope you enjoy....
We have all been there. The prospect has agreed to the business but they are dragging their feet on signatures, admin tasks, credit paperwork, etc. In these situations you need to remind them why they decided to move forward and simply ask them to follow through on the busy work. I like to call and say something like this..."First of all I really appreciate your business as we never take that for granted. I understand you are busy and the credit app is not your priority but it is something I need you to take care of for me so I can move forward internally, we both agree this program is a priority and I don't want to slow anything down." This almost always works and if it doesn't you may have some more work to do with the prospect......
This is something I have some personal experience with just recently. There is not much worse than going back to a customer to tell them you screwed up and your going to need them to pay more! Inflation is causing price increases so fast, its hard to keep up so this mistake is easily made these days. If its a smaller transactional sale you may want to explain what happened and honor the price while clearly explaining the real pricing for the next transaction. This will build you some good faith with the customer. If you made this mistake on a much larger enterprise type deal its going to be a much different story, but...
Your prospect is not dumb, they know what fair market value is for your product or service and they know you came in wayyyy lower than the other options. If your product was the clear choice it may not have been simply based on price especially in these type deals. There are many steps along the way in larger more complex sales cycles that would be time consuming and costly to go through again with a competitor. Your mistake may still cost you some margin points even after revising your quote but it usually doesn't kill the deal every time. If it does kill the deal you are either no different from your competitor or the customer is a price buyer and you don't want price based relationships anyway, you want value based partnerships. The situation will suck but move on to more ideal customers who see and understand your value. ps review larger quotes and proposals a few times in the future :)
This is a tale as old as time. Either you did a bad job qualifying the prospective company overall or you are not targeting the real decision maker. If its not a qualification issue you may not be speaking to the right person within the qualified prospective company. You may have met with a nice person who could benefit from your product but doesn't have the authority to make buying decisions. They may have went to their boss about it and had it shot down. You need to find out early on who should be involved in the initial discovery call. Don't take the meeting or set up the Zoom until you have the right people involved.
We have all been there. The most likely reason you are not getting a reply is that your message is weak and you are coming off like every other sales person in their email, voicemail, and LinkedIn massage box. If you can't differentiate yourself in todays world of non stop spam you are in big trouble. All day everyday horrible attempts to gain the attention of decision makers are made. From automated email to the worst LinkedIn messages you can imagine bad sales people are decreasing the patience of prospects in every industry. The good news is that if you can nail your message and your approach you will be a breath of fresh air for your prospects. Ok, so how do you do that.....
There is way more to unpack here than I could ever do it justice in a blog. I highly recommend you look into the best video coaching series ever produced on winning new business by Mike Weinberg. Mike is an Author, Speaker, and Consultant who is booked solid for years to come. He is booked for a reason and you will understand immediately if you do some research into his content. Here is a little sample from YouTube.
To end this edition of Tales of The Sales I will keep it simple. The Meme says it all. The grass is not always greener. Its a very challenging time to run a business right now and most leaders are doing all they can to keep their top people happy. Don't jump ship unless you have some really good, well thought out reasons to do so. If you are unhappy find a way to communicate calmly and with maturity, without complaining and give your employer a chance to correct. Your manager is living in the same stressful times as you are so give them a break.
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