Free Tips on Solutions Selling

11 Tips to Increase Your Close Rate to Sales Call Ratio

1. Choose companies who can buy in this economy. Not everyone is your customer. Approach recession-proof companies, like healthcare, who have a need and can still buy in this economy.

2. Meet only with the decision-maker. Don’t waste your time meeting with people who ultimately can’t make the buying decision. Uncover their need or “pain” and build everything you propose around those issues.

3. Always do your homework before the sales call. Conducting research on the prospective company will give you insight into the company, help you create better probing questions to uncover need, and give you a “leg up” on the competition.

4. Obtain referrals into the company. Ask your current, happy customers to refer you and your college to other companies. This will warm up the call, helps to build trust and shortens the sales cycle.

5. Build trust before your sell. Enter your sales call on the human level. Begin to build trust and the relationship before you ever begin to sell. Talk about what you learned in your research on their company, their accomplishments, awards or new products.

6. Ask for success indicators during the sales call. Ask what they want to see different at the end of the training/intervention with your college. Listen carefully and take notes. Feed these bullets back to them in the proposal.

7. Hand-deliver the proposal. At the end of the sales call, determine the date/time when you will hand-deliver the proposal. When you get back with the customer, you can get the interest and excitement going again, remind them of their issues and “pain” and handle objections as they come up.

8. Anticipate possible objections. Before you deliver the proposal, think about possible objections the customer may have and prepare your response to those objections before the meeting. This helps you look more professional and keeps you from groping for a response.

9. Determine next steps before leaving a sales call. Never leave a meeting or a phone call without determining the date/time for next steps. That might be a follow-up telephone call, e-mailing an outline, hand-delivering the proposal, bringing in the consultant, touring the facility, etc.

10. Have value-added options available if necessary. Sometimes offering a free hour of consulting can help tip the scale for a “yes” on your proposal. Be ready with other value-added options, but use only if necessary to close the deal.

11. Work your pipeline. There should be 8-10 movements per week in your pipeline. If you follow this simple rule, you will shorten your sales cycle and close more business