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by Paul DiModica

"Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't . . . and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it." Robert Frost

Which type of salesperson are you?

Sales communication is a precise, methodical process where each word you say paints a picture in the mind of the buyer. Are you a salesperson who says the same thing to each prospect every time or are you a strategic salesperson who plans their language to produce the specific response or action step you are seeking during your sales cycle.

Selling and communicating is not always linked. At times there is a chasm between your language as said . . . and what is heard by the prospect.

At times, prospects only hear what they want to hear, not what you said.

One sales technique to increase your sales communication success is called a Prospect Communication Logbook. When speaking with prospects and their team members, they often make specific declarations during your discovery on how your product or service offering can help their business. It is not uncommon for prospects to say, "If this goes well, we could drop our overhead costs 12%" or "I think this project is going to help us increase our revenue."

These statements are key sales tools that you can use to close more deals. But if you do not document who said them and when, they lose their impact during your sales closing process as being more hearsay than business facts.

To use client buying statements as sales tools, always document the person's name and title, as well as the date and time of the statement in a Prospect Communication Logbook. As long as prospect team members have not said the information supplied to you is confidential between you and them, you should use these statements as specific selling tools during your sales cycle.

When developing your prospect's proposal, you should always include a succinct, conclusion page on why the prospect should buy from you. Inside this conclusion page, insert statements made by the buying team documented in your Prospect Communication Logbook including the dates, times and comments that were made.  This approach communicates a first party (the prospect themselves) confirmation of your offering's value and is a value forward selling method that turns their observations into a 3-dimensional value perception that they will believe.

Why does this work?

Often management teams and their supporting staff describe cost justifications and value acceptance during their discovery period to buy.  But if you as a salesperson cannot specifically annotate exactly who said what and when it was said, it becomes wasted buying testimonials. By inserting this amount of detail in your conclusions page, it makes it difficult for prospects to argue with their own team's conclusions.

A lead into this section of your conclusion page would start like this:

"During our conversations and discovery with your team, the following comments were made to us including:

·         Ringo Smith on October 1st said, "If this goes well we could drop our overhead costs 12%".

·         John Smith on October 5th said, "I think this project is going to help us increase our revenue."

By listing 7-10 comments made by the buying managers and their supporting team, you are allowing them to sell themselves through their own words in your conclusion.

Webinar Proposals

Using email often reduces the closing ratio of salespeople because when they send their proposals electronically to prospects, it often disappears into an invisible land where salespeople scramble to follow-up for confirmation and prospect feedback. Management and salespeople use email as a delivery method for proposals for a host of reasons including time restraints, convenience and prospects that reside at geographically distant locations.

Negotiating in person is always better, but when it is not financially or logistically feasible, instead of just emailing your proposal to your prospect, you should provide them a Webinar Proposal first. By using webinar proposal, you force your prospect to walk through your proposal page by page allowing you deal with sales objections as they happen, instead of invisibly by email.

When your proposal is ready, call your prospect and tell him that you would like to go over his proposal in detail. If they say, "just send it" and they will get back to you, respond "I appreciate that input, but my firm always presents the proposal by webinar first to make sure it meets your needs, and then we follow up with a written document."

Webinar Proposal Guidelines

1.      Keep your webinar proposal to 10 slides or less.

2.      During the presentation, show high level information of your detailed proposal including your offering description, your reference slide, a high level operations slide, the investment slide, and the conclusion page of why they should buy.

3.      Do not show detailed technical or operational information during your webinar proposal. Instead, save that data for the follow-up email proposal.

4.      Write down the top ten sales objections you anticipate hearing during the webinar proposal presentation and prepare your answers.

5.      After you have finished the webinar proposal presentation, only then send your traditional email proposal.

Use this format, and you will close more deals by managing sales objections proactively as they arise, instead of reacting to follow-up email or phone calls.

"Negotiation depends on the right communication." Art Windell

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