It took me a while to learn the products and what their use was for. Learning the use of the equipment was easy, the company had great instructions on each machine. The machine was designed for use just as the largest companies that you would hire to come to your home or business. The machine forced water down deep into the carpet and at the same time vacuumed the dirty water back out getting about ninety eight percent of the water back into the machine. This made the carpet dry in a lot less time.
When making a new account call I took a machine and a few bottles of the cleaning solution
with me. This all was for show and tell. After all, as I said earlier in my sales life that we all were really taught how to sell when we brought a toy or an item of interest to school and had our turn at show and tell. We shared the great things that we believed made the item great. The same process is used in the sales world. Think about it, you go to a car lot to look at a new car. The salesperson shows and tells you all about the new car. Show and tell. You go to an open house when searching for a new home. The realtor shows and tells you all about the amenities of the home. Show and tell.
When you are prepared with the items that you want to share with the customer and you are prepared to write the deal, even though you may not close the deal, you will have at least had the chance to do a soft close. Soft closing is when you are confident that the customer is ready to make a change or a purchase. How you get to a soft close is through the investigating process. You may have found out about the customer being ready to make a change, or you may know that the contract or deal that they are in with a competitor is about to end or has ended. The customer may even not have a product like yours.
I believed in my products all through my sales career. The only way to close or even have a soft close is to believe in the product that you are selling. The slightest disbelief in any of the products that you are showing and telling will almost certainly end in a no sale.
So getting the appointment may not have been an easy task. You must get the appointment to be able to do a show and tell. That appointment is very important for you to achieve the sale. How you get that appointment has taken you time and effort and there are several ways to get the appointment. There are many books and CD’s that are filled with ways to get the appointment and they are good resources for you to learn. There are list that you can buy to get phone numbers for particular types of business that you may be interested in for your needs. I had several ways that I used.
One way and I that worked really well for me was to ask the customer that I had just closed or even if I didn’t close for references. You can do this if indeed you did your best to close, if you did everything right then ask for references. I found that they customer would almost always give some references. Once I had the customer give me a list of customers that covered most of the state of Tennessee and Alabama. Once I had that list I moved quickly to contact and make appointments with as many of the people on that list that I could. I didn’t stop there either I would ask every single customer for more references. I would attack these list and keep myself very busy.
Another way to find the new customers that you wanted to contact was to go on line and go to the yellow pages. Pick a city and state search for the type of business that you were interested in. You can from there expand your search to the whole state. Write down the addresses and phone numbers of the potential customers. You may not get the right person when you call, so then you investigate. Ask who the right person is that you need to talk to. I found that sometimes when I did this, that that store was part of a chain of stores and I would ask for the home office number and, this is very important, ask for the buyers name. Almost always at the store level you could get the name. If you failed to get the name and you called the home office you would have another step to go through, the gate keeper.
The gate keeper is usually the office manager, administrator or secretary. they are in place to screen the callers. If you have the name of the person you are that much closer to the appointment. Having the right name still does not always get you to them, you will still be screened. Be polite always, be pleasant, after all the person that is answering the phone as more responsibility than just answering the phone.
