My ‘Wants and Needs’ always came with goals. Maybe it was a paycheck to be larger, of course we all want bigger paychecks. In the commission world of sales usually there are not raises. I know that you can sometimes get a raise of a percent or so, but that does not happen all that often. I believe that you must give yourself a raise. How to do that is to work smarter and harder and sell. Sell with a goal that you give yourself that is above and beyond the goals set for you by your company. If you set a goal to reach for the stars you may not get quite to outer space but if you try harder enough you may reach the outer atmosphere and that is a highly lofty goal in its self!
Having high goals, and you must have goals so you can grow along with a growing paycheck is very important to being successful. So then ‘Wants and Needs’ are attributed to yours and your customers success. If you and your customer are achieving the “Wants and Needs” then in your sales world all is perfect.
To be successful you must look the part. That means being clean, smelling good, and dressing well. Being prepared, meaning knowing your products, and having a presentation ready. I was always on time and mostly early for all of my appointments. I also made sure that I had several extra copies of the presentation ready. Customers more times then not, have other interested parties there for the meeting. Being prepared for this surprise become not a surprise at all. Make sure you have the proper tools with you, that is to say extra scrap paper and pens along with a calculator.
If you were given a reference from another customer and that customer said that you could use them then by all means do so. The deal that you have with the each of the customers has not necessarily anything to do with the other. Meaning unless they are all part of a group that works together as an ad group or are part of the same organization then you should share less info about the other as far as of the business agreement that you have with that customer.
Keeping control is very important. You need to control your presentation. If your presentation has several pages you need to try to keep the customers attention on what you are covering. Customers that move ahead of you during the presentation are wanting to move along. This could be that they have many appointments scheduled for the day and don’t have the time for a long drawn out meeting. If you lose control at this point and cannot regain the customers attention then you may not get the sale.
Now with my presentations with the cleaning company, my meetings were not all about the paper presentation. I had chemicals arranged before them and I also had the equipment for show and tell. Now I always wanted to start with the paper presentation, but it didn’t go that way most of the time. I learned to compose myself and would still be in control and would change so to please the customer. They would want to know all about the equipment first. I would be ready for that and do that part of the presentation first, then I would reel the customer in to the paper part. Sharing the company history and where they have been and where they are intending on going is important. It’s important that for your company to move forward to the future your need the customers business, and you are asking for help. When asking for help, most people want to help you.
