Get your sales structure right

Siddharth Moorthy
Aug 24, 2017 · 4 min read
source : tumblr

Not every sales call can be a successful close. Learn to embrace the ‘no’. It’s not necessary to satisfy every prospect. As long as you get some positive suggestions / feedback, it’s fine.

Having been in sales for quite some years now, I’ve read a lot of blogs, followed a lot of inspirational, qualified entrepreneurs. Personally speaking, quite a lot of tips have actually worked. They’ve done magic to my life in sales. Hustle — I’ve learnt to preach this word. In the current world, the best salesperson wins the deal. So keep hustling, every single call that you make is gold, so it’s always wise to keep your energy pumped up.

From my learnings, My first piece of advice would be to get your sales structure right. Combining a few point from my learnings :

Qualify your prospect :

  • Never close bad deals. Not every prospect’s solution is your application. Pressurising your prospect and selling your product to them will only cost you a lot of problems. They might not find a fit with your product and will provide bad ratings on social media, review sites. Minimise the work for your tech support team so that they can focus on providing world class support for the right customers.

Ask questions :

  • Ask the customer how they are managing the current problem for which your product will be providing a solution for. This will give you a basic insight on their requirement.
  • It’s better to ask them if they have tried any other application before. If yes, what did they like and not like in that. This will give you an early edge for better product demonstration and key area focus.
  • Give a brief idea about your application and how it will help them out.

A proper demo :

  • Ask for permission for an appointment and schedule a demo depending on the prospect’s availability.
  • Do a brief study of the client’s business prior to the demo. This will help you in many ways as you will have a basic understanding of their requirement.
  • Make it as an interactive session. Ask as many questions as you can.
  • Keep the demo to a maximum of 15 minutes. Everyone loves a story, walk through your product with a scenario.
  • Always focus on the main problems and provide a straight up solution. (Even a car advertisement highlights its important features, not every single regular feature).
  • Once the demo is done, ask the customer what they think about the demo and the solution.
  • Allow the customer to try out the software for the trial period.

Regular Follow up :

Do a regular follow up but not too often as it might annoy your customer. Ensure that during their trial period, you do a minimum of 4 follow ups.

Follow up 1 : Day 3 (Email)

  • Send a personalised email and ask them if they need any assistance.
  • Suggest a specific feature you think might be useful for them.

Follow up 2 : Day 5 (Call)

  • Ask them how their trial is going.
  • Ask if they need help in understanding any feature.

Follow up 3 : Day 7 (Email)

  • Send a mail suggesting a different other feature and let them know you are there to assist them if they have doubts.
  • Include a ‘You can subscribe to the application’ link.

Follow up 4 : Day 14 (Call and Email)

  • Ask the customer a feed back of the application, encourage your customer to provide you feature requests.
  • Ask whether the client has had enough time to evaluate the application.
  • Ask them if he finds any reason to not to buy the software. (Helps out in bringing the original feedback of the customer)
  • Ask for the close.
  • Include a ‘You can subscribe to the application here’ link in the mail.

Time to seal the deal :

If the customer says they are not ready to purchase at the moment and need a trial extension, provide an additional trial but limit it to half the number of days that you had provided in the original trial limit. (Eg : 14 days free trial initially, make it 7 days).

If the customer says they don’t want to purchase it or delays the purchase, Ask them what went wrong?

  • Didn’t they like the product?

- If yes, what did they not like in the product and why?

  • They think this might not work for them?

- Any missing features? Any specific functionality that they are looking for?

  • They think it’s not useful?

- Have they tried the complete product? why they think it won’t be useful?

  • They are not the decision makers?

- Ask who is the decision maker and ask whether you can talk to them.

Even after all this the customer is not willing to purchase (ensure that they say ‘no’, don’t close till then), it’s ok , tell them that hopefully you might have them on board in the future. (Keep a track of such customers as you can get in touch with them months later).

If a customer is satisfied, ask for the close and get them to subscribe immediately then and there.

Once you get the customer on board, request them to leave a review if they love the application.

A lil structuring always helps ;)

If you like this article and wish to get more updates, follow me here on medium or you can also follow me via Twitter.

)
Siddharth Moorthy

Written by

Sales Enthusiast, Business strategist, Hustling is life! A strong believer in the phrase “Go get em”.A singer, cricketer and Animal lover.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade