Key Takeaways

  • The preapproach is a critical step that helps you earn your customer’s trust and sell adaptively; this is true whether you are meeting with a new customer—a target account—or an existing customer—one of your key accounts.
  • Before you make your sales call, you should know the objectives of the meeting. You should record these objectives, along with basic company information, on a precall planning worksheet.
  • Preapproach research includes information on:
    • company demographics, company news, and financial performance to help you discover sales opportunities and go deeper in your qualifying process.
    • company’s customers, the current buying situation, and your contact person at the company to help you tailor your sales approach.
    • existing customers to find opportunities for expanding the relationship and creating moresales.
  • Good salespeople don’t sell products; they sell solutions to their customers’ problems or challenges.
  • It’s important to know exactly what you want to accomplish when you go into a sales meeting.
  • The goals for your sales call should be specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound: SMART.
  • Once you have identified your customers’ problems and goals, brainstorm solutions and opportunities that will meet their needs.
  • Knowing the best solution for your customer will help you craft a general benefits statement and a specific benefits statement that will help the customer envision the way your solution or opportunity meets their needs.
  • As you plan your sales presentation, keep four things in mind:
      1. Prioritize and organize your agenda.
      2. Personalize the presentation to match your customer’s needs and preferences.
      3. Prepare visual aids and product demonstrations to illustrate your point and engage your audience.
      4. Practice your delivery.

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Selling for Success 3e Copyright © 2023 by NSCC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book