Selling's Easy, Buying's Hard!

Yes, you read that right, it’s becoming harder to buy every day. Don’t believe me? Put your consumer hat on for a minute and think about every time you’ve been frustrated as a buyer. Think about every piece of bad information, unanswered question, broken promise, missed deadline or disappointment you’ve experienced as a customer. If you’re like me, you’ve likely had more than your fair share.

Options for today’s buyers are at an all-time high, and their expectations are at an all-time low! Looking for a car? Look no further than the internet, and you can quickly arm yourself with all the product knowledge, inventory, reviews, performance videos and pricing information you could want. Your options are at an all-time high. Walk on to a car lot, however, and your expectations for an enjoyable experience are likely at an all-time low*.

So, what are your prospects, customers and clients saying about you? A better question is what are your lost customers, and dead leads saying about you?

• How would they characterize your character?
• Do you follow through by honoring every commitment?
• Do you communicate accurately and timely?
• How prepared are you for every call?
• Do you listen to your customers, or do you just wait to talk?
• Are you genuine Sales Professional, or just another salesperson?
• When was the last time you invested in your professional development?

Your prospects, customers and clients will tell you what they want, how they want it, and what they expect, but only if you ask, engage, and inform them. If you’d like to “Up” your selling game, a great place to start is at the end every sales call. Once you’ve met your call objective, whether it’s the first introductory call or the third discovery call you’ve made, wrap up every interaction with these two steps:

1. Recapping the main points of your conversation. Let them know you heard them and heard them correctly! You can take this a step further by restating or using other words (“So, in other words…”) to let them know you not only heard them, but you understood them.
2. Gain agreement on what’s going to happen next, by whom and when. An easy way to remember this is to end the call by confirming next step(s), date and time–also known as closing. You might not be able to close the deal, but you can close the next step, close the next meeting, and next action item. As a bonus, you have also set the customers expectations. It’s a lot easier to exceed someone’s expectations when everyone is clear on what those expectations are!

This simple process, when done correctly, sets you apart from 90% of your competitors, sets clear expectations with the customer, makes it easier to follow up and move the customer and the sale forward.

If you’d like to know how your sales skills stack up against the top performers, you can test them here now.

*I realize there are numerous Sales Professionals in the car business, and I hope I haven’t offended any of the truly exceptional ones.