I was having lunch today with a regional manager who was asking me some questions about how we can increase the effectiveness of our people’s sales calls.  I started to think through the process we follow when going in to present a product or program.  Here is how I feel they often go:

1) “Hi, how was your weekend?  Anything exciting happen?

2) “I have this great program and incentive you might want to think about taking advantage of.”

3) “Sounds good, go ahead and think about it and I will (but often don’t) follow up with you.”

To me, this is an extremely ineffective way to make a sales call.  To often the call takes end up being the beginning of the selling cycle, rather than the taking of an order.  I feel the call should go more like this:

1)  “Hi, how was your weekend?  Anything exciting happen at your son’s baseball game?”

2)  “I know you have been using a lot of xyz over the past few months as I can see your volume is really picking up.  We have a promotion that just started in this line that complements what you have already been doing and I think that based upon your ussage on those other parts, you could really use these 10 parts.”

3)  “Do you think those are something you can use?  Would you like me to get them coming?”

If we are going to go through the time and effort to go visit or even to call a customer, we should at least be prepared with the reason we are calling how our pre-work has indicated that what we are offering is of benefit to that customer.  Use your sales calls to close the sale…