When we’re with a prospect, we’ve got to get them into the right frame of mind. Essentially we need to get them to a place where they want to buy. Instead of them thinking that we’re trying to sell them something, we need to get them to a place where they feel as if they’re in control and that they want to purchase your product or service whole-heartedly.
A problem that we have a lot of the time is that when we go into a sale, we get stuck talking about our product or service, rather than thinking about the value that we can bring to people. Salespeople are always thinking about what kind of sale they can make, and how their prospect can help them. This selfish way of looking at things creates problems. If you’re thinking about yourself and what you’re going to get out of it, you’ll stop thinking about the best interests of your prospective clients. And If you happen to present them with an irresistible offer that ticks all of their boxes, then you’ll be in a much better position. So how can we do this and get our clients into buying mode?
First and foremost- never underestimate the importance of building rapport. Rapport is essentially the ability to relate to others in a way that creates trust. And when it comes to building relationships with prospective clients, trust is vital.
Building rapport is essentially about asking open-ended questions (who, what, what, where, when, and “tell me more about that”) about your prospects work, social life, and family. I speak about this in detail in my article on: “The Art of Asking.”
Once you’ve built rapport, relaxed your prospect, and gotten to know them a bit, they’ll be more willing to listen to what you’ve got to say. Now is when you find out how you can be of value to them, and how you can help them. What is it that you’ve got that they want or need? Don’t get confused here about what you’ve got to sell them, focus instead on the value you can bring them. Here’s what you need to be clear of at this point:
- What does your prospect want?
- Why do they want it?
- How are you going to give it to them?
It’s also important to understand the personality type of the person that you’re dealing with. An ‘analytical person’ will need more detail and information, an ‘amiable person’ is easy to befriend, a ‘driver’ will need someone that they can trust because they don’t have much time, and an expressive person has more emotion attached to their decision-making process. Nine times out of ten, these people won’t be too concerned about the detail, but what they will need to know is how your product or service can help them. Essentially- what is their ‘why’?
Think about what you sell. If you sell real estate, then why do people want to buy a house? Maybe they want to make money from investing, perhaps they want to buy a property that will provide them with a rental income, or let’s say your prospect just wants a new family home because they’ve just had a child and need a bigger house. It could also be the other way around, where your prospect wants to retire into a smaller home and sell their existing house that’s too big for them at this stage in their life.
What are you doing to understand the needs of the people that you meet? With every person that you come into contact with, ask yourself the following questions:
- Have you built sufficient rapport?
- Do you understand their personality type?
- Do you know what they want and why they want it?
- Have you thought about how you’re going to give your prospect what they want?
Once you’ve done the above, your prospect will automatically move into buying mode. From here you’ve got to walk your prospect through the purchasing decision. Here’s where you would bring out your trial closes. You could use something along the lines of:
“Mr Jones, you’ve said to me today that you’re really interested in buying a six-seater family car. Can you tell me why you’re interested in that?” They would then tell you that they’ve got a big or growing family. Then you could ask: “How important is safety to you?” They would obviously also tell you that safety is important to them. Then you would say: “So if after today, I can find you a six-seater car, that’s in your price range and that has all the safety features that you need, are you going to be in a better position to make a buying decision to satisfy your needs and your family’s needs?”.
You’re not necessarily asking them for the business right now, but you’re asking them if they’ll be in a better position to buy from you once you have fulfilled all of their wants and needs. This is still the trial close. From there you can say: “What else can we add to this vehicle to make it perfect for you?”
Asking these types of questions is always going to be much easier when you’ve got people in a buying frame of mind, you’ve understood their psychology, you know what personality type they have, and what their wants and needs are.
It’s important that you make the purchasing process as frictionless as possible. You need the prospect to feel comfortable and by the time you’re ready to close the sale, they need to be open to making that decision and believe that it was them that made it in the first place.
If you’d like to learn more about this topic, then click here to watch my Facebook Live, where I discussed How to Get Your Prospect into Buying Mode.
