Phone Sex

Well, not sex really, but sales. All of us learned to sell face to face. Whether it was Girl Scout cookies or used cars, we learned to sell face to face. Learning to read your mark was important, no, critical. Which old lady on the block would by every type of cookie? We all knew her.

So when you sell face to face you can see tells, those eye movements, face twitches, nervous feet, everything you need to steer the sales pitch to keep them in their comfort zone. Most of us now do a lot of phone selling. So unless you are selling with Facetime or Skype, you’ll need another way to do this. So how do you know what your prospect thinks?

The easy answer? Ask. Sounds easier than it is, but not asking is disastrous. Now to be fair, I get called in to do targeted demos…most of the time J. I insist on a list of questions from the prospect, and I get that….most of the time J. This allows me to show an answer to one of the outstanding questions and then ask, “Does this meet your needs”? Really only 3 answers they can give, yes, no, maybe. All can be addressed.

Additionally I ask questions like, can you see yourself using what I showed you, does this match your expectations, will this match your workflows? All of these will not only give you an idea that your solution is on target, but that the prospect is thinking about using your product. Want to know what they think? Ask.