An Essential Step that is Usually Overlooked
Depending on which “guru” you listen to there can be four steps to the sales process, 6 steps, 9 steps or more. But there’s one step that I believe in which is almost always overlooked by salespeople. It’s the quickest and easiest step, but on observing salespeople I rarely see them do it. It’s the confirmation step.
Most sales experts suggest the same, or similar, steps but use different words or terms to describe them. Typically, they are:
- Establish rapport
- Ask questions
- Present
- Negotiate
- Close
- Objection handling
What this leaves out is the Confirmation step.
At some point we have to let the prospect know what we’re going to do for them. How we can help them. What they’ll get if they do business with us. But in order to make good suggestions our presentation (proposal, plan) needs to be based on good information. When we ask the right questions and listen actively our prospects will tell us everything we need to know in order to help them choose to do business with us. But sometimes they don’t properly communicate their current situation, their pains, their needs, etc. because they aren’t used to putting them into words. Other times the prospect clearly communicates but we aren’t listening well and hear something different than what they’re trying to say. This is where the Confirmation step comes in.
Once you’ve asked your questions and actively listened to the answers it’s time to make certain that what you think you heard is what your prospect was actually trying to say. It’s quick and easy. Here’s how. Once you’ve asked all your questions, simply say, “If I heard you right, what you said was…” and then paraphrase what you think you heard. In my world, it might sound something like this: “So, Denise, if I heard you correctly you have 27 sales reps across the U.S. They aren’t seeing enough prospects because they aren’t good at getting appointments with decision makers. When they do manage to set a meeting, their sales cycle takes way too long, and their closing ratio isn’t good. Additionally, they discount way too often, and profit margins are extremely low. In order to increase sales, you want to help them to get more appointments with the right people, shorten their sales cycle, and close more business, more profitably. Is that about right?”
The beauty of this step is that you can’t lose. Either you feed back to your prospect what you think they said, and they confirm it, in which case you have valid information on which to base your proposal, or you get corrected. For example, if I said, “You have 27 sales reps,” but that number is wrong, Denise would say, “No Jeff, I said I have 25 sales reps.” When we say something that’s wrong, it’s human nature for the other person to correct us. Either way, we have good information on which to make suggestions.
Don’t skip the confirmation step. It takes very little time but can pay big dividends!