Summary: In this podcast we look at part two of the sales process. A good sales process is important because sales is both an art and a science. The science is in the process. The art is in how you execute that process. How do you gain the prospects confidence? How do you know when it’s time to close? How do you know what they need to make the buying decision?Will they see you as the person to do business with? Do they have faith in your company to help them reach their objectives? The key to getting answers to all these questions and more is in how well you execute your sales process. Sales Process Overview, Pre-presentation Sales Activity The pre-presentations sales activity section of your sales process is for developing the strategies and tactics for you’ll perform before you meet with the prospect. They will fall into two main categories. Your strategy for contacting and setting the appointment. Pre-call planning before every sales call. Appointment Setting, The Telephone Before you pick up the phone, know what you are going to say. Be prepared for whatever direction the conversation takes. To do that I would highly suggest you develop a script. I’ll take it a step further and say you develop several scripts. This isn't a script that you are going to read to the prospect. They’re scripts you’ll use to develop your message. Here’s the process for developing your scripts. Each script will have three parts: Introduction The message The call to action Emails Your sales process may require a minimum of three emails. What you want to do is create an email template that you can use. Now when I say template, your template should have space to personalize the message to the recipient. Those three emails could consist of: Two emails after the first contact. One for when you set the appointment. One if you were unable to set the appointment. One email before the appointment date to confirm the appointment and provide additional information that could be helpful in the sales process. Here are things to keep in mind when writing sales emails. Keep it short. Get to the point. Most of us read our emails on our smart phones so the subject line and the first two sentences are very important. Try using the subject line as a summary and include your name, and or your companies name. Always limit the number of topics in an email to one. Check your spelling and grammar. As I said before, develop a template. I also found a couple of articles online that you might want to check out related to business emails. From Small Business Trends .com "10 Old New Rules for Business Emails" From Freelance Switch, “Writing Email Copy That Turns Into Sales” And from About .com Sales “Quick Tip: Email Subject Lines” Pre Call Planning One area of the sales process I feel is the most neglected, is pre-call planning. Pre-call planning provides you with three benefits: It provides you with a repeatable process for planning each sales call. It Improves the outcome of the sales call. It allows you to better prepare for the sales call. I hope you enjoy this podcast and that you come back for more. Check Our Sales Management Workshop Podcast Check out Sales Management Workshop. A podcast and blog devoted to sales management. On the Sales Management Workshop podcast, we focus on Sales Planning, Territory development, Coaching, Hiring, Training and more If you get the chance, check it out. You can also fine the Sales Management Workshop podcast in the Apple iTunes Store, and it's free. For more information on Michael Carter's Sales Training Programs follow this link.
