Kids love playing hide-and-seek. In sales, we found that the game is very similar in the sales process too.
In hide-and-seek, the seeker’s job is to get all the hiders and he loses if he doesn’t. In sales, the salesperson is the seeker and the hiders are the prospects and the main task of the salesperson is to hunt down all the prospects in order to hit their targets.
It may be easy in the kids’ version of the game, but in sales, it can be slightly trickier. Here we’ll share some very simple strategies for you to dominate the sales game.
Prospect will always hide
Just mention that you are a salesperson and the person over the other line will start giving excuses to hide from you. A normal salesperson would just go “This prospect is not interested, he will never buy!”
It’s natural that if a prospect isn’t interested in what you have to say, he can easily create 10001 excuses in a second. However, if the salesperson is a trained hunter, he can skillfully convert a cold, uninterested prospect to a warm prospect. One simple step – creating needs.
A prospect will only be interested if you can solve their problem. The skill is to change their “I’m not interested” into “Hmm…tell me more…”. The first step is to understand your prospect’s business and know their challenges. When you understand their challenges, you can craft your pitch to hit them where it ‘hurts’ and that’s where you’ll get their attention. More steps here.
Don’t look at the same place twice
In hide-and-seek, if you have already searched a location, you don’t go back to the place again. It’s unlikely that you’ll find a hider by going back there again.
Likewise, in sales, if you have used the same pitch before and it didn’t work, you don’t use it again hoping for a different result. That’s insanity.
A trained person will follow up with something that will catch the attention of the prospect. It can be something like “Hi Mr. Lee! I just want to tell you that we have recently trained XYZ which is a company very similar to yours and after training them, they have increased their sales by 50% in 1 month! Would you like to hear what we did for them?”
In this follow up call, you have already made yourself more credible by saying that your company is getting new clients and at the same time, you have shared a testimonial about your success.
Look for feet
A great tip in hide-and-seek is to always look for feet accidentally sticking out from curtains when you are the seeker.
In sales, there are always signs when talking to a prospect. Every sales leader wants their sales team to hit targets and they need solutions. By finding out the challenges the sales leader is facing, you can provide the solution. This is done by asking the right questions. A correctly crafted question can show that you are an expert in the field and at the same time getting your prospect’s pain points.
Sales is a game. A very challenging yet fun one. Once your salespeople know the strategies and techniques of the game, your salespeople will be eager to close more sales. It’s just like kids and hide-and-seek, once they know how to really play the game, they’ll want to play it again and again because they enjoy winning.
If you are really interested in transforming your sales team, we would like to talk to you. Drop your details here and we will get back to you within 1 working day.
