A client of mine, Deborah, came to me five years ago. Within the first two weeks of working with her, I discovered that she had a resistance to sales. Deborah had been in business at the time for 22 years, with a graphic design and web development company. She could not get her income beyond $6,000 a month.
I told her she had a resistance to sales. She had over 3000 satisfied clients. She had never approached them about her business. She sat back and waiting for referrals to be given to her organically. And as a result, her income was unpredictable.
I told her we had to get her mindset corrected because she wasn’t going to push herself to do uncomfortable things until we got that fixed. She did the post-it-note exercise, and within a month, her income jumped to $9,300. The month after she brought in $10,000 and the one after that was $15,000.
We recently caught up, and she had grown her company to over $50,000 a month. Why? Because she got over her resistance to sales. I know we already talked about this month, but it’s super important, so I wanted to tell this story and hit on it again.
Now that you understand how essential sales are, let’s take a look at a proven sales process.
The Sales Process
Draw a mountain on a piece of paper. On the lower left side of the mountain, put lead generation. That’s where the sales process starts. You’ve got to generate leads for your business. Next, you’ve got to market to those leads and qualify them. This goes about 25% of the way up the mountain.
The next step up the mountain is appointment setting. You have to set appointments with your qualified leads. During that appointment, find out if you want to do business with the person and if you can help them. I always run a 10-minute phone call before I physically meet with somebody because you can waste a crap ton of time meeting with unqualified prospects.
Now you have a qualified lead. It’s time to build trust and rapport. Help the prospect get to know you, like you, and trust you, so they want your help. At this point, it’s time to identify their needs by asking probing questions to learn about their pain, their challenges, and how you can help them.
Now you are nearing the top of the mountain. When you get to the top of it, you are at the sweet spot. You only have 25% of the mountain left to climb, and it’s time to present the proposal. All that’s left to do at this point is close.
Just ask for the sale. If you follow these steps, and do these things in order, the close is a natural process. Simply say, “Hey, does this make sense? Yes. Would you like to move forward? Yes.” Now, there’s a lot of different closes that you can do. But that’s how simple it is.
If you need help climbing the sales mountain, check out my Facebook group here. Make it a great day.
