In our last blog, we talked about the importance of, newly, finding out what your prospects and customers are really thinking, and we went over how you do that.
You cannot assume they are in the same mental place as they were before COVID-19, and it is crucial to find out exactly where they are now. You need to regain their trust or reaffirm the trust that existed before.
Once your prospects and customers trust you enough to talk about what is really on their mind, you are then ready to ask them some pertinent questions to strengthen your position with them.
These are questions you probably already know the answer to, but you are not actually asking these questions so you can learn the answers. It is far more valuable to get prospects and customers to answer them from their point of view so that they examine the answers for themselves.
Sample Questions
You might ask them questions such as:
• “How important is it that your money goes farther in this new economy?”
• “How valuable is it that your projects be kept on time and within budget?”
• “Would you agree that in this environment we need high-quality products that are built to last because we can’t afford to buy them again?”
• “What should you expect from companies that provide products and services, in this time of recovery?”
• “How do you feel companies can add value at this point in time?”
Agreement
Engaging prospects and customers in answering these questions brings them further into agreement with you, something you need as you make your way back up the sales process.
One of the main focuses of communication is establishing agreement—and you will notice that people who are great at communication are also great at establishing agreement.
You won’t get anyone to trust you if you don’t also establish agreement with them, something you’ll realize if you recall a time you didn’t agree with someone, and also recall how much you didn’t trust them.
Obtaining agreement is also part of the Rule of 8, which is the 8-step key to getting a prospect talking and unlocking early-stage sales resistance.
If you have studied the basic sales process, we developed at SELLability, you know that Agreement is the step of the sales process that comes right before the Close—that’s how important agreement is. It is the point in the sales process at which your prospect has firmly decided to purchase and has made that decision known to you.
Re-setting agreement in general, as part of reviving communication with all your prospects and customers, will make it that much easier to bring them up through the sales process step of Agreement, and get that sale closed.
