In our last post, we had seen what a sales process is, how it is the lifeblood of any business, and took a glimpse of the first three stages of a sales process, viz. prospecting, preparation and approach. We will now move on to the next two stages in this post.
Presentation
Here is where the actual salesperson comes into play. The document prepared in the ‘preparation’ stage will come in handy here while you present your product or service to the prospects.
First, ensure that your pitch deck is optimized and personalized to your prospect’s needs. It is important that you focus on the benefits and features of your product, and present them as solutions to your prospect’s pain points in this deck. Alternatively, you can give a detailed demonstration of your product highlighting why your product or service is the best fit for your prospect. Once you have given all the required information to the prospect through your presentation, the prospect would be thinking about the cross offers and comparing yours with others.
At this point, your research about your competition will come in handy. You need to point out your offering’s unique selling points (USPs), how your offering is better than your competitors (without degrading them) and how it perfectly fits the prospect’s needs.
If you have made the presentation conversational and asked the right questions until this point, you will have a good idea about what other features the client would benefit from. This will help you decide when to offer them enhanced services (called upselling) for an additional fee. But remember - never sell prospects something they don't need; this would make them lose trust in you.
Here are some handy tips for you while presenting your product to the prospect -
- Keep the presentation short, engaging, and value-focused.
- Speak a language that the prospects understand. Do not use technical jargon and complicated phrases while talking to them.
- Focus only on the significant features. Do not talk about points that do not apply to the prospects.
- End the presentation properly. Summarize all the points and decide upon the next steps.
Handling Objections
Once your presentation is complete (or even in between), it is quite natural for the prospect to have some objections or hesitation. When they do that, you should give all your ears to their points. As a salesperson, you should see these objections as opportunities to understand your prospect much better.
The first thing you should do is acknowledge the concern the prospect has made. Then offer solutions to tackle that concern in a meaningful way. Try to ask multiple questions to understand their views and then address them one by one.
Pro-Tip: Be ready with some subsequent questions or effective responses to some common customer objections. It will help you face them confidently. Here are four types of objections and some of the questions you might encounter under each of those headers -
Lack of Budget
“We don't have the budget right now.”
“Your product doesn’t fit our budget.”
Lack of Trust
“We’re not aware of your company.”
Lack of Need
“I don't think this will suit us.”
Lack of Urgency
“Your product is not on our priority list right now.”
Conclusion
The sales process is highly dynamic and must be consistently reviewed, tweaked, and revamped to meet customer expectations. This will help you offer an exceptional experience to them. The above two sales process stages are highly crucial to your organization’s success and need to be perfected over time.
For more such tips and information on the sales process (and everything else), you can watch our Sales Expert Webinar where an expert from the industry addresses problems of scaling sales.
