You have been calling all your clients with an empathetic “check-in” to see how they are doing. You’ve been pleasantly pleased that it’s easier to speak to clients live and they are appreciative of your call showing care for them and their families. You’ve been brave and even called customers you haven’t spoken to in several years.
Now what? Do you call them again and check-in? Or do you call to seek sales, as you’re getting pressure to change the declining sales numbers?
For some, this is becoming an ethical dilemma.
How can you prevent your team from inappropriately “Selling Too Soon”?
For some, this is becoming an ethical dilemma: how can you prevent your team from inappropriately “Selling Too Soon”? Share on XThe PURPOSE Consultative framework provides a step by step process to show care, build trust, and simply ask questions to pivot the conversation about how COVID19 is impacting their business.
It will guide you to transition the conversation from check-in to asking more about their business to help you determine their priorities…and if it is suitable to explore your solutions with them.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been sharing PURPOSE framework with the sales teams I’ve been coaching. I’ve also been applying PURPOSE framework to my daily 10 sales calls each morning! It’s working very well and a few opportunities have even emerged.
- P – Prepare well before the customer meetings
Visit their website and/or social media to research their COVID19 update, as most have posted on their business continuity plan. Prepare with your own positive self-talk – you’re here to help, care and if suitable explore your solutions. Prepare by reviewing the PURPOSE framework and the business type questions you can ask and not ask depending on their response.
Prepare well before your customer meetings. Prepare with your own positive self-talk – you’re here to help, care, and if suitable, explore your solutions. Share on X- U – Understand the customer’s personality style, generation & decision-making role to adapt their conversation
The Trifecta factor will help you to adapt to a more comfortably chatty conversation. If they are exhibiting a driver personality style, it may be appropriate to pivot to a discussion about impacting their bottom line.
- R – Rapport building to kick off the meeting
How is COVID continuing to impact you (and your family)? You can even get more personal and ask about their favourite Netflix, kids’ activities, to cooking. One Sales Leader even joked, “Hey, I have tickets for the Raptors game- are you interested?”
- P – Purpose of the meeting by stating the meeting objectives and/or agenda items including length of meeting
This is the turning point in the check-in conversation. The purpose of my call is to further discuss how COVID is impacting your business and ….
- O – Open-Ended Questions, at least 5-10 questions focused on their business impact & ideal outcome
Create your list of great business questions.
How is this impacting the efficiency of your plant operations?
Have you laid off any staff?
Have you adjusted your budgets for …?
How is this impacting the bandwidth of your internet services with your entire family working and doing school from home?
What is your go-forward plan when lockdown ends?
- S – Summarize & Solutions
Use their words to repeat back a summary of their situation and then provide your solutions if suitable.
So, what I’m hearing you say is….. Have you considered ….
- E – Execute the next steps by scheduling the next meeting or call to present the proposal
Suggest a next call with a specified date & time to come back and provide a working proposal with options for them to consider.
Download the PURPOSE Conversation Template to coach your sales team to have more PURPOSEful Business Conversations.
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.