Today I’d like to talk to you about the three most likely points of failure in a sales process.
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First is Almost Always Targeting.
This means trying to go too big, or too wide, or too deep, too fast. If you think the world is your market, okay, but the problem is it’s very unlikely that you have enough money to market to everyone.
For that reason, you have to get your targeting dialed in. It’s like what Benjamin Martin said in the movie The Patriot. Aim small, miss small, because when you think you’re targeting everyone, it’s really more likely that you’re not targeting anyone. Like the old proverb said, he who chases two rabbits catches none.
Another issue with targeting everyone is that not everyone is a good prospect for you. Many people have no need, no desire, no money, no budget, no willingness to spend. So if you’re targeting everyone, or you’re targeting poorly, you’ll have to kiss a lot of frogs, as the saying goes, to find your prince or princess.
But that’s qualification. We’ll discuss that another time.
The Second Most Likely Point of Failure in Your Sales Process is Your First Contact with a Prospect.
And a lot of people confuse their first contact with their actual sales process. For example, in live seminars, I’ll often ask an audience, What’s your sales process?
How do you get new customers through the door like clockwork? They’ll often shout out things like, Networking, Cold Calling, Facebook, LinkedIn. But the ones who are almost always more proud of their answers than anyone else are those who shout out the word, Referrals. They often look with disdain on those who offer other answers.
And yes, referrals are fantastic, but referrals, just like all the others, are just a method of lead generation for your first contact with a prospect. Like networking, cold calling, social media, and all the other forms of first contact, none of them are a sales process. At best, they’re all just the first step in a sales process.
Now, since your first contact will very likely set the stage as the basis of your relationship with the prospect going forward, you have to make it count. You only get one chance to make a first impression, right? Because so little time, effort, and training are ever focused on it, first contact remains one of the biggest points of failure in the sales process.
The Third Point of Failure in the Sales Process is The Path.
What happens after you initiate first contact with a new prospect? What’s step two? What’s step three? What’s step four? Do you just wing it? Because many salespeople just wing it. They refer to their winging it as following up, and it’s usually about as rudderless and nondescript as it sounds.
Often, it just means staying in touch.
Naturally, staying in touch is necessary in business. But how much more effective is it when you have a plan, when you actually have a path, when you have objectives, benchmarks, or a process to follow along the way?
Of course, every prospect is different. Every single conversation you have is different.
So it’s not like you’re going to be able to control every aspect of the sales process.
But if you have a path, at least you know what you need to accomplish and you have something to return to if and when your prospects start wandering off in another direction — which they inevitably will.
Without a clear path, without those benchmarks that you know you need to hit to complete the sale, you can end up lost and walking in circles for a really long time.
That’s why a clear path is so critical to your success. And it’s why not having one is often a critical point of failure.
These are just the first three, but they’re big. So if you need help fixing any or all of these in your business, or anything that might be causing you trouble, go to TopSecrets.com/help to see how we can help. That’s TopSecrets.com/help.
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