How often does it happen to you that you’re fully prepared to help your customer but they aren’t prepared to move forward? They don’t have answers to questions important to their success or worse, they ask you to leave your hard work (your complete proposal or whatever) so that they can show it to their decision makers (and why weren’t they in on the meeting to begin so maybe you weren’t fully prepared…).
Stop wasting your time and theirs!
1. No one gets to keep your hard work until they agree to work with you. If that is your mantra (we’d love to leave it with you and with a signed agreement can do so; our policy is to keep it until then), you never need to worry about them borrowing your ideas without being compensated for them.
2. Help them be prepared. Don’t wait until the meeting or conference call to ask if the decision maker is on it. Ask when the decision maker is available to meet or be on the call. When they push back, you’ll know they aren’t ready to make the decision.
3.Require them to work by answering questions! (If you’ve been reading my blog, you know I never make them work to set up the next step. Once it’s agreed upon, however, you both want it to be a good use of time. So find out how you can help them the most.) Likely questions might be:
What are the 3 main outcomes you’d like this investment to accomplish?
What 3 results can be gained with this investment?
What 3 negative outcomes would you like this investment to make irrelevant?
Make 2013 your best ever by valuing your time and approaching each prospect in the most prepared, professional and profitable way! Make it great!
Power Sales Writing