Asking a Prospect to Buy Is How You Make the Sale
By Tim Rice
What happens when you fail to ask someone to buy your vehicle? The short version is that you don’t get the sale. The longer version is that they buy from someone else, don’t buy at all, or defer their decision. In any of these cases you have failed in your role and efforts as a salesperson. After all, aren’t you paid to make sales? Follow up on un-sold and sold customers? Have appointments each day?
One of the most intriguing and elusive sales questions of all time is simply this: Why do salespeople spend a great deal of time, effort, energy and commitment to get in front of a prospect only to let the opportunity to sell their vehicles slip away from them?
Why does that happen? Is it a sense of caution that’s driven by a desire not to offend – or to avoid being offended yourself when your prospect says “No?” Is it an inability to create such value in the mind of the prospect that the salesperson never really knows when, precisely, to ask someone to make a purchase decision? Could it be a simple lack of knowledge when it comes to knowing precisely how to ask someone to buy?
It’s probably a little bit of all of these things. The truth is that the answer is not an easy one. Let’s look at some of the causes:
• A lack of results orientation on the part of the salesperson
• A lack of assertiveness on the part of the salesperson
• A lack of sales skills on the part of the salesperson
• A lack of self confidence or self-worth on the part of the salesperson
• A lack of belief in the product on the part of the salesperson
• A lack of a sales process that leads to the sale on the part of the salesperson
There are probably a lot of other reasons too! But the fact is this: whenever a sale is not made, it is generally the fault of the salesperson. So stop blaming poor marketing, pricing, product management, sales management, product failures or everything else for your own failure. It’s you… not them, who have failed.
That being said, how do you fix the problem? Let me provide eight specific ideas or strategies to help you begin finalizing transactions immediately:
• Understand what your job is.. It is making sales. Period.
• Learn how to use feedback questions (“How does this look?”) to be sure you’re on target with your presentations.
• Learn how to listen and observe better. Listen to what prospects say. Better yet, listen to what they really mean. Be sensitive to non-verbal behavior, body language. (Prospect pulls door handle of locked vehicle while asking you; “what’s your best price, deal?”
• Master the art of "value selling" so you can present your product in a way that makes it virtually irresistible to own. Sell the benefits, the sizzle! Don’t sell me a toaster. Sell me the smell of sweet bread. What it will do for me!
• Be sure you’re in front of qualified buyers “all the decision makers are present” who really do have the authority to say "Yes." “Who will be primary driver?”
• Believe in yourself, your sales process, dealership organization, and product so much that you badly want others to become a part of it – and ask them to do so.
• Learn and master four or five well-applied, non heavy-handed ways to finalize a transaction “close the deal” and use them consistently. “On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate this vehicle, ten being the best?” What would it take to make it a ten? or If there was one thing that kept you from buying this vehicle, what would that one thing be? So what you’re telling me is if I can make affordable and fit it in your budget we would have a deal? What I mean is, we could earn your business now?”
• Learn the fundamentals of negotiation and learn how to ask people to buy after agreeing on terms.
Your lack of bringing sales to closure can lead to lots of things including a lack of income and all of the bad things that can create. Failure to progress in your career and a tiny, quiet voice that says to you, “You’re not really selling… who are you kidding?”
The bottom line is this: a failure to ask for the order, the sale, on the part of salespeople is like an athletic team that loses every game in the final seconds. Or a bus driver who never reaches the final destination…or a hair stylist who only cuts half the hair… or a fast food server who gives you the bun with no hamburger! The job is only half done… and never completed to the point that it even comes close to accomplishing the intent of the entire activity.
“Remember, if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”
Tim Rice
Automotive Training Solutions
Phone: 603.828.9299