By Troy Harrison – Sales Navigator
Recently, while perusing discussions on my LinkedIn groups, I saw a statement that can only be described as a doozy: another sales trainer posted, “I can teach you to build a relationship, based on trust, that will last a lifetime, and accomplish that within a 30 minute sales call.” Wow. That’s quite a statement. And let me make a statement, as well: I cannot teach you how, within a 30 minute sales call, to build a lifetime relationship based on trust.
Of course, I suspect that the author of the statement can’t do so either. In fact, I’m sure he can’t; earning a lifetime’s worth of trust cannot be done within 30 minutes. People simply don’t work that way. However, if your sights and your goals are set correctly, you can accomplish some important things in a 30 minute sales call. Let’s talk about what they are.
Establish Dialogue: The first task on any sales interaction is to generate a comfortable dialogue for both parties. Any sales interaction begins with fear on both parties’ sides. Your customer has a fear of making a bad deal, or at a minimum, wasting time. You have a fear of not selling and not succeeding. Within the first 30 minutes, you can put at least some of those fears to the side. The fear creates a wall between the two of you; if that wall isn’t lower by the time you leave than it was when you started, you’ve missed something somewhere.
Become Memorable: One of the most difficult aspects of selling is being remembered when you’re not in front of the buyer.