It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been in to see a particular customer, or if this is your very first time, there’s things you should be doing to get yourself ready before your call.

Regardless of your official role, everyone is a sales person. I’ll help you to get ready for that first call!

It is so important to prepare before you see a customer as preparation is key, knowing what your customer is looking for and what direction their company is following is a way that you can help them with your solutions. Without a plan or agenda you may run the risk of wasting the customers time, perception or not.

Too many times I’ve witnessed too many sales people not having an agenda or any idea of the purpose of their meeting. They need to ‘tick’ off a number of sales calls. I’d always prefer a smaller number of high quality, targeted sales calls, than higher quantity of scatter activity – unless the strategy is to conduct a blitz to the customers.

These days customers are not interested in ‘Sales People’ they want advocates/partners, people who can help them find the best solution, after all, they’ve come to you because you’re the professional in the field. Being prepared for the sales call involves preparation which comes in all forms, such as research the customers’ history, future needs and requirements. By conducting such thorough research and preparation, this will enable you to fully understand the customer and you’ll be in a better place to help guide them through any objections with the best outcome, rather than being surprised at any objections along the way.

What do you need to do to prepare? I always start with research the customer history and future growth.

1. Ensure you know your product better than your customers, everyone loves to be an expert, but spent valuable time to ensure you learn the product as a customer would need to know it. If your product is flexible, then learn how flexible it is and what are the consequences or enhancements that come with that?
2. Ensure you know your competitors product better than themselves and your customers. Knowing their strength, weakness, opportunities and threats put you in a powerful position. #SWOT
3. Target the right people, audience, customers for your product. If you try and sell to the wrong customer, you’re one step forward, 10 steps back! This doesn’t make good business sense at all and is a complete waste of your time.
4. Research the companies growth plans, how you can work with them. Investigate how you can be included and a part of their future plans.
5. Ensure the customer is the centre of your business and show them how you’re doing this.

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