Selling is not hanging around being nice to people. If you don’t establish a sales strategy and have meaningful customer action objective for each of your sales calls, you will be wasting your time.

The question is not how long a sale takes, but how many calls. The answer should be around three…

On the first call you should be looking to qualify the buyer. You will want to find out whether the company needs the product and can afford it, and who would make the buying decision. This is an opportunity, not to show how much you know, but how much you want to learn so that you can help the customer achieve his objectives.

During that second call, you can demonstrate what your product / service can do for the buyer company. You match what your product does with what the customer wants.

On the third call, you get a commitment to make a purchase.

These calls may take place over a month or a year; they may include several meetings to explore and expand on issues. The key to success is that a salespeople should have specific, measurable, customer action objectives for each sales call…

• On call number one, the customer described the company’s needs, identify the decision maker, indicate the budget status, and give an appointment to demonstrate.
• The customer action objective for call two is acceptance, debate or discussion regarding the match and fit between needs and deliverables.
• The third stage has the customer action objective of a commitment to buy.

To improve sales productivity, change from focusing on what you have to do in the sales process, to what commitments your buyers should give you; change too, from what you should do, to what you want your customers to do. When you create customer action objectives for your sales calls, you will find you are spending less time, getting more deals.