Hi Friends,
Today,
we’re going to discuss another selling tip or technique, whatever which we will
call “Selling by Visualization”. Now, Selling by Visualizing is a way of trying
to sell by certain imaginative exercises to be carried out, prior to the actual
call. As usual, I am talking about Industrial Selling. It should work to some
extent in other sales processes too, but don’t quote me as I have never tried
it out other than in Industrial Selling.
Things to know
- It’s a way of not letting nervousness rear its head, by increasing your confidence. Confidence is a property that any salesperson needs to possess as the more the confidence; the more are the chances of the sale.
- Confidence without basic product knowledge is useless. It is wastage of resources and can misfire badly.
- Selling by Vision is not something to be tried out at the very first sales call. A little experience should be acquired before you try it out.
- Besides selling, the process is useful in other situations too where confidence helps such as in a job interview.
Methodology
Let
us suppose that the sales person which is you has got a sales call lined up with
a potential customer. First you should do your homework as to how your product
can help the customer, try to gather information about the purchasing methods
of the customer, role of the competition in the customer’s plant, etc.
Next
step is to decide how to conduct the sales call. Here is where the experience
is required. Let us assume that you will do a presentation, a simple power point
slide presentation.
Now,
the salesperson should close his eyes or if in public, keep them open but
register nothing. The entire process from when he approaches the customer’s
office to his departure at the conclusion of the call is visualized. Here,
imaginative capabilities come in. Starting from the initial handshake, just
visualize the call in your mind as if a movie is playing in front of you. Try
to anticipate the questions which may come at different stages. There may be
some which you cannot answer immediately. So, what answer will you give which
does not give the customer wrong impressions. If done correctly, this will make
you more prepared such as, say you are visualizing showing slides to a customer when
there is a question about a connected matter, for which there is no slide in
that particular presentation. You visualize yourself trying to find that slide and failing which says a great deal about how organized you are. Make a note to keep that
slide ready. Go through the entire sales call and visualize a happy ending, say
that the customer has asked you for a budgetary offer. Try to be realistic. The
visualization can be in ordinary speed but what is vital is that you need to identify the turning points. Keep
yourself ready for them. It is usually goof-ups in the turning points that prevents a sales presentation materialize into a sale.
This
may sound foolish as you are only imagining how the customer will react, you
have no idea what will happen. That is of course true, but think about it and
you will find that the customer’s possible reaction though a variable can be
defined by limits. The second point is that this exercise is not a memorization
technique but is aimed at enhancing your confidence, and increasing your
positive energy-that feel-good-feeling. The final point is that it hardly takes
a couple of minutes. So, what have you got to lose?
