Sales training ideas – Be direct to get to the sale faster.

You cold called, you got the lead, you sent out some background information on your company, you called three times before you finally got the prospect on the phone, you did a 15 minute presentation, over came some objections, closed several times, and in the end you heard, “Ya know what? I really not that interested.”

Does this sound familiar? Let’s face it, most of us have had this happen at least several times in our selling career, and for some of us, we run into this several times a week.

In a tough economy it’s more important than ever to NOT waste time chasing pipe dream leads. Many of us are so anxious to get a lead that we don’t qualify the lead quite as well as we should. In other words, having a lead, or a lot of them, gives us hope for a lot of future sales.

We must fight the urge to simply fill our pipelines with lots leads and focus instead on the quality of leads in our pipeline. The way to do this is to be more direct with prospects and ask direct questions, thus finding out up front if we have a true lead versus a pipe dream lead. At the end of the day, using this method may generate fewer leads, but they will be better leads and thus, we will waste less time and be much more efficient.

The bottom line: Cut lots time, effort, energy, and cost by being direct with prospects thus getting more solid leads. Spending time only on quality leads will ensure much more efficiency.

John Chapin – co-author of Sales Encyclopedia   www.completeselling.com