When working clients on planning the sales call, the conversation often starts out something like this:

SalesCooke: “What’ s the objective of your sales call?”

Client: “I want to talk to them about…”  STOP!

Let’s talk about sales call planning.  The objective of any sales call is to continue your learning process.  What you “want” is not important.  What you would like to accomplish is.  And, what you need to learn and understand is even more important.  Every sales call is an opportunity to build a better relationship and learn more about your clients.  Plan your sales calls as learning exercises and avoid going in with an objective to convince, convert, or advocate.  Those type of words all have “tell” and “talk to” tendencies associated with them.  Tactics your customer is never very receptive to.

Your role as sales professional is to discover unknown obstacles, issues, and motivations that facilitate a path for your customer prospect to want and need you.  Beating them down or checking in to find out when you are going to “get the order”, is not part of that process.  Discover how to create what you want into a learning exercise that helps you discover what you need to know.

Some examples:

• “I want to figure out how to get them to make a decision on this proposal.”
• Learning mode:  “I need to understand what is getting in the way of their making a decision on this proposal.”  Note, if you have read any of my other posts or my book, you would know how to avoid this question in the first place)

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• “I want to know why they decided to stay with their current supplier when I could have saved them money, etc.”
• Learning mode: “I need to understand their motivations and criteria for not making a change.”  Or, “I need to find out what they are getting from their current supplier that they felt like they would not receive from me.”

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• “I want to know how I can do business with them.”
• Learning mode:  “I need to uncover the issues or challenges they are having in their business that I may learn about in order that I may discover ways to help them with these problems.”

Note, all of the “wants” have been converted into learning exercises. The agenda has been shifted from an aggressive, controversial style to an inquiring, inquisitive style.  It is a very subtle, but effective difference.  When you go into a sales call with the objective of “selling”, you end up making little or no progress and you run the risk of putting your client on the defensive.  When you go into a meeting with an objective to learn and discover the conversation is different, the customer’s receptiveness to your conversation changes, and the results are positively impacted.  Avoid an agenda that focuses on what you “want” and take a tactic that challenges you to discover what else you need to learn and understand.