Who is really in control of the sales process – you or the buyer?

Have you ever been rejected? If your answer is yes, you have just proven that you are not in control of the sales process; however, the buyer is in control.

Is it not your job and responsibility as a sales professional to qualify the prospects and to reject them if they are not qualified?

Who is really qualifying? Who is really in control? The buyer!

Do you want to know why and how the buyer is in control?

The answer is simple; buyers follow a buyers’ sales process, just like you do when meeting with a sales person.

Sales people assume they are in control by answering all the questions, but in reality it is the buyer who is in control. They actually carry out the rejection, not you.

Allow me to share the buyer’s sales process with you. As a buyer, let’s pretend you know you want to buy a white shirt and your budget is $40.00. You walk into a retail outlet and the salesperson approaches you and says “Hello, can I help you?”

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As a salesperson you have to rid yourself of ineffective or bad habits and demonstrate good selling habits, or appropriate behaviors, if you want to succeed in this great profession.

You have to be constantly filling the funnel with suspects, qualifying them to become prospects, making prescriptions or presentations, acquiring new business, following up and maintaining relationships.

You also have to maintain and expand existing customers, handle requests, go to meetings, complete all kinds of reports and maintain a positive and enthusiastic attitude.

You are expected to demonstrate a multitude of effective habits or so called behaviors.

You also have to know which or your habits are working best for you – your behavioral ratios.

For example, how many telephone calls do you have to make to get a face-to-face appointment, how many appointments turn into a presentation, and how many presentations result in a sale?

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In business, and in the sales profession, you make your living from buyers. Are you effectively attracting buyers, or are you chasing after them?

In order to survive in this new economy of buyers, you need to stop chasing buyers and start attracting them. You need to stop selling them and start engaging them. You need to stop closing them and start empowering them to buy.

Buyers are everywhere. What are you doing to attract, engage and empower them to buy, from you?

To accomplish this you will need to become buyer focused. In other words it is no longer about you, your product or your business. It is about the buyer, the relationship you create with them and their needs and desires, not yours.

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Let’s face it, we are all buyers and we all visit retail outlets. Did you ever take the time to listen to the sales greetings as you walk into the retail outlets? If you do, you will notice most of them repeat the same greeting, and we respond with the same old answer.

It is time for retailers to wake up and stop doing what they have always done. If they do not make the necessary changes, they will continue to get the same sales results as in the past.

This is the standard retail sales greeting you usually receive walking into an outlet. “Hello, can I help you?” and you give the standard answer, “No thank you, I’m just looking.” Even if you know what you want to buy and how much you are willing to spend, you still offer the same old reply.

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