Four Ways to Ensure You Make the Right Sales Call
Have you ever been to a presentation and felt like the speaker had no idea who the audience really was? I have.
I’ll give you a recent example. I went to a meeting of my MotherOfTwins Club last week; the topic was “Healthy Eating for Less.” Great topic. There was lots of interest on the part of the attendees.
The speaker was a woman (a single woman with no children) who had founded a non-profit organization with the mission of helping people become healthier. Very noble. She had a book with 50 tips in it.
The woman had 1 hour to talk to us. She started covering the tips randomly, based on numbers that we shouted out. She got through about 15 of them, and exceeded her time limit by more than 30 minutes. I suppose each of us walked away having learned something of value. But what should she have done differently?
She should have taken the characteristics of her audience into consideration and customized her presentation to what she believed to be true about us. That we, every on of us, are...
• BUSY!!!
• Don’t have a lot of time to comparison shop.
• But that we love our children and want them to be as healthy as possible, within the limits of our respective budgets (which I’m sure are all vastly different).
Given that all of the above were true, should she have been talking to us about buying direct from manufacturers, waiting 6 months for frozen pizzas to be on sale, or what was the best month to buy vegetables? NO!
With children, you do not have the luxury of deciding when you need something. When you need it, you have to get it. Now.
I am willing to bet that the speaker gives the same presentation regardless of who is in her audience. And that was ineffective and disrespectful of our time and attention, not to mention that she kept us all there far later than we planned to be, because we were too polite to walk out on her.
- Categories:
- Business Management - Marketing/Sales
Blogger, author, consultant, coach and all around evangelist for the graphic arts industry, Kelly sold digital printing for 15 years so she understands the challenges, frustrations and pitfalls of building a successful sales practice. Her mission is to help printers of all sizes sell more stuff. Kelly's areas of focus include sales and marketing coaching, enabling clients to find engagement strategies that work for them and mentoring the next generation of sales superstars.
Kelly graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Political Science and, among other notable accomplishments, co-founded the Windy City Rollers, a professional women's roller derby league. She is also the mother of two sets of twins under the age of ten, so she fears nothing.
