This article is a simple piece of advice to add clarity and confidence to your sales and stop you working hard for a sale, doing well, and seeing the opportunity peter out.
The reason this situation occurs is because you can have a very good conversation with a prospective customer, be that over the telephone or face-to-face, get along well with them having built rapport, introduced your company fully and piqued their interest, only to leave the next step as a bit of an uncertainty. All too often sales people are ‘waiting to hear back’ from those customers as they might have a requirement, ’sometime soon’.
If a sale cannot be achieved at a particular point, you need to lay out a clear plan with the customer as to what will happen next. You both need to be fully aware of the next step and likely requirements in order for you, the sales person, to achieve your goal without simply putting the customer down for a follow up call every month to get a ‘yes or no’ answer. If there is a level of interest but the requirement is not immediate, detail the following and you will be able to follow up much more effectively, by annoying your customer less and increasing the likelihood of closing that deal: