Are you reviewing your sales process?

Are you sitting there thinking that you suck at sales?

Maybe you say to yourself “I’m not confident in my selling skills.”

Are you feeling like you are doing all the things in sales that the best salespeople are telling you to do?

LinkedIn outreach, using tools for followup, even your business coach aren’t 100%.

You have the mechanics of everything in place, but still feel like you aren’t able to hit the stride or get enough clients to fill that pipeline.

I have just one question for you.

Are you reviewing your sales process?

Do you listen to the recorded sales calls?

Are you listening more than talking?

Who’s asking more questions, you or the lead?

Are you reading between the lines of what the lead is telling you?

Do you have a spot on your calendar every single month to review your sales process?

It’s so important to be able to listen back on a sales call to hear how you sound to the lead.

Get over the fact of hearing your own voice and put yourself in the shoes of the lead. Ask yourself, as the lead, if you would buy from this person.

Listening to, reading transcriptions of the calls if you need to, is so important to be doing, especially early on or if you are trying something new.

Here’s why this is important.

You think you sound good

When you are in conversation with someone, your brain in processing feedback and forming your next words as the words are coming out of your mouth.

When you listen back, you’ll hear all the “ums” and “ahs” and “you knows”. You’ll hear things that you don’t hear during the midst of the conversation.

You also hear spots in where you may stumble or misheard the question and wonder to yourself “what was I thinking?!?”

Once you hear these things, you can’t un-hear them and so you’ll be a little more conscious of them in the next one. Which in turn improves your sales communication.

It’s not always all about you

If you don’t get a lead to close, ask why.

There’s a good chance they will never tell you. Or tell you something that really isn’t all that helpful.

But understanding the reason behind why someone chose not to move forward allows for you to adjust your process and sales conversation.

For example, if you keep hearing pushback on pricing, ask for the budget early on. If it’s timeline based, ask for the lead when they would like this done by earlier.

Another could be that they don’t like something about the process of working with you. Which then you may want to think about putting a nice write up about that on your website.

All these objections aren’t saying that you are wrong in any way. It’s simply saying that their expectations and needs differ. That’s all.

Putting in place a way to allow them to tell you a reason for not moving forward, saves you and future leads time.

But it’s important because it creates space so that those leads that are a better fit have your attention, time, and focus.