6 Steps to Sales

There are six phases to any successful selling process:

This helps you understand exactly what you have to offer that’s unique and which target audiences can best use what you have to sell. Your success ratios will be much higher if you focus your efforts only on those prospects who have a high probability of buying. 

Making contact is the first critical test. Apart from product knowledge, no other facet of the sales process makes a greater impression on the customer. In the first few minutes, your prospect sizes you up and decides if you’re the type of person he’d like to do business with.

Contact may be in person, over the phone, or by letter or email. Each makes a different impression and the key, regardless of which approach you use, is to build credibility and trust. When prospects sense you have their best interests in mind, the rest of the sales process should follow more easily.

The purpose of this stage is to get to know the customer’s needs and what it will take to fulfill them. To do that, you need to listen, but you also need to ask the right questions.

You want to look for the prospect’s problems and opportunities. The problem, or need, is the gap between what a customer wants and what he has. An opportunity is something extra that can be added. A new market, a better avenue of distribution, or an untapped promotional vehicle. A resourceful salesperson can create an opportunity.

The goal at this stage is for you and your prospect to find a solution that meets the prospect’s needs. You do this by taking the prospect’s ideas and combining them with your own to arrive at a solution that makes sense to both of you.

As you discuss a solution, explain how it will work in your customer’s environment. Most customers don’t care how something works; they want to know what it will do for them, how it will solve their problems. So speak the language of benefits rather than features. 

Top salespeople are always in step with their customers. They make sure there’s agreement every step of the way. So by the time they get to the point of asking for the sale, it’s a matter of when, not if.

But the ultimate goal is not just closing the sale, it’s gaining a committed customer. So the Commit stage is critical in building a potential long-term partnership. It requires trust, respect, and open communication on each side. You can’t work through all the stages of a sale and then try a manipulative closing technique. That doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t work.

This is where most salespeople drop the ball. Solidify your relationship by being absolutely clear about the client’s expectations. If you conducted the earlier stages well, you should have a good handle on those standards. Then stay involved with the customer. If there are problems with the product or service, see those as a chance to show how much you care about your customers. Think long term. All future sales and referrals depend on your ability to reaffirm your commitment to quality and service.