How to be a Professional Salesperson.©
Free Sales Training Video Series – Know when to cut your losses
Know when to cut your losses
Most sales people are, by nature, optimists. As a sales person you need that optimism to get you going every morning. Unfortunately, too many times we let that optimism cloud our judgment. We lead too much from our heart and not enough from our heads. You need to be disciplined when looking at your pipeline. And, more importantly, you need to be realistic and honest. You have to know when to walk away because you are a sales professional. Your time is your income. And if you don’t manage your time well, your income will show it.
Here are some questions you need to ask yourself about every one of your potential deals before you decide to spend your precious time on them:
- Am I talking with the financial buyer or the person that can sign my order and write the check?
- Is the person I am talking to keeping me from the true financial buyer?
- Do I always have to call them or do they readily call me with questions during the buying cycle?
- Is the buyer readily willing to talk to me about my competition?
- Is there a weakness in my prospect’s current solution that I can use my product with which to help them?
- Is their house on fire? (Do they have an urgent need for a product like mine?)
- Is their company financially sound?
- Have they cancelled several meetings?
- Have they followed through on commitments they’ve made?
- How many other vendors are they considering?
- If they are looking at other vendors, are they comparing apples to apples?
- Am I getting feedback from them?
- Are they asking “post sales” questions?
If you cannot answer these questions realistically, and be prepared to add or remove your prospect from your pipeline, then your pipeline has no credibility. More importantly, you have not learned when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em.
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