Sales Training: Gaining Commitment – Timing

Another day goes by and there sits your rep’s opportunity randomly forecasted at 60% to close in three months. This is exactly the way it looked last month and the month before Why? Because the sales rep is afraid to get it on the radar and have you ask questions they are not prepared to answer. The amusing, or sad, depending on which side of the conversation you are on, thing about it is, the questions you ask are exactly what you can teach them to ask.

Why are reps afraid to ask the big questions? Most of the time fear of loss is the reason things hang around in the ethers right outside of the 30 day pipeline.

“I don’t want to push.”

“They are going through a process.”

“I do not have the right contact to determine their plan.”

To all of this I say, HUMBUG! The sales  process must mirror the buying process, as I shared in the last post. If you do not know the stage of the buying process you are in, you cannot determine in what stage of the sales process you reside. Let me say that again, IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE BUYER IS DOING, YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO!

Make things easy and ask the questions that may lose opportunities. They will not, again I repeat, THEY WILL NOT cost you sales. Personally, I teach my team members to dig deep into the personal and professional history early. This makes it easy to ask straight forward business questions, because you are perceived as someone who asks questions that matter. So, now that I have built it up, what are the questions that gain time commitments?

1. If you knew what you wanted, would you buy it today?
2. When you find the product you want, what happens next?
3. What quarter is this project’s budget in?

There are many variations of these three questions, but they are the crux of understanding timing. You want to know if they are ready to buy (1), ready to determine what to buy (3), and the real purchaser or just an influencer (2). You can ask many other things but anything beyond a yes or no for question 1 paints the the picture for what you are up against. A yes, get rolling, a no, get it out of the pipeline.

Question 2 should unravel a simple or elaborate process. If this question is not answered, move on. The contact or organization is wasting your time. Otherwise, start envisioning the process flowing through your own company and how loing it would take to get what they are suggesting done. Take into consideration what you know about their efficiency vs. your company’s and adjust for a few weeks here or there. THIS IS HOW YOU FORECAST!

Question 3 delivers a time-line like nobodies business. If it is not budgeted, you are wasting time. This could be a wallet full of cash, or the national budget in congress. Either way, it has to be there or you will not get a sale.

Focus on variations of these questions and you will get your timing questions answered. If you cannot accomplish this task, take the deal out of the pipeline, period.

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