There are many blogs written on sales, inbound & outbound. Here I just wanted to pick up points which can help us to make a lead suspect, prospect & finally our client or partner.

In the world, there are a million bundles for the sales process, sales funnel, and customer’s journey. As our Sale’s fathers used to say, try to fulfil client’s needs rather than selling your product. Ultimately you’ll be fulfilling their needs only by selling your product but sales should be focusing on fulfilling someone’s need & make him a client or we can say be their provider. Though, a sales person always wants his product & services to be purchased but at the client’s desk it should be like we are fulfilling their need, we are the one who will solve their problem.

The best way for it is to LISTEN.

Let’s check stages where you can make someone your client / can be their provider.

1. Leads come in
2. Sales Qualification (SQ)
3. Set-up demonstration
4. Negotiation
5. Proposal
6. Closed

1. Leads Come in:

There are a lot of techniques to generate the leads. Marketing people are working very hard on the marketing front, writing blogs, running different campaigns & advertisements, launching a podcast, hosting a webinar, working on different social media and many more.

Because of these different activities, Company is getting many inquiries from their target audience. That’s how leads come in.

2. Sales Qualification (SQ):

Today’s buyers are smart enough to differentiate you from your competitors; they might have come after watching your product and services. At this point of time, you need to understand why they have come to you? What are their past experiences with existing products? How can you solve this problem? How can you serve best?

Hence, here in the SQ (Sales Qualification) stage, where you try to take as much possible information from your lead, so that you can understand his requirements. You’ll have an idea,

• Has he come to the right place to fulfill his requirements?
• Is he looking for what you are providing?
• Can you provide the customization he is looking for?

This is very important to invest time on someone who can be your prospect; also it will help you to minimize your next stage in case of a negative answer to the above question. So you can simply suggest to him some other option if you can. If having a positive answer to the above questions, he is qualified to purchase your product. Let’s move to the next stage.

3. Set-up demonstration:

To set-up a demonstration you have to have a good convenient time for both of you, because here only you can make him understand how your product & service serve him the best. Set a meeting on an available meeting platform on an allocated time slot, confirm the same with him through the mail.

At this point of time you should keep one thing in mind, though you are showing your product but it should seem like you are showing how the other person’s problem can be solved via your product rather than just throwing information & benefits of your product. 

4. Negotiation:

This is a very crucial part of the sales journey. Negotiation doesn’t mean only about the money. There are many areas you have to focus on like, a very first thing you make sure that,

Is he a decision maker? Give him 1st preference to jump on, quote one specific figure, would this be a win-win situation.

5. Proposal:

Sales proposals should be short & simple. The centre of proposal should be more focused on their problem rather than the product’s features & benefits. Study said that human minds understand visual contents more, so try to put some professional diagrams, flowcharts.

6. Closed:

This is not the end of the journey, the actual journey of happy customer’s starts from here. Service after sales also plays a vital role. You must focus on long term relationships building rather than just a onetime sale.