Last Updated on March 27, 2018
When accountants look at balance sheets, they don’t look at the cost of lost opportunity. They simply looked at the money that came in the door and went right back out.
But there’s ONE error that could cost your company thousands of dollars over the next 30 days…and most sales managers don’t even know that their reps are making it…
The Hidden Menace That’s Sabotaging Your Sales: Missed Opportunities
Opportunity likes speed.
It likes people who see it and who seize it before the moment passes. The fastest way to miss out on opportunity is to:
- Fail to see it when it comes
- Fail to act in time
Right now, the reps on your sales team could be costing you dozens, possibly hundreds of dollars in lost opportunity. Not because of what they’re doing wrong, but because of what they’re not doing right.
If you’ve ever sold anything in person, you know that there’s a small window of time, sometimes only seconds long, when your prospect is ready to buy.
If you ask for the sale at that moment, you’re much more likely to get a yes. And once a customer says yes, they’re much less likely to go back on their word and change their mind.
But if you miss the window by a few seconds, the customer’s yes can quickly turn to hesitation, and then doubt, and then full blown rejection. It all depends on when you ask them for the order.
Do your reps know when this golden window of opportunity is? If so, do they ask for the sale…or do they back off out of their own fear and hesitation?
If you have any doubt at all about this, you can be 100% certain that you’re losing money. The question now is…
What Can You Do About This?
There are two ways to find out if a customer is in their “buying zone.” First, you can develop a highly sensitive intuition. But that can take years, sometimes decades, of selling experience to develop. Some of your reps will never develop it.
The other option is much, much faster…and much easier. You can train your reps to close when they’ve either…
- Just finished presenting the offer and the customer has paused, even for a second.
- Just overcome an objection and the customer had paused, even for a second.
The only time you should never break silence in a sales call is when you’ve JUST asked for the order. If you talk then, you lose the sale.
But if you make it a habit to ask for the order during those fleeting pauses after your presentation or your response to an objection, you’ll be much more likely to close the deal.
Last Updated on March 27, 2018