by Will Rotondi
My wife and I recently took a trip to the beach, and on the last day ended up volunteering for a sales presentation for a timeshare. (Don’t laugh, I didn’t take out a second mortgage.) I’ll give the sales rep credit: he had the right attitude, tried to get us excited about the program, and wanted to establish a relationship with us immediately.
The only problem? The presentation went far too long – by 3 hours.
Too much effort was spent trying to convince us why their timeshare methodology was so successful. Not only did it draw out the presentation, it overshadowed the true value: examples of places we could go, how beautiful those properties looked, and how flexible their point structure was.
It would have been easier on him if his associates had done more to vet us as ideal prospects. Give me a way to calculate how much I’d have to spend prior to a sit-down meeting, and I could have easily saved him that 3 hours for someone more invested.
Some of you in sales might still think this rep was doing it the right way: get your prospects in the door, wow them enough, and you’ll be able to close. You might even think that you can sell to anyone. But as the prospect in this situation, I wasn’t biting. I was tired, hungry, and just looking for more information.
Your prospects feel the same way. Educate them on your services before you make the sales pitch. Spend less effort tooting your own horn and more on promoting your true value. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and hassle, and do a better job at focusing your efforts on those who are genuinely interested – and able – to buy from you.
Your prospects want to be shown the value in what you’re offering (like a trip they could be taking)…
