Permission selling is rarely practiced. This is unfortunate. You practice permission selling when you seek the prospect’s agreement before taking any action that involves them. Permission selling or permission based selling, involves the use of statements like, “Is it okay if I…?” or, “Do you mind if we….?” You catch the drift. Here are 3 reasons why you should practice permission selling. The more if your selling is largely, conversion based.
You align to the prospect’s frame of mind.
When you are selling moving services, loans, land or mortuary services, or such other product or services, prospecting (seeking potential buyers) is not something you do actively, like, say, one selling insurance services. The former services call for strategies in sales conversion, not ‘selling’. I mean, you don’t go out telling people, “Hi! I’m selling mortuary services. If you are dead, you should know our mortuary services,…” or, ask for referrals, “Do you know anyone in your family dying soon?”. Of course, not.
When selling these services, prospects come to you in response to your marketing activities or via referral. And when they do, they are already interested in your services. To use sales parlance, they are hot leads. Their frame of mind however, is, “Court me first”; it’s not, “Marry me, now!” Traditional selling goes for marriage now; however, being alive to the prospect’s frame of mind, permission selling goes for courting first. Here’s why.
You cover all the steps in the sales cycle
Now then. That the contacts are hot leads is both good and bad news. The good news is that half your job, the tougher half, (prospecting) is done. The sad news is that the average salesperson assumes this means, jump to close. It doesn’t. This is because you ignore all the other important steps of the sales cycle. As a reminder, the steps are prospecting, interviewing, presenting, validating, negotiating and closing. The hot lead just covers prospecting, and even then not qualifying the prospect. Going straight to close is skipping all the steps in between-much to your detriment. (Read more about that here: Build your own bridge to successfully sell a lead)
Now you know why your conversion rate is low. You went too quickly to kissing her before she sent out the “I want you to kiss me signals.” To get there with the prospect, try using permission selling instead. For instance, at interview stage, ask the prospect, “I’d like to ask you a few questions about your situation to better align what we have to what you are looking for. Is this OK?” This is seeking authorization to progress to interview. And it aligns itself to the already ‘buy’ frame of mind of the prospect. When you don’t use permission selling, you create friction or the prospect feels rushed.
Practicing permission selling gives the prospect a sense of control
When you politely ask questions, seeking permission to proceed, the prospect feels in control. And in an industry where the buyer-seller relationship is fear, instead of value-based, permission based selling removes the feeling of selling, being doing something to somebody rather than something for somebody, or with somebody. Not surprisingly therefore, helped to make a purchase decisions, the prospect feels inspired to voluntarily open up about his situation. He feels he is in charge, when he responds with, “Yes. That’s OK. You can start moving the items from my son’s bedroom and finish with mine.” Or, “Yes, I’d like that.”
Try it out. Let me know how it goes.
Check out our short courses and other services here. If you would like to have your sales team sell more, we can help. In order for us to do so we propose a free consultation meeting or a call. If in agreement please complete the form below and we will get in touch after receiving your details, none of which will be public. Thank you.
Views – 1051