Is More Time Required To Make The Sale?

Contrary to commonly accepted advisor sales thinking, an advisor’s chance of making the sale does not increase with more time invested with their prospect. 

Giving your prospects more time to make a decision, by stretching the sales process out over multiple steps, is an idea that remains deeply embedded in the old school “know-like-trust” sales model. 

That model is based on the hope that the sale will gradually build forward momentum over time.  

The thinking goes, if you attempt to close the sale prematurely, before enough forward momentum has been created, then your sales opportunity is liable to never get off the ground. 

But is that always true? 

It used to be the case that prospects responded positively to a more deferent approach. 

Now, due to commoditization of the profession, that behaviour has changed. 

Prospects can’t sustain their focus over a long sales process anymore because their attention is divided. 

They don’t need time to make a decision. 

Rather, they need their attention focused and concentrated in one place, at one time, or they probably can’t make a decision at all. 

The intention of making the sale in one meeting, not over a series of meetings, is the sales mindset shift that’s required for you to succeed in today’s business environment. 

This may seem contradictory given that the ethos behind building momentum over time was to de-pressurize the sale. 

Advisors understood correctly that sales pressure created sales resistance. 

What they didn’t understand was that educating their prospect over time, doing free consulting, was still a form of persuasion that created perceived sales pressure all the same. 

More time spent “selling” to a prospect creates more need for them to “think about it”  (a quiet form of resistance). 

To build trust, what’s needed is a process that avoids selling altogether and focuses on diagnosing their problems. 

Your prospect’s situation or problem has its own immediacy and urgency, and making this the centrepiece of the discussion rather than your solution.   

This should relieve you of having to “sell” in the traditional sense of the term. 

No selling = no pressure = trust 

The beauty of this problem-centric approach is that it can build trust immediately allowing them to hire you on the spot. 

Ari Galper is the number one authority on trust-based selling and has created Unlock The Game®, a new sales mindset that overturns the notion of selling as we know it today. Thousands of Business Owners worldwide have been transformed by his trust-based sales approach. Get access to his Free Masterclass at www.UnlockTheGame.com/Video, order his new book "Unlock The Sales Game" at www.UnlockTheGame.com/AriBookOrderNow, subscribe to his podcast "Stump The Guru" or to be a guest on his live show, visit www.UnlockTheGame.com/StumpTheGuru