Integrity Sales - Sales Strategies 4

What Are The Four Parts of the Sales Process? Part 1

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If you are a salesperson or small business owner or are responsible for marketing a product your most important job is to find new prospects who are willing to buy what you have to offer. Without a prospect there is no sale and without any sale there is no revenue. Whether you are given leads and prospects to follow up with or you are solely responsible for finding these prospects there are typically four stages of the sales process.

Out of these four stages there can be many sub stages to the selling process but these four parts are constant and to be successful in sales and marketing you need to learn how to master all of them.

Stage number one-Prospecting

The idea of prospecting is to find hot new prospects that have a need, the funds, and a willingness to buy. When you are prospecting it is difficult to tell immediately if the prospect is a potential customer but finding out up front as much as you possibly can will save you a lot of time and heart ache. If you feel there is a potential when you are talking to a prospect you should go ahead and schedule the appointment when you get to the second stage you will be able to find out if they are more qualified.

Stage number two-Qualification

Once you set an appointment to meet your potential customer than you want to drill down even further to see if in fact they are qualified for you to pursue and spend your time offering your services. This is the most important stage of the whole process because it will give you the information that you need to formulate a plan to make the sale.

One of the biggest mistakes that salespeople make is they use the spaghetti against the wall mentality and they generally will pursue anybody who shows the slightest bit of interest. This can affect your commissions because when you are trying to sell to someone who is not truly qualified you waste a lot of time when you could otherwise be selling to a prospect who is more qualified and more likely to buy from you.

These are just the first two stages of the sales process in the next part we will look at demonstrating value and closing. You should try to master these skills sequentially because if you can not get past stage 1 than none of the other stages really matter.

Did you know that even the most successful cold callers only have a 2% success rate while cold calling? You know that cold calling prospecting is one of the least effective ways to find new prospects? Go to http://www.sickandtiredofcoldcalling.com where you will get a free 5 part e-course to eliminate cold calling out of your life.

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