Opening the Door to Sales

That’s much easier said than done! There is a tremendous amount of work, thought, and coordination to opening a door. If you are in the retail sector and customers come walking into the store, opening a conversation is presented to you regularly. If you are not taking advantage of walk-in customers by finding out why they came into the store, you are leaving sales opportunities on the table. For those who must proactively search for customers, the task is different.

In this case, you must first qualify a prospective customer to determine if it matches the products or services your company offers. Once past that initial phase, you need to determine what the best way of entry would be to open conversation. Is it direct? Possibly through another business associate? Do you email them? Maybe you should pick up the phone and call?

The main objective is to develop a rapport strong enough that the prospective client will be open to an invite for a meeting. This meeting can sometimes be very fast toward the close, and sometimes as slow as molasses to get to the same point. It depends on several variables; the needs of the business, competition in your industry, comfort zone of other products or services already being bought, personality styles, and much more. There’s never a dull moment and it must be worked on at all times.

At the end of the day, planning during the ‘opening the door’ phase is as important, if not, more important than closing the sale. Be diligent, have fun with it, and you too will start seeing increased fruit from your labor!

What are your challenges when it comes to opening the door to opportunities and new sales? I look forward to hearing your comments. Until next time…