Get the Right Commitment

There’s a good post at Shane Murphy’s blog that reminded me of the importance of gaining some sort of a commitment as the outcome of every sales appointment. You do this not to ultimately persuade someone to buy something they don’t need, but to test how seriously they are taking your discussions.

People often nod their head yes and act as though they agree with what you’re saying, but have already made up their mind that they’re not buying from you, for any number of reasons.

To prevent wasting your time with bad prospects, do these two things:

1. Set realistic goals for how your first appointment should conclude. You’re not going to close too many of these (depending on what you sell), so be reasonable as to what should result from your first appointments.
2. Get the right commitment at the conclusion of any sales call. That “right commitment” should involve asking the buyer to do something active — download a resource from your website, call for feedback from one of your existing clients, get hard data you need in fully analyzing their current situation.

Too often we go to one extreme or the other on sales calls. We leave things too open-ended and we end up chasing the prospect around, hoping to eventually sell them; or we hard-close them too early and we alienate the buyer personally.

Set the right targets and get the right commitments and you stand a better chance of working higher probability prospects.