3 Sales Secrets to Up Your Chances of Getting to a "Yes!"

A lot of people believe that selling to corporate clients is a lot harder than selling to small business owners. I, of course, disagree entirely. Unlike in the online marketing world, where you need marketing “funnels” and “escalators” and other so-called sales strategies, selling to the corporate world usually comes down to the seemingly simple things. Meeting someone at an event. Sending an email. Getting an introduction. Making a phone call. If online marketing is a science, then selling to corporate clients is an art. It’s about doing the simple things, but doing them well. And it all starts with your first steps. So here are 3 things you can do to make sure you get started on the right foot with your prospects and up your chances of getting to a “Yes!” Don’t waste their time. If you think you’re busy as a small business owner, just spend a day shadowing a corporate decision maker. You’ll have a new appreciation for “busy.” So rule number one is to never everwaste their valuable time. They’ll resent you for it.How, you ask, might you waste their time?By doing things that appear innocent, like sending an email or calling “just to check in.” Or by committing worse offenses, such as contacting a company before you’ve invested five minutes to check out its website to see if your services would even make sense.rnThink “being helpful” first, selling third. When you are in the mindset of runningyour business, you should of course be thinking about revenues first.But when it comes time to interact with a potential client — corporate or otherwise — you need to shift gears entirely and come from a place where your presiding thought is, “I wonder if there is a way I can help this person or company?”If you ask a few well thought out, open-ended questions and it turns out you can in fact help them, the second step is clarifying their needs and matching it to a solution. Only then are you finally ready to think about making a sale.rnAsk. Listen. Satisfy. One of the biggest complaints from companies about outside vendors and experts is that they simply do not listen. You can set yourself apart from everyone else out there if you ask questions you are genuinely interested in knowing the answer to— and you incorporate the prospect’s desires into what you do and say.Here’s a good example. The next time a corporate client agrees to schedule a phone conversation or face-to-face meeting with you, say this: “Sally, I’m really looking forward to speaking with you next week. What information would you want to take away from this meeting to make it a valuable use of your time and be a success in your mind?”rnThe other key of course is to ensure that you keep your pipeline full of clients who are ready, willing and able to pay you top dollar for your expertise.