CONNECTION IS CRITICAL!

I hope you’ve had a chance to look at the first two articles in my four-part series on the Science of Selling, “Red Light, Green Light, Go!” and “Off the Phone and In the Door.” With the economy down in the dumps, it’s the absolute right time to up skill your senior housing sales staff and keep the revenue coming in!

In the second article, I talked about how important it was to make sure phone calls from referrals were handled correctly – or sales were sure to suffer. Believe it or not, at most communities, these calls ARE mismanaged. In an industry-wide study done by ProMatura, researchers blind-called sales staff and discovered an overall shocking lack of expertise in making the right connection with a prospect. This directly hits your bottom line – if you can’t close the deal, you can’t make the money!

Here are a few common mistakes I see Sales Professionals make on a regular basis with prospect calls:

· Not taking the time needed to ask questions and find out what’s important to the prospect – in other words, talking more than listening.

· “Verbal Vomiting” – that’s what I call randomly listing features and services without any regard to what the person calling actually wants. This one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t fit this sales situation!

· Lack of empathy. If you’re not sensitive to the emotional component of the call, the prospect won’t feel you care about their particular needs.

· Judging the caller’s financial situation – i.e. can they afford or not afford this community? - without having the facts.

· Failure to collect valuable contact information for follow-up.

· Acting as if they have more important things to do than talk to the caller.

· Freely offering to send informational packets and give prices out over the phone – instead of working towards the all-important on-site visit.

The great thing about the above list? All of these bad habits can be easily broken – by having the right Inquiry Connection Sheet in place (you can find two examples of them here.) When used correctly, Connection Sheets provide the structure for sales success – and allow the salesperson to best meet the prospect’s genuine needs.