That Didn’t Feel Like a Sales Call

Sales calls can feel like a lot of work. You can run into prospective clients that are skeptical and need to be convinced that you can help them with their problems. Some prospects are even adversarial, forcing you to work very hard to try to win them as a client (something you may later regret). But sometimes, a sales call can feel so good and so natural that it’s not like working at all.

The Advantages of Partner-Minded, Mature Business People

When you sell to clients that are partner-minded and who are on the right side of the business maturity continuum, selling can feel like you aren’t working at all. These prospective clients are forthcoming about their problems, the implications of their problems, how they prefer them to be solved, and how they are going to evaluate a potential partner. They tell you what they are looking for in a partner.

Partner-minded, mature dream clients ask a lot of questions. Their questions are challenging, but their intention isn’t to play “gotcha.” Their questions aren’t designed to test your sales acumen either. Instead, their intention is to learn. They ask questions to learn about you and your organization. They want to understand what makes you different and how you make a difference for your clients.

Most of all, they seek to understand what you believe you can do to help them to move their business forward.

Focused on Opportunities and Solving Problems

The sales calls that feel effortless are the sales calls where you spend your time focused on the ways that you and your soon-to-be client can work together on opportunities or solving problems.

Instead of spending your time presenting and pitching, you spend your time leveraging your business acumen and your situational knowledge to work with your dream client on their opportunity or their challenges. You give your dream client a chance to see what it will be like to work with you, and you demonstrate that they will be hiring someone with more than just sales acumen; they will be hiring someone that can own and deliver the outcomes they seek.

You find more opportunities that fit this description when you work and sell in your sweet spot. This is where you have the ability to create value in the areas in which your dream client needs you to create value.

You Are Selling, and You Still Have to Sell

Even though it feels effortless, you are still selling. Even though the sales call goes well, all of the iron laws still apply. You still have to be a salesperson, which means you still have to ask for and obtain the commitments that move an opportunity forward. You can’t do your best consultative work creating value without also doing what is necessary to move the opportunity forward.

That, too, should feel effortless.

Questions

What makes a successful, easy sales call?

What attributes make a client easy to work with and easy to sell to?

Is your sales acumen more important to these sales than you business acumen, or vice versa?

Even when a sales call goes particularly well, what are still your responsibilities as a salesperson?