Turning Prospects into Customers

We all have to do cold calls. It takes a little while for a new salesman to build up confidence making cold calls without doing a little bit of research first, it could be your next big sale. When you’re prospecting, it’s important to do at least a little research to find out if your product is even a good fit for the potential new customer. After all, in the age of the internet, your prospect has already done the research about you. For the salesman, the endgame is always the same, close the deal. Turning the prospect into a closed deal can be a challenge.

The customer is always looking for a solution to a problem. Your product has very likely come up in their research. It’s your job as a salesman to help identify the potential problems and help the customer see how your product is the right solution.

Bringing on a new account is a lot like onboarding a new employee, accept instead of aligning the new employee to your company’s culture, you are aligning your customer’s needs to your company’s solutions. Much like the new hire training that every employee goes through, each new account should be trained on your company’s products and capabilities to find the best fit and solution.

Working in the trucking and transportation industry, we are always looking for ways to help a customer save money. A lot of times, this comes from aftermarket all-makes parts options. I try to educate my customers on what each product has to offer whether it be product support or warranty coverage. Sometimes a longer warranty period makes up for a slightly higher price point. For a customer, knowing that the manufacturer will stand behind the product and replace any progressive damage that may occur is a benefit to any buyer.

Getting the prospect to the point where they are ready to buy takes some time. It’s almost never as simple as just showing up and making the sale. Once you’ve identified the prospect, the next step is determining the right point of contact to meet with initially. Leveraging your network to make these introductions can be a huge asset for you. From there, getting the meeting and making the presentation is still not guaranteed. But, the mark of a true salesman is to persevere and not get discouraged. Any salesman will have to get used to having a lot of doors closed in their face.

Before going in to any meeting, it’s important to educate yourself on the product as much as possible to answer as many questions as you can during the meeting to help strengthen your chances of closing the deal. There is no better way to have a meeting run off course than to show up unprepared. When that happens, good luck getting back in front of a key decision maker.

The timeline to turning a prospect into a new customer has no set amount of time. There have been a few times when I’ve gotten lucky and made a sale within the first couple of visits. Normally it takes time and effort, lunches, meetings, sometimes even it can look like you’re about to miss out on the opportunity altogether when suddenly it clicks. The call comes in that they are ready to make a purchase. That is always such a good feeling.

Once the sale is made, your job as a salesman is not over. It is easy to take for granted that your prospect is now a customer, but now you have to develop the account. Once you get the initial product into the customer’s hands they will begin to trust you more, which means more opportunity to present more options. Always be on the lookout for ways to grow a customer, otherwise you’ll always be looking for new accounts to onboard.