Measure twice, carefully, and cut once...if you wish to be an effective craftsman. Develop your sales message carefully and thoughtfully, with respect to your customers' expectations of value...if you wish to be an effective salesperson.
Once you develop a clear sales message for your targeted prospect, you must also be ready to communicate the message. The salesperson must be ready to introduce and provide information that reinforces the sales message. Remember who you are selling to and what you are selling, in order to stay focused and consistent with your message.
The sales message is so important because it communicates to the customer what your product is, and most importantly, how it will affect their business. The sales message must incorporate the benefits of the offering (how the offering is going to solve the prospect's problems).
Successful sales means developing and practicing a method for the entire process, starting well before your first contact. Steps of the process include studying your offering and your potential client. One of the benefits to a sales process? This insures that once you go into the sales meeting or into follow up conversation, that you will not confuse the decision maker by altering the sales message. By understanding what this offering does and how it will meet their needs, you can quiz yourself on possible questions or comments from the prospect. By remaining consistent in your responses, the prospect will be able to gather complete and clear information for their decision making. Once again, knowing the prospect will only benefit you and your business.
By choosing to blindly walk into a sales meeting or a cold call, you could send mixed messages about the offering. This is likely to cause the prospect to not fully understand what they are being offered, causing the salesperson to lose the sale. More importantly, a misunderstanding could lead to an unsatisfied customer if the product/service doesn't offer the type of solution that the sales message sent.
On the other hand, if you provide information that reinforces the sales message in each contact, your satisfied customer is likely to spread the word that your offering provided the solution for which they were searching.
