A prospect contacts you, and they say they’re really interested in OOH advertising. Ok, they don’t say that they say they want a billboard. They are giving off all of the right “buying signals”. All you have to do is put together a proposal, email it to the prospect and they’ll make a decision quick. Sounds like a no brainer, done deal, right?

You sit down and begin to think to yourself, “Wait a minute…hold your horses!  I need to think about this.  I don’t want to blow this ‘no brainer deal’!”

Where do I begin to put together a truly “best fit” proposal?

• What do you really know about the prospect?
• Is the person you’re talking to the real decision maker? How do they know?
• Why did the prospect reach out to you/your company to start with?
• What problem(s) are they hoping you will solve? Why is this even a problem that they need help with?
• What’s compelling them to get this fixed? Why right now?
• What happens if it doesn’t get fixed? Does life go on as is without any big interruptions for them or is there no other choice but to get this fixed?
• Can they even afford the solution you’re going to offer them?
• How do they begin to make a decision on this? What process and criteria are they using for the decision? When does the decision get made?
• How about competition? If they’re talking to your company, there’s a high likelihood that they’re talking to your competitors.
• Once you quote them, what happens after that?

This done deal doesn’t look like such a sure thing now, does it?

How can you be sure you are putting together the right, best fit proposal for them if you can’t answer those questions?  Let’s face it, you can’t.  Anything you put together is at best a shot in the dark.

A lot of this is driven by getting excited about what appears, on the surface, to be an easy opportunity to close. You rush to close the deal before you really understand the prospect and what’s driving the opportunity. You start to skip steps in your sales process because it seems so easy. You must slow down and dig deep to ask the questions above so you can qualify it properly and make sure to understand the real problems the prospect needs help with.

What’s the worst that can happen, you ask? Here are a few of the outcomes from this scenario that can happen once you email that quote/proposal to the prospect. Let me know how many of them sound familiar to you.

• Prospect stops responding and “goes dark”. You begin chasing and stalking the prospect and waste a ton of time on this opportunity that will eventually go nowhere.
• Prospect says the price is too high and begins trying to negotiate the price down.
• Prospect says, “Thank you for your time and the quote, but we’ve decided to go another direction.”
• Prospect says, “Thank you for your time and the quote, but we’ve decided to stay with the company we’re using now.”
• Prospect says, “We need to think this over before we make a decision on this.” (Studies have shown that “Think it overs” are really a polite NO 83% of the time.)

If this sounds familiar to you, STOP THE MADNESS, break the pattern and slow down to speed up your way to a sale!

Ask these questions and truly qualify the prospect and the opportunity to determine if it even makes sense to spend the time and effort to quote the opportunity…after all, do you really need PRACTICE putting together quotes?!

Need help with sales skills or coaching to take your out of home company to the next level.  Learn more about OOH Sales Mastery at oohmastery.com  or Contact Dan Nausley at  dan.nausley@sandler.com, 423.702.5579.

Lisa & Dan Nausley and Reggie Piercy of Sandler Chattanooga have developed the OOH Sales Mastery Program after more than a decade of training/coaching thousands of OOH Operators across the country in sales, leadership, and executive coaching.

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