The Number 1 Sales Tip to Avoid Spooky Deals This Halloween

“Curiosity kills the cat, but keeps your sales campaign on track.” These are words to live by if you want to identify spooky deals early and prevent prospects from ghosting you.

Throughout my career, I was fortunate enough to have worked with several great sales leaders with a wealth of experience and sales tips when it comes to improving performance. 

One key characteristic of successful sales reps is their ability to bridge with prospects, capture information and lead their sales campaigns.

There are many techniques and sales methodologies that help sales reps and teams improve their performance while interacting with prospects. These techniques include coming to the meeting prepared with an agenda, asking open-ended questions, focusing on the value rather than the product and challenging the prospect. They focus on the importance of only spending 20% of the time talking. The other 80% goes to listening and taking notes.

Don’t get me wrong, these are all fantastic techniques that have been proven to work when used wisely. 

However, I have seen many sales reps forgetting their natural sales acumen. As a result, they turn into robotic interrogation monsters. They become solely led by the technique rather than the underlying cause to bridge with their clients and understand their needs.

Being naturally curious

The most successful sales professionals I have met all had a natural curiosity and strong desire to genuinely understand if they could be of value to their prospects. This mindset naturally makes them ask open-ended questions, allowing them to unveil the “whys” and the “hows”. 

The sales professionals listen carefully and take notes to capture the sometimes complex needs. They even challenge their prospects if they don’t fully understand the given information. This allows them to discover hidden gaps or unthought of angles to the issues, building trust and confidence in a potential relationship.

So my single most important sales tip is:

Be curious and make sure you truly understand every interaction with your client

Your innate curiosity in trying to understand and piece the puzzle together will open doors. This will enable you to discover what you truly need to know to drive a successful sales campaign and close the deal. You will have to worry less about all those techniques such as active listening, focusing less on the product etc. as they will come naturally. This will help you build strong relationships and bring you one step closer to establishing a healthy pipeline of real and qualified deals.