Non-salespeople can increase suspect to prospect close ratios substantially

Question

The choice to train your people might seem difficult, especially if you want to introduce a new ethos to a team unfamiliar or even negatively disposed to selling. In this post, Laura Livesey addresses the primary issue you need to consider: Who will actually do the selling?

Answer

I think when you are looking at training people or you are considering the problem you have to look at what the problem is.

So, if you are looking at a company, say for example it’s a hospital, or say for example it’s a team of engineers, the first question you often need to look at, is who is actually going to be doing the selling?

Should I be bringing in a team of sales people? Or should I be training my professional and technical people to actually learn how to sell. For some companies a sales team is an option but for many it isn’t.

So let’s first look at the the most common situation: the companies for whom it isn’t an option to bring in a full fledged sales team.

Those companies then have non-sales professionals going out and meeting a wide range of people, and coming into situations where they will be asked to describe the company. They will be asked to provide some information. This communication is important as it may or may not incite that prospect to actually get back to them, and start having a real dialog/conversation.

And for the companies that do have sales teams, in reality, this is going to happen in those companies too, regardless of whether they have sales people or not.

So what we find is that by actually training the professional and technical people to become skilled in at least this aspect of the initial communication, you are able to increase your suspect to prospect closing ratios substantially.