HOW TO BE A SALES SUPERSTAR

Hot tips from a stellar franchisee.

Many new franchisees spend a large percentage of their time producing marketing, operation and financial plans, but overlook having a sales plan. It’s not until a few years down the track that they realise what a huge mistake they have made. So let’s start:

STEP 1: LEADS

These are the first and most important parts of your plan. Ask yourself: What does my perfect customer look like? Where are these people? Why would they buy from me? How much would they spend? What’s their average age? Gender? The better you can articulate these points, the clearer and more effective your lead-generation material will be.

STEP 2: LEAD GENERATION

Once you know what your ideal prospect looks like, you need to go out and find them. Many people respond well to a free seven-day trial, your first session free, or a short-term sale. Your goal with a lead-generation piece is to get a prospect interested enough so they can be booked into an appointment to join up or purchase something from your business.

STEP 3: BOOKING AND CONFIRMING

Once you have a steady stream of leads coming in, you must have a plan to call them within a certain time frame and get an appointment booked. Just as important is to confirm this appointment. The easiest way for this is via an SMS. This then produces your lead-to-appointment ratio. The better the ratio, the better your leads are and the better you were at booking and confirming your appointments.

STEP 4: THE SALES APPOINTMENT

Congratulations! Your prospect has turned up for an appointment. The fact that they are there means they want to purchase what you have. Your job is to guide them through the process. The first thing you need is to gain rapport with them. If they don’t like you, you are dead in the water. Smile, shake their hand, make eye contact. Remember their name. Many people choose to either like or dislike you within seconds of meeting you.

STEP 5: FOCUSING ON THE CUSTOMER

Ask the prospect questions about exactly what they want to achieve by buying your product, and why that’s important to them. Not doing this is by far the biggest mistake people make during the sales process. Most people just have a brief chat to the prospect, don’t ask any questions and then try and guess what they might want.

STEP 6: OFFER CHOICES

Once you know what they want, and why they want what you are selling, always offer them two choices. For a gym it might be a 12- or an 18-month membership. People love a choice, and it gives them the feeling of being in control.

STEP 7: ASK FOR THE SALE

Many sales fall through simply by not asking what option suits them best, or asking when would they would like to start. You’ve got to be genuine and expect that they will accept one of the options you offer them.

STEP 8: ASK FOR A REFERRAL

Ask if they have any friends that might want to also use what they have just purchased, or who might want to train with them. The key is to offer an incentive for this and always, always ask for every single sale. You’d be surprised at the end of the month just how many leads you will get.