Speed Wins the Sale
In business, speed wins. If your quality, selection, customer service, and price are equal to your competitors, response time breaks the tie. Whoever is fastest to deliver gets the deal. In a competitive environment, rapid response time can correct for competitive defects like a higher price, fewer features, or lower quality.
You might be thinking, yes, but if I respond too fast, my customer will think it’s easy for me to do, or I have lots of inventory, so I should charge less. You might get a cheap customer to say that, but the vast majority of customers want speedy response and are even willing to pay extra for expedited service.
Make the easy things look difficult and difficult things look easy.
Use the magician’s principle: “Make the easy things look difficult and difficult things look easy.” That’s what customers pay for and pay well for.
How can you transform how you approach your business and your customer to increase speed to respond and deliver? It may require altering how you get things done, yet it’s completely worth it if you can change the game.
Read on to get ideas how to speed up your customer response.
Sell What’s in Stock
Sell what’s in stock so that you deliver immediately. Yes, some customers will place an order for what they’ve bought before or researched. Yet, many buyers will take your direction as to what they need based on their trust of your advice. Sell them what you’ve got.
My colleague, Van Carpenter wrote a powerful mnemonic for this: SOLUTION means “Selling Our Line Unto Those In Obvious Need.”
Stop actively selling stuff you can’t ship and start selling what you can deliver immediately. This improves your cash flow, retires quota quicker, and makes customers happy.
Answer Common Questions in Advance
Many of your prospects have the same question, so write a party line for all of the sales staff to use in response.
What questions do you frequently get from your prospects and customers? What questions do you wish they’d ask? What questions do they ask Google, Siri, and Alexa?
Answer them with FAQs on your website for the search engines to find. Have copy and paste answers ready to go for emails. Answer them with short YouTube videos. Answer them with routinely broadcast Tweets. If appropriate, answer with Pinterest and Instagram posts.
The faster you can get your prospects questions answered with a positive response, thefaster they can say yes to your offer.
Ask a Silver Bullet Question
What question, when you ask it, most frequently leads to a conversation and a sale? Ask everyone that question.
If you’re a sales manager, listen to your team. Your good sales pros ask questions instead of pitching prospects. Identify the silver bullet question. It’s likely that they don’t consciously know what question is getting the best response, they just use it out of experience and habit. Find it and teach that question to everyone and make sure they use it.
A favorite of mine: “Where is your next customer coming from? What are you willing to pay to get your next customer? Don’t know? Want my help?”
Do you need a silver bullet question? Let’s talk. I’ll write one for you.
Ask Customers When They Want Delivery
Speed is relative. What’s fast for some customers isn’t fast enough for others. So ask them, “When do you need this in hand, ready to go?” That’s your target minus a tick(one time increment sooner).
This keeps you from killing yourself delivering instantly to everyone when that’s not the service level required for all. And yet, it allows you to over deliver on your promise.
Amazon.com does a good job with this offering a variety of delivery times. Immediate delivery costs more. If you’re part of the club, two day is free. If you can wait, they’ll pay you back for your time in future order credit. Brillient!
How can you use this idea in your business or in your negotiations (“I can reduce the price for a later ship date if you pay today.”)
Let’s have a conversation if you think my ideas can help you find and close more customers or to invite me to speak at your forthcoming meeting. Find a mutually agreeable time at MarksSchedule.com.