Many of the world’s most successful salespeople started their careers selling door-to-door. And while most people experience overwhelming rejection, they find ways to be successful and close more deals. They consistently beat industry averages and actually make a lot of money. What’s their secret?
The Challenge of Door-to-Door Sales
Those who have never had the experience of selling in a door-to-door manner have no idea how brutally challenging it is. Not only is rejection common, but it comes in a face-to-face manner, which seems more personal.
Physically, going door-to-door – whether in office parks or neighborhoods – is taxing on your body. Psychologically, there’s the need to always be “on” in order to engage prospects so they’ll at least listen to what you have to say. Emotionally, there’s the constant rejection that you have to deal with over and over again.
While some may look down on door-to-door salespeople, they often don’t know the first thing about how sales work. Speak with any successful salesperson and there’s a good chance they started out going door-to-door (and are better for the experience). You learn a lot from this form of selling, but you better catch on quick if you want to put food on the table.
5 Tips to Improve Your Door-to-Door Results
With door-to-door selling, you don’t have the luxury of being patient and hoping things work out. You need to develop a plan of attack and implement strategies that give you the best chance of being successful. Otherwise, you won’t be a salesperson very long.
1. Stop Trying to be Someone You Aren’t
Have you ever met a salesperson who would do anything to avoid using the word “sales” when describing what they do? When they engage a prospect in a door-to-door manner, they either avoid introducing themselves altogether and start asking questions, or they blatantly lie about who they are and what they’re doing. Both situations are problematic. First off, prospects can spot a salesperson from a mile away. You aren’t fooling anyone. Secondly, deceit will rarely (if ever) result in a sale.
Be honest and leverage this transparency to engage the prospect for a few minutes. Say something like, “Yes, I’m a salesperson, but I genuinely believe I have something that can help you [insert value].” This is a far better approach.
2. Get to “No” Faster
Many salespeople are great at stringing prospects along and keeping the conversation flowing, but be wary of dragging things out. In the end, you’re just doing a disservice to yourself. The quicker you can get to a “no,” the faster you can move on to the next prospect. (On the flip side, this also speeds up the process of getting to a “yes,” which is an even more valuable skill.)
This doesn’t mean you speed through your pitch and gloss over important details. It does, however, mean that you cut out the fluff and avoid artificially prolonging the interaction with no real value-added.
3. Perfect Tonality
Keeping the previous tip in mind, it’s important to remember that building rapport at the door is essential to success. People like to buy from people they actually like.
“Creating this level of connection requires capturing and keeping your prospect’s attention by genuinely connecting with them,” explains Spotio, creator of a leading door-to-door sales tracking app. “What’s more important is that they connect with you on both a conscious, and unconscious, level. Tonality is a key fundamental component of building rapport and establishing trust.”
Your tonal patterns allow you to establish yourself as someone who is worthy of being heard. Certain tones are more attractive to sales prospects than others; it’s up to you to quickly identify who your target is and how they’re going to best connect with you.
4. Ask Questions and Listen
If you find yourself in a situation where you’re having to convince a prospect that they need a product, you’re already behind the proverbial 8-ball. What you really want is for the prospect to convince themselves. You do this by asking questions and then letting them talk. You just listen and guide their thinking with some interjections and comments along the way. Eventually, they’ll convince themselves and you can move in for the close.
5. Provide Next Steps
Never let a prospect tell you something like, “Thanks for the information. We’ll think about it and get back in touch with you.” For every hundred people who tell you some variation of this, you might get one call. Instead of leaving it like this, you need to provide some tangible next steps. Tell them that you’ll call or swing back by. This puts you back in control.
Close More Sales
Door-to-door sales success is rooted in your ability to convince individual prospects to purchase a product or service after just a few minutes of face-to-face interaction with them. The word “challenging” doesn’t even begin to explain how difficult it is to master this art form.
However, if you study the people at the top, you’ll notice that they’ve found a way to consistently outperform the average. Each individual salesperson has their own unique strategy, but many rely on the techniques outlined in this article.
Give them a try and see which ones work for you.
from Feedster https://www.feedster.com/blog/5-tips-and-techniques-that-will-make-you-a-better-door-to-door-salesman/
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