How to Develop a Thriving Personal Selling Process

In the business realm, mastering sales techniques has been of the most complex subjects. It isn’t one-size-fits-all; it has to be customized according to your team, industry, and clients. Generating sales and long-term customers are some of the most critical components of a company. Without it, your organization will not have an income. Thus, developing a personal selling process is crucial.

When elaborating this process, the ultimate goal is to seal the sale at all costs. Though the procedure may vary greatly based on your industry, the framework is the same.

It is important to emphasize that a successful personal selling process takes time to develop. You might have to test different formats that will best fit the way you prospect, approach, present, and close your product or service.

Without further due, here is what you need to know to develop your own process.

What is the Personal Selling Process?

A personal selling process is a seven-step process to help you close a sale. The ultimate goal is for you to identify and solve the prospects’ needs for products and services and satisfy them.

Whether you are doing business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) sales, you must develop your own methods.

Personal Selling Process Advantages and Disadvantages

Much like any other business strategy or method, a personal selling process will come with advantages and perhaps some disadvantages. Thus, before jumping into it, here is what you should consider:

Personal Selling Process Advantages

One of the greatest advantages of developing a personal selling process is that it allows you or your sales team to create a connection between your company and the potential customer.

Ideally, your sales team builds a personal relationship with the prospect and can address individual issues. Should questions or concerns arise, it puts you or your salesman at better odds of addressing them, which essentially improves the closing rate.

Personal Selling Process Disavantages

There are not many disadvantages to the process of personal selling. One drawback is that due to the personalized nature, it takes more time and resources than the traditional way.

Another downside is that reaching out to a large group of prospects is unrealistic because of the personalization of the process. Each candidate has to be identified and qualified before entering the process.

Although the personal selling process can be time-consuming and labor-intensive, you foster a strong relationship with your prospects. Thus, you are more likely to build a long-term partnership with them.

The Personal Selling Process

1. Prospecting
2. Pre-Approach
3. Approach
4. Sales Presentation
5. Handling Objections
6. Closing the Sales
7. Follow up

Each step is equally important, and it allows your sales team to better understand and serve your future clients.

Prospecting

Although prospecting can vary depending on your industry, it will likely be done via cold-calling, in-person networking, marketing, and online research, or all of them combined.

Because the personal selling process is about finding solutions for your customers, in this stage, the most important element is lead qualification. Remember, not everyone is fit to be your customer. Your goal is to minimize customer churn by qualifying your lead.

If your company builds patios and decks, most of your clientele will be homeowners with a certain residual income. Therefore, it would be unwise to offer your service to a renter.

In the long-run, qualifying the right leads will save you time and money.

Pre-Approach

Before you make contact with the leads that you deemed qualified, you should do deeper research. You want to find out as much as you can about your prospect before the approach.

My company sales are strictly B2B. Before reaching out to my leads, I will create a CRM entry with all the information I can find — owner’s and manager’s name, how they operate, location, etc.

Once they are contacted, my sales team can add all the information to the system. For instance, the name and number of the decision-maker, what company they are currently using, what services they are likely to outsource, etc.

Those are all excellent information to have before jumping into the next step. And the beauty of a CRM is that you and your sales team can access it from anywhere.

Approach

In this step, you will make the first contact to introduce yourself and start a conversation with your prospect. The way you go about making this contact will depend on your industry. In my case, I have tried all kinds of methods — email, phone calls, and in-person — but no one works except for in-person visits.

The goal is to better understand your prospect’s needs, wants, and figure out how your product and service can solve the problem. This is the stage where you ask many questions.

Evidently, the questions will vary depending on what you are offering. It would help if you created a questionary based on your company profile and your products or service.

Sales Presentation

This is where all your research and questions from the previous steps will pay off. By the time you get to present your product or service to your prospects, you should be well acquainted with their needs.

In this step, you should be focusing on describing to your prospects how your product or service will solve their problems.

The presentation has to be geared towards the prospects. Take time to describe their pain points, and how your product will solve those issues. Don’t spend too much time on the product itself, but focus on the solution.

Handling Objections

Your prospects will likely have questions and or objections. It is crucial to genuinely answer them without being pushy.

In this step, you are simply ensuring that the prospects completely understand what you are offering. It is not yet the time to change their mind or push them to buy it.

If your prospect is not reaching out for questions, you should follow-up to see if you can help them in any way.

Closing

Finally, it is time to close the sale. After doing your presentation and handling objections, you should push for the close. There are several closing techniques that you can apply in this step.

In this stage of the personal selling process, you should be finalizing your price, settling negotiations, contracts, and any paperwork required to close the deal.

Follow Up

The final stage of the personal selling process is to follow-up. You should contact your client to make sure your product or service is delivered up to their standard.

The follow-up is equally important to maintain a relationship with the client. If you play your cards right, in due time, you will be able to offer them a renewal or upgrade. Also, happy customers are better advocates.

Start Your Personal Selling Process

Though there are many ways to develop a personal selling process, the framework is virtually the same.

The most crucial aspect of your process is to ensure that you are focusing on your clients’ needs and how to solve them; your product or service is irrelevant if you cannot solve the needs of your clients.

Create your own strategy using this framework, and encourage your sales team to use it. Building relationships is the essence of business.

What are your thoughts? Share in the comments.