“The ability to connect and thus to raise the yield of existing knowledge is learnable.” — Peter Drucker
In our industry, I still encounter sales professionals who see their job as getting as many people into the sales funnel whether the prospects are ready or not. According to this “sales is a number game” theory, the more prospects in the sales funnel, the more customers will come out. The problem with this high-pressure sales approach is if prospects aren’t ready, they can’t be pushed and will resist moving forward in the sales process. Top producers use a different approach where they add value to prospects or customers until they are ready. For example, if the prospect is a real estate agent, the producer might educate on how to improve their business. If dealing with a consumer, the sales person might explain how the process works today to get approval from a lender. This sets expectations and provides options to prevent unnecessary frustrations that can arise in the loan approval process.