If you are one of the 50 million American business owners, sales persons, financial advisors and independent professionals that make a living by selling, then you need to learn the rules of the game for courting clients.
That is the advice of a new book, Always Forward! Discover the 7 Secrets of Sales Success, by William S. Wooditch. I was fascinated by the rags to riches story of this scrappy self-made man. A great part of being a book editor is meeting interesting people.
Wooditch worked for two Fortune 500 companies and became the top salesperson in both. Today he is CEO of The Wooditch Group, a privately held risk management and insurance services firm in Southern California he founded in 1993.
Wooditch, a popular speaker and media interview guest, is active in recruiting, training and mentoring sales reps. With his blessing I wanted to share his seven rules for sales courtship:
1. Seek a meeting in your prospect’s office, and keep it short. Stay on point. The goal is to get to next—the next meeting, the next step in the process, or perhaps, next is a consummated sale. Find a reason to have another meeting. Build on the value premise and promise from your initial meeting. Follow-up after the meeting with an email thanking them for their time and consideration. In the email, outline the next mutually agreed upon step.
2. Play it forward by thinking and implementing the next step. Take the actions that move you closer to yes. Share information, entice them, be attractive, have an air of confidence, know your subject matter, believe in yourself. Exude confidence, but don’t become careless or sloppy. If there is an interest or connection, it will pull you forward as it pulls them toward you.
3. Find a common interest. The conversation will either flow or not, just like when you are on a date. It’s not easy to turn a bad date good, but it’s easy to turn a good date bad. You can push your position and become aggressive, probably get slapped, or you can stay on the courtship trail and keep moving gently toward yes by having a personal bandwidth that directs activity from feel as much as thought.
4. Avoid sounding like you are following a sales formula or script. The process of qualifying is an opportunity to become familiar, learn and bond with a prospective client. The catalyst in the formula is you. Your personality and style, talent, perseverance, persistence, and timing must make the process come alive. Remember, people expect a certain approach, they expect to be sold and told. Dare to be you, enroll, engage and connect.
5. Stay away from personal problems and issues or beliefs that could be controversial or offensive. Establish those hooks of connection that tie you to the prospect from an emotional sphere. Once you adhere to their emotional side, you can weave and bond from those small hooks of connection. Fortify a stronger relationship from each and every interaction. Reserve each interaction without expectation of another. Fully immerse yourself in the present with the person. Learn how to earn future engagements. Earn the right by forging the bond that comes not from expectation and assumption, but from paying attention to your contribution to the relationship in the present.
6. Remember to use the most powerful words in our language, “Please” and “Thank you.” After each meeting, send a thank you to the prospective client for their time and consideration. It does not need to be pithy or a version of War and Peace, but it needs to be done with haste, it needs to be completed with accuracy and it needs to have substance.
7. Use a velvet glove, iron fist approach. The velvet glove is the respectful approach of subtle but consistent pressure and the iron fist must hold your will and resolve to move your proposition and platform forward. This will require the skill of a surgeon, the feel of an orchestra leader and the heart of a warrior.
“In all cases, the prospective client is the one who determines if you have earned the right to proceed,” says Wooditch. “At this point in the process, there may be a chemistry coalescing between you and the prospective client. Your approach must be one of confidence. Substance trumps style every time. The marriage of substance and style is a winning formula.”
