Close more deals and create more dedicated clients by ensuring your sales reps have the knowledge, skills, and awareness to effectively engage with homeowners.
If you’ve ever asked a top sales rep what their strategy is when meeting with a homeowner, you’ve likely never heard them say “I just wing it!”. That’s because when it comes to sales calls, preparation is key for success. So, how can your home improvement company and sales team be sure that they are prepared for customer conversations? By embracing the concepts of sales readiness and relevance. Here’s how those two things work:
1. Sales Readiness
When your sales reps meet with a prospect, time is of the essence. Homeowners don’t have all day, and they expect for a rep to address their questions and needs in a timely manner. That said, your sales reps need to be able to deliver the right message at the right time in order to have a successful sales call. So, how can you – the smart business owner – prepare your sales reps to effectively interact with homeowners? Two words: sales readiness.
Sales readiness happens when a rep has everything they need to go out into the field and sell – and PSA: just completing your company’s training program won’t cut it. If you want your reps to speak confidently about the products/services they’re selling and be able to think on their feet, they need to take what they learned in training and apply that knowledge to real-word experiences.
This is where the old saying ‘practice makes perfect’ comes into play. With the right amount of practice, coaching, and feedback, your sales reps will be better able to answer unique customer questions or questions they weren’t prepared for, allowing them to carry out more effective conversations with customers and close more deals.
2. Relevance
If a sales rep’s pitch isn’t relevant to the prospect, the prospect is going to have a difficult time seeing value in whatever the rep is selling. So, how can you guarantee that conversations with a homeowner are relevant to their situation? Easy: you just need to make sure that your sales team is aware of how customers derive value from the products/services you sell.
To do this, you may want to encourage your reps to speak with previous customers to learn about their experiences and success stories with your company. In doing so, your reps will gain insights into what issues targeted customers are facing and how your products/services can solve those problems, enabling them to better tailor their pitch to a homeowner. And when interacting with a prospect, your reps should then use phrases such as “similar to your situation…” and “like you, this customer…” to draw parallels between the prospect’s problem and a previous customer’s problem that was solved by your company. As a result, your reps will have an easier time connecting with the customer and the customer will likely see greater value out of your pitch.
MarketSharp Can Help
It takes continuous work, but when your home improvement company embraces the ideas of sales readiness and relevance, your reps will be more capable of reaching their sales targets and quotas. Taking the right actions – from comprehensive training, to mentorship programs, to frequent practice and constructive feedback – are key, but so are the right resources.
By using an industry-specific CRM system like MarketSharp, you can enable your sales teams to do their jobs more effectively and close more deals. MarketSharp offers several tools – like a mobile app – that are designed to make your reps more productive in the field and streamline communications with homeowners.
To learn more about how MarketSharp’s industry-specific CRM system can help your sales reps achieve sales readiness and practice relevance when interacting with prospects and homeowners, schedule a demo with one of our team members today!