What Makes For An Effective In-House Sales Function?
Or: Why Your Consults-to-Surgeries Are Lower Than 85%If an effective Refractive Counselor or Sales Executive can get face-to-face with a prospect, the odds of a sale should be at least 50%. How you make that ratio better depends on the quality of your in-house sales function.
Effective sales persons are made, not born. Occasionally you encounter someone who is a ‘natural salesman’ – but these are few and far between, and any successful sales person is successful because they know and use the basics of selling.
The Tip Of The Iceberg
That moment when a prospect signs on the dotted line is the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Before that can occur he has to be guided, educated, reassured and most importantly, his hidden objections detected and resolved.
Did you know that the most important communication in any sales interview is NOT what the salesman says to the prospect? It’s what the prospect says silently to himself while the salesman goes on and on with his pitch.
Training systems that focus on developing basic sales skills should include:
- Prospect/interviewer role-playing
- Show-and-tell
- Interview techniques to detect hidden objections
- ‘Closing’
Décor, ambience, internal flow lines, keeping and tracking of weekly statistics, incentive programs and systems for following up consults who didn’t buy are also important elements.
The Most Common Pitfalls
Here are some of the pitfalls we typically encounter when analyzing a client’s in-house sales operations:
- Confusing, inappropriate or unhelpful signage and/or materials in the waiting area
- New arrivals for LASIK Consultations mixed in with cataract or other patients
- Poor physical management of the Prospect-to-Consultation flow
- A challenging or off-putting atmosphere
- No one really wearing the sales ‘hat’
- No secure area for interviews after the consult
- Poor or inadequate show-and-tell
- Missing interview and sales skills
- Inability to detect and resolve hidden objections
- Inability to recognize the ‘Go’ button
- Inappropriate focus on money when prospect questions are still unanswered
- No follow-up system for ‘failed closes’
- No additional, tailored sales personnel training for recurring specific or local objections
How to deal with them? Implementing systems that correct those pitfalls is a big part of what we do. After all, without an effective in-house sales function our clients won’t be making the increased profits that guarantee we will get paid.
Contact us now to schedule an in-depth and confidential Marketing Analysis.
