Securing an appointment with a lead is a major victory, and the last thing you want to do is waste your marketing efforts by going in and blowing it. While there are certainly times when the outcome of a deal is beyond your control, there are plenty of ways you can stack the odds in your favor. Here is a look at how MSP salespeople can improve their chances of sales success. 

Make sure you’ve met the 5 prerequisites for sales success

Before you go in for your presentation, you want to be sure the conditions are ideal for sales success. Nick Points, the sales director at CharTec, says that salespeople should make sure they have met the following five prerequisites before the big presentation to increase their chances of sales success.

Recognized need  

Give everyone at the presentation a compelling reason to need your services. Managed IT services are not glamorous or exciting, and no one wants to pay for them. So, the more needs you can identify, the stronger your position will be. You need to look at everyone in the business, from the CEO to the person at the front desk and find their pain points and identify how your solution can address them. Demonstrate an abundance of reasons the company wants your services for sales success.

Viable solution for Sale Success

You must explain how your services will solve the needs you identify. After all, there is no point in bringing up problems if you can’t solve them. You might believe that your services are valuable, and they very well could be, but people don’t buy things just because they have value. They buy them because they need them. It won’t matter how good of a deal it is; the people you are selling it to must believe that it is something they need and will solve their problems, saving them time and money for sales success.

The value must justify the cost 

Of course, even if the prospect needs what you are offering, you still need to show them that the investment will be worth it for them personally. Your offer must be worth more than the money you’re asking them to spend. This step is where figures may be helpful for sales success.

Present a sense of urgency to get your sales sucess  

What urgent factors have you identified during the discovery process to motivate them to say yes on the day you present it or soon after, rather than thinking about it for months? Show them the urgent factors that will persuade them to choose when you give your presentation to them. The more needs you identify, the greater the urgency to change. 

Present to those with authority to buy  

Be sure you are presenting to the decision-making body at the company. Remember that it is not always the CEO who makes these decisions. Find out if there is a board, partners, or others with decision-making authority, and get everyone in the room with you on presentation day. You can step out for a few minutes while they discuss it, but you want everyone to be there listening to your presentation. Otherwise, the person you present it to might have to tell you they can’t make the decision and will pass it along to whoever has that authority—and you can be sure that when they present it on your behalf, they won’t do nearly as good of a job as you would. If you are presenting to anyone other than the person who can sign the agreement or check, you are wasting your time for sales success.

You must have these five prerequisites met before you present a new opportunity. If you think about deals you have lost in the past, you lost them because you were missing one or more of these prerequisites.  

Get a follow-up, or push for a “no” for sales success

When you do your presentation, you will get a signed agreement or set up a date to pick up a check. But if closing the deal will not happen, you want to close with a no. Although that might sound harsh, you don’t want to get stuck in a back-and-forth where they constantly give you the runaround. People you present to may like you and will not say “no” to you if they cannot move forward for whatever reason. In these cases, many people prefer to tell you they’ll “think about it” because it feels more polite than an outright rejection.  

This roadblock is problematic for salespeople because they need to follow up if the prospect says they’re thinking about it. This might not be a big deal if just one customer gives you the runaround, but what happens when there are multiple presentations that didn’t pan out and you get stuck in a cycle where you are constantly following up? You’ll be spending most of your sales time following up on opportunities that don’t lead anywhere when you could pursue better leads. 

So, it is far better to get a “no” and find out why. Maybe there is something you can do better next time, or something you can change. Turn it into an opportunity for learning.  

While there will always be deals that don’t work out for some odd reason, following these tips can help you increase your chances of success. You can also join our upcoming academy to gain more knowledge in sales and close them.