“I Just Need To Get In Front Of More Prospects…”

When your rural sales reps say this they can’t close.

Instead of focussing on the close, they need to be focussing on the conversation.

This is because all meaningful high purchase sales happen before the sale, not at the sale.

This is why we keep banging the drum about the importance of proper positioning and committing to a programme of educational-based content.

By committing to regular and relevant content you are building relationships and building authority.

The cadence and consistency of your content builds trust.

This means when it comes to the “sale”, your prospects are already pre-qualified, pre-sold and more pre-disposed to listening to what you have to say – and sell.

You’re also using one of the most powerful laws of influence and persuasion: reciprocation.

By giving them something of value that they can use and apply to their farming business, they are far more likely to give you value in the form of an email, quote, appointment or order.

Saying you need to see more prospects means you are burning through prospects.

You will continue to make the same mistake until you fix it.

Here’s the thing:

You are not putting enough weight and value in what you do before the sale.

If you’re facing pricing objections, I can tell you that you have positioning problems.

If your prospect thinks you can’t help them with their specific problem they will not be receptive to your sales pitch, regardless of how hard you try or politely persist.

If they don’t see you as a specialist they will punish you on price because you are seen as substitutable.

They’ll just swap you out for another, especially if you’re selling commodities.

You need to focus far more effort on your pre-sale activities:

• commit to consistent educational-based content (so you serve to sell)
• map out the optimum sales experience (forget all the talk about customer experience until you nail the sales experience)
• challenge their pre-conceptions and pre-occupation with a pattern interrupt (facts, stats, insights, intel)
• think about what your prospect is thinking and feeling (emotional state, questions she or he is asking themselves, conversations and questions they are having in their own head)
• prepare your most powerful questions to uncover their buyer motives
• be ultra-specific in your solutions and the success stories you share (hyper-relevant)
• build your business as an authority vs. a commodity (email, conferences, media, podcast, ebooks, articles, white papers – different people consume different media)
• publish pertinent articles and blogs that lift your authority and domain score in Google
• optimise your website to ensure it ranks high on specific keywords
• focus on a quality vs quantity of social media (don’t fall for vanity metrics from friends, family and co-workers)
• define your ideal customer and find more just like them
• keep close to your customers to gain insights that continually inform your content

I’ll say it again:

It’s what you do before the sale, not at the sale.

Plan and prepare so you can perform and profit.

Build a pipeline of qualified prospects are more ready to buy by giving them content that connects with the specific problem they want solving.

That way you won’t need to “see more prospects” because they will be have a more predisposed mind and be more prequalified to buy, which means you’ll close and convert more of your rural customers more quickly.

Best of all, they are more likely to close themselves when they come forward as a result of consuming your valuable content.

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I am on a mission to help rural sales and marketing owners and managers get the results they really deserve.

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