Are We Closing or Opening Our Prospects?

I have listened and taken part in hours and hours of sales training, both for network marketing and for sales jobs and I always hear about closing the customer. Everyone teaches you to close. Be sure that you are asking for the close several times during the presentation. On and on it goes. I agree that asking for the sale or closing the customer is important, especially if you like to pay your bills, however, I would like you to consider a new twist on the closing part of your presentation.

If you will, please consider changing your mindset to opening the customer.

What if before you even start your presentation and all throughout the presentation you are focused on opening your customers up to the business or product you are presenting? What if you asked enough questions to get your customers to disturb themselves enough to want, really want your solution to their challenge? Yes, I mean disturb themselves. Don’t ever try to tell someone why you think his or her life is not working. All that will do is give them permission to defend anything that might be going on. No one wants to be told that they made a bad business choice, they have too much debt, or they look like crap. Please do not offer your opinion. Learn from my mistakes, people will always defend their fort. By asking questions you can get them to admit that things aren’t so great. Then and only then will they be ready to really listen to you.

I call this opening the customer.

Using questions like F.O.R.M. (Family, Occupation, Recreation, and Money.) Take the time to find out where your company or products could fit into the prospects life. Find out about their dreams, their wants, and their needs. Most people are thrilled to talk about themselves if we would just shut up long enough to let them.

Keep in mind as network marketers we are not paid for the information we give, we are paid for the information we get.

People are always listening to us with filters on. They are always looking at what is in it for them. Our job is to always present to the prospects needs.

As we learn to open up our prospects and hear, truly hear their needs we can then present our business or products in such a way that the prospect actually sees the possibilities of how this business or products can fix their problems. When we show people how what we have can truly help them, they get excited and are much more likely to want to join our business or at least try our products.

Until next time, remember I BELIEVE IN YOU!

Carol Briney is the founder and owner of Universal Order—a national speaking, training and home-based business consulting firm that focuses on simplifying life, and finding balance between work and play. She is a speaker, trainer, and home-based business consultant. Carol brings over 25 years of entrepreneurial and corporate experience to the platform.

Whether keynotes, conferences, executive retreats, church retreats, seminars, or consulting, people say Carol’s greatest strength is to motivate and inspire people to positive action.

Carol has been a regular contributor to The Down Towner, Boomers Magazine, The Bloomfield Bulletin and Champions Magazine. Her business has been featured in the Herald, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, The Tribune Review, and Balance Magazine as well as several radio and television shows.

Due to some health challenges in her family, and actually choosing to follow her own advice and simplify her life, Carol made the decision to reinvent herself. She investigated over 30 home-based business companies using very serious criteria and chose the company she is with due to their outstanding business model and ethics.

Carol’s new company, Carol Briney Work From Home, was formed because Carol’s passion is to educate as many people as possible about the toxic brew in their own homes and help them find better, safer products for their families and our planet, as well as teach everyone they do need a PLAN B for their life.

Carol is also the founder of The Business Leads Exchange Networking Group in Sharpsburg Pennsylvania.

Go to www.CarolBrineyWorkFromHome.com and get your free e-book. How To Choose a Home-Based Business Using Business Criteria and Not Your Emotions Carol and her best friend and husband Ron, live in Aspinwall, Pa.