I am a big believer in the importance of preparation.

But there are times when preparation helps and times when it hurts.

The first sales call is a time when preparation can hurt you.

I know this may sound a bit crazy.

I mean the Scout’s motto is Be Prepared, right?

Well think about it for a moment. Just what preparation are you going to do exactly for your first sales call with a prospect?

Prepare what you are going to talk about?

Prepare what you are going to show?

Prepare what you are going to demonstrate?

If you are preparing ANY of these things, you are going to hurt yourself.

Hurt yourself because talking, showing and demonstrating on the first call puts the prospect in control and leaves you shooting randomly hoping to hit something, anything.

Your goal on your first sales call is to find out if you even have a chance to sell your prospect something or not.

And whether or not you have a chance to sell your prospect depends solely on the prospect, not on you, not on your preparation.

At your first sales call with your prospect, your strategy should be to show up, ask problem finding and pain magnifying questions, and watch and see what your prospect’s responses are.

How your prospect responds will dictate your next move.

If there’s enough pain that they might want to get what it is that you sell, then you also will want to find out what their decision process is and whether and how they might pay to fix their problems.

This is focus of your first sales call. To find out if you have a pain that they want to solve and to set down the rules of how you are going to sell to the prospect.

That said then, you will need to prepare at least once for the rest of your first sales calls so that you won’t have to prepare anymore. What you need to do is you need to determine what types of problems your prospects typically have so that you can quickly ask about and magnify your prospect’s pain.

With good questioning and sales call control skills, you won’t need to prepare for your first sales calls. You can just show up, and work off of their responses to your questions.

To quickly improve your questioning and sales call control skills, go get your copy of the Persuasive Selling Skills Audio Program now.

Sell with Pride,

Shameless Shamus Brown