National Sales Center

Speaking With Sales Prospects

Life is a learning experience and you never know when it’s ready to teach you something. You may have noticed I haven’t posted anything for a few days. I was vacationing in the Caribbean and had a great time. I also picked up some interesting lessons about how to talk with sales prospects.

I was at this resort and found the interaction between guests very interesting. We were all on vacation and looking forward to a good time. All of us were strangers to each other yet we would spend the week eating and enjoying activities together. By observing how strangers interact with each other I was able to come up with an interesting sales tip for salespeople on how to best speak with sales prospects.

I picked up on a nervous laughter used by too many at the end of a sentence. It comes in the form of a HA-HA-HA. A person may say, “It’s a beautiful day” and then comes the HA-HA-HA. What’s going on with the HA-HA-HA? What they said wasn’t funny or even meant to be funny so why add the HA-HA-HA?

It gets worse. The person listening to the beautiful day remark responds with “It sure is – HA-HA-HA”. One HA-HA-HA grows into another HA-HA-HA. I started getting fixated on these HA-HA-HAs and it got so annoying I had to forget about it so it wouldn’t ruin my vacation. However, I did learn something about how to speak with prospects.

The HA-HA-HA is obviously a nervous laughter. Some people get nervous meeting new people and that gives rise to the HA-HA-HA. I guess they are trying to say that they are happy and/or funny but all I got from it was that they are not comfortable.

Do you HA-HA-HA when speaking to a sales prospect? You may not even be aware of it but if you are a HA-HA-HAer I urge you to leave it behind when you are on a sales call. When speaking with a sales prospect you must convey confidence. The HA-HA-HA conveys uneasiness and that’s a message you don’t want to convey when speaking with a sales prospect.

Building rapport with a sales prospect is a key step in the sales process. For that reason, I take great care to cover rapport building in my sales training programs. There is a right way and a wrong way to speak with a sales prospect and the HA-HA-HA will certainty take you down the wrong path.

So, I picked up this little sales tip on how to speak with sales prospects while I was on vacation. I thought I’d share it with you just in case you HA-HA-HA… HA-HA-HA.

I wish you great sales success!

Nick

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Tags: sales advice