On Tuesday, July 13, the ARA of Virginia hosted a webinar designed to help rental companies close more sales and increase profits.
“Shut Up and Sell More” was presented by Alan Berg, a Certified Speaking Professional™ with more than 25 years in sales and marketing leadership roles. During his session, Berg delivered the key takeaways of how and when to ask the right questions, learning better listening skills, identifying strong buying signals coming from the prospective client, and selling more efficiently.
The benefit of being an avid listener when it comes to customers resonated with those who participated.
“Alan made some good points concerning the question and listening portion of your sales call with the customer,” says Charlie Drummond, general manager, Rental Works, Richmond, Va., and an ARA of Virginia board member. “The key points I picked up involved listening to vs. just hearing the customer and communicating with the customer in the same way they choose to communicate with you — whether by email, text or phone.”
Keeping with Berg’s point of “shutting up,” Drummond also says that he learned “not to answer questions a customer hasn’t asked, and don’t ‘data dump’ with information they don’t need to know.”
Mike Fitzwater, general manager, Special Events Entertainment, Portsmouth, Va., and ARA Region Two director, also picked up some useful tips from the presentation, saying that Berg “gave great insight on communicating with customers, such as rather than quoting your less expensive product, give them a price range with the statement that ‘most customers end up at $X amount’ — whatever is the middle of the range for that particular product. That was a very smart and useful insight.”