{"id":2252,"date":"2016-08-18T08:00:27","date_gmt":"2016-08-18T12:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/?p=2252"},"modified":"2019-04-03T09:40:50","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T13:40:50","slug":"thoughtful-thursdays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/18\/thoughtful-thursdays\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughtful Thursdays &#8211; One way to increase your close rate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Advances in technology have increased the speed at which information is available and created&nbsp;the opportunity&nbsp;for&nbsp;customers to get what they want faster than ever.<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s sales thought&nbsp;is about being first to the post, shortening your sales cycle&nbsp;and increasing your close rate.<\/p>\n<p>You have offered your prospects multiple ways to get in touch with you directly. Text, telephone and email top the list.&nbsp;When you provide prospects a way to contact you, it is your responsibility to make it work. It surprises me when professional sales people do not respond in a timely fashion. The excuses surprise me more. That is a topic for another day.<\/p>\n<p>Having the patience to wait for you to respond is a luxury most prospects no longer offer to their potential suppliers. If you do not respond in a timely fashion, you have opened the door for your competitor.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Set up an auto response for email to let people know when you will get back to them<\/li>\n<li>Make sure your voice message tells them when they can expect to hear back from you<\/li>\n<li>Text messaging is pretty much real time communication, check it several times a day<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In general, if a call comes in before noon, returning it before the end of the day is a reasonable expectation.&nbsp;Responding to an&nbsp;afternoon inquiry the morning of the next business day will be acceptable.<\/p>\n<p>The key is to acknowledge receipt of the request. You do not always need to have the answer.<\/p>\n<p>The sooner you get back the sooner the sale may close. Outperform your competition by being first to respond and increase your close rate.<\/p>\n<p>It sucks&nbsp;to hear: &#8220;I ordered from your competitor because I could not reach you.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Schedule time slots&nbsp;in the morning and afternoon to check and respond to messages and make sure you do it.<\/p>\n<p>Your customer is expecting you to be accessible.<\/p>\n<p>Good selling,<br \/>\nRichard<\/p>\n<p>Have a question about sales? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sakanashiandassociates.com\/contact\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Contact Sakanashi and Associates Inc.<\/a> and I will respond.<\/p>\n<p>Please share Thoughtful Thursdays posts with people you feel may find the topic interesting and helpful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Advances in technology have increased the speed at which information is available and created&nbsp;the opportunity&nbsp;for&nbsp;customers to get what they want faster than ever. Today&#8217;s sales thought&nbsp;is about being first to the post, shortening your sales&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/18\/thoughtful-thursdays\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,34,3,55],"tags":[60,36,73,74],"class_list":["post-2252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sales","category-things-that-can-shorten-the-sales-cycle","category-thoughtful-thursdays","category-time-management","tag-sales-2","tag-shorten-sales-cycle","tag-thoughtful-thursdays","tag-time-management"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2252"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3678,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2252\/revisions\/3678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}