Rural Sales Success: Explore why it’s not just about what you sell, but how you sell.

Win rates have been on a constant decline for years now. Research shows any deals over $100,000 are won at an average of 17%. That’s less than 1 in 5.

Price or feature parity exists, products and services are almost identical. And the only thing that differentiates the deal is the buyer experience.

That means you Mr Salesperson.

Often you are the most important part of the sales process.

How you show up, prepare, plan, question, probe, quality and clarify will distinguish between a good or bad buyer experience.

The problem with most rural sales teams is that they are getting worse, not better.

This makes you job so much harder. Because your farming clients are burnt and bruised from all those over-promising, over-selling reps who’ve not delivered on their promises.

This means your farmers default to a cynical and sceptical setting whenever they encounter a sales rep.

The words that run in their own head are:

“What are they here to sell me now?” (cue: eye roll).

For cold customers, you’ve got a mountain to climb.

And when other sales reps get worse, you have no other choice than to train and commit to getting better or you won’t win more deals.

ALSO READ: Rural Sales: Sell The Way You Buy

How you sell is far more important than what you sell.

Sure, you can play the numbers game and burn through leads satisfied with a 1 in 5 win rate but what happened if you focused on improving your buyer’s experience?

• What if you could prepare and plan to ask specific, intelligent and searching questions that got your buyer thinking about the impact and implication of not taking action?
• What if you could take a colleague along to observe how you performed so you could debrief post-meeting to reflect and improve your performance next time?
• What if you committed 2 hours a week to improving your rural sales training skills by dedicating time to learn from sales books, podcasts, groups, coaches or mentors?

As products and services get increasingly commoditized with little or no differentiation, the only differentiator left is you.

Unless you invest in you, or the company you work for ensures you can become the best version of you, you won’t increase your win rate.

Jim Rohn, legendary US business coach said this:

“Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development, because success is something you attract by the person you become.”

If you want to make more money by making more sales that will rarely happen if you don’t commit to your own personal and professional development.

Who can you become?

Who does your buyer buy into?

Why you?

These are important questions you need to ask yourself.