Principles of Creative Salesmanship

The Approach

After prospecting and the pre-approach, the next step of your sales procedure is to get face to face with your prospect. Professional buyers are the easiest to reach. They hold regular hours for buying and are readily accessible to salesmen. But individual customers in their offices or homes are not so easily contacted.

They seldom phone a salesman and invite him to call. And if a salesman calls unexpectedly, he may be unwelcome. When the doorbell rings, he may be interrupting the viewing of a TV program. Then, too, some housewives are annoyed constantly by peddlers.

Others have had unfortunate experiences with pitchmen who were crudely insistent once they were inside the door. Prospects are likely to greet an unknown salesman with cold suspicion.

Further, most people are unaware of their needs and so try to avoid listening to the salesman’s story. So how do you go about bridging the gap between you and your prospects?

Securing the Interview: Methods of getting an appointment include I) the personal call, 2) introduction by a friend, 3) the telephone call, 4) the company letter or card, and 5) the sample or gift.

The Personal Call

Once you have qualified a prospect as one who has a need for your product and the ability to buy, one way to reach him is to call on him without an appointment. You just drop around.

In such a cold-turkey call much depends on the first impression: the salesman with a confident manner and good appearance is most likely to get an interview. Many salesmen use the door-to-door method effectively.

Their assured manner makes it plain to a prospect that they expect to be admitted. Such an attitude forestalls a prospect’s first impulse to turn them away. The success of the unscheduled call hinges on the ability of the salesman to arouse curiosity and develop interest rapidly. Word your introduction carefully to answer the first questions in the prospect’s mind—who is calling and why.