Download this article as a PDFEarly in my career I watched a colleague deliver the best sales pitch I had ever seen. The prospect was leaning in, nodding, genuinely excited. And then, right at the end, it came out that they did not have anywhere near the budget to buy. All that energy, all that craft, spent on a deal that was never going to close. It taught me the thing this whole business runs on, and it is not charm. It is method.
At Hayward Miller we believe frequent, effective communication is the key to selling. We follow our own approach, the one we call the Hayward Miller Way, a set of proven procedures that lifts our odds of turning a lead into a sale. Here is roughly how it works.
The B.A.N.T. process
The Hayward Miller Way starts by capturing every piece of information we need from a lead, built around the B.A.N.T. process: budget, authority, need and timeframe. Used properly, it tells you whether a lead is hot, long-term, or simply not worth chasing. Budget asks whether they can actually afford your service. Authority tells you who holds the decision, and therefore who you should be pitching to. Need is the obvious one: is there a real, existing requirement for what you do? And timeframe covers two things at once, how long the sale itself will take, and how long the work will be needed, short-term or long.
Understand what those four questions are really asking, and know how to approach them, and you save yourself an enormous amount of time and grief. Only once you have the answers should you push things forward, because there is nothing worse than that collapsed pitch I described. That is exactly why BANT matters so much at the start. And you will rarely get all four answers in a single conversation, so keep in contact until you do.
Developing the relationship
Once you have had the introductory conversations and you understand what your prospect needs, the job becomes building the relationship. You have to sell yourself, your values, why you actually believe in what you are offering, and you have to do it honestly. People pick up on sincerity, and they pick up on the lack of it just as fast. Do this often enough and your prospect will not forget you, your manner, or what you can do for them. People buy into people, not things, because what they are really responding to is a shared value.
Why frequency is everything
Underneath all of it sits one word: frequency. Communication does not develop unless it is frequent. You might think, I spoke to them two weeks ago, what could possibly have changed? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. The point is you need to find out rather than guess, because for all you know a competitor called them yesterday, and being the more recent voice in the room counts for a great deal. Contact does not always mean a phone call either. An email, a letter, even a thoughtful post will do. Never aim to be the first or the last contact. Aim to be the constant, familiar one, so that whenever the need arises, yours is the name they reach for.
Two percent of sales are made on the first contact. Eighty percent are made between the fifth and the twelfth.
That figure comes from the National Sales Executive Association, and our own results at Hayward Miller back it up entirely. Frequency is not the trick behind the Hayward Miller Way. It is the whole engine.
