My wife really needs a new car. She just went back to work full time for her (telecom) company and she needs a new ride.

Since I have a BMW, I suggested she go and drive the X3 (small SUV).

We walked into the BMW dealership and asked if we could test drive one. We were told that our name in the database was assigned to a sales person who was busy with a prospect at the moment so we wouldn’t be able to drive one.

WHAT??!!!

“You  mean if I had $40,000 cash and wanted to buy that car, I couldn’t because “my salesperson” was busy?”

“That’s right, sir.” (And here I thought the auto market was struggling. Guess not). So we gave her our number and told her to have “our salesperson” call us. He never did.

So here’s my question to you: Do you practice “sales prevention” anywhere in your company? I know your answer will be a quick “NO!” But think about it for a moment. I’m sure the BMW dealer would answer “No”, too. But he actually does prevent sales…by his systems (or lack of).

Think about the following ‘points on the path to a sale:’

• When the prospect first calls in to talk to someone….how does that sound? Does the prospect get “engaged” or just passed through? Does your voice mail system work to ‘help the caller?’
• When you go out to the first call–do you send an agenda in advance? Do you have an agenda with you? Do you follow up with notes after the call? (I find most sellers fail miserably at these.)
• When you come back to the office, so you take a few minutes to take notes so you don’t forget to follow up, or the important points?
• When you go back out to meet with that person, do you lead with an ‘historical review’ of what you covered the first meeting–and any open items? Or do you just start in and hope you’re in the same place?
• Are you constantly educating the customer as to where they are in your sales / their purchase cycle? Or, do you just assume he’ll follow you blindly?
• And, when I go to your company website, does it help me sort out what I’m looking for…or give me mountains of links?

So, before you answer NO to my question above…answer those. I hope you’re practicing “Sales Facilitation” rather than “Sales Prevention.”

By the way, we ended up at the VW dealership, test drove a Tiguan (Oh, how I hate their model names) and she loved it. No X3 in her future.