Sowing, Cultivating, Harvesting: A Framework for Jedi Sales

If you’re a “Star Wars” fan, you may know that Luke Skywalker’s adoptive family worked as moisture farmers. The skills that Skywalker learned as a farm boy laid the foundation for his success as a Jedi knight.

Successful business owners and salespeople share Skywalker’s traits. Jedi-caliber sales require a farmer’s mind-set to generate steady pipeline of prospects. Here’s a framework for planting, cultivating and harvesting sales in 2016.

Planting // Visualize your potential prospects by creating a hub-and-spoke relationship diagram. Place a circle with your name as the hub, and identify all of the entities or types of people that you know who might lead you to prospects. There are many options available online for developing a diagram; here’s a starter example:

Generate additional offshoots for each spoke, using the following questions:

  • Whom do I know who could be a prospect or who could introduce me to prospects?
  • What events or meetings do they attend that I could attend?
  • Who else should I be talking to?

Cultivating // Chances are that you have a stack of business cards from prospects you met and intended to reconnect with after an initial meeting. Sending a New Year card in January is a thoughtful and inexpensive way to reconnect.

Year-round, you can reconnect with a handwritten note or by email. Think about the conversation you had, and draft a message that incorporates the follow up you’d like to initiate. Here’s a template:

It was good to meet you at the IOGA meeting recently. I enjoyed comparing notes about (business topic) with you, and also appreciated our conversation about (personal interest). It’s always a pleasure to meet a like-minded enthusiast!

I’d enjoy continuing our conversation. Are you available for coffee over the next few weeks? Please let me know some dates and times that can work. I look forward to reconnecting with you.

Harvesting // Review your prospects’ harvesting potential by asking the following questions:

  • What’s preventing me from asking for the sale? What do I need to do to change that?
  • Are there other influencers or decision-makers I haven’t met? Have I asked my prospect, “Who else should I be talking to?”

Your answers will reveal open-ended questions to ask your prospect. Listen for buying signals or conditions, which can help you to frame a trial close. Two ways to frame a trial close are:

  • “If I could (specific action or condition), would that be beneficial for you?”
  • “If I can provide a (solution, answer, option) that will work for you, are you interested in moving forward?”

Like the box office receipts for “Star Wars,” the payout for planting, cultivating and harvesting your prospects in 2016 can be stellar Jedi sales.