Would you like to save time, shorten your sales cycle, and close a larger percentage of first-time appointments? This sales technique requires no time or effort to implement, and it will dramatically improve your success rate.

First, let us take you back to a sales meeting from your past. You met a prospective customer for the first time on a Tuesday, and absolutely everything went as planned. You effectively engaged the prospect; everything clicked personally; your discovery process uncovered her needs clearly; and you discussed an outline solution that excited her. All in all, the call could not have gone better. You agreed with your enthusiastic future customer that you would summarize the discussion in a proposal within days, and call to follow up a few days later. Sounds like a perfect meeting, doesn't it? Sounds like you got another sale!

You returned to the office, the clock now ticking. Since you didn't have a busy week, you started on the proposal on Wednesday, and you mailed it on Thursday. No point calling Friday – she would not have had a chance to absorb the proposal yet, so you decided to wait until the next week.

The next Tuesday, you left your first voice mail. Several voice mails followed in the next few days. By Friday, now some 10 days since your meeting, you breached the voce-mail defenses and actually got your prospect live. She had a "chance to glance through it but not really give it the attention it deserves" (you know she hasn't even looked at it yet but that's OK) and requested that you call early next week to follow up again.

Monday would look too desperate so you waited until Tuesday to call again. Another week went by. You finally got her on the phone again, and this time your once enthusiastic prospect sounded anything but enthusiastic. Nowhere near as excited as when she suggested that you prepare the proposal! This time she told you she'd "get back to you" and as time passed by, your prospect slipped away, never to be heard from again.

What happened? You fell into the biggest trap in sales. You wandered unwittingly into Death Valley – that dry zone that stretches from the first contact to proposal follow-up. All around are the bleaching bones of the countless millions of salespeople who preceded you. Another thin-on-the-ground opportunity bites the dust.

The conventional wisdom in selling suggests that this is an unavoidable consequence of selling – one of the elements in the "numbers game" that you jut have to learn to swallow. Not true!

A Simple Solution
Make one simple change to your sales call right now and you can fix this problem forever. Every single time you meet a prospect, make the next appointment before you leave. That's it – simple but highly effective. Suppose it's your first appointment and you have agreed to prepare a proposal. Don't leave without looking for an appointment to meet with the prospect again to bring the proposal back in to talk to through, within days if possible.

There are a couple of possible responses when you try to set the next appointment for a few days later.

1. The Prospect Agrees
You are already winning. For a start, you've qualified the prospect's interest. If he is prepared to meet you again, his interest looks genuine and you have immediately hacked a few weeks off your sales cycle. Also, your positive initial meeting won't have time to slip his mind. When you next meet, he remembers why he was so enthusiastic about what you had to say, how you planned to meet his pressing requirements, and why he asked you to prepare a proposal. What salesperson would not close more of those deals than the Death Valley specials above?

2. The Prospect Declines
"You know, the rest of my week is just completely full." You suggest early the following week, but "next week is even worse." She suggests that you "simply mail in your proposal." It seems now as though she does not want to solve the problem you recently discovered.  Maybe you haven't uncovered her real
issues and proposed a satisfactory solution. Or perhaps she is not the decision-maker. Or she doesn't have the budget. But even this is good news, because now you have information you did not previously have. If you feel you have got the right person, right requirements, and an existing budget, then you can flip back into the discovery process and try to recover. If you've got the wrong person, then you can probe for the right one and start over. If it's simply a hopeless case, then slap yourself on the back – you just saved yourself the time, energy and effort, and the disappointment of eventually watching another one bite the dust! Now you can spend your time on more worthy prospects.

You gain information, clarity and time when you ask for the next appointment during the current appointment. Implement this simple change to your sales process right away and soar over your competitors' bones in Death Valley.