By Neil Phillips.
How often have you heard or said: “I can’t get any bookings or appointments?”
It is probably the #1 frustration that direct selling leaders tell us they hear from their teams. And it frustrates you, their leader, because you want to help. Perhaps you have offered many suggestions for finding more bookings or sales appointments, conducted training and booking blitzes, and still, they say, “I don’t have anything on my calendar.”
I have hope! There is a solution. It begins with shifting responsibility for filling the calendar to your team member. We become’ the booking fixer’ in our desire to help our consultants find bookings. We offer up solution after solution without ever diagnosing the problem. It’s time to become the ‘booking coach.’ A coach believes the solution lies within the person and that they know best how to achieve their success. I bet your team members have plenty of knowledge about how to get bookings; coaching will help you and them discover why they are not getting bookings.
Powerful questions are a coach’s #1 tool for helping people break through their barriers. Here are some powerful questions to ask about booking issues:
- What have you tried so far?
- How did that work?
- Do you feel comfortable asking for a date?
- Tell me exactly what you say at your parties about bookings. (Make sure they repeat the exact words, you will learn a lot with this one!)
- What is keeping you from asking for bookings?
- How could you overcome that?
- Where could you learn more about how to ask for a booking?
- What do you know to do that you have not tried?
- What are you willing to do to get bookings on your calendar?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how committed are you to following through with the action you just described? (If it’s not at least a 9, there is something to uncover here.)
Go ahead, take off your booking fixer hat, and put on your booking coach hat. You and your team member will soon feel empowered. You will be confident about how to really ‘help’ your team member, and they will feel prepared to go out and get those bookings!
Please come back and share your stories of the difference these questions make – or maybe you have a favorite question or two to share that works for you. Let’s create a robust list of questions to end those booking challenges!
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