In-Home Sales Appointment Tips From 40 Years in Living Rooms

Picture the usual one. Van on the drive, shoes off at the door, a cup of tea you didn't really want going cold on the coffee table. She's on the sofa with her arms folded and two other firms' leaflets tucked behind the clock. You've got a couple of hours, and she's already half decided you're the same as the last lot.

The best in-home sales appointment tips I can give you come down to four things. Tell them up front why you're there and how it ends. Spend most of your time asking and listening. Test where they are before you ask for the order. And never walk out without an agreed next step. Simple to say. Most reps don't do any of it properly.

I've been sitting in people's living rooms for more than 40 years, starting with gas central heating, door to door. I still sell every job at my own conservatory roof business. So everything below is what I actually do on a Tuesday afternoon, cup of tea and all.

Say why you're there before you sit down

Most salespeople walk in and start being nice. The dog, the garden, the roadworks on the way over. Then the laptop comes out. The customer has no idea what the next two hours look like, so she protects herself the only way she can. "We're just getting a few prices."

I frame it instead. Three things, early on. This is why I'm here. This is what I'm going to do. And if we come to an agreement, these will be the next steps. That last bit does the heavy lifting. It tells them you've come to do business, and you're not there to drop off a quote and vanish.

Then the line I always use: "I'm not going to ask you for a decision today, unless you want to give me one." Watch the shoulders drop.

Pick up the gold

Once they start talking, customers drop little bits of gold everywhere. Pearls. Diamonds. "We stopped using that room in January." "My daughter won't sit in there." "It looks so tatty from the road." And most reps step right over them, because they're busy thinking about what they're going to say next.

You've got to pick every one of them up. That's where the sale is. The cold room might not be why she rang at all. Being embarrassed every time her sister pulls up outside might be.

So ask, and keep asking. How long has it been bothering you? Why now, and not two years ago? What happens if we have this conversation today and you do nothing about it? Then shut up and let them answer. The sale is made in the silence, and I've met very few reps who can sit through more than about two seconds of it.

The question I ask myself halfway through

I give the reps I coach a little check. Partway through any appointment, ask yourself whether what you're saying right now is moving this person towards a decision. Or are you just exporting information at them?

If it's the second one, stop. Turn it into a question. Rather than five minutes on the history of your company, try "What would you need to see from a firm before you trusted them with this?" You learn nothing while you're talking. They'll tell you everything if you ask.

When I listen back to a rep's recordings, this is where I find most appointments went wrong. Hardly ever at the close. Usually forty minutes earlier, when he stopped asking and started telling.

Test the water before you ask

You shouldn't ask for the order until you're fairly sure the answer's going to be yes. So you test first. I call it the pre-close, and it's one of the steps in my 7 Steps to Sales Mastery.

It's a plain question. "Based on the conversation we've had today, where are we?" Or, "Just so I'm up to speed, how are you feeling about it all?"

One of two things happens. You hear buying signals, like "How soon could you fit it?" or "How long does it take?", and you stop talking and close. Or something comes out they hadn't mentioned. The brother-in-law who knows about windows. The holiday they've booked for March. Much better you hear it now, sat at the kitchen table, than in a text three days later.

Before you agree terms, go back to the why. "Earlier you said the back bedroom's freezing and you wanted a company that's been around a while. Are you happy we've covered all that?" And if only one of them's there, ask the obvious one: "Is your wife on board with this?"

Never leave on a maybe

Some nights it won't close. Fine. But don't just pre-close and leave. Agree the next step before you stand up. "I'll ring you at nine tomorrow, once you've had a chat with your husband. Does that work?" More often than not, they ring you first.

The worst thing you can say on the doorstep is "we'll be in touch". People can fill in one form online and get ten quotes now. When I started, getting another price took real effort. Now you get one bite of the cherry, and if you leave without a next step you've handed it to whoever's booked in after you.

Work out where you lost it

After every appointment that didn't close, I want a rep to be able to tell me exactly where it went. Not "they were tyre kickers". The actual moment. Put the deals you won next to the deals you didn't, and look for the point they split. If you can't find it, you'll do the same thing next week.

Then clear your head before the next one. Don't carry a bad call, or the office's mix-up with the survey, into someone else's living room. That customer couldn't care less what happened at your last appointment.

One rep I coach works this way every time. In the first four days of one August he ran 15 appointments and made 10 sales, 8 of them on the day, £50k in sales. That's one person's result, not a promise. But it shows what changes when the frame, the questions and the pre-close happen on every call, not just the good ones.

If you'd like to know where your own appointments are leaking, take the free 2-minute Sales Leak Assessment and book a free 30-minute discovery call.