4 questions that scare salespeople
If you can answer these questions, there is an excellent chance you will help the prospect make a better buying decision.
As someone who coaches salespeople and makes selling a part of my everyday activities, I can appreciate the job’s difficulty. What I can’t respect is not doing everything possible to make the job simpler. I swear, at times, it seems like salespeople are intentionally making their job harder.
Open up your CRM be prepared to answer some questions. Before we get to the questions, let’s address the two key elements in this request.
Related: Is your prospect pipeline in robust health or cardiac arrest?
First, what constitutes a prospect? A prospect is not a name on a wish list or on the list you just purchased. You don’t have an actual prospect until they’re aware of your interest in potentially doing business with them, and they agree to participate in that exploration.
Now, your CRM. To be clear, I’m talking about the technology you use to track prospects. This is the system that you bitch about to your sales manager because “Entering stuff in the system gets in the way of my valuable sales time.”
Do you know why salespeople avoid using a CRM? It allows them to avoid owning up to the reality of them not having a healthy pipeline.
Back to the questions. If you can answer the following questions, there is an excellent chance you will help the prospect make a better buying decision.
What does this opportunity value most?
This question is the most obvious and the most ignored. It is obvious because of course you have to show prospects more value. The problem is that most salespeople assume the answer to this question on behalf of the prospect. Salespeople assume the prospect either wants a lower price, more free stuff, or better service.
The path to lost opportunities is littered with wrong assumptions made by salespeople.
Don’t make this difficult. Just take the time at the beginning of the sales process to ask the buyer what they value. But ask it in a way that expands their expectations beyond price, product, and service.
Ask them, “If we were getting together for dinner to celebrate what we have accomplished by working together, what are a couple of non-cost-related things we would be celebrating?”
What have I done to deliver on that value?
Once you have identified what a prospect values, start delivering on it. I mean NOW, while they’re still a prospect.
If you want to make the buying decision easier for a prospect, nothing will move the needle faster than delivering ideas and advice on what they value. This completely removes the concern they have over whether they would get any meaningful value from working with you.
When will our next meeting take place?
The one thing worse than an empty pipeline? One that is filled, but stagnant. Prospects must keep moving forward (and I don’t mean on the two- to three-year timeline so many producers believe it takes to earn a new client).
If you have identified what a prospect values and you are already providing proof of your ability to deliver on that value, you have their attention. And, if you have shown them a path that leads to even greater value, they will be eager to schedule the next conversation and move forward with you.
What is the purpose of the next meeting?
Every meeting must have a purpose, a defined goal. When you and the prospect agree on what you will discuss next and why it is meaningful to the buyer, meetings stop feeling like a burden and start to look like the growth opportunity they need to be.
When you have defined the purpose of a meeting, they become productive, meaningful, and valuable to the buyer.
Purposeful meetings build momentum, trust, and confidence.
The questions move your KPIs
The average time it takes a typical producer to acquire a new client is way too long in our industry, and the close ratios are woefully low. Answering these four questions with confidence will lead to more new clients in dramatically shorter periods of time.
Look back at each prospect in your pipeline. If you can positively and definitively answer each of these questions for a prospect, you are likely looking at a future client.
If you can’t, well, your gut has already been telling you that answer.
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