“You’ve got to make it easy for them to decide, easy for them to evaluate and easy for them to implement. If that picture is not painted very clearly, other things are going to be prioritized.” – Todd Caponi in today’s Tip 426
What if you could read the minds of your customers and prospects?
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Successfully Selling In Uncertain & Difficult Times
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. I asked Todd Caponi to record this tip after Kevin Piket, a very regular listener to this show, recommended the full webinar that Todd mentions at the end of this tip. Here he is:
Todd Caponi: What if you could read the minds of your customers and prospects? Well, as it turns out, given all that’s going on, you actually can. They’re thinking about and dealing with the exact same things that you are. It’s a matter of fact, every organizational CEO right now has been asked to put together contingency plans and do the same exact things that you’re probably doing in your personal life.
Things like number one, cutting out discretionary spending, meaning the nice to have type things.
Number two, looking at your essential spending, the things that you must have and doing two things with that. Number one is trying to cut costs where you can and number two is extending your runway as just a just in case. The third thing that you’re probably all doing are seeking ways to reduce risk. And in every organization, they are doing exactly the same thing and in some cases, number four is that individuals are looking to others for advice and they’re looking to see what other people are doing and in many cases following that advice, those are probably the same things you’re doing. Cutting discretionary spending, looking at your essentials and figuring out how to extend your runway, cutting your own personal risk and looking around to see what others are doing.
Given that we’re all doing exactly the same things and thinking the same things, executive buyer, customer and yourself. It’s time to take a look at your messaging because the bottom line is any messaging that was developed during an upturn is likely not going to be effective in a downturn or in times of uncertainty. So it’s time to evaluate your message and by doing that, taking a look and see if it has any of the elements that people are shying away from right now, which is discretionary or does it have the elements that create your solution as being essential. And also a combination of reducing risk and helping to extend runway.
Once you identify that step number two is to escalate your message to make sure it is really hitting on those points. One thing to keep in mind when you are escalating your message is that revenue growth, as counterintuitive as it might sound, is actually a nice to have right now. When everybody is thinking about cost-cutting, risk reduction and extending their runway, talking about revenue growth is actually a nice to have and won’t resonate as much as those pieces before it.
The third thing to do is to empathize with your customers and prospects and understand that they’ve got a lot on their mind right now, so pounding them with calls and emails is really ineffective. Instead, give, give, give. What kinds of things can you give to the customer to help them through this to build a relationship and be the first one they call when they are ready to focus on those essentials or as things calm down on the back end, you’re the first people that they call.
Two last points to make.
Number one, you’ve got to remove friction from the buying journey. You’ve got to do that now. You’ve got to make it easy for them to decide, easy for them to evaluate and easy for them to implement. If that picture is not painted very clearly, other things are going to be prioritized.
And number two is a brain science thing, but it’s thinking about the idea that as it turns out, confidence is actually contagious. Just know that from downturns, from uncertainty, there are often great opportunities and many of the world’s greatest companies were founded during downturns, so be confident.
If you shift right there is great opportunity ahead of you, so don’t get down on yourself because the customers will also feel that as well.
So also linked here is a free YouTube video, a 50-minute webinar where we go into each one of these things in much more detail and share a little bit more of the brain science around it. I sincerely hope that helps and feel free to share that around the office because when we evaluate our messaging, we escalate it aligned to exactly what our buyers are thinking right now.
We empathize by giving, giving, giving, instead of trying to ask for the take. We remove friction from the buying journey, and then we just know that confidence is contagious to those five things, and I promise you, you’re going to come out doing pretty well on the back end. So good luck and please let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.
Scott Ingram: For a link to the full webinar titled: “Successfully Selling In Uncertain & Difficult Times” just click over to DailySales.Tips/426 and we’ll have the details for you there.
As always, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!