“A really simple and subtle way to begin to underscore the collaborative nature of the conversation is to swap out all that ‘I’ focused language for ‘we’ focused language.” – Jordana Zeldin in today’s Tip 844
How do you create collaborative conversations with your prospect?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Jordana Zeldin. Jordana is a Sales Coach and the Founder of Spriing Training, a coaching consultancy that helps sellers and sales teams feel and be more human in their selling. The result? Selling that feels better for you, for your prospects, for your revenue. Here she is:
Jordana Zeldin: Your meeting agenda can be a really powerful place, not just to talk about what you and your prospect are going to do together. You know what you’re going to cover, what you’re going to talk about, but also how you’re going to be together, what the dynamic of your conversation can feel like. To my mind, there is almost no better adjective to describe the very best-selling conversations than collaborative. And you can actually begin to lay the groundwork for collaborative selling conversations right in your agenda. And I’m going to be talking about two really easy ways to do that.
First of all, you know, agendas are usually chocked full of ‘I’ focus language, right? As the seller delivering their agenda. We often talk about that, you know, I want to do this. Next, I’d like to do this. From there, I’ll tell you about this. Right? And all of that suggests that this meeting is really about you and your needs and your wants as the seller rather than your prospect. But a really simple and subtle way to begin to underscore the collaborative nature of the conversation is to swap out all that ‘I’ focused language for ‘we’ focused language. Like, from there we can. Together we can determine. Based on what you tell me, I can share… Right? So using language to queue up and trigger that this is going to be a conversation that’s really fueled by you and your prospect on the same team working together.
Now, a common thing that I see at the end of an agenda to get confirmation or buy-in is to ask a question like, does that sound good or does that make sense? Or even a, you know, a better but still closed-ended question like, is there anything else you want to add to the agenda? A far better and more effective question that allows you to not only learn more about what matters to your prospect, but also give them the early experience of feeling seen and heard is to ask an open-ended question like this. “What do you want to make sure we talk about?” Or “That’s what I had in mind. What do you want to add to the agenda today?” Or even, “You know, so that was just what I had in mind. But what’s the most important thing that you want to come away from our time together with?” That gets them contributing early, sharing what matters to them most. Right? Beginning the process of it being a dialog rather than a monologue, while also giving you as the seller an invaluable compass that allows you to shape the conversation and kind of molded around what you learned they care about most.
Scott Ingram: To connect with Jordana on LinkedIn and to learn more about Spriing Training, just click over to DailySales.Tips/844
Then, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!