“When you do all the work ahead of time to create the space for yourself to make the selling part easier, wonderful things happen, and you never lose engagement with your prospect along the way.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 994
How do you make your sales process?
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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 Jeff Bajorek, who will also be hosting a whole series of hallways conversations at the Sales Success Summit on Monday and Tuesday. Stay tuned at the end for more about that. Here’s Jeff:
Jeff Bajorek: Prospecting, discovery, and follow-up are all closely related in the sales process, and they’re related by this common thread of you trying to learn something. Now, I’m sure you’ve thought about that from a discovery standpoint before, because that’s literally the definition, right? But when it comes to prospecting and follow-up, are you trying to learn something too, or are you just throwing statements out there hoping that something is going to dazzle your prospect and compel them to call you back?
Think about that.
Questions tend to start conversations while statements tend to end them. So use both judiciously. So where do those questions come from? Those questions should come from your differentiators. Look, if you cannot differentiate, you cannot sell. So what a better place to start? Is there even a better place to start than that?
Here’s my exercise for you today, I want you to write down your three, four, maybe your five biggest differentiators between you and all of your competitors in the marketplace. The competitors, the other companies, the solutions that attempt to solve for the same issue that you solve for. And then underneath each one of those differentiators, I want you to write three or four, maybe five questions that would start a meaningful conversation about why your differentiator is so valuable.
So let me give you a quick example.
I create custom sales training programs for teams, and so one of my questions might be, Mr. or Miss, Vice President of Sales. What are you doing with your team to ensure that they not just get training, they get training that meets their needs where they are so that it is most easily comprehended and then put into use? That’s a question that’s going to make someone think.
So, if you can write down three or four differentiators, you can write down three or four questions for each one of those differentiators that might start a conversation. You’ve got anywhere between 9 and 16 questions that you really want to ask your prospect so you can learn a little bit more about their situation. Right?
Here’s the trick. I guess it’s a trick. It seems pretty straightforward to me. You can use those questions in your prospect and cadence. You can use those questions in between meetings or maybe if you haven’t scheduled the next step after the first meeting with your prospect, when you need to follow up, go back to that bank of questions and ask some more. You know, what’s really interesting, too, is when you do get that discovery meeting. Those are exactly the questions that you’re trying to ask.
If you do this work ahead of time, you create an environment where your prospect knows you’re trying to learn something about them so they feel validated. They feel heard. They feel seen. That’s important for developing that relationship. When you get into the discovery call, this is a great jumping-off point for starting a conversation so that you can then put yourself in a position to really go down rabbit holes in that conversation where it’s necessary and where it’s going to be beneficial. And it’s also giving you really meaningful and engaging steps for follow up when they just don’t seem to be calling you back and you don’t know what to say because that’s the toughest part about follow up is you haven’t thought ahead enough about what you’re going to do to follow up.
So when you do all the work ahead of time to create the space for yourself to make the selling part easier, wonderful things happen, and you never lose engagement with your prospect along the way. So I don’t know if you’ve ever made that connection before. I hope you understand that connection now. Go out and use it.
Scott Ingram: I mentioned at the top that Jeff will be hosting hallways conversations at the Sales Success Summit, like he’s done a couple of times before. To get access to those, make sure you’re subscribed to the Sales Success Stories podcast where we’ll be releasing those as quickly as we can. They typically come out on the same day!
As always, for links, just click over to DailySales.Tips/994 and then, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!