“Your mission and purpose is what you do, how you do it, and most importantly, why you do it to the benefit of your client.” – Jim Camp in today’s Tip 1634
What are you trying to help your opponents see and discover?
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4 Reasons People Say No
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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 Jim Camp. Jim is a former VP of Sales, and is now an owner and coach with Camp Negotiations. Jim has also served as a military pilot and is retiring as a Major General from the United States Air Force. Here he is:
Jim Camp: Hi, this is Jim Camp. Good to be back with you for another sales tip. During our previous 10 tips, we’ve been focusing on your mindset and helping you keep your emotions under control. Today, I’d like to shift to the actual structure of our sales negotiation system. The foundation of our sales negotiation system is our overall mission and purpose. Your mission and purpose is actually what you provide and it helps your client solve problems or create opportunities for their business. I actually recommend that you write down, if you don’t already have one, your overall mission and purpose. Big picture. The first important question for you is, what are you trying to help your opponents see and discover? What features make you and your product unique? How do those features and benefits actually impact your client? In other words, what separates you from your competitors?
Here’s the tip.
Write down the top three to five features of your product, and then for each of those features, write down how your client benefits from those features. This is a starting point of building your overall mission and purpose. There’s an important rule in our system. Your mission and purpose must be written to the world of your opponent. To their benefit, not yours. Many times we confuse mission and purpose with maybe what you want from the deal. We’re going to cover that in future episodes, but this is not revolving around results or what you want from the deal.
Remember from previous tips, you can’t tell anybody anything. They may not see the value of what you provide until you can get into their world and address their challenges. So instead of rattling off all the great features and benefits of what you’re selling, write them down and develop interrogative-led questions that will help your clients see for themselves and discover how you can help them.
Here’s an example.
I’m coaching a recruiting company right now, and the industry, as you may know, is in a very slow period. When I asked the President to go through the same exercise that we’re doing today, her primary feature that we talked about was their experience and track record of finding quality leaders. Leaders that would not only fill a current position, but leaders that had the ability and the talent to stick to be a lasting long-term solution.
Their customer would benefit from this by gaining talented personnel that had a proven track record, and if they didn’t have to recruit as often, then that would ultimately save them money in the end. So this was the start of her overall mission and purpose. From this feature and benefit, we were able to come up with questions that would help her opponents see and discover actually what she could do for them. What separated her recruiting firm from recruiting in-house or using less experienced companies that are far cheaper than what her solution was.
Some of the questions we came up with during our session were, how do you currently find qualified leaders in your industry that have potential for growth? What would stable leadership mean to your organization long term? From your perspective, how important is experience in finding executives with talent? How important is experience in recruiting? What level of risk are you willing to accept with these positions? What will it look like if you have to continuously replace candidates because it didn’t work out?
As you notice, these types of questions get into the client’s world and they begin to build their vision. If your clients were simply looking for the cheaper solution, then there may not be a fit. The value this recruiting company brings may not be what they’re looking for, and it may actually be beyond their budget. If that’s the case, put yourself in her shoes. How much time should her company spend chasing that deal if it doesn’t fit her overall mission and purpose? Look, I know this is difficult, and we could spend hours talking about mission and purpose. Think of it this way. Your mission and purpose is what you do, how you do it, and most importantly, why you do it to the benefit of your client. See you on the next episode. Take care.
Scott Ingram: To get your hands on a free download with the 4 Reasons People Say No from Jim and Camp Negotiation, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1634. Once you’ve clicked over there to grab that download, be sure to click back here for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!