“You need to augment your messaging and sell to one of those two needs if you’re going to make a connection and you actually get through and make some deals happen and make some leads come in during this difficult time.” – Rajiv RajNATION Nathan in today’s Tip 422
How is this impacting your company? How is this impacting your job?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. RajNATION is back today with an incredibly thoughtful tip. It’s a little longer than the usual but well worth the extra time. Here he is:
Rajiv RajNATION Nathan: This is an interesting time for all of us. In my lifetime It is unprecedented. I have never seen something where every major sporting event or large group gathering just gets canceled. Not even every major sporting event or major sporting event, but even the minor sporting events, everything is getting canceled. And there is a shockwave that is being felt throughout the business world. Of course, I’m talking about the Coronavirus and there has to be a shift and how you sell in the age, let’s call it or in the time of this pandemic.
Now, hopefully, this recording well ended up being a blip on all of our radars and will actually be highly irrelevant very soon. But we do have to prepare for it being relevant or for this idea that Coronavirus sticks around for a decent amount of time, at least a few months, maybe six months or longer. And it has to change the way you sell. And I say that because it is something that everyone is feeling. All right? Whether you have actually like physiologically contracted Coronavirus or not, we all feel it.
As I’m talking to you about this right now, I have like a certain like uneasiness or pit in my stomach, which I’ve had all day in the last couple of days because it’s on all of our minds and we’re confused and we’re concerned and we’re scared and we don’t quite know how to act as a result or what is the appropriate way to act as a result.
So here’s my take on how to sell amidst the Coronavirus. It is foolish to ignore it, okay?
If you’ve got a buyer on a demo call, don’t try to skirt by without acknowledging it. Thinking that, Oh, if I don’t mention it, it’s not a thing and they’ll forget about it and I can like slip in a sale without coronavirus coming up as a potential blocker to the deal. No, that’s not going to work.
You have to get out in front of this thing and I would recommend start your call by asking them, Hey, how is this impacting your company? How is it impacting your business unit? How has it impacted your jobs specifically? How is it impacting the way you’re making right now?
You need to get out in front of it. Ignoring it is not the answer. You need to, for lack of a better word, embrace at least the concept of it and try to work within the confines of this, right?
Rules are changing for the time being. So you need to talk about this with your potential buyer and as part of that, you need to appreciate the psychological impact that this has happening. And as a result, you have to temporarily augment your value proposition.
See in a normal environment, you are most likely selling to one or a couple of the top three needs in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. So if you picture Maslow’s hierarchy at the top of the pyramid, the three top levels are steam, love and belonging and self-actualization.
So in a normal scenario, in a normal environment, you’re typically selling to one or a couple of those three needs, steam, love and belonging, self-actualization. But right now our two most basic needs as a society are under attack.
So the base part of the pyramid and Maslow’s hierarchy, our physiological needs and safety needs. Right now, those two needs are under attack. Without feeling secure in our two basic needs, physiological and safety, it is nearly impossible to think that any of the other three matter. That’s why it’s a hierarchy. You have to have one to get the next and the next and the next. So again, if our basic needs are under attack, it is going to be nearly impossible to try and have a message and a value prop that only speaks to the top three needs because they’re not going to matter in the face of this.
So you have to augment your message to fit the current buying scenario. To fit the current landscape, you have to augment your message to fit the times, even if it is just temporary.
If you are doing outbound prospecting, your emails should speak to the situation and how your product kind of fits within that situation. You should speak to how, Hey amidst all this stuff, here are some things that we know are top of mind four insert buyer group. We believe what we have can help with that.
And then in your demo calls or your discovery calls, again you want to bring it up, but you need to relate what you’re talking about in a different way. You need to augment your messaging to better one or two of the basic needs of Maslow’s hierarchy. Physiological needs and safety needs. Your messaging must augment around those.
So, for example, let’s say you were selling benefits software to HR. Whether it is an outbound email or a call or a demo call and you’ve got to present something to them.
If you’re selling benefits software to HR, can you make the case that this is a time when their staff, let’s call the company the buyer here Acme. Can you make the case like this like Acme. You know this is for lack of better word, crisis. It’s a pandemic. You’ve major employees go remote, which is a great decision, right? Everyone’s working from home, but your staff is also confused at this point, I would bet. And at a time where they’re confused and concerned, they’re honestly, they’re thinking about the security of their own future.
So this is a time for you, Acme as the employer to stand up and show your employees that you’re not giving up on them. This is a time where your employees need to know that Acme has their back. It’s your job to make your team feel secure and investing in this software is a vote of confidence, right?
So you see how that is radically different. then, what you might say when things are great when there’s no pandemic. You have to change the need you’re selling to the psychological need you’re selling to. It’s almost like the pyramid has been flipped, right?
Physiological and safety needs are not a given right now. So you need to augment your messaging and sell to one of those two needs if you’re going to make a connection and you actually get through and make some deals happen and make some leads come in during this difficult time.
Scott Ingram: For more about RajNATION, and a great place to comment on this topic is either on the website, or we’ll ultimately link to Raj’s LinkedIn post about this. Just click over too DailySales.Tips/422
Then be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!