“Look at your buying journey and make it as easy as possible because your customers are prioritizing the projects that will give them a reward with the least amount of effort.” – Todd Caponi in today’s Tip 520
What is your thought about what Todd says?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Todd Caponi is back. Todd is the author of the award-winning (best of 2020) book, The Transparency Sale, a top-rated keynote speaker & trainer as Principal of Sales Melon LLC, and he’s also Managing Director of Chicago’s VentureSCALE. Here he is with today’s tip:
Todd Caponi: Do you remember back in high school when you would be in English class and the teacher would assign a book report? And I remember for me, I was assigned a book report. I was given a list of 50 books to choose from and I could choose any book I wanted.
What did I do? Well, it’s probably the same thing that you did. You know, first of all, I looked across the 50 books and said, “All right, which one have I read before?” And unfortunately, there weren’t any, they were all the classics.
Second thing I did is I said, “All right, which one has a movie made about it? That will help me understand the whole context of this book before I dig in.”
And then number three is I looked for the cliff notes. I wanted to see if there was cliff notes written for this book that was going to help me get to the goal line. And then ultimately I picked a book. I wrote it, I think I got an A-minus.
Now, why do I bring that up? Well, let’s think about the projects that our customers take on. You know, what actually happens subconsciously is that we are wired to take the path of least resistance. We look and say, “All right, what is the balance between the reward and the effort and how do I get to a reward that is satisfactory or could be awesome with the least amount of friction.”
And so why does that matter? Well, when we think across our sales pursuits, right now. Consensus buying is really hard. I mean, we always thought that consensus selling was hard, but consensus buying when all of the buyers are remote, it’s really, really tough.
So it is our job to remove friction from the buying journey because with a hundred different things that a buyer could potentially focus on, are they just looking for the A-plus the biggest reward and it doesn’t matter what the effort is, not quite what they’re looking to do is get to their goals with the least amount of effort. And that’s up to you, that is up to you to help with their positioning. And I got a hint. Transparency will help with that. Leading with transparency, with both the pros and the cons removes homework from the buyer’s journey and builds trust, right from the get-go.
But think about the stages of your buying journey as well. Are you putting an extra stages? Are you causing the buyer to have their earn a demo or earn a proposal? Get to it, remove friction from the buying journey, look at your contract processes. Do you have one-way terms in there like auto-renews that have a 5% increase, or if you don’t tell us within 90 days of renewal, then you’re renewed.
Look your buying journey and make it as easy as possible because your customers are prioritizing the projects that will give them a reward with the least amount of effort. That’s up to you. So give it a thought, reach out to me if I can help in any way, and help you think through some of these things and I can’t wait to hear how it goes. Thank you.
Scott Ingram: You’ll find more about Todd and the video version of this tip at DailySales.Tips/520 There you can connect with him on LinkedIn and grab a copy of his book The Transparency Sale, if you haven’t already. It’s also available on Audible.
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!