“Start thinking outside the script” – Jason Bay in today’s Tip 522
If you were able to think outside the script and be more creative, how will you prospect it?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Jason Bay is back. Jason is the Chief Prospecting Officer at Blissful Prospecting and he’s also hosting the Think Outside the Script Summer Virtual Tour which you’ll hear more about in just a couple of minutes. Here’s Jason:
Jason Bay: Creativity is a really interesting thing. I think about it a lot, actually and If you think about what it means to be creative, you’ve probably described someone as an outside of the box thinker or that person’s really like they think so far outside of the box, right? You probably heard someone say that or maybe you’ve described someone like that before. And when you think about what that really means, I don’t think it’s because that person puts any extra level of effort into things. And I don’t really think it’s like something that you’re born with either. I think what that person has intentionally done is said, well, how are things being done right now and how can I just do it different or just the opposite way?
I’ll give you an example.
Most of you, if you’re listening to this are probably, you’re probably using a scheduling link of some sort like a calendar link, like Calendly or some link you can send a prospect or a client where they can book a meeting. Now, when someone books a meeting, what usually happens. Usually, a confirmation page pops up and says, “Hey, do you want to add this to your calendar?” I mean, that’s great, nothing wrong with that or the other variation I’ve seen is it’ll redirect to the company website or the person’s LinkedIn profile. Again, nothing wrong with that. But that’s what I see, 99% of the time. But some of the time I get surprised, and this is what we do with prospects. When they schedule a meeting with us, it’ll redirect to a page that says, “Hey, I’m super excited about talking with you.” And it’s got a gif of like a little Asian baby. I can do that. Cause I’m Asian, it’s got a little Asia baby dancing and it’s like super cute and people comment on it. So we do that to be different. That didn’t take a lot of creative energy for me to do that. I just said, “Hey, what is the normal experience like? And how can I just surprise someone and do something different that might brighten their day up a little bit.”
So what I’m getting to with this is this concept of thinking outside of the box, applied to sales. What I think that really is thinking outside the script. The script in the literal sense of what you say in a cold call and saying the word for word stuff that you hear a lot, but also scripted the sense that, “Hey, when I have a prospect, I want to reach out to you. I read an email and that email sounds exactly like this.” And I start with who I am and I introduced myself, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? It’s these normal things to see canned approaches. What if instead of that, you thought outside of the script, and what I did is I came up with some rules of engagement. There’s 10 of them. I only have some time here to share maybe three to five of them. But what if we were able to think outside the script and be more creative in how we prospect it?
So I’m going to share a couple of my favorites with you.
Number one is, start with empathy. I know you’re hearing empathy a lot right now, but what if, instead of introducing yourself in an email and talking about what your company does, you talked about the prospect and what you thought that they were feeling based on the other prospects like them, that you talk about. And it was, “Hey, I talk a lot of people like you and what they tell me they’re focused on right now is this, or what they tell me they’re having challenges on is this.” So what if you started more with empathy and what’s going on in their world, instead of what’s going on in your world.
Number two. Teach don’t take. What if instead of the call to action to be, to hop on a 15 to 30-minute demo with you so that you can introduce yourselves and talk about your product or your service. What if instead of that, the promise is that you’re going to teach them something. And the promise could be, I work with a lot of people like you, and here’s how they accomplish that. So for us, it’s always a promise of learning, how other companies like theirs are prospecting and getting meetings right now. So what if that was the call to action, instead of hopping on a call to do a demo.
Number three. Make the prospect, the hero. What if, instead of talking about how great you are and you talk about how great your clients are, not how great you are. Do you make them the hero. You make them Batman in the story and you become Liam Neeson from the Lead of shadows, the person that teaches Batman, all those Ninja skills. And if you haven’t seen it or heard of the story, you’re gonna have to go check it out for that to make sense.
I’m going to share one more. Ask for permission, and do it often. So what if, instead of being assumptive and telling the prospect what to do you ask them, if you could ask them a question or you ask them if you could tell them something and those are called upfront contracts in the sandal world. Right. Is it cool if I share some feedback with you? Hey, is it cool? I have a really, and it might sound like a personal question, but I really want to dig into this as a cool, fast through some questions around it. Right? Give the prospect their autonomy. These are just a few of the ways that you can start thinking outside the script and being different than every other sales interaction that they have.
That’s all I got today before I take off, I want to share one quick announcement. I’m putting on an event called Think Outside the Script. It’s a summer virtual tour. So instead of a virtual summit with like 20 events packed down into like two or three days, and it being all prerecorded, there’s 40 events spread out across the entire summer. And a hundred percent of the focus is on prospecting. Scott Ingram is going to be one of the guests. We’re going to be talking about personal branding, but I wanted to invite you. It’s free. It’s live. It’s going to be awesome. You can check it out at TOUR. That’s tour.blissfulprospecting.com. Check it out again. It’s free 40 speakers. A lot of names will recognize when you go check it out tour.blissfulprospecting.com. Thanks for tuning in and listening to my tip and I’ll talk to you later.
Scott Ingram: For that link again to get signed up for the tour and to connect with Jason, just click over to DailySales.Tips/522, and my presentation is scheduled for June 25th at Noon, so I hope you’ll join Jason and I for that.
Once you’ve gotten yourself signed-up, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!