“When you understand your sales process, you understand the steps in it and what a typical customer journey looks like.” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 700
How do you overcome obstacles to sell more?
Join the conversation below and check out the links!
The Perfect Close
Books by Jeff Bajorek
Jeff’Bajorek on LinkedIn
The Why And The Buy Podcast
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. It seems only fitting that Jeff Bajorek is the star of episode number 700 today since he’s consistently been here about every 7th tip. Here he is with another one:
Jeff Bajorek: If you’ve been paying attention to my work, any of my work, really over the last eight months or so, you will know that I believe there are only two things that will help you sell more. You either need to spend more time selling, or you need to make sure that you are advancing that sales process at every possible opportunity. Now, you can’t speed up someone’s buying process. You know that you can only avoid slowing it down. And I believe that about 80% of reps failed to ask for the next steps. Now I think there are three reasons for that.
One, you don’t know what success looks like for this meeting anyway, but you got to fill out the CRM so you’re going to go. Two, you’re not sure what to ask for because you don’t know what success looks like. And three, you really don’t know how to ask. This comes down to simple planning. It doesn’t need to be complicated. I’m going to lay this out as simply as possible, because it is really simple. Decide what success looks like for this meeting. Why are you meeting with this prospect in the first place? Of course, you have a solution that fits their problem. Okay. What do you want them to do ultimately, as a result of this problem and as a result of your solution for their problem, and how does that break down? This is where you understand the purpose of your sales process.
When you understand your sales process, you understand the steps in it and what a typical customer journey looks like. So that should help you boil down and understand what it is that you need to ask for in every meeting. And then if you know what to ask for, it should be pretty simple to phrase the question, but this is where a lot of people get hung up because they feel like I have to word it a certain way. They feel like they have to do it a certain way. Maybe they feel like they learn some complicated technique that they need to revert to, but they don’t quite have it down yet. Or maybe they’re just a little gun shy at the moment of truth and they can’t spit out the question.
Look, this is ultimately very simple. And if you need a cheat, a hack, or whatever, then take a page out of my friend, James Muir’s book, The Perfect Close, and just say, does it make sense to fill in the blank, right? Fill in the blank with your suggestion. Now James wrote that book several years ago. It’s really, really good. I’ve been using my own version of that for really the entirety of my sales career. And this might even be a little simpler than James, although maybe not as specifically effective. I just say, Hey, I feel like we’ve got something going here. I feel like you understand how we can help you. And I think I have a pretty good idea of what you’re struggling with and how we can plug in our solution to help. Why don’t we do from here?
It’s such a simple, but very vulnerable way to move the process forward, and look, you’re making it clear in any case. You’re making it clear that your prospect has control of the situation, but you need to be the one that nudges the process in that direction without you. And that call to action. Nothing is moving forward, which is why so many of your deals stall.
So look, those three little obstacles, they really kind of dovetail into one another. And when you figure out one, it leads you to the answer to the second, which should lead you pretty well into the answers to the third. And look, even if you don’t have those specific questions that you have to rehearse, you can bail to what I just told you or what James outlines in his book. This is simple, you’re capable. You just got to do a little work on the front end and that little bit of work you do on the front end makes the other stuff, the profitable stuff, so much more imminent and possible.
Scott Ingram: For more about Jeff Bajorek, including a link to James Muir’s The Perfect Close and Jeff’s own books, just click over to DailySales.Tips/700.
After you’ve bought a book or two, come on back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!