“By following the first principle of GREAT Expectations, you begin to close that gap.” – Jack Wilson in today’s Tip 734
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Jack Wilson is back to continue or more like to officially start his series on GREAT Expectations. Here he is:
Jack Wilson: What’s going on Daily Sales Tips Community. I’m back with tip one of the five-part series, introducing the concept of GREAT Expectations. Before we dive in it’s important to understand exactly why setting GREAT Expectations is so important. Many of the reasons are pretty obvious, like providing a good customer experience, increasing customer satisfaction, more closed opportunities, and others that quickly come to mind. It’s in the nuance, however, that you’ll find even more compelling reasons. For example, have you ever ended up in what I call pending hell that place between when a customer tells you yes, and the deal is actually closed, or have you had opportunities that closed on time that fell off shortly during or immediately following onboarding? Longer-term still, do you struggle with renewals? If it’s something that you’re tasked within your particular role? Many times we end up in these situations because of dissonance.
Now I talk with my hands, so picture this. My left hand is up in the air to my left, like a bookend that represents your prospect’s expectations. My right hand is on the other side in the same manner. That hand is reality. The distance between my two hands’ expectations and reality is dissonance. In that gap lives, uncertainty, ambiguity, doubt, and mistrust. By following the first principle of GREAT Expectations, you begin to close that gap. The principle is granular. At the beginning of a cold call, we ask if we can share why we’re calling. At discovery, we lay out a verbal agenda, outlining the process, but at the closing table, we tend to use generalities. Like, we’ll just need a few pieces of information or I’ll send you some documentation to look over.
We all know that there’s at least one part of our closing process that tends to hang us up or that our customers middle through. This is your opportunity to be much more granular in your expectation setting. If your closing package consists of three documents, don’t just say, “you’ll need a few,” be more granular in your description. For example, in the next 48 hours, you’ll receive an email from [email protected] attached to that email will be a contract that will require a signature, a billing form that you’ll need your accounting team to complete and return, and a scope of work for you to review, sign and return. This might seem simple and maybe even a little bit obvious, but a majority of sellers get sloppy toward the end of the process and the impact this has in your prospect’s mind is huge. Not to mention one of the biggest reasons, sales has developed a bad rep, which is due to sales setting the wrong expectations.
I’ll leave you with a story to explain it a little bit better. After a long and successful career in sales, a sales professional arrives at the Gates of Heaven, and she’s presented with a choice. She has the option to choose where she will live out eternity. The only condition is that she must demo each first. An elevator appears and she begrudgingly descends to demo hell first. When the doors open and she’s pleasantly surprised, the devil greets her in a pin-straight suit and wingtips. She looks around and sees rolling fairways of endless golf. Most of her sales colleagues of her past are there as well as some of our managers. And pretty much all of her friends from college just as she began to warm up to it, the demo had ended and it was time to check out heaven. Heaven was beautiful in its own right. Rolling clouds, a city pleasant stream of harps played. She recognized her family, a few of her friends, great historical figures like Mother Teresa, and quickly, that demo ended as well. It was time to choose. She never imagined herself saying this, but her choice was in and she chose hell. The demo showed her that it wasn’t anything like she expected. And she could really see herself being there forever. Onto the elevator she went, except this time when the doors opened, it was hellfire and brimstone. The devil greeted her with giant horns and flames dancing around him. “What did this?” She said. It’s nothing like the demo. Well, the devil said, “That was the sales pitch, now you’re a customer.”
Scott Ingram: For more from Jack Wilson. Connect with him on LinkedIn. He’s a consistent daily poster and as always we’ll have a link for you at DailySales.Tips/734.
Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip and next Friday for the next tip in Jack’s series. I have a feeling it’s going to be pretty great. Thanks for listening!