“Remember you will be most successful when you concentrate first on the success of others, and then your own success” – Malvina EL-Sayegh in today’s Tip 775
How do you structuring the conversation in your discovery call?
Join the conversation below and check out the links!
#Stayhuman Podcast
Personal Branding for Sales Professionals
Malvina EL-Sayegh on LinkedIn
Submit a Sales Tip
Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]
Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Malvina EL-Sayegh. Malvina is an experienced Training Consultant with a 10-year history of working in the Financial Services Industry. She is a sales coach and host of the #stayhuman podcast which focuses on demystifying sales. Here she is:
Malvina EL-Sayegh: Let’s talk about discovery calls. We all know how daunting they can be. As potential, you are stepping into the unknown, but really it’s a great opportunity for both parties, you and your potential client to discover and learn more about the challenges, hurdles, and problems to then really decide if it makes sense for both of you to keep talking and take the next step. I want to introduce you to my five-step process in nailing your discovery call to make sure that you’re not jumping around all over the place, that you have a clear structure that you’re following, that you feel confident about the questions you’re asking, and if you’re doing things in the right way.
Let’s face it. We all hate conversations that bounce back and forward and midway through. We don’t really know what exactly is happening and where this is going and structuring the conversation in a discovery call. After you’ve done your research. You’ve preconditioned the meeting is really, really important.
Let me introduce you to my acronym FLOWS.
F – Find out all the issues. L – List them out and make sure they are complete. O – Optimize. Find out what’s most important to the client. W – What’s the evidence and impact. Remember people care about business results or business problems. And finally, S – Summarize. Did you get it right? Did you leave anything out? This structure of a discovery call will help you feel in control? Why? Because you’re not jumping all over the place.
Let me walk you through it, step by step.
F – Find out all the issues. Here you want to understand the problems that the customer’s trying to solve, or the results that they are trying to generate. I mean, if you look at it, people always make decisions. When they encountered these two factors.
L – Listed all out. You want to make sure that you have a complete list of problems or results. Ask them my favorite type of question. The AWE question that Michael Bungay Stanier talks in his book, the coaching habit. You want to ask and what else?
O – Optimize. Ultimately you want to find out what issue is the most important to the client. Get them to tell you what’s crucial and what makes the difference, what has been addressed?
W – What’s the evidence and impact. If a client is slowed down by technology within his firm, what does that mean for them? If their technology stack is clunky, what does that mean for the bottom line? You want to find out the impact and the evidence of how this appears.
S – Summarize. You want to end the conversation, ensuring that you understood all the issues and you didn’t leave anything out, summarize what you have understood, paraphrase, what the client has told you use the same language to connect with them, and then ask if I got it right. Did I miss anything out? And ultimately remember you will be most successful when you concentrate first on the success of others, and then your own success.
Scott Ingram: For more about Malvina including links to her #Stayhuman Podcast and her listenable course on Personal Branding for Sales Professionals, just click over to DailySales.Tips/775
Once you’ve checked that out, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!