“We want deals to close and we want them to close fast.” – Katie Jane Bailey in today’s Tip 790
How do you help your customer to understand the impact after you’ve identified the pain?
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Katie Jane Bailey on Sales Success Stories Interview
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Katie Jane Bailey. You may recognize Katie Jane from such places as her Sales Success Stories interview with me in episode 111, because she’s the top Senior Enterprise Account Executive at Figma. Here she is:
Katie Jane Bailey: In sales, we want deals to close and we want them to close fast. We want a short sweet sales cycle. When you first start in your sales cycle and you have that first call with a prospect, our natural instinct is to ask questions based on what we, what I, the rep, what do I want to know? We’re not asking questions naturally based on what the customer may need to learn. So on a discovery call, it’s very natural for me to want to know, what am I working with? Is this going to be a large deal? Is this going to be a small deal? Does this person have decision-making power? And what is the pain that they have? And if I get the answer to all of those things, I think great. I know they have pain, they have budget and they have decision-making power. And while this might be my checklist for having a deal, this isn’t necessarily their checklist for buying a solution, right? They want to understand the impact my solution is going to have on their work.
For example, let’s say that I am selling a sales leads engine of some kind, and you are the person I’m selling to. The conversation I may have with you on an initial call could sound something like this. So do you have enough leads? No, I don’t have enough leads. And when you don’t have enough leads, what happens in your work day to day, week to week, month to month? Well, if I don’t have enough leads, I’m probably not going to hit quota. So if you did have enough leads, how would that impact your work? If I had enough leads, I would close way more deals and I would be booking so much more revenue, which means I’d be making a lot more money. What we did there is we didn’t stop at the pain question.
Most salespeople it’s so easy to stop at the pain question. The pain question in there being, what happens when you don’t have enough leads. I don’t hit quota. Well, that’s super painful, but if you stop there, you’re hurting yourself and you’re hurting your deal. But if you follow up with helping your customer to understand the impact your solution can have, and the impact could be, if I had more leads, I would close more deals. I would make more money. Then now as a buyer, I am associating your solution with making more money. And that is what someone would buy for.
So we have asked ourselves, are we stopping at identifying pain because we need that in order for someone to buy, or are we helping our customers understand the impact after we’ve identified the pain.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Katie Jane and to hear more than just 3 minutes from her, you can get the full 2 hour and 17 minute treatment by clicking over to DailySales.Tips/790
Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!