Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jul 26, 2010 @ 10:02 AM
One of my inside sales training course clients had a real dilemma a couple of weeks ago. Since her Lead Qualification reps were being compensated on appointments being sent to the field, she was finding that there were a significant number of unqualified appointments being made, and the Field salespeople were beginning to complain.
One of the problems was that there wasn’t a lead grading system in place, so a lead was characterized as either being an appointment or a non-appointment. This is not an isolated incident, and I see this quite frequently. Naturally, if no lead grading system is in place, Business Development reps will create as many appointments as they can, because that’s how they’re measured and compensated.
To fix this, a lead grading system should be put in place, and compensation should be adjusted accordingly. My feeling is that unqualified leads should never be part of a compensation package, and the best place to start is by defining what constitutes an “A,” or fully qualified and compensated lead.
One of the concepts I teach is that there are six basic qualification question types, and each question should be asked on every qualification call. Here they are, along with my ideas on the responses that might constitute an “A” lead:
Requirements: The prospect has defined at least one technical or product/service requirement that links to an element of the proposed solution.
Timeframe: The prospect intends to buy within 90 days.
Decision Tree: The decision process is defined, leading up to the appropriate VP or CXO.
Scope: The potential size of the opportunity is defined, encompassing all individuals, departments, and divisions within the enterprise that will be eventually using the solution.
Business/Consequence: A business problem is identified that links to the proposed solution, as well as the consequences of not solving the problem.
Budget: Has a budget been allocated for the solution in question? This question must always be asked, but a “no” answer is not necessarily a deal-breaker, as budgets can be allocated if the Business/Consequence, Requirements, and Timeframe answers constitute a qualified lead.
This is a model, and it’s going to vary somewhat depending on your product. For transactional sales, maybe the “A” lead timeframe is 30 days. For large enterprise deals, maybe it’s 3-12 months. You can craft your own “B” and “C” categories after you’ve determined what an “A” lead is, and perhaps tweak your comp plan to reflect that as well.
Although the issue on the table is sales leads going to Field reps, the case for ranking lead qualification categories is critical for all Business Development teams. Asking the Field for input regarding what they think constitutes an “A” lead is important too. After all, the Field is the customer.
If you’re a Business Development manager who hasn’t yet implemented a lead ranking system, now’s a good time to start. And if you already have, it’s worth a check at least once a year to ensure that youre ranking system is giving the Field what it needs, and you’re compensating your team members on the activities that best reflect on the profitability of the company. And be sure to add Lead Ranking development and maintenance to your Best Management Playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jun 28, 2010 @ 10:02 AM
I got a call this week from a blog subscriber that desperately needed some tips for selling in a "down" economy. Now that summer's here, his prospects are ramping down in terms of their purchases. He's really feeling it at the end of the quarter, and wants to ensure he doesn't have the same situation at the end of the upcoming quarter as well.
The philosophy I teach in my inside sales training courses has always been that you sell all year ‘round just the same as you would when things are tough. Great sales practices should be in place all the time. So here are four tips that are critically important right now. And once you do them consistently, you shouldn't have too many under-quota months:
1) Upsell and cross-sell to your current customers. Your customers already know you. You've done a great job for them, your solutions are working, and they're happy. But if you're ignoring them, you're not only leaving the door open for the competition, but you're missing out on additional sales, I'll bet. Why don't you call to introduce a solution that your customer might not have acquired yet? Even if he or she said "no" in the past, it doesn't mean things haven't changed.
2) In terms of cross-selling, make sure that you are in contact with all corporate entities under your customers' umbrella. You've got a same-enterprise reference, so call all of those other companies. Call high into those companies, tell the exec what you've been doing for his or her colleagues, then get engaged in an initiative at a new same-enterprise company for which your offering is a solution.
3) Know why every company in your territory is not doing business with you. My old boss Perry Lynne had us keep a record of what he called "lost sales," which told him not only who wasn't buying, but why. And what was surprising was that when we asked, we found a lot of great data, and it opened the door for us at numerous companies. Parenthetically, it was also a great CYA tool if we ever got asked why a company wasn't our customer. If asked, I could simply go to the database, and prove that there was a valid reason. And if there hadn't been a valid reason in the first place, I often had a conversation about it, and that prospect then became my customer.
4) Ask your customers what project they're using your solution on. Customers want to talk about their business more than yours, and if they love your product, they'll tell you how they use it to make their area work more efficiently and effectively. If you do ask this question, I guarantee this: at least once every few conversations, you'll be lead down a path that will open the door to another of your solutions that the customer doesn't yet own. All you have to do is listen.
It's the nature of salespeople to forget about a customer once he or she has placed the order, because money is already "in the bank." If your company is like most, you have a product or engineering team coming up with new exciting stuff that appears once every quarter or so, but you might be so focused on new business that you forget about the people that have already given you their business.
Upselling, cross-selling, knowing why people aren't buying, and asking about your customers' business never go out of style, and using these techniques constantly will keep you out of the sales doldrums, especially in tough times. Add them to your Best Practices Playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jun 14, 2010 @ 10:02 AM
One of my most popular blog posts is the one dealing with getting "shopped" by purchasing folks that ask you to bid on a project that you've already lost. Now that the economy is nicely rebounding, my inside sales training customers are telling me that unsolicited RFPs (requests for proposals) and RFQs (requests for quotes) are starting to come in over the transom, from telephone and email from prospects to whom they've never spoken.
Answering these blindly without talking to someone first is always a mistake, because in all probability, some competitor of yours has already gotten there, the decision has been made against you, and the person that contacted you did so to do some price comparison for the purpose of grinding your competitor's price down a bit.
So you've really got to have a telephone conversation with the individual requesting the RFP or RFQ. And when you do, you'll always want to ask this great question:
"What other solutions are you considering?"
The answer to this question should tell you where you are in the sales process. It will tell you who got there first, and your follow-on questions will tell you if you have a ghost of a chance to get the business. If a known competitor is involved, I always ask what the prospect likes about the competitor, and if he or she could "wave the magic wand," how could the competitor be better? I'm looking for holes in my competitor's offering that will open the business for me. If I hear a lot of good about the competitor and no negatives, I'll ask the following tricky question:
"It sounds like you like [competitor] really well. Is there anything preventing you from just going with them?"
And one of two things will happen. The prospect will come clean and tell you he or she is doing "due diligence," another term for "you lose." Or, as has happened a few times in my own sales world, the contact will tell me that there are some perceived issues with the competitor that weren't flushed out earlier. Now we've got something going!
Of course there are other factors of importance, too. What is the title of the individual that is asking for the RFQ? If he or she is in Purchasing or HR, it's far enough away from your technology focus area that you're probably being shopped. In this case, I'd recommend calling high into your product solution area, and talk to an exec that can tell you if an initiative is on the table. If so, you may be able to break into the sales process and get some real traction.
Unless you're dealing in commodities, unsolicited RFPs and RFQs are always a red flag. And even in commodities sales, you do want to have a conversation before you take the time to craft a proposal and put it in your sales pipeline. It's always worth doing a check up to ensure that your company is the front-runner. Add those all-important front-end conversations to your Best Practices playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Nov 02, 2009 @ 01:15 AM
In addition to writing my weekly blog posts on telesales training topics, I monitor a few other blogs in which sales questions arise. A few weeks ago, the following question popped up about getting POs in faster. We're closing in on year-end now, so I think it's topical to repeat the question in today's post, as well as my answer. Have a look:
Question: What methods do you use to put a time limit on a quote without exposing yourself to pressure? Let's say it is two weeks before the end of the quarter. You want to get a sale before the end of the quarter. What methods do you find effective to get the PO in the time you need it? I find that discounting does not contribute to that and that I am not able to back up from the discount even after the time limit. In other words, the discount is gone forever, even if the Purchase Order was not submitted on time. Please assume the customer is ready to decide, that is all other conditions for the purchase are already met.
(Geoff's answer) "You did the right thing by not further lowering the price. But you have to determine how the prospect perceives that your solution will either help him or her make money, or stop losing money. 99% of the time, companies buy for these reasons. This is always best done early in the sales process, but you can still do it now. Call the prospect and ask, and then try to quantify it. For example, let's say the prospect tells you that she will be using your solution to get her product to market faster. You can then ask how much faster she perceives your product will get it to market. Once you find that out, ask how much revenue is projected for that product in the next 12 months. Once you get that figure, divide by 52 (weeks), and you will know how much his or her company is losing based on lost opportunity costs, per week. Then you can tell her that for each week the decision is delayed, his or her company will be losing that much money. Those are real numbers, based on what she just told you, and you've given her a compelling reason to get the PO to you now. In addition, you'll have given her a good, financially sound argument she may have to take to her CFO. I've probably got a dozen examples of how to build an ROI model like this, but this one's one of the most common (for more on "Selling by ROI," read my whitepaper).
"This technique works equally well if your target company is building an external project (for use by their customers) or an internal project (for use by themselves). Ultimately, people buy solutions because they make financial sense, and sometimes the finances are based on projections. But you do have to ask what their thoughts are as to how the implementation of your solution will pass muster on both the technology and the financial sides of the fence. It sounds like you've won the technology battle. Now you've got to tackle the financial element."
(Back in the present again) The technique of drilling down on the financial reasons people perceive a need for your solution is critical to accelerating the sales process, and it's most effective when you're early in the sales cycle (I encourage you to do it on the very first call) because the prospect is not yet in price negotiation mode, and much of the time will be fairly comfortable giving you some hard numbers. Add this technique to your Best Practices Playbook, and you'll be getting those POs in a lot faster, and with less resistance.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Oct 26, 2009 @ 01:20 AM
I don't care how smart or seasoned a sales exec --- or sales trainer --- is, sometimes he or she will fail to bring in a big deal. Today, it's true confession time.
I'm going to tell you about a deal I lost this year, then tell you a question I could have asked that might have saved it for me. I don't want you to lose the deal like I did, so listen up!
First, a little background. My sales training company has had another great year this year. We're unique, totally customized, and my customers will tell you I'm the hardest working classroom trainer in the biz. We don't have trouble convincing prospects that we're the best. But even when they know we're the best, we still have to negotiate the price. Sometimes they can't afford it. And lots of times, if that's the case, they won't tell you. They just won't answer your calls (sound familiar? It should. It happens to all of us.)
This particular prospect was a really huge company that I'd guess most of you had heard of. They'd had a bad experience with their prior training company. I spent an hour on the phone with their sales exec, and he liked what we had to say, and how we'd solve the problem. He had loads of telesales reps, and it was going to require about 6 weeks of my time as well as the resources of an additional person from my company. As the call was about to end, I asked "price issues aside, are you convinced this is the training solution you want?" He replied that it was, and asked for a proposal. I said I'd get it to him within 24 hours, and did.
But after receiving my proposal, he never returned my calls, and totally went dark. I'd lost the business, and guessed that it was probably sticker shock. I always tell the people I train that you're gonna lose some, but the greats in this business learn from the losses, and don't replicate them. So in retrospect, what I should have done right after I asked that earlier question, was ask the following:
"Now that you've told me that this is the course you want, what are your expectations in terms of the investment required to move forward with it?"
In other words, tell me what you think you're going to pay. This is a really huge question, particularly important if you're located in a part of the country where folks are used to paying top dollar for high-end solutions (think SF, Boston, New York), and you're selling into geographical areas that may have lower expectations in terms of pricing. In my business, there are loads of people selling sales training for $100 per person per day, and most of them are located away from the geographical areas mentioned above. I put way too much time into customization and delivery to compete in that price space. And just about every one of you reading this post will have a similar sales situation in terms of price expectations based on geography as well.
So let's distill two great questions from this experience of mine, so you can learn from my experience. You'll want to use these questions when the prospect loves your solution, but doesn't yet know what your pricing will be. Be sure to ask the following:
1) "Price issues aside, are you convinced this is the [solution] you want?" (and the prospect answers affirmatively)
2) "Now that you've told me that this is the [solution] you want, what are your expectations in terms of the investment required to move forward with it?"
The prospect's answer to your second question will tell you whether you've got an instant go, you need to negotiate a bit, or you need to walk away. The best sales people always want to know why they've lost a transaction, but if a disgruntled prospect doesn't return your calls, you'll never know why.
When you've got a prospect that just loves your solution, be forewarned: if you don't ask the above two questions, you could lose the deal. Add those questions to your Best Practices playbook, and you'll do a superb job at price negotiation.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 @ 12:48 AM
One of the challenges in breaking a verbal habit is that it's nearly impossible to fix it by making your adjustment only while at work. In my telesales training classes, two of the most prevalent habits we work on correcting are the "you guys" and the "how are you today?" habits. And to fully correct them, you need help from the folks with whom you live (and play). Before we discuss "How are you today?" and its inherent problems, I want to review "you guys" for a bit. In the telesales courses I teach, I try to get people in our classes to stop referring to the prospect's company as "you guys", as used in "how are you guys addressing [the technology in question] today?" Especially when you're calling high, using "you guys" doesn't work very well in peer communication with a high level executive, and many women are resistant to that term at any level. "You guys" makes it sound like you're an adolescent, as well, and the prospect almost anticipates the word "awesome" to follow somewhere in the conversation. A better approach is to use the name of the company you're calling in place of "you guys", so let's say the company we're calling is called QED Technology. All you'd have to do, to sound a lot more professional, is to restructure your question by asking "how is QED addressing [the technology in question] today?", inserting the appropriate technology issue in the brackets.
So back to "How are you today?", the topic of today's post. It really doesn't matter too much whether or not you use this on a warm call, where you already know the prospect. Where it really hurts you is on a cold call. At an executive level, you will get hung up on frequently if you open a call with this question. In one of my coaching sessions recently, even though we rehearsed a better way to open the call, the rep did it anyway through habit, and got slammed immediately. There are a number of reasons not to begin your call with this shopworn phrase, but the main reason is that business-to-consumer telemarketers have been flogging it for decades, and it's associated now with getting interrupted by a telemarketer during the dinner hour. It's disliked so much that there's even an acronym for it (HAYT) because people "hate" the question so much from someone to whom they've never spoken. It's much better to open your call by saying who you are, why you're calling, and telling the individual what you need. In most cases, you need to know if there's a current initiative looking for a solution that your product or service can fix. Pretty good way to start a call.
But fixing ineffective communication habits often isn't easily done at work, so I recommend asking personal friends to help out. If you're in the HAYT habit on cold calls, ask your significant other, family, and friends to stop you whenever they hear you using the term when on the phone making personal calls. Chances are, you'll soon get tired of them nailing you, but you will break the habit. And once you've broken it at home, you'll pretty much have it licked at work.
It's hard enough to reach people these days, and you only have one opportunity to make a great first impression. Avoid using words and phrases that annoy people, and enlist the help of friends at home when you really need to fix the problem. A friend of mine once ran for Superintendant of Public Instruction on the platform of "inculcation of sophisticated spoken English." You don't need to go that far to be a great business communicator, but professional speech is terrifically important, especially when speaking to high level executives. Add that level of professionalism to your Best Practices Playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jun 22, 2009 @ 01:49 AM
I was coaching a rep during a telesales call last month, when she said to her prospect "So, I assume that you'll need the development process to run more efficiently" (she sold application development solutions that streamlined the development process). The prospect at that point became annoyed, and testily responded with "actually, we're pretty efficient as it is now, what have I said that indicated it wasn't?" (he was a Director of Software Development). While the prospect had other reasons for looking at the rep's solution, efficiency wasn't one of them, so by "assuming," she hurt the rapport she'd spent all call building up, and had to back up a notch and say she was mistaken for putting words in his mouth.
Fact is, we never know exactly what our prospect wants, or thinks, unless we ask through an "open" question, or the prospect volunteers the information first. We're never as smart as the prospect, as much as we try to be. In my telesales training courses, I discuss the concept of being "intelligently ignorant", which means that you want to ask a lot of questions, even if you think you know all the answers. In the United States today, there's lots of "assuming" on the part of companies looking for ways to attract customers, and all it does is result in products and services that reflect the least common denominator. Many Thai restaurants, for example, are making their tam yum goong (spicy prawn soup) with hardly any spices because "Western people don't like spices." As a result, the soup is nothing like you'd find in Thailand, and in many cases virtually inedible, but the Thais think they're doing the Yanks a big favor by lowering the quality of their product. For years, Ford has been marketing the cute, sexy, high mileage "Ka" car in Europe, but doesn't do it in the U.S. Did they ever ask the U.S. consumer if he or she wanted a car like that? Probably not, because Japanese automakers seem to be selling all the sexy small cars in the U.S. right now. And how's the U.S. auto industry doing these days, by the way? I could give you many other examples, but I think you know what I'm saying. By failing to ask the prospect what he or she wants or thinks, we're losing information that is essential to getting more customers and making the sale. In each case above, the "manufacturers" force-fed product to the customer, and in doing so failed to provide leadership or attempt to educate the prospect. And they're losing business because they assume the customer isn't bright enough to make an informed decision. Regardless of what you're selling, I hope you'll understand the metaphor.
Getting back to telesales, now, why not consider dropping the "assumptive" habit yourself? Instead, change the way you ask questions. Try to avoid asking questions that begin with the words "Is... ?" or "Are...?" , which most often lead to assumptions. Instead (and here I'll use applications development examples, for continuity's sake), try the following ways of asking a question:
"Describe", "Would you explain", "Would you elaborate on" and "Tell me about" are great words and phrases that you can use to start learning more by having the prospect tell you in his or her words where the problem areas are.
As much as some people seem to be telling us, there aren't all that many "one size fits all" sales situations, whether it's soup, cars, or development tools. You owe your prospect your best quality solution, and the way you diagnose it is by asking good open questions prior to making recommendations. Focusing on asking your prospect about his or her priorities should be your priority. So be "intelligently ignorant", assume nothing, and add open questions to your Best Practices playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jun 15, 2009 @ 01:22 AM
I've written before on the critical importance of using strong professional verbiage to position oneself as a peer when calling high and talking to a prospect at the CXO, VP, or Director level. Asking permission ("Is this a good --- or bad --- time to talk?") and beginning the conversation with "How are you today?" are two things I strongly suggest you do not do on a cold call, because by doing so, you're giving the subtle message that you don't really have anything important to say.
Today, I want to discuss some additional weak verbiage that will erode your position as a peer to higher level prospects, namely the use of diminutive phrases that convey the feeling that you are not as important as the people to whom you're speaking. Four of the most common are:
1) "I'm just..." (as in "I'm just calling to see if you've looked at my proposal yet.")
2) "I'm new here." (or "new to the territory")
3) "Are you the decision-maker?"
4) "Would it be all right if I called so-and-so?"
Each one of the above phrases erodes the confidence that the prospect needs to have in you, and you stand to be in danger of losing the business to a competitive rep with more professional communication skills. Not only should you not use these phrases with high level prospects, you shouldn't use them with lower level prospects either. Let's discuss them individually:
1) "Just" gives you no justice. In my example above, it's more like a whine, and is reminiscent of how a child talks to a parent. Remove that word "just"from your telesales vocabulary to fix the problem.
2) Prospects like talking to "the buck stops here" reps that have all the answers, or at least project an image that they do. They don't care whether you're new to the territory, the company, or the planet, but they need to have confidence that you're the right guy or gal. Save "I'm new here" for bar talk, not business talk.
3) Who's going to answer that question with "no, I'm not the decision-maker"? Most of you reading this blog sell or qualify leads for companies selling enterprise solutions, where one individual rarely makes a unilateral buying decision. To get the information you're trying to get, ask "How does the decision process work?", and you'll obtain better information about all the people involved in the decision, and sound more professionally savvy as well.
4) Asking permission to do anything rarely invites a positive response, and when you're told "no", then you feel uncomfortable in going ahead and doing what you're paid to do, which is calling everyone in the decision process to ensure that you've comprehensively qualified the opportunity. You should have the philosophy that you'll call anyone at the prospect company at any time, and feel confident enough that you don't have to ask anyone's permission to do so.
Using professional verbiage is not only important in communications with prospects and customers, it's terrifically important within the sales department too, particularly when you're in close communication with field sales reps. As inside sales professionals, we fight an ongoing battle to prove to our field sales colleagues that we know just as much as they do, are as smart as they are, and can close as much business as they can. Many field sales people feel that if telesales people were really clever, they'd be working in the field instead, a prejudice many of us in the telebusiness industry have spent years in the process of changing. In my telesales training courses, I always find time to discuss the fact that inside sales has to be more efficient, more effective, and more professional than our field counterparts, because we've always got something to prove. And one of the best ways to do it is to use powerful, professional verbiage, and kick those weak phrases out of our vocabularies for good. Add powerful, no-nonsense terminology to your Best Practices playbook, and you'll increase sales and improve team communication at the same time.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Apr 20, 2009 @ 02:03 AM
One of the things I preach --- and I really mean preach in my telesales training classes is you've only got one call to qualify your prospect. Just one. And when you get that person on the phone, that may be the only time you ever talk. Ever. We all know the frustration of calling back the same prospect that asked us to call back, and never being able to reach that person again. And all the voicemails and emails won't help, either, a vast majority of the time. So today I'm going to discuss a great sales tip to fix this, that works especially well if you're in the lead generation or lead qualification business.
Today's post is about prospects that try to get you off the phone as soon as you begin your opening. They're just going into a meeting. They were expecting another call. They're dealing with an emergency. They have dyspepsia or catarrh. Sometimes it's true, and sometimes it isn't. But you have to absolutely find out whether that prospect you're calling for the first time has a need for your offering. If he or she doesn't, that person is disqualified, and you don't have to call again. But he or she may, and that's what you absolutely have to discover before dropping this type of call.
So here's what you do. When the first-time prospect tell you he or she can't take your call, do the following:
1) Ask "Before I let you go, let me ask you this:"
2) Tell him or her in 5 seconds or fewer who you are and what you do.
3) Reference something that indicates that he or she might be interested. This could be that he or she attended a trade show, seminar, downloaded a whitepaper, or even something you saw on his or her company's website.
4) Ask if he or she will be looking into solutions like yours anytime within the "next few months."
This 4 step process works almost 100% of the time, because it's quick, gets you what you need, and often the prospect will actually have a conversation with you, provided there is an initiative to look into an offering like yours. Why does it work? Because you're honoring the "contract" that the prospect gave you at the beginning of the call. And that contract was "I'm busy, bug off." By responding with "Before I let you go, let me ask you this", you're telling the prospect that yes, you'll bug off, after one quick question. Even if the prospect is busy, that's a pretty good trade. So let me set this out in actual dialogue form, so you can see what it looks like. And let's say you sell in-circuit emulators, for example's sake:
Prospect: "Hi, this is Sandra Bannerjee"
You: "Hi Sandra, this is Geoff Alexander from Atron, and..."
Prospect: "I'm sorry, this is a really bad time to talk, can you call me next week?"
You: "I'd be happy to, Sandra, but before I go, let me ask you this. You attended our seminar on debugging the 680X0 series of processors, and I'm wondering if you'll be looking at buying emulators for those processors any time within the next several months?"
Prospect: "Yes we will."
You: "When do you have to have them on board?"
Prospect: "Real soon, but I can't talk right now."
You: "OK, Sandra, who can I talk with right now that can discuss some of the specs of the project?"
Prospect: "Lee Kiley is the Project Manager, go ahead and give Lee a call."
I could go on ad infinitum about where I'd take the conversation from here, but bottom line, you took a call that was going to be worthless, and turned it into something. You found an opportunity, and got a referral. And if you do this on every one of these types of calls, you'll be spinning your wheels less, generating more leads, selling faster, and be spending less time calling the same prospect over and over. But do remember "the contract." Add "Before I let you go, let me ask you this" to your sales vocabulary and highlight it in your Best Practices playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Dec 08, 2008 @ 03:12 AM
Frustrating. Annoying. Unusable. These words are three of the most common used by prospects to describe a product or service that isn't working well for them. And they're using these words because they're talking to you about potentially changing to your offering, and telling you why they're unhappy with what they're using now. Many inside sales reps, though, ignore these clue words, and instead of asking the prospect to elaborate on the pain point, begin feature dumping all over the place, describing features and benefits like crazy, but failing to use the clue to begin the process of quantifying the scope and return-on-investment (ROI) value of the problem. Let's talk about how to fix this.
Here's an example of how it shouldn't be done. The prospect is a Testing Manager:
Prospect: "It takes forever to build scripts with our current regression tester, and it annoys the heck out of me and the team, because we're getting pressure to get out the new release. How soon can you get me a demo?"
Salesperson: "I think you'll find that our GUI is terrific, and you'll be able to build scripts faster than your current solution. I can fit you in for a demonstration webinar next Wednesday. Work that work with your schedule?"
Prospect: "Yes, I'll get the team together to take a look."
Salesperson: "Terrific. I'll send you a confirmation email, along with a dial-in keycode. Anything else I can answer before I let you go?"
The problem here is that the rep doesn't know about the problem (he or she didn't ask), and is just going to deliver another unqualified webinar. Maybe the webinar goes well, and the rep keeps calling, but after 2 weeks, there's still no PO. Not only that the rep can't reach the prospect, and the rep's calls aren't being returned. Sound familiar? It should, because it's probably happened to all of us (me included, what I was a junior salesperson). So how do we fix this, and accelerate the sales cycle? By asking the prospect to better explain the problem, instead of jumping prematurely into delivering a demo/webinar. How about improving the call so it goes like this:
Prospect: "It takes forever to build scripts with our current regression tester, and it annoys the heck out of me and the team, because we're getting pressure to get out the new release. How soon can you get me a demo?"
Salesperson: "Tell me a little about that new release, and the internal pressures you're running into."
Prospect: "We have an important upgrade that will fix a lot of the problems in our last release, and included is a new feature set our customers have been asking for. We've got hundreds of customers lined up to buy this upgrade, and they won't buy additional licenses until the old problems have been fixed. Our current regression tester has blown up on several tests already, and the VP of Sales is putting pressure on engineering, because she needs the revenue this quarter."
Salesperson: "Do you have a sense of what kind of revenue is going to be generated when the new release is ready to ship?"
Prospect: "Well, it's conservatively 2000 licenses, and we're charging $495 for the upgrade."
Salesperson: "That comes out to $990,000, does that sound about right?"
Prospect: "Right, and the quarter ends in 60 days."
Salesperson: "I can see why the VP of Sales is concerned. If we divide $990,000 by 60 days, it looks as though there's a lost opportunity cost of $16,500 per day. That's a lot."
Can you see what we're doing here? We're now fully understanding what the ramifications are of not finding a solution. Now you can do your demo webinar. So why hasn't the prospect called us back after the webinar? Busy in the lab, trying again to get the old product working, broken ankle in a pickup game and he or she is out for 3 days, could be anything. But now you have the power to call above the Testing Manager, maybe to the VP of Engineering (and you did begin the sales process by calling high and getting passed down, didn't you?) You can tell the VP that you know that his or her company is losing $16,500 a day in delayed sales, and the VP can accelerate your sale again.
In each telesales training course I teach, we spend a lot of time talking about clues, and how to address them. The clues commonly begin with words like "annoying," "frustrating," or "unusable." When you hear these words, or those similar to them, perk your ears up, stop "selling," and ask for elaboration. It's your key to getting important ROI information that will get you the sale faster. This sales technique will increase sales, and help you to understand your prospect's situation more fully. Add it to your Best Practices playbook.