What’s the best way to start a conversation after I’ve sent my proposal?
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, May 23, 2011 @ 10:02 AM
I got a great question in my mailbag last week, and it concerns every one of you that sends a proposal or quotation as part of your sales process. We teach these techniques in our inside sales courses, so let’s start with Mai’s question. She asks:
“I do not know what to do between the time a prospect is quoted and I’m waiting for the order. Currently, all I do is call back and 'ask how's it going'? And it doesn’t seem to move the sales process forward.”
Mai’s right, handling a call like that isn’t going to move the sales process forward. One of my most popular blog posts regards why “I’m just following up” is a bad way to start a call (read it if you haven’t).
Every time you call you need to provide info and/or have a reason to call. You can solve this problem by using what I call “Business/Consequence” questions and the “Let’s go see your uncle” close, as follows:
1) Let’s go see your uncle: determine on the first call who else is going to need to see the proposal, and ask to engage that individual on the same call. This way, we shorten the sales cycle by getting earlier complete buy-in, perhaps even getting agreement from both (all) parties. That way, the proposal becomes a formality to an already-agreed upon course of action, rather than a document that gets passed around ad infinitum, or worse, sits gathering dust on someone's desk. If you didn’t take this step on your first call, be sure to take it on your second one.
2) Business/consequence questions: There is a valid business reason people are looking at adopting your solution, and you need to uncover it, discuss it, and attempt to quantify it on the first call. Then we've got a business driver.
So let's say you’re selling network security solutions, and the driver is the cost of previous hacks on the network. Our follow-up call could start with "I'm concerned that you're still being burdened with all those costs associated with hacking events, and I'd like to see if we can revisit this and perhaps find a solution today that might work well enough that you'd want to move forward right away." That's just one example, but there could be dozens, depending on how the prospect voices the business problem.
It’s important to use the techniques on your first call, because people tend to divulge most important information when they’re in “fact-finding” mode with you. But if you didn’t, do it on the second call, and make it part of your call objective. These techniques help tremendously in handling sales objections that are hidden, and during later price negotiations as well. When you take this approach, you’ll have much better success in accelerating your sales cycle. And be sure to add these important techniques to your Best Practices Playbook.