Close Sales by Evaluation Faster through this Process
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Tue, Aug 26, 2008 @ 12:44 PM
Although many companies are demonstrating products through webinars, a significant number still send out evaluation software or hardware. If your company does, you can save a significant amount of time and close sales faster by adopting some best practices for evaluations. The process I'm going to describe could generate dozens of new sales leads for you, too.
Selling by evaluation and on-site demonstration are two great ways of giving prospects necessary "hands-on" experience with your product before purchase. Yet many companies are thoroughly frustrated with the poor evaluation-to-sale ratio, to the extent that they are considering stopping the program altogether. Big mistake. If your team takes the approach I'm going to describe in a second, your ratio will skyrocket and you'll close sales faster, although the number of evals you actually send out may actually decrease.
Here are some ideas that can benefit you immediately:
1) Always ask for the sale with 30 day right-of-return prior to suggesting an evaluation. The number of prospects that will actually place an order when you ask the question may surprise you... if your accountants can't figure out how to handle the occasional charge-back, invest in a college-level accounting course for them.
2) Send out an evaluation only to those who will buy if their requirements criteria are met. Note their requirements, use the "if we could, would you?" question, and set the expectation for purchase if the eval fits their pre-stated needs.
3) Call the day after the expected arrival of the evaluation. Make sure it got there, and help him or her with the installation process if necessary.
4) Call a week later. If their expectations have been met, ask if you can "wrap up the paperwork" right then and there. If not, get tech support involved proactively to get the prospect's requirements taken care of.
5) Follow up after tech support has called them. Repeat step 4.
6) If the prospect wants an eval to continue beyond 30 days, negotiate! Here are some ideas I've used successfully:
a) explain that your evals are on allocation. Ask if he or she would be willing to make the decision in two more working days, provided you'll agree to putting the full force of your tech support group behind getting it to perform to their expectations. That way, your prospects can be productive right away, and they'll be doing a favor as well for other prospects in the same situation by freeing an eval slot for another company (stated professionally, this type of statement will build value for your product).
b) if he or she simply can't get around to installing it, ask if the prospect can allocate another person to look it over. Work with that new person. If you're convinced your eval is going to sit on the shelf, ask the prospect to send it back. Convincing the prospect that you (and, by extension, other customers) consider your product to be a valuable item will assist in building the value you'll need to get in the door again. In addition, if your eval gathers dust on someone's shelf, it sends a signal to the entire prospect department that something must not have been up to snuff.
7) Don't call the enterprise while the eval process is underway. It's OK to get the rest of the prospect's department involved, but don't tell the whole corporate entity about it until the evaluation has turned into a sale. Here are a couple of problems that could occur should you broadcast it too early:
a) a Detroit associate of your Cleveland prospect calls to ask how the eval is coming... right when Cleveland's discovered a frustrating bug that only 1% of the customers ever see. Problem is, tech support hasn't gotten back to him yet, so Cleveland tells Detroit about the buggy software and lousy tech support. An hour later when the patch arrives, Detroit has already called your competitor for an eval of his product.
b) MIS in Philadelphia gets mad that Cleveland is trying to evaluate a solution without Philly's blessing! Result: eval on hold and Philly wants to make a point with Cleveland by forcing a competitive product on them ... and you lose the sale!
8) After the eval is successful, leverage it by calling every single same-company prospect in your database and telling the user story. These are people who, at one time, were interested. Maybe they'll have renewed interest when they find out someone at their company is using your product successfully!
OK, now you have a template for selling by evaluation that should improve your sales performance dramatically. This is what I teach in my inside sales courses, and it works. Give it a try, and let me know what you think.