Frustrating, annoying, unusable: Three clue words that lead to sales success!
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.