- How would you like to have
better sales conversations that are ultimately going
to lead to more deals? Now of course we all know
that your conversations are at the heart of your ability
to actually close business. And what I see going on in
today's world of selling is really one of two things. One, is you see sales people
who are just showing up and throwing up all over their prospects, they're pitching, they're
talking about their products or services, they're focused on the
features and benefits, and ultimately they're
focused on themselves. The other world are the people that are showing up and they're saying, hey, I'd love to understand
what keeps you up at night. Right, they're coming in
without offering much value and they're trying to engage in a conversation around questions which is good, but they're not bringing much
value to the conversation and so as a result, buyers are obviously a little bit wary and say, well, why should I tell you about my challenges, shouldn't you already know? So in this video I'm going to
show you exactly how you get around those key problems. I'm going to show you the three plus keys to sales conversations that close deals, check it out. Number one, insight. Showing that you have insight to offer is so key to getting that conversation in the first place. We need to establish as sales people that we have the authority, that we have the value, and that we're not just
going to be taking, taking, taking, from prospects by asking them tons of questions, but instead we're going to
be offering them some value at the beginning. This is a really important distinction and it's really about the
early part of the conversation. Whether it's on the phone, or it's face-to-face at the
beginning of the meeting we want to start by kicking
off the conversation with something that's different than just, so what are
your biggest challenges, or what's keeping you up at night? But instead, is really
focused on their world, on solving their challenges. So step number one within that is about your opening play. How are you actually
opening that conversation? Having an opening play is not about using your value proposition but instead, using an approach
that really is talking about some of the key challenges that they're seeing in their world. And so you might say something like, you know what, George, what I'm seeing happening
with a lot of organizations just like yours is the following. Right, and then you're going to list off a couple of those key challenges that you're really seeing are
affecting those organizations. What you're going to then is by starting the conversation that way, you're already saying, hey look, I understand what's
going on in your world. We can start a conversation where I can actually get permission really to ask you some questions because I already know what's going on and that's where this next piece comes in, which is the whiteboard pitch. This is something that we've just started
playing around with and it's so incredibly effective. And so a whiteboard pitch is you literally have
a small piece of paper, or a whiteboard, and you're going to just write out using, typically we find a matrix of the root challenges that are actually causing those challenges to be an issue for the prospects and then ultimately some pieces of data that you're seeing that really are the reason that they're facing those problems in the first place. So again, a whiteboard pitch, and by the way, you could
do this on a whiteboard in your prospect's office, you could do it just on a piece of paper, but what you want to do is have something that's really showing that you understand what's going on. So it's really an extension
of your opening play, when you're focused on their challenges, not the benefits of what you offer, or the features, or anything about you, it's all about them, and what are those key challenges. And then lastly, we
want to engage prospects in that conversation, right. So we've done our whiteboard pitch, we've talked about what are
some of the key challenges that we're seeing going
on in their industry, and now we're engaging with a simple question, something like, do any of
these issues ring true to you? Or, do you see any of
these issues in your world? So you're engaging them in a conversation, whether again, this is face-to-face, in your first meeting, or it could be on the phone, but you're engaging them
ultimately with the goal of pulling them into a conversation where now, they're starting to
talk about their challenges, and when you start asking questions, they're not just going to rush to, hey, can you just tell
me what the price is? Or can you just tell me about the product? Instead, it's a well-deserved conversation where you've shown that you have expertise and now, you're going to
be in that doctor role, and you're going to understand
exactly what's going on which leads to part number two. Number two, disqualify. Now, if you've ever followed
any of my stuff before you'll know that disqualification is such a big part of really high-quality sales conversation. The typical idea that most
of us have been taught is that we need to persuade prospects to do business with us. This idea takes that idea and just flips it right on its head. We don't need to persuade
people to do business with us. Instead, what we want to do actually is not even qualify prospects. But instead we want to disqualify. We want to come in with
that doctor's mindset, we want our sales people, or just ourselves, to come in with that doctor's mindset, where we're saying to ourselves, is this a fit? And that starts with the first piece which is, understanding their challenges. You've shown some insight, you've brought some
value to the conversation and now you want to dig
into those key challenges that the prospect is facing around the areas that
you focus on, of course. You want to understand exactly
what those challenges are and this where we kind of get into our psychologist
armchair mode, right, where we're just slowing
down the conversation and we're just letting them tell us about some of the key challenges that they're facing at the moment. So there are a lot of questions like, help me understand why you say that? Or tell me a little bit more about that? Or can you give me an example of that? Right, so you're just some basic questions that are going to open up the prospect and getting them talking
about their key challenges. The next step is to go into cost. We want to understand what is the cost of these challenges. I've played around for years with, do you we wanna understand
what's the upside, do we wanna understand if we're able to solve those challenges, what does it mean? Or do we wanna focus on the cost? And we've come back to this idea that cost is so important because people will do so much more to stop from losing something than they will to actually
go out and gain something. So if you tell someone, hey, I have a great opportunity for you. They're like, okay I'm interested, maybe. But if you say, hey, I can actually tell you a way to stop from losing
what you currently have, that's going to be a lot
more compelling to them. So we wanna understand what's the cost of the challenges they've just told us? What does this mean to the organization? So simple questions like, you know what, George, help me understand what
are these challenges actually costing the organization? Or, if you were able to solve this, what would it mean in additional revenue? You can look at it both ways, but you wanna understand, and you wanna get a dollar value of what's really the
cost of those challenges. And by the way, if the cost of
these challenges isn't much, it's not worth it, right. Now we know it's time to eject, this is a disqualification
moment, we're done. But, if they're saying, oh yeah, actually, you know,
these challenges are costing our organization millions of dollars in lost productivity, or millions of dollars in lost employees, or whatever it is, right, now we know we're having a really valuable and focused conversation around the things that really matter. The next piece within disqualify that I just wanna focus on, the last one, I'm just giving you an overview here, but is, understanding their drive. We want to know what is
actually driving them, right. What's in it for them? Right, one of my mentors
used to always say, prospects listen to one radio station and one radio station only, WIIFM, what's in it for me? Right, what is in it for them? Why do they care about
solving these challenges? How does it affect them personally? We want to understand how is that, kind of, the wound that they have, right, is that actually hurting them, or is it just more about the organization? And you know what, quite frankly, it's not a top priority. We want to understand their drive, what's really pushing them. And so, you might ask a question like, you know, behind every corporate objective is a personal objective. Help me understand what is causing you to be so focused on this issue? Or, how is this issue
affecting you personally? Right, and that's where we
go from really high-level to just in the weeds, right. And this is where you
start to get things like, oh well if we don't solve this, I'm gonna be in a lot of trouble, right. I could be in risk of losing my job. And now you're having a conversation that they really care about. We're going to be
ultimately avoiding so many of the objections down the road because they've already
told you how important it is to them. So if later they're like, oh you know, it's really
not a priority right now, you could say, well George, you just told me earlier that if you don't solve this you might be in risk of
actually losing your job. Help me understand what's going on? Right, now you understand so much more. Number three, solve. In order to have effective conversations you need to show the prospect that you can actually
solve their problems. This is really important to understand where we are in the sales process, right. We've already shown insight, we've disqualified people to the point where we
know that this person at this point is a good fit, and now we're demonstrating that we can solve their problems. And that's where a case
study presentation comes in. People are persuaded so
much more by stories. If you start to throw out tons of facts, or features and benefits, or you're trying to
tell them the solution, they're much more likely
to actually resist. But when you tell them a case study, or a story, where maybe there were results as a result of that story, now they're engaged in the conversation. They can't fight with
the facts of the story so we want to be using case studies in our presentation, particularly at the early
part of the presentation as a way to demonstrate how our solution will
help their organization. So that means mentioning what were some of the earlier challenges that maybe this other client was facing and then what was ultimately done, and then what were the results? It's a very simple, basic approach to a case study, and by the way, these don't have to be written out, these could just literally be some stories that you share, or of course, you can
have printed out PDFs, you can do all of that. Ultimately, you want to
have some case studies that you can reference
in your presentation in terms of telling them a story of what we're going to do. Sandra, let me tell you a story about what we did with a client that was somewhat similar to you. Now, you go into the story, and now they're so much more engaged with that conversation. The next piece within solve, is dealing with objections. If you have done a good job up until now, you're not going to be
getting a lot of objections. The key to handling objections is to avoid them in the first place. Be strong up front in the
disqualification process, and you're going to have
far fewer objections. But even so, even at the end, there's still a chance that you're gonna have
one objection, or two, if you've done a good job up until now. And so, this is the place where you don't want to get
into an arm wrestling match. You want to really understand why they're sharing an objection. So maybe they say something like, you know what, Marc, the price is much more
than I had expected. Now, most sales people are
going to start defending that price as soon as they
hear an objection like that. But my first approach is to say, you know, George, I really
appreciate you sharing that, help me understand why do you
say that in the first place? We want to clarify exactly what they mean, and why they're saying that. And so now we start in a conversation and we can really unpack
what they're most focused on. And they might say, oh well, you know, I really didn't expect this or that, and now you're starting to
get a more clear picture of what they really care about because we want to remember, most objections are
really just smokescreens, and we want to understand
what they really care about. Oftentimes it's not about price, but instead, it's that they don't feel like maybe what you've put forth is actually going to solve the problems and so they do care about budget because they're not convinced that what you're going to do is actually going to solve the challenges that they have. You want to take objections in stride and always, almost like
a hostage negotiator, you don't want to
instinctually just fight back when you hear an objection, but instead take it in, slow it down, understand
what they most care about, and then bring the
conversation back around to what they really care about. Oftentimes in the objections moment, it can actually lead to a lot more really
high-quality questions where you can unpack and learn more things about the prospect that
you never knew before. So there are the three plus keys to sales conversations that close deals. And if you enjoyed this video then I have an awesome free training on the data-driven approach to help you crush your sales goals. Just click right here, to get registered instantly. Seriously, just click right here, this is an in-depth training that will help you close more deals at higher prices, all while generating more meetings. Also, if you got some value please like this video below on YouTube and be sure to subscribe
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