How is your first quarter turning out so far?
Closing lots of business and exceeding your quota? Or are you struggling to catch up and hoping for a strong March?
If you or your team is struggling, a cause might be a fundamental flaw that many sales teams suffer from: failure to understand—and pitch to—a prospect’s unique buying motive.
Let’s review the sales process briefly:
- Recognizing all buyers of products and services have specific needs (buying motives) they are looking to fulfill.
- Not everyone’s buying motives are the same. The best way to sell someone is to fully understand what their buying motives are and then to:
- Pitch to each buyer’s specific needs.
- Then, as you do, you use carefully placed tie-downs and trial closes to build a yes momentum that leads to the close.
That’s the essential process of sales. Of course, there are nuances and specific techniques to master the above steps at a high level, and that’s why you train…
But, let me tell you what I have found to be the major problem for teams and individual sales reps who are not making their numbers:
They never understand exactly what each prospect’s unique buying motive is, and so they just keep pitching, hoping that what they say will match up somehow with what a prospect wants to hear.
Two problems with this approach:
- Many prospects aren’t buying regardless, and so if you just keep pitching without understanding their buying motive—or worse, haven’t identified that this prospect doesn’t have a buying motive you can fulfill—then you’re wasting everyone’s time.
- If you have failed to understand exactly what a specific prospect’s buying motive is, then you won’t be able to speak directly to it, build the appropriate amount of value, and you’ll miss step 5 above and risk talking past the close—and yourself out of a deal.
How would you like one magic question that will reveal to you each prospect’s buying motive? Here it is:
“{first name}, let me ask you: what specifically are you hoping a (product or service) like ours will do for you at this time?”
That’s it! Now, listen carefully to the answer, and ask yourself honestly: Can your product or service give them exactly what they are looking for? If so, pitch directly to it. Use tie-downs to see if you’re getting closer to making a sale. Shift to trial closes mid-way through your close. And if you’re getting buy in, then assume the close!
This one question, combined with the 4-step process above, will elevate your close ratio and help your entire team make their quota.
Try it today!
Related: One Quick Secret to Getting Your Emails Opened and Read