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4 questions that provoke the ire of prospects

Dec 2013/in /by

By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Market Development

The cardinal rule of sales should be: Don’t irritate your prospects! It doesn’t matter whether a potential buyer could use your services or not. If they cultivate a strong dislike for you during the pitch, they’re unlikely to go with the company you represent. Sometimes when you’re under pressure to close, you might phrase questions inappropriately, leading to the disdain of the people you’re trying to impress. Avoid ruining the outcome of the sale before you’ve even begun. To start out, here are a few questions you should avoid asking:

  1. “Are you the decision-maker?”
    You want to make sure you’re not wasting your time with someone who doesn’t impact the purchasing decision. But the truth is, even if the final decision isn’t theirs, they can be a good bridge to someone who will make the final choice. Use this question and your prospect will see right through you. As Geoffrey James puts it in the Salesforce blog, when you ask this question you’re implying your contact is “some flunky gatekeeper who needs to be schmoozed.”Instead, you may want to dispense with the term “decision maker” altogether. James suggests asking instead, “who are the stakeholders?” Without bluntly questioning where the prospect falls in the chain of command, you can get an idea of who else you should talk to before closing the deal. Another idea, according to the Sales Excellence blog, is to ask “Once you make your decision, what are the next steps?” This will also give you a better understanding of the buying process.
  2. “Would you agree that…?”
    This is a leading question that could immediately cause your prospect to bristle. The idea is to make them say yes to something small so they will be more likely to say yes to buying. Unfortunately, your contact has probably heard this ancient selling technique hundreds of times, so it will only put them on the defensive. Instead, try a more open question like “what are your priorities around…?” Ask questions that lead to a legitimate discussion. Let go of the seller-buyer dichotomy and you’re more likely to influence your potential client.
  3. “If we could save you money, would you be interested?”
    Once again, you’re using a manipulative tactic and dangling the carrot in front of the horse. You’re obviously hoping to hook the prospect into a longer conversation, but this question is actually extremely vague, and needs to be more targeted to the prospective company in order to be useful. According to Colleen Stanley for Customer Think blog, it may be better to say, “let’s you and I crunch some numbers together to see if the cost savings add up to enough dollars to even consider making a move.” This way, you’re communicating to the prospect that you understand they have individual needs and offering a one-size-fits-all solution may not benefit them.
  4. Any question you should already know the answer to
    While making this kind of blunder may not send up a red flag as quickly as the first three, lack of research won’t get you ahead. To establish yourself as not just a salesperson, but a valuable informational resource, you’ll want to know as much as possible about your potential buyer’s market. Customer analytics can provide an in depth background on where your buyer is coming from. It can help you anticipate their needs, which will help you ask the right questions. Knowing your customers before engaging in the sales pitch is the smartest thing a salesperson can do.

Do your research, avoid provoking clients, and encourage conversation rather than being pushy, and you’re likely to win the confidence of your prospective buyers.

partner success

Customer Companies Are Seen As Strategic Partners

Nov 2013/in /by

By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Market Development

Understanding your customers has never been more important than it is today. Customers have greater access to information than ever before, which means they have more choices and it’s more challenging to build long-lasting loyalty. But companies need to do this to retain clients long term and generate more revenue. Being customer-focused has its benefits for you as well.

Customer-centricity has four main requirements: recognizing and understanding the differences between each of your customers, realizing the quantifiable value in each individual client, learning who your high-value clients are and how to retain them and utilizing customer data to create a highly personalized experience. Although every person in your organization is responsible for improving customer centricity, your sales representatives need to establish themselves as strategic consultants who play a vital role in your customers’ businesses.

Moving Past “Sales” to Be Seen as an Essential Partner
Sales professionals are usually extroverted and are great at closing deals. But what happens after the sale? Are your reps continuing to check in with clients, or is their contact information just sitting in your CRM? Customer-centric organizations know how to move past the strictly sales mentality to form lasting relationships with their clients. These reps aren’t just people who sell new products and services—they’re viewed as critical business partners who can advise and direct. But your team can’t accomplish this without actionable information.

“A successful salesperson knows how to strike a balance between the science of being a salesperson and the art to match their customer needs,” said Nima Niakan, FirstRain Fellow.

He added that FirstRain can help organizations embrace different methodologies, such as TAS and Challenger, to ensure any information that comes into the organization is analyzed and directed to the right sales rep—the most relevant information in the right platform, categorized under a particular selection based on the methodology. This allows the salesperson to quickly take action on this information.

“FirstRain ups the game for the sales rep and helps them be more efficient with that ‘science’ side of the equation,” Niakan stated.

Bridging the Gap Between Salespeople and Strategic Consultants
While actionable science may seem like a lofty goal to some, companies can’t become more customer-oriented without the right data. So how can salespeople transform their enterprise relationships into more of a partnership?

“By understanding their customers’ ecosystem, knowing what legislative, regulatory and macroeconomic issues are facing their customer and working backwards from there to see how to positions and time the deal to assure it matches the customer’s priorities,” Niakan said.

It can be challenging to establish this type of relationship with your customers, but it pays off in the long run. Being viewed as an essential consultant has benefits in the sales process after the relationship has been developed.

“Once the customer thinks of you as a key partner, now they will come to your first, before looking to a competitor of yours,” he added.

After this trusted status has been gained, the rep can leverage his or her knowledge of the customer to direct clients toward the company’s solutions. This allows customers to get where they want faster, more efficiently and have a desired impact by utilizing your products and solutions.

“The relationship will open a channel for the customer to ask for new features and products that put you in the lead and help you get more ingrained inside the customer’s organization,” Niakan stated.

simple path

Get More Sales When You Stop Selling

Nov 2013/in /by

By Ryan Warren, Vice President of Market Development

In sales, there’s been a lot of hype about the importance of knowing your customers. While it’s easy to talk about, the truth of the matter is companies are struggling to gain insights into their clients’ realities. Although there are a number of tools available to help make sense of all the disparate data sources out there, many sales teams are still getting bogged down with complexity, and that can negatively impact sales productivity. With disrupters entering the market more frequently, businesses need to know their customers and their customers’ market conditions. While this sounds like a daunting task, making processes simpler can improve revenue gains and customer relationships. When you focus on customers, it’s easier to design processes with them in mind.

Stop Using Complexity as an Excuse
New sales methodologies crop up all the time, and it’s pretty clear that some organizations are agile enough to adapt. Despite this, firms need to put customers first. But if companies hide behind the excuse of tricky market conditions, difficult-to-know customers or internal operations, a competitor can easily enter the market and snatch business away, according to an article by Dave Brock for Salesforce. Many organizations default to doing the things the same way they always have.

In fact, organizational complexity can make it harder to solve problems because sales teams or other departments are trying to approach them the wrong way. Some companies have a set way of approaching issues and are afraid to diverge, even when there’s a new opportunity. Brock noted startups are often better at solving problems and addressing clients’ needs because they aren’t stuck in the same rut of taking an established route. Startups don’t necessarily experience less complexity, but they don’t rely on the same approaches all the time.

Simplifying sales methods, processes and organizational attitudes isn’t always an easy task. Past habits and beliefs can prevent team members from seeing the big picture and maximizing productivity. But if your sales reps are spending more time arguing in internal meetings than serving customers, something needs to change. You need to consider things from your customers’ perspectives to make adjustments.

Putting Your Customers—Not Your Pitches—First Will Improve Sales
They say you catch more flies with honey, and your sales team may land more deals by catering to customers’ needs and preferences, rather than having a pitch ready at all times. Although your reps should absolutely know your product or service offerings back and forth, this shouldn’t be the information they lead with. If you want to boost sales, you should address customers first. Talk about them—their companies, their markets—and ask questions rather than just speak, Tom Searcy wrote for Inc. magazine.

In the past, salespeople would go to meetings and talk about why their products were the best, but now your team needs to be more subtle. Don’t be caught selling. Your team can be a lot more successful by focusing on issues related to your clients’ businesses. You can then offer insights into these problems by placing the emphasis on the context of the business, rather than the context of products you are trying to tell. Reps that take this approach wait to be asked to solve the problem. They do not push their own solutions. But expressing this concern about customer pain points helps establish a deeper sense of trust. These salespeople transform themselves into strategic partners and advisors instead of just a contact after the sale.

Market Insight Is Key
Without a firm knowledge of the conditions, competitors and geopolitical events in a customer’s market, your team can’t deliver this kind of service to clients or prospects. Although your customers are more informed about their options, you need to know what they are facing to meet them on their own terms and sell without selling.

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