Give a little to get a lot
Give a little to get a lot
How to reset the Frame, Question equity, and more pro tips
I’ve observed many salespeople fail at executing their Qualification process because they failed to address the Baseline Frame.
Baseline Frame:
The prospect sees you as Low Status and you need to earn the right for them to follow your sales process.
Whether this is objectively true or not doesn’t matter.
It’s what the prospect believes.. therefore it is something you need to address *before* you can proceed to influence them.
Sounds familiar?
The call starts and you begin interrogating your prospect with tons of MEDDICC / BANT / WHATEVER questions.
They sense what you are doing and then ask you a pointed question about your product and you either:
Begin vomiting features/benefits
Completely evade the question and continue with your Qualification criteria
They begin closing up and increasingly get annoyed with you because they aren’t getting anything of real value upfront.
The result?
You get vague & generic answers as they plan their escape.
All because you didn’t address the Baseline Frame
Why didn’t you address the Baseline Frame?
Do you hate money, anon?
The cause of your Problems
Salespeople / Sales leadership are selfish and “Me” focused.
They try to squeeze all the value out of prospects first without addressing the prospects basic human need of:
“What’s in it for me?”
99% of salespeople don’t offer anything valuable upfront so they fail to at least somewhat satisfy this need.
Salespeople expect the prospect to blindly follow their sales process without giving them any sort of reassurance that it’s worth their time to do so.
When you present features/benefits without context then you are coming off the same way as everyone else.. as a salesman.
When you present your product in the context of how it solves a stated problem, you are being helpful and earning Trust.
Stop selling. Buyers are sick of it.
In fact, companies are investing hundreds of millions of dollars into PLG motions for this very reason.
Prospects don’t want to deal with amateur salespeople anymore. But one thing that will never go away is the prospects desire for help from someone who is credible and has real expertise.
This is the alfa.
Know more about these 4 things than anyone else in your space and you will be fine:
Salespeople only have a finite amount of questions they can ask in which the prospect will comply, so each question needs to matter.
Chad note: How can you expect to look professional if you are asking questions where the answer can easily be found through Google / Linkedin search?
Introducing Question Equity
The Higher your Status, the more question equity you have.
But this isn’t fool proof. Nobody wants to feel like they are being interrogated.
However, we still want to maximize our Question Equity.
We do this in 2 steps:
Step 1: Reframe from the baseline
We need to put a new perspective (Frame) on the Baseline Frame.
Baseline Frame:
The prospect sees you as Low Status so you need to earn the right to execute your sales process.
🔽
Reframe:
The prospect sees you as High Status and there is a real benefit for them to continue down your sales process.
Step 2: Give them a treat!
Prospect: *asks technical question*
🐲: Good question. You mind providing an example where answering that question would solve a meaningful problem for you?
Prospect: *explains and is genuinely impressed by you*
Once you’ve fully understood the context behind the question, give them the treat 🍰:
🐲: Based on my experience, we would.. *explains how the solution would solve the problem in a concise way*
Prospect: I see
🐲: Was that an adequate answer?
If Yes, proceed with your Qualification process.
If No, stay there until you properly answer it.
Then you can proceed with your Qualification criteria.. and they’ll usually oblige.
Why?
Because they now know it is worth their time to continue to exploring the opportunity with you.
Think of it as a sort of “Golden ratio” between Give and Take.
Your Qualification Questions = Take
How your product solves a problem they said they have = Give
Chad note: Notice I didn’t say to tell them about your product in general. I said to understand their problem and then talk about your product in the context of how it solves their problem.
Pro tips
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