Sales Training Series #21

Insights from recent trainings

Welcome back to another Sales Training series!

These posts give you access to some of the key insights I give clients during our trainings.

Note: I intentionally keep the descriptions vague for privacy reasons.

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What we’re covering in this post:

- What to do if closing the deal is too easy

- Making high % choices in the sales meeting

- Disarming a hostile customer that is threatening to cancel their contract

- The subtleties & nuances of probing for the consequences of a problem

- Tips for staying in the Buyers buying criteria

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It’s never that easy

We always hear of salespeople being overly eager to close a deal.

You know what it looks like..

• Pouncing on the first sign of a buying signal

• Trial closing

• Rushing / Skipping through proper Discovery

When you’re eager, you are in a rush to close the deal.. fueled by anxiety and fear.

But what happens when the buyer is the one in a rush to get the deal done?

A dream come true? Not so fast.

A scenario recently came up where the buyer, an inbound lead, was ready to close fast.. a little too fast.

The buyer wasn’t particularly eager either. Quite nonchalant actually, but certain in his words.

Upon reviewing the deal, a few red flags came up:

🚩 The buyer didn’t want to see a demo. (Not that he didn’t need to see one.. he just didn’t want to see one)

🚩 The buyer didn’t reveal any specific or unique information about his situation or problem.

The Discovery was superficial (lots of situational questions, many of which can be found using Linkedin and Sales Intelligence, 1-2 problem questions, and that’s it)

🚩 The buyer said he was the sole decision maker in this.

There rarely is such a thing as “one decision maker” in B2B SaaS.

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*after 10-15 minutes*

Buyer: What does the pricing / plans look like?

Seller: starts at $10k/year for up to 3 users.. if you need more users and [features] then pricing goes up to xyz.

🚩 The seller has no idea what the buyer needs and why.. AI can (and will) give these generic answers!

Buyer: Great send me the contract for the $10k plan.

Seller: Sure thing!

🚩🚩🚩

The seller sent the contract and never heard back from the buyer.

The seller chased the buyer for weeks.

No response.

Chad note: I suspect the buyer had no real intention of buying rather he was using the seller for some ulterior motive like trying to get a better deal with his current vendor. The seller will never know because he never challenged the buyer!

So here’s what I told the seller:

“If it feels to good to be true, then it is.”

The next thing is to slow…down.

Slow. Down.

If you see an eager buyer or someone that wants to move forward faster / sooner than usual.. then you need to push back a bit.

Start by probing for more background information..