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 scenario descriptions vague for privacy reasons.
What we’re covering in this post:
- Tips on Compelling Events
- Setting Anchors in order to create Contrast
- Examples of responding to subtext
- How to deal with “We’re shopping around”
- Turning Commoditization into Discovery
“Why now?”
Compelling Events provide a great answer to the “Why now?” question.
I was doing an exercise with a client in order to learn which compelling events are common in his buyers world that would compel them to need his software.
We discovered the 3 most common compelling events are:
- Contract up for renewal with the incumbent
- New round of funding
- New hires
Then my client told me:
“But there’s situations where someone comes in, sees the value, and wants to buy immediately. Happened the other day. She was interested in learning more. Saw the opportunity to increase operational efficiency. And she bought.”
Chad note: He didn’t know if the 3 common compelling events were at play because he didn’t ask. This is a mistake.
Now let’s pretend he did ask and discovered that there wasn’t any compelling events at play. That the buyer was just interested to learn more.
Would that mean the buyer is automatically disqualified?
No.
It just means the buyer better have a damn good reason as to why they want to change.
And in this case, the buyer did have a good reason to change because they ended up buying despite the seller not understanding the full picture.
When my client tells me “they saw the opportunity to increase operational efficiency and they bought” a couple things come to mind:
The buyer saw the cost of inaction and that’s what contributed to or drove the Urgency
There may have been other factors at play but we’ll never know because he didn’t ask
Deals do close without compelling events.
However, the Pain and Desire must be strong enough to overcompensate for the lack of the compelling event in order move forward.
But, I still advised him to look for compelling events in all his meetings because that’s a huge factor that drives urgency.
I told him you can (and should) discover & co-create compelling events with your buyers.
If your buyer is about to hire 3 new people in the next month and they need to upgrade their systems, then it would be smart to sell to that compelling event. You’d Frame your software as a solution to the current and future problems they are likely to run into as a result of their compelling event.
Set up a sequence of steps in order to get your product trialled and operational before they bring on those 3 new people.
If there is no compelling event at the top of the conversation then look for urgency at the problem level.
You should always be looking for urgency at the problem level regardless if there is a compelling event or not.
Additional Tips
Try to look for as much internal / external pressures in the buyers world that will drive them away from the Status Quo.
Think of stacking it all up.. Pain + Desire + Compelling Event(s) = Maximum Urgency
Contrast is KING
Buyers need contrast in order to make decisions.
For example, let’s say you sell a software with the main value prop being cost savings.
If you’re like my client then you may have conversations that go something like this:
Buyer: We have all these different tools that we're using, and we're thinking of consolidating some of them to help us save on costs.
Seller: What do total costs look like today?
Buyer: ~$50k/month
Seller: Wow that’s a lot. And what tools are you using?
Buyer: *lists the tools*
Seller: We can definitely replace a few of those. You know, with our software you can… *lists features/benefits*
Buyer: Interesting. Tell me more?
and so begins the dog & pony show.
Let’s pause for a moment.
Does the seller have enough information from the buyer to start talking solutions?
No.
Few issues:
All the seller knows is the buyer spends $50k/mo on various tools. The seller assumes the buyer has intent to change simply because the buyer is curious.
The seller assumes they can save the buyer money. But the seller doesn’t know for sure because they don’t have enough information yet.
There’s nothing for the buyer to anchor the $50k/mo figure to. So the claim of saving on costs isn’t very credible. It lacks substance.
What’s missing in all of this is more details and contrast.
Contrast, in this context, means the space, or gap, between where the buyer is and where they need to be.
Not where they want to be, but where they need to be.
This contrast is where discomfort lives.
And the buyer needs to feel their internal discomfort regarding their situation in order to change.
That’s why I recommend setting anchors in your sales meetings:
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