Sales Training Series #25

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:

- Strategies for closing more referral partnership business

- Dealing with a “no-show”

- Reframing the same question in different ways depending on your objective

- Subtle but powerful changes to opening a meeting

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Strategies for closing more referral partnership deals

I recently worked with a channel sales rep whose focus is on recruiting more referral partners and generating more referral business from those partners.

He has a hard time doing both and often comes up against objections such as:

“We’re already partnered with [similar company]”

“We’ve had a 3rd party screw up with clients in the past so we’re not interested”

“We already do this in-house”

During our consult we workshopped various strategies & Framing to overcome the objections.

Additional Context

• The potential referral partner does not need to stop partnering with the incumbent in order to partner with the other company. They can be complimentary to one another.

Creating Differentiation

In order to be seen as better you first need to be seen as different.

Differentiation is what gives you the first opening in order to persuade them to see you as “better”

We create differentiation by working backwards..

Baseline Frames

a Baseline Frame is the dynamic at play before ever saying a word to the buyer.

What is the buyers Frame, or in this context, the potential referral partner’s Frame?

We can reasonably assume it is something like:

Buyer Frame: I don’t see a need to partner with you as well. And if I’ve had a bad experience with you in the past then I really don’t see the need to partner with you again.

What it would look like if we created a new “Seller Frame” that is more compelling than the Buyer’s Frame?

It would look something like this:

Seller Frame: There are more reasons to partner with us than not to. I just need to help you discover that so you can decide for yourself. And bad experiences happen! Nobody’s perfect.

Now that we understand the Baselines we move into strategy..

Step 1: Start with the Reasons to become a Referral Partner

**Regardless if they have an existing partnership or not.

Reason #1: We offer more comprehensive products and services

Reason #2: We offer higher payouts

Reason #3: More well known brand

Step 2: What problem does each reason solve?

Reason #1: We offer more comprehensive products and services

Chad notes:

• Define “comprehensive”

• What do less comprehensive products / services look like?

• What current/future/known/unknown problems would a referral partner have when offering less comprehensive products / services to their client?

• What current/future/known/unknown problems would a client have when being offered or using less comprehensive products / services?

• More comprehensive products / services = More variety. Turning that to a problem = Not enough or the right solutions to offer their clients

Reason #2: We offer higher payouts

• What’s the difference in payouts?

• What problems does having higher payouts solve? (i.e Less earnings, etc)

• Why does the competition offer lower payouts? How does that reason create a problem for the referral partner that partnering with your company would solve?

Reason #3: More well known brand

• A well known brand can reduce friction in the sales process. Are their clients not buying because they don’t know or trust the brand their advisor is referring to them?

• A well known brand can mean it is more reputable. And a more reputable brand can mean higher close rates and customer satisfaction. Are they losing deals because they only have one partner for their clients to choose from? Are their clients complaining or churning because of issues with the platform?

The answers to these questions will help you come up with your questions and Framing..

Example of Questions and Framing: