Sh*t flows downstream!
Most of your sales problems are a result of what you did and/or didn’t do prior to that problem arising.
Think of it as garbage flowing downstream..
Instead of removing the garbage early on so as not to further pollute the water, you just let the garbage continue to contaminate the fresh water. The longer you wait to remove the garbage, the more contaminated the fresh water becomes.
If you wait for the prospect to address the elephant in the room, their issues will carry more “weight” which increases the odds of those issues derailing your deal.
“Your price is too high!” could’ve been addressed earlier in the process
“I’m not the decision maker!” could’ve been discovered in the first 5 minutes of your call
“We’re not ready to make a decision until next quarter” could’ve found that out early on!
All of those annoying and repetitive objections you hear in your day to day can largely be resolved with a different approach.
Resolved = overcome or Disqualify
Every day I get messages like “the prospect said this / did that, what should I do / say?”
They think they are put in their current situation by accident.. but that’s not the case.
Very few of your sales problems happen out of nowhere.. and with a little bit of digging, I find out that what was not done prior is the cause of their current predicament.
Common scenario
Many of you who do cold outreach are falling into the same trap nearly every other salesperson does.
You frame your cold email as a “show & tell” if the prospect agrees to meet.
You say things like:
“Do you have some time so I can show you how we can help [your company] save hours a week on X?”
So is it any surprise that the prospect gets pissed off when they agree to your ask (see your platform) and then you say “Wait one second! I want to learn a little bit more about your business”?
You’re being inconsistent with your messaging (what happened *prior* to your meeting)
You asked them to jump on a call so you can show them how to [achieve desired result] with your [new solution]
When people see inconsistency in others behavior, they get sketched out and/or pissed off.
If you want this to stop happening you need to stop leading with:
- Your solution
- Showing how you can help them or how you do X
All you’re doing is anchoring the idea that you’re going to dance for them.
Is it any surprise the prospect gets annoyed when you don’t comply on the call? You’re breaking your promise!
Stay congruent
Instead of begging telling the prospect how great your solution is and how you can help, you’re going lead with the problems you fix and see if they bite.
You’re essentially laying out your Frame and inviting them to enter or not:
They have the problem and in order to diagnose if you can fix their problems, you need to understand more about how their business is being affected by those problems.
You don’t just walk into a doctors office and demand meds. They need to diagnose you first.
Sending the right message
The more articulate and detailed you can be when describing the problems you fix, the better.
Here’s an email template you can get inspiration from..
🐲: Hey John, feel free to stop reading if this is irrelevant.
Many SMM’s are using us to help with:
1) presenting ROI to senior leadership (they tell us that no one else in the company understands how social actually works to the point where it feels like they are wasting their breath trying to explain it)
2) Communicating with other departments to post social content. It’s frustrating trying to nail down approvals when there is a wide range of opinions.
3) Dealing with lack of resources which leads to poor quality content getting posted
If any of this resonates with you, hit reply. I have some questions to make sure it’s a fit.
The call
Most of the Frame has now been set making your job a whole lot easier. Now it’s just a matter of maintaining control of the Frame.
Instead of saying you want to learn more about their business you kick off the call with something like:
🐲: So it’s good to connect John. Out of curiosity, which of the 3 points in my email resonated the most with you?
then you probe deeper so you can move the prospect from Logic to Emotion (and then back to Logic)
For examples of how to probe deeper and turning the sale emotional you can check out my course here.
Pro tips
Another practical example of winning through Disqualification:
*Chad note: context matters here so use your best judgement simply copying and pasting this strategy!
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This is quality.
What do you recommend as a good subject line for the template? Great article.