Ever been in a meeting where the salesperson whipped out their laptop and insisted in going through a long presentation?
Slide after slide of boring detail of how their solution worked. While your eyes glazed over.
All truly successful salespeople understand a fundamental irony. They can’t be salespeople. They know their clients cannot be “sold to” and must want “to buy”.
The only way to accomplish this is to have prospects come to their own conclusions. With your help of course. Which is where “facilitated buying” comes in.
When coaching salespeople in how to conduct meetings with prospects, I tell them to walk in naked!
Well, metaphorically.
Ditch the laptop, IPad, brochures and every other prop.
Walk in with pen and paper and a recorder.
Your job is to ask questions that elicit three things.
“Why Now” (the problem) and “What if?” (the outcome) and the GAP between the two.
Delve in the issues and the impact they’re having.
What insights can you bring around their issues? How well do you understand them and what they’re going through? Their known spoken about problems as well as what they don’t speak about openly.
And their aspirations. What they would really love to have happen. The “What if”. What would things be like once they’ve implemented a solution.
Unless there’s a big gap between their current problems and their aspiration, there’s no reason for them to buy. So the better you get at eliciting both and highlighting the gap, the easier it will be to have them decide to buy.
Yes, they will want to know the details and how the solution will be implemented, but only once they’re convinced of the Why Now and What if.
So next time you’re going into a sales conversation, ditch the props and go in naked.
I realise this could be a completely different mindset and sales methodology for many of you. So if you want to improve your sale team’s performance when selling complex B2B deals we can coach and train you and your team one on one or as a group. Contact Rashid for more details.
