My observation of salespeople is that they desperately want to live at the value end of the equation but when push comes to shove, they tend to slide over to the price side to push deals across the finish line.

4 Key Differences

Seth Godin calls discounting price the “race to the bottom.” He has said it is a race you can’t win and that it is a race you don’t want to win. Here are four keys to having success selling value and staying out of the race to the bottom:

1. You must have table pounding conviction in the value that you and your firm provide. You can’t think it might be true. You must know it.
2. You must remember that value it is never meant to be communicated. It is meant to be demonstrated. Said differently, you can’t be going around talking about value and telling prospects how good you and your company might be. You must demonstrate it by having conversations with your prospects that your competition is not having. Remember, if you must tell people how good you are, there is a chance you are not all that good!
3. You must be willing to walk away when your prospect makes it clear that their buying decision is going to come down to price. I have a name for prospects like that – I call them “nonbelievers.” They do not believe in, nor do they have any appreciation for the value you bring to the table. Why spend a ton of time with nonbelievers?
4. Finally, none of the above will work unless you prospect with the appropriate intensity. You must take a “Seven Eleven” approach to hunting, meaning you are always open and working to fill the top of the funnel. It is hard to walk away from an opportunity if you don’t have another opportunity to walk towards.

And no offense to Walmart by the way. It is a fine place to shop. Just don’t try to sell like they do. It is hard to “out Walmart” Walmart!

 

These three qualifying questions will help salespeople sort all of their new business opportunities into two piles. Over on the left is a pile of opportunities that they want to go after. They believe they've got a good shot at winning the business because they are in their niche and in their market, so in the sweet spot. And over here on the right is another pile of opportunities. These opportunities are opportunities that they should walk on by. They're good folks, good men, good women, good businesses, but they are unlikely to leave the provider they're using today and move the business to their firm. 

The problem is of course, weak pipelines make cowards of us all. If there's not much or anything in their pipeline, then salespeople will be content to talk and work with whatever comes their way. It is the equivalent of going grocery shopping when hungry, everything looks good and almost everything makes its way into the shopping cart. So, let's start by looking at these three qualifying questions that will help engage more of the right prospects.  

3 Questions to Ask if You Want to Engage with the Right Prospects

Question #1: Do I want to win this business? 

The question every salesperson must ask themselves is, do I want to win that deal? Do I want that business? Do I want this firm or these people as a client or a customer? Are they going to be easy to work with? Are they going to be loyal to me? Are they going to be a believer in our value proposition? Are they going to have the wandering eye when every other firm offers a cheaper option? Do I want the privilege of working with them? 

That is one of the best things about a career in sales. You get to pick your clients.

 Question #2: Can I win this business?

The answer to this question is largely a function of whether or not the incumbent relationship is breakable. A salesperson must consider, can I win it? They can't win unless there are two things present at the same time. The prospect has a problem, a challenge, an issue that they have to fix. They’ve got to be in front of a company or an individual that has a problem that they absolutely have to fix. They're not kicking the tires. It has become a priority that they have to fix. 

And secondly, they have to be able to leave the incumbent provider. They have to be able, at the end of the sales process, to do what some would consider to be very tough. Does the problem hurt that much or would they rather live with it? The prospect always wants to avoid that difficult conversation of calling Mary or Matt at the current provider and saying, you're done. We're moving over here to another company. A salesperson can't win the business unless they have a prospect with a problem they have to fix. And they're willing to say, Bye-Bye to the incumbent.  

Question #3: How do I win this business?  

Question 3 is a matter of sales methodology and sales strategy. When a prospect says to a salesperson, “I've enjoyed our conversation. I'd love to see you put into writing what you think you can do for us.” That request might be fine, but let’s discuss the evolution of an opportunity. The prospect must have a compelling problem that must be fixed and be willing to leave their current provider. Two steps in the sales process.  But a salesperson must find out if they have the capacity to deal with it – meaning do they have the time, money and resources to take action.  And then a salesperson must make darn sure they are in front of the decision makers and if not, how and when can they meet with them. The how about engaging with prospects is the great pipeline cleaner.  Strong salespeople know that the best time to lose a prospect is today. There are more steps to this stage-based sales process, more than can be covered today.

Bonus Questions:

Another unwritten rule is that salespeople must get very good at talking their prospect’s love language. Their love language revolves around the problems they're having and the potential you have to solve them. What are the future growth opportunities that they might see? That's what they think about all the time. Any executive, any owner of a company, the men and women who put their sweat equity into building something - they're concerned about a lot of things. But at the top of their list are the problems and the things that threaten their business today. And as they look down the horizon around the corner into the next quarter or the next fiscal year, what are the potential opportunities that they would like to seize or take advantage of? These are the questions that will help you engage with prospects. 

In summary, all salespeople are going to lose deals they probably should have won. But there's one thing that is inexcusable and that is not being properly prepared for a sales conversation. That is not a matter of skill, that is a matter of discipline and being accountable and making the decision to pre-call. One way to engage with more of the right prospects is to have a prospect scorecard. A prospect scorecard will put a little bit of logic and methodology to the process.

 

 

 

 

1. Must have a USA: This acronym stands for Unique Sales Approach. How are your salespeople distinguishing themselves from the competition? Have you heard and seen their first call approach by phone and in person? The 80/20 Rule applies to most salespeople and proves out that the majority of revenue comes from about 20% of clients. In order to have a USA, producers must spend time defining their profile and determining how to go about finding and reaching more of them.
   
   Working with clients over the past 30 years, we know that if a salesperson is an expert in a particular area, their ability to open doors, have compelling conversations and serve/sell to a particular segment is more successful. What specific types of clients are your relationship managers best at working with? Focusing on a segment allows salespeople to develop deep domain expertise in an area and that experience provides them with stories and an understanding of the challenges faced by that client type. Credibility grows as prospects and clients recognize that this salesperson is different. In fact, they are advisors with a particular set of skills that can truly help them and their company.
   
   When your salespeople are experts, their messaging will resonate on first calls and in social selling platforms like LinkedIn, Google, at association meetings.  Top salespeople are always gathering industry information about their target client and building their acumen in their expertise. Spend time with your team listening and helping them refine their Unique Selling Approach to help them develop a truly competitive sales strategy.
   
   
2. Must follow an ESS: This stands for Effective Selling System. According to our partner, Objective Management Group, the pioneer and leader in sales evaluations, an effective sales system measures an individual’s ability to follow a proper sequence of stages and milestones of a structured sales process. An effective sales process evaluates a salesperson on sales-specific attributes such as if their process has key milestones, and if their process yields consistent results. When a salesperson excels at sales process, opportunities will be consistently defined in their pipeline. When a salesperson is weak on Sales Process, their pipeline will have inconsistently defined opportunities, creating longer sales cycles and pipeline bloat.
   
   To demonstrate just how critical having an ESS is in developing a competitive sales strategy, you can see on the chart below the correlation of Sales Process to Sales Percentile. 87% of elite producers follow a sales process, while only 20% of weak salespeople do so. Which category do you want and need your salespeople to fall into? Make certain that your company has, follows and inspects a consistent and effective sales process.

 

3. Make sure to ABP: One last acronym for you, this stands for Always Be Prospecting. The skill and habit of prospecting relates directly to your producers’ skills and commitment to hunting. One of the findings on the sales evaluation we utilize includes the specific skills that top prospectors have mastered:

• Will prospect & prospect consistently
• Has no need for approval
• Schedules meetings
• Recovers from rejection
• Maintains a full pipeline
• Not a perfectionist
• Reaches target clients
• Gains referrals from clients and networks
• Uses social selling tools
• Attends networking events

Your best salespeople schedule time on their calendars to prospect as part of their competitive sales strategy.  And today it is even more important that they do so. Here is a sobering statistic about the world of modern day selling: the average number of attempts to reach a prospect has increased to 16-18, but most salespeople quit after less than 5 attempts. Maybe they think that, “in the good old days,” people used to return calls but the world has changed. Prospects are a hard fish to catch. Make sure that your team has persistence and a commitment to ABP as a key to developing their competitive sales strategy.

 

 

If your team needs to have better initial appointments, they must adopt best practices for prospecting for new leads. They’re going to have to improve the quality of their initial phone call. It takes about 16 attempts to reach a prospect to get them engaged. Most people give up after four attempts. First, your producers and relationship managers and lenders have got to be more persistent and consistent in their outreach and second, they must get better. That first phone call is so critical.

4 Rules for Prospecting for New Leads

Here are some keys to remember to upgrade your team’s prospecting effectiveness. What is the purpose of the first call? Simply, to get the prospect engaged. Not to talk product and definitely, not to sell anything. The first call is to gain their attention, find out what is on their minds and secure a meeting. So here are four rules to help your team improve in that area. Remind them that:

1. How they say what they say is more important than what they say
2. Nobody wants to talk to them, really
3. The first 10 seconds are critical
4. They must sound like someone the prospect would choose to speak with

All of those can be improved if you require your people to prepare themselves with pre-call planning. They must know what they are going to ask, what the prospect might ask them and be prepared so they can pivot if they need to. If they cannot connect with the prospect in the first 10 seconds, everything from there is uphill. All of this requires practice, practice, practice. That’s where real leadership emerges.  Are you inspecting these behaviors?  Does your company have a consistent sales approach that you or your managers are following and coaching around? All salespeople, including yours, will fall back on what is comfortable, what they learned at a prior company. To implement best practices in prospecting for new leads, you will have to take them out of that comfort zone.

How can leaders get better at improving the sales techniques of their people without processes proven to work? We help many companies with a better first call approach, improving their team’s ability to prospect for new leads. We call this the 8-Step phone approach but that is not important. What IS important is that your people craft this, practice this, refine it and tailor it to who they are calling. First calls that are effective are no whimsical in nature, not off the cuff, they are pre-planned and precise. However, the prospect is not scripted, so your lenders and producers must be flexible and tenacious. Here is a simplified approach for the 8-Step call:

1. Introduce Yourself then…
2. STOP​ (let them talk, ask etc.)
3. Ask Permission​ to continue
4. Provide short Positioning Statement​ about what other clients in their industry are dealing with (Sample: Bob, in talking with executives like yourself, some of the common challenges that I've been hearing are hiring top talent, and an uncertainty that the people they have can overcome some of the challenges facing them in the coming year. Bob, I'm curious, are either of those having an impact on you and your business?)
5. Let them answer then ask permission to continue
6. Give two examples of how you have helped others in similar situations
7. Discussion & Drill Down ​– ask questions to find out how these issues are affecting them, their company, their success
8. Close for Appointment​ – no selling, no product talk (Sample: Bob, can I make a suggestion? Why don't you invite me out? Let's find some time to sit down. We can ask each other some questions, and at the end of that, we'll both know if it makes sense to talk further.)

Have your people script this for upcoming calls, then practice over and over. It should not be or sound like a canned approach. They must become familiar with it; they must own it and it must be unique. Have them do that for the next 30 days. Have them record their opening dialogue to their phone call. Listen to it. Have other people listen to it. Coach it. Would you want to talk to them if they called you?

It's important to warn your people about getting happy ears, as we like to call it. They hear one kind of buying comment, such as yes, we really could use a better approach, and bam, they are introducing their product benefits and how they can make it better. Instead, your salespeople will be unique and stand out if they ask questions, better questions and lots of questions to fully understand the prospect’s problem. See how long your salespeople can go without talking about their product or company or solution. At the end of the conversation, their prospect should be thinking: That was different or I can see myself doing business with him or her down the road. I might not have a problem right now, but when I do, I'm going to be thinking of them. They asked good questions, they challenged me, they don’t want to sell me, they want to know me.

So, I will ask you again: How good is your team at prospecting for new leads? And what are you going to do about it?

 

 

The traditional perspective on cross-selling, if we were in discussion at a training session, would likely involve me asking the participants why we should engage in it. Common responses would revolve around increasing sales, driving market penetration, and enhancing customer loyalty to fend off competition. While these reasons may hold some truth, let’s shift the focus to this question: where is the emphasis placed?

The traditional rationale centers on the benefits to the company – more sales, increased market share, and customer retention. However, there’s a notable absence of consideration for the customer. This observation holds true in our experiences at Anthony Cole Training Group, where, despite our 30 years of engagement in this conversation nationwide, rarely does anyone express that cross-selling and up-selling strategies should occur because they genuinely are in the client’s best interest.

As sales leader, you should lead the charge to adopt an approach that will foster comfort for you and your team and also elevate the quality of the relationships you have built with your customers over time. To achieve this, we must entertain the possibility that the most compelling reason to broach the topic of relationship expansion with a client is the potential benefit to their best interests. It could be that your client is struggling with a problem they need assistance in solving. Here are ten keys to helping your team with client expansion, a much better term for cross-selling or up-selling:

1. Remember the focus is on the client, not you or your company
2. Take a consultative approach
3. Demonstrate empathy
4. Be curious and ask the right questions (takes practice)
5. Engage in active listening
6. Ask if they need your help
7. Be their guide
8. Make it your goal to take care of the whole client
9. Focus on stewardship instead of selling
10. Guide them to make sound decisions

You will encounter doubt and skepticism, no doubt. Your salespeople will likely think but not share the following:

• If I ask for other business, they might think I’m greedy
• I’ll ask for other business after I’ve proven I can do a good job for them
• I’ve already asked them - they said they aren’t interested
• I can’t ask for other business because it might jeopardize my current relationship
• They already have a relationship with someone else that does that for them

If your team truly believes that they are stewards for their clients, many of these objections fall away. After all, by its very definition, stewardship is the job of taking care of something that has been entrusted to you. We will often coach salespeople to “think like the CEO” and ask CEO-like questions. Understanding the bigger picture that the prospect is operating from is always additive. A consultative approach to this will involve asking questions about growth goals of the company or retirement goals for the individual. What is keeping them up at night or getting in their way of reaching their plans? Understanding the environment and industry your prospect or client is operating in is essential. Remember the word “entrusted”.  As you reflect on your team’s success or challenges in the areas of cross-selling and up-selling strategies, have they earned the trust and operated as a steward for their clients? Let’s eradicate the term cross-selling and focus on relationship expansion and serving the whole customer.