Written by Hamish Knox; President of Sandler in Calgary, Canada
Creating accountable, sales focused organizations in Calgary
As much as your sales team is full of great people who are client-focused people don’t trust salespeople.
Your salespeople may be inadvertently breaking rapport with their prospects and lengthening their sales cycles because the questions they ask are perceived by their prospect as a trap.
A common example of this is when a salesperson tells a story to a prospect that has a clearly negative outcome (e.g. “and because they chose to attempt a fix instead of replacing the machine their entire plant was down for two weeks when that machine broke, which caused them to lose a big client because they couldn’t deliver on time.”) that the salesperson ends with some version of “you wouldn’t want that to happen to you?”
Another common example is when a salesperson tells a story that has a clearly positive outcome because the client that the story is about chose to use their product (e.g. “what our client found is using our software their people were twice as productive and happier too!”) that they end with “would you like your people to be twice as productive?” (If you don’t believe salespeople still ask those types of questions you’re not meeting enough salespeople).
In both of these cases the prospect feels trapped because saying “yes” to the first question and “no” to the second would be bad choices so they answer, “no” and “yes,” the salesperson thinks “got one” while their prospect starts speculating on how many voicemails this salesperson will leave before they give up.
In both stories the salesperson would be less I-centred and more prospect focused if they adjusted their questions.
In the first story ending with “what would you produce with two weeks of extra run time?” pulls the prospect away from the fear presented in the story, which puts them at ease and makes the salesperson sound like a trusted adviser.
In the second story ending with “but your team is probably pushing the limits of productivity already,” makes the prospect feel okay to say “yes, they are” or “no they’re not” because they aren’t trapped into choosing between being twice as productive or remaining status quo.
Your prospects won’t tell you that they felt trapped, but their behavior will. Train your salespeople to be aware of shifts in body language or tonality that may signal a prospect who is feeling not-OK and to gently take the pressure off their prospect by saying something like, “maybe I’m moving to fast. Should we back up?”
When debriefing sales that didn’t close ask your salespeople “where did your prospect feel trapped?” to support them in being aware of the subtle ways that they might be unintentionally costing themselves a sale.
Until next time… go lead.
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