Barcelona Activa MaxVal Technology Partners How to create new opportuniites and reach final agreement Eric Bentolilla
Activitat cofinanรงada per:
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1
How to Create New Opportunities A. How to Conduct Effective Pre-Call Planning B. How to Stimulate Interest With Prospects
2
How to Reach Final Agreement A. The 6 Golden Rules B. How to deal with objections
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Selling: Art or Science ?
Do we born as a Salesman or do we become a Salesman ? What is certain is that your success depends on your ability to make the difference.
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What buyers want To do business with salespeople that
++
understand them, their jobs and their problems.
A consultant who is going to
add value to their situations.
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What buyers don’t want
Pushy salespeople only interested
in selling their product and services.
Otherwise they would just go to
the web site for product information and prices quotes.
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The buyer’s perspective
While you’re talking, they’re thinking :
Do I want to listen to this salesperson?
Is this person different from other salespeople?
Is this person sincere?
Is this person competent?
Can I trust this person?
Do I want to share information with this person?
reveal sensitive information to a stranger?
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Establish credibility Built rapport
Establish trust, sincerity and competency Demonstrated situational knowledge
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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Principles
No pain, no change Pain flows throughout the entire organization Diagnose before you prescribe There are 3 levels of buyers needs There are 2 type of opportunities: Looking and not Looking Get there first You can’t sell to someone who cannot buy
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No pain no change A pain can be : • a critical business issue • a problem
Before
• a potential missed opportunity
And only pains give people a reason to change, to take action !
After
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People within functional groups are dependent on each other One individual’s problems
Identify and quantify 1 the pain of the individual whom you’re talking to
link to
other people within the same organization 2 but also link that problem to others
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Diagnose before you prescribe Have a good understanding of the customer’s problem
? diagnostic
before you discuss the solution !!
3 levels of needs
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3rd level
Vision of solution 2nd Admitted level Pain
1st level
Latent Pain
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Looking and Not Looking Looking : the buyer has made a commitment to buy something, 5, 10% are actually looking Not Looking : Their pain is latent, the buyer is living with his problems
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Get there first Great opportunity to set or define the buyer’s requirements.
Find opportunities in latent pain = win 90% of the time
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You can’t sell to someone who can’t buy
However, you can spend a great deal of time, money and effort !
Target and call on people as high up in the organization as possible.
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Creating new opportunities
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Increasing Your Probability of Success • The most effective way to increase your probability of success is to decrease your risk of failure.
FAILURE
SUCCESS
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Mismatching: The Avoidable Risk • Mismatching is the instinctive tendency of individuals to resist, push back or respond in a contrarian manner.
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5 strategies to reduce your risk • Mismatching is not an objection, therefore it shouldn’t be handled like one.
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#1: Ask more questions and make fewer statements • “Your boss needs to be at the presentation next week.” • Mismatch: “there’s no need for anyone else to be involved at this point.” • If your current approach to sales is statement-based, then your comments will actually invite mismatched responses.
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#2: Credibility reduces the prospect’s need to resist.
• If you want to be seen as an expert, ask expert questions
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#3: Curiosity neutralizes the mismatching reflex • It’s impossible for someone who’s curious to be inviting you in and pushing you away at the same time.
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#4: Reversing the positive • • • •
“Did I catch you at a bad time?” “Am I interrupting?” “Is next week too soon for a presentation?” “Will the pricing in this proposal make your boss nervous?”.
• Each of these questions has a negative tone, so when someone takes the opposite position they actually mismatch in your favour.
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#5: Momentum helps reduce the mismatching instinct The Herd theory. Potential buyers are instinctively trying to reduce their risk of making a bad decision. Most prospects are very interested in, and highly influenced by, what “everyone else� is doing.
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Precall planning
Have a good situational knowledge
Be prepared
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Let’s Practice: Build a Straw Man!
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Build a Straw Man
?
Build a model or profile of your prospective buyer. It could include: Defined marketing criteria
Key players Pains or critical issues for the key players Product and services capabilities aligned to each key player and pain Reference story
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Key Players List Key Players
Potential Pains
Revenue Find the best match for each target.
New business opps Simplicity …
?
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Business development prompters To create new opportunities in latent pain market
Main objective: to create curiosity !
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BDP, New opportunity Name Company
First call notice
My name is…… With……
It’s the first time I speak to you
Industry expertise
I/we’ve been working with Telecom provider for the past 8 years
Job title expertise
One of the chief concerns I/we are hearing from other IT managers….
Pain
You can help
Is their frustration with……
We’ve been able to help our customers solve this issue
Are you curious Would you be interested to know how? Earn the right to ask Just before, may I ask you a few questions to understand better questions your current situation?
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BDP, Menu Approach Name Company First call notice
My name is…… With…… It’s the first time I speak to you
Industry expertise
I/we’ve been working with Telecom provider for the past 8 years
Job title expertise
One of the chief concerns I/we are hearing from other IT managers…. Is their frustration with:
Pain You can help Are you curious
1…….. 2……. 3………
We’ve been able to help our customers solve this issue Would you be interested to know how?
Earn the right to ask Just before, may I ask you a few questions to understand better questions your current situation?
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BDP, Customer referral Name Company First call notice Referral Job title expertise
Pain You can help Are you curious
My name is…… With…… It’s the first time I speak to you Eric,IT Managers at ABC Computers, suggested that I give a call. We were able to help him address his frustration with….. 1…….. 2……. 3………
We’ve been able to help him address this issue Would you be interested to know how?
Earn the right to ask Just before, may I ask you a few questions to understand better questions your current situation?
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• Leveraging Momentum: When a prospects cut you off in the first few seconds of a sales call to ask: “What’s this about?” • “Mr Prospect, we have figured out how to solve series of very specific business problems that many customers in your industry currently face.”
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3Fs Rule: Feel, Felt, Found • When a prospect raises an objection, the salesperson aknowledges the concern by saying: • “I understand how you feel: other customers have felt the same way. Take A,B,C,X,Y,Z, for example, who had similar concern about price until they found that the value of our product far outweighed its cost.”
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A Question that Only You Can Answer “Hi Susan, this is…..I was hoping to catch you for a minute because I have a question…that only you can answer. If you could please call me back, I’ll be in my office this afternoon until around 4.30 pm”.
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Something Made Me Think of You • Make existing contacts curious: “Hi Richard, I decided to pick up the phone and call..because something happened earlier today that make me think of you. If you get a minute, I’ll be in the office until around 6.oo pm. My tel is….”
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Creating An Associative Reference • What’s an associative reference? It’s a contact you manufacture within your targeted prospect that creates and legitimizes a reason to call key decision makers and initiate a productive dialogue.
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Diagnosis and Qualification
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Leveraging the Most Powerful Tool in Sales
Even the Bible says, “ask and ye shall receive.�
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Managing the Scope of your questions • Scope: refers to a question’s broadness and narrowness. • Open-ended questions are broader in scope. • Open-ended questions are great tools for expanding relationships but they don’t help to establish credibility. • Most prospects are reluctant to express openly with a salesperson they hardly know…
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Narrowing Scope for Maximum Credibility • Now ask a series of short-answer, diagnostic questions. • Let’s practice!.....closed-ended questions
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Status Questions • • • • •
Are you providing technical support? Internally or externally? Are you using a remote support solution? Which one? On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate you current tool?
– What would make it a 10?
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Issues Questions • Issue questions facilitate the first stage of problem solving. • Asking “to what extent is---------important?” is a technique that uncovers needs and encourages people to expand their responses
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Implication Questions • The more implications you uncover, the easier it is for prospects to justify a favorable purchase decision • Issue questions and implication questions work together
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Global Questions • Use global questions to develop the need • What else? • How does that work?
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Solution Questions • Solutions questions motivate prospects to move forward by focusing their attention on solving the problem • “In your mind what would be the ideal solution?”
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QUALIFYING • Motivation for buying • Users • Urgency • Technical Buyer • Trial Activation • Economic Buyer • Champion
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QUALIFYING: MOTIVATION • What are you thoughts? • What other issues are important to you? Why? • Now that you have seen the capabilities of our solution, how do you think it can help you to solve your issues?
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QUALIFYING: USERS • Who are the current users? • Who are the potential users? • What are their expectations and issues?
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QUALIFYING: URGENCY – What is your timeline for implementing/purchasing this kind of service? – What do you see as the next action steps? – What could make this no longer a priority?
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QUALIFYING: TECHNICAL BUYER • • • •
Are you responsible for choosing the solution? What are you decision criterias? How will you measure it? Who else is involved in this decision?
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QUALIFYING: ECONOMIC BUYER • Is this investment going to be charged on the IT department budget? • What budget has been established for this? • If there’s no budget established for this, does it mean that we won’t be able to implement this solution this year?
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QUALIFYING: CHAMPIONS • What will you do if your boss says the price? • Would you arrange a meeting with the decision maker? • What if someone on the committee wants to delay the project? • What if they ask about different options?
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Create a Vision Of a Solution
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The pain sheet Help formulate control questions Facilitate the diagnostic conversation Develop product and situational knowledge Enable you to focus on providing solutions
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PAIN SHEET Pain: Support team troubleshooting follow-up Job title : IT manager Our offering: Administration console, reports
REASONS Is it because…? Today?
IMPACT Is this (pain) causing?
A. You invoice your customers and you want to be able to justify your price?
. Customer dissatisfaction? Customers queries? Why and How? . Impact on productivity? How? . Is the sales Dpt affected? How? . Who else could be affected in your organization?
B. Of a quality process?
.
What happen if you don’t have this kind of reports? . Does it mean that it might impact the entire organization?
CAPABILITIES What if …would it help if? A.When: invoicing Who: your customers What: you can generate customer specific report and fee-for-time-used charges that correspond to billing periods and can be exported to your billing systems?
A.When: reviewing remote session activity Who: you What: Could access detailed, text-based accounts of every action that occurred during a remote control session to assist in challenging troubleshooting or incident tracking?
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Demonstration Recomendations
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1. THE LESS CLICKS THE BETTER! 2. Align your demonstration with your Pain Sheet diagnosis
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Argumentations Recomandations
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GET vs WANT • We shouldn’t be trying to GET prospects to make a buying decision. We shouldn’t be trying to GET prospects to answer questions and we shouldn’t even try to GET them to listen to our pitch. • We should focus on getting prospects to WANT to buy, to WANT to answer questions and to WANT to listen.
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Customers Purchasing Motivation
• While some people run fast toward Gold Medals, many others run even faster from German Sherpherds. • Rather than hoping to benefit from all the wonderful things your product or service offers, they’re trying to avoid potential problems, uncertainty or even failure. Prospects are motivated differently.
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Gold Medals and German Shepherds “ Ms prospect, our reliability features will increase your productivity (Gold medal) and reduce all those pesky interruptions that would otherwise handcuff your business (German Shepherd).” “Performance is also an advantage for two reasons. Because our systems use advanced technology, you can access more information than ever before without any risk of overloading the system with excess network traffic.”
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How to reach Final Agreement
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Humbling Disclaimers Humility is a very attractive human quality. Humbling disclaimers give other people an opportunity to “rescue” you before you even deliver the question (no, no it’s ok, you can ask) I’m not sure how to ask this, but… Without being too forward, can I ask about…. At the risk of getting myself in trouble, would you mind if… I don’t want to ask the wrong thing but….
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Asking The Hard Questions • Is it a fair question to ask your impression? • Are we at risk of losing this business? • If you were the salesperson on this account, what would you be doing differently? • Is it just me or is something bothering you about this proposal? • What other concern do you have?
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Ask prospects to predict the outcome of the sale • My boss keeps asking when this sale is going to close. I’d much rather be accurate than optimistic, so should I tell him that we are in good shape to complete the deal by the end of the month or should I tell him not to get this hope up? • Realistically what are the chances your management will approve this deal before the end of the month • If you were a betting man, would you say this deal is getting ready to close or would you say we’re at risk?
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Overcoming “NO” • Most sales take place after at least five rejections.
• “NO” is merely a verbal response to an offer.
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Does “NO” mean, “Not right now” (Timing issues)? Does “NO” mean, “I don’t have the money right now” (revenue, budget, or billing issues)?
Does “NO” mean, “I don’t have the authority” (Buying power or decision making ability)? Does “NO” mean, “We can’t use it or don’t need it right now” (inappropriate need level for that specific offer only)? Does “NO” mean, “I don’t want to make the decision” (decision makers are changing, or your contact is leaving the organization and doesn’t want to make the commit for a successor)?
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DON’T CLOSE BEFORE IT’S CLOSABLE !
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CLOSING CHECKLIST
HAVE YOU MET WITH THE KEY PLAYER WHO HAS THE POWER TO BUY? HAS THE PAYBACK FROM OUR SOLUTION BEEN AGREED UPON? HAVE ALL APPROVALS (TECHNICAL, ADMINISTRATIVE…) BEEN GIVEN?
HAVE YOU POSITIVELY ANSWERED ALL THE CUSTOMERS OBJECTIONS?
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The 6 Golden Rules 1. « You will dare to
4. « If you must
start with a high initial requirement ».
move back, you will do it with small steps ».
2. « A direct request for concessions, you will answer initially by an argument ». 3. « Don’t give without getting: prepare a Give/get list ».
5. « You will engage the customer towards the conclusion ». 6. « Build strong pipelines».
Barcelona Activa MaxVal Technology Partners All generally finishes by a compromise… this is why one never should start with a compromise!
Golden Rule n°1
« You will dare to start with a high initial requirement »
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Golden Rule n°2
« A direct request for concessions, you will answer initially by an argument »
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PAIN ARGUMENT: “The reason we have spent the last 3 weeks together is because you are not meeting your new account revenue target. That issue will not go away until you gain these new capabilities.” VALUE ARGUMENT: “When we calculated the payback, you said that even with all cost included it was a higher return than you expected. We agreed that the project would pay for itself in 1 month.” SOLUTION ARGUMENT: “You told me that you needed an easy way to fix your customers technical problems so that you will gain in productivity. As you know, we can provide you that capability.”
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• “The only way I could do something for you is if you could do something for me.” • Buyer should ask: “Like what?”
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Golden Rule n°3
« Don’t give without getting: prepare a Give/get list »
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GIVE-GET LIST
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Pre-Closing Is it possible for you to…………………..? Is that possible? • SILENCE!! ONLY if buyer accepts your condition……. • If you can ………………….., then we are prepared to………….which is worth (€;%). • Can we go forward on this basis?
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Golden Rule n°4
« If you must move back, you will do it with small steps »
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Step Back With Small Steps • Never split the difference (50/50). Reduce each concession.
• Move away the attack: “on this point, I can do nothing. But here is what I can do for you… ”.
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Golden Rule n°5
« You will engage the customer towards the conclusion »
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The « pre-closing »
• Question of principle : – “Except this point, do you agree with the rest of our proposal?”
• Question of engagement : – “Thus, if we find an agreement on this particular point, I can count on your decision right now?”
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Golden Rule n°6
« Build strong pipelines »
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Thank you for your attention.
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