- August 8, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We were at the Zoo when we came upon the monkey in the picture. He was holding on to the chainlink fence with both hands and both feet – probably not very unusual for a monkey – but he was sitting on a basketball!
The monkey is following a traditional monkey methodology for hanging on, while being authentic, allowing his silly personality to come through, and getting people who were interacting with him to laugh.
We can even apply that approach to sales process and methodology!
Sales Process consists of several stages, each having appropriate milestones that must be achieved. Sales Methodology is the approach we take to move from milestone to milestone and stage to stage. Methodology can also be explained as what a good conversation sounds like as we achieve each milestone of the sales process.
Sales Process is our chain link fence. It’s the structure. It doesn’t change and it’s not a moving target.
Sales Methodology is our basketball. We’re staying true to sales process (holding on) but we can have fun in how we use sales methodology. In fact, the more enjoyable your conversation, the more engaged your prospect will be. I’m not suggesting that you tell jokes, but you should understand the difference between being overly serious versus having an enjoyable conversation. Overly serious equals boring.
An engaged prospect will share more with you. An engaged prospect will spend more time with you. An engaged prospect will come back for more. And if your engaged prospect is also the decision maker, they will probably do business with you, especially if your competition failed to reach them. Salespeople who reach decision makers early in the sales process are 341% more likely to close the business.
Be yourself! When you are authentic, it will be much easier to build trust, and the more your prospect trusts you, the more information they’ll share.
What kind of information are you seeking? The kind that leads to uncovering your prospects’ compelling reasons to buy and buy from you. When you monetize their compelling reasons, and your prospect becomes emotional, they may feel tremendous urgency to take action.
The decision maker may be the only person with actual compelling reasons to buy while others, usually below the decision maker on the org chart, may not understand those reasons. And let’s bring back the basketball back into the conversation. Your authentic, engaging conversation differentiates you from your competition and it’s even better if it doesn’t sound salesy.
Putting all the pieces together, when you inject your personality into sales process, uncover and monetize the decision maker’s compelling reason to buy from you, and the decision maker becomes emotional, you will have become the value, effectively differentiated yourself, and will likely get the business. All that’s left is to thoroughly qualify the opportunity.
