Making Your Sales Messaging Less About You And More About Them
Last week my blog focused on making sure your messaging spoke specifically to your prospect's pain. Based on a couple of the responses I received back, I wanted to provide some specific examples of what my team has found to be useful in getting their attention.
First and foremost, avoid the features and benefits discussion right out the gates. Ultimately it will sound like you’re “fishing for a fit” and from my experience those conversations generally tend not to go anywhere.
Bad Example:
Me: Good morning [prospect name], my name is Craig Ferrara and I’m calling with AG Salesworks. I was sent your way as the person that would oversee pipeline and lead development for your organization. The reason for my call is to give you an introduction to our services and how we differentiate ourselves in the marketplace. Do you have a few moments to discuss this?
Prospect: Yes
Me: Great, AG is an 8 year old company based in the Boston area offering sophisticated teleprospecting, lead qualification and pipeline development services exclusively to technology companies offering B2B software, hardware and services. Through a combination of targeted outbound cold calling, marketing lead follow up and qualification and diagnostic questioning, we identify and develop truly qualified sales opportunities which move forward in the sales cycle at around an 80% rate. Is any of this an area of concern for you organization?
The average prospect would have stopped listening after the first sentence.
Our psychology during the brief introduction, is that you’re appealing to their pain, while also finding the time to slip an introduction to your technology. The challenge is trying to package that all up into a 30 second statement with a pretty little bow on top. (It ain't easy...)
What usually works for us is leveraging the fact that you speak with people in very similar situations/roles all day long. Don’t be afraid to sell yourself as an expert since this seems to capture their attention. Considering you're having conversations with their peers on this topic all day long, you really are.
Good Example:
Me: Good morning prospect; this is Craig Ferrara with AG Salesworks. How are you today?
Prospect: Good.
Me: Happy to hear it. I was pointed in your direction as the person to speak to your demand generation, teleprospecting and pipeline development efforts. Am I in the right place?
Prospect: Yes
Me: Great, real quickly we work with technology companies similar to yours that would like to increase the amount of active sales qualified opportunities to their outside salesforce. Our expertise centers around trying to bridge the gap that can exist between sales and marketing in order to make that happen.
How are you developing leads for your sales team now?
So let’s assume that you’ve appealed to the pain and you still get the “Everything is working well” response. Well you can still make it about them.
A good response to this would be: "Could you get into some detail on why it is working well for you?”
As a result you can further qualify the prospect in or out and you'll also have better intelligence down the road if you are not able to uncover an immediate need.
One of my senior business development reps summed it up well for me. He said he constantly keeps an old sales quote in mind every time he dials. “A prospect doesn’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care.” Make em' know you care. Whether you do or you don't, it matters to the people you're selling to.