Getting Started with Outbound Sales: Lecture 3
Sales strageies that work
Create a powerful value proposition: Most people can’t articulate challenges they struggle with on a daily basis. But whe you can articulate those challenges and provide a strong vision of how your products and services will solve those challenges, it can drive the urgency to change.
Tell a strong story: The typical sales person will focus on facts and features.. but that’s not how the human mind works. Telling a personal story and using metaphors will help bring your message alive. It will paint a vivid picture which help make your message even more memorable.
Leverage referrals: A referral is a magical thing. When someone trusted makes a pitch to a lead, then the salesperson’s job becomes a whole lot simpler. When you do close a sale, make sure to ask for referrals. Or better yet, wait a few weeks for the customer to “feel” the value of your products and services. At that point, a referral would be even stronger.
Automate everything you can: Your team needs to be cost efficient. If you’re finding prospects by running the same searches on the same systems, you need to use a tool to automate it and just let you know about new results. You can use auto dialers and email templates to speed up communications. Software systems can also automate meeting scheduling and lead scoring.
How to qualify prospects
Qualifying is the determining whether it’s worth your time and effort in trying to convert the prospect to a customer.
The biggest mistake you can make is spending time trying to sell to customers who will never convert. Since your time is precious, it’s important for you to eliminate non-opportunities as fast as you can.
Lead qualifying questions should be provocative: They should make your prospect think through their challenges and they get you the information you need to assess if they’re a good fit for your company’s products and services.
Here’s a list of qualifying questions you should ask:
- What results do you hope to see from the work we do together?
- What are your company’s goals?
- What is your most important priority?
- What’s keeping you from overcoming that challenge?
- How well are your competitors doing?
- What are you willing to stake your reputation on?
- What’s your customer acquisition cost?
- Which internal team or department do you struggle most with?
- Who signs the contracts? Who is the decision maker?
- How will you know if we’ve been successful?
- What could obstructs us from working together?