Make your Value Proposition
Irresistible
Help your reps identify the
characteristics of their best clients and enumerate your
firm’s unique benefits. Ask your team, “Why would my ideal
prospect talk with me?” What makes us different from everyone
else? What would our prospects and customers do/use if we were
not around?
To help you position yourself to qualify
and attract your precise target market use a position statement in
all your communications. What should that statement be?
Remember the first rule of selling:
Attract attention and engage the prospect. You want to say something
that will elicit a response along the lines of: "That sounds
interesting; tell me more."
Here's a powerful technique you can use
to define your value proposition and create an elevator pitch in one
minute or less. It will position you and your services perfectly
with the ideal clients you seek. This one-minute positioning
consists of two parts. Each is essential to the positioning process.
The first part begins with a “You know
how” statement, such as “You know how XXXX executives like yourself
are always looking for YYY?” Use an analogy, current event or
success story to make the first part of the elevator pitch come
alive. Here is a “Coach Nick” example: “You know how sports teams
bring in speakers to motivate their teams…”
The power of this opening resides in two
important elements of sales psychology: focusing on the prospect,
because it is more important for you to be interested than
interesting, and emphasizing your understanding of the prospect's
problems. Remember the words of Paul Karasik, "Prospects don't care
how much you know until they know how much you care."
The second part of the elevator pitch
answers the most important question in any prospect's mind: "What's
in it for me?" Before they become clients, prospects want to know
how you and your services will help them achieve their goals. To
make sure the second part of your elevator pitch is strong, write
it, say it aloud, and then ask, "So what?"
Therefore, you would follow up with a
“What We Do” benefit statement for part two of your elevator pitch.
“What we do for you is ZZZ …” Here is another “Coach Nick” example:
“What we do is work with sales professionals & teams to develop
your sales plan & drive higher revenue!”
Perfect Your Presentation
Evaluate your reps’ presentation,
including technology tools utilized. Sending an agenda ahead and
indicating others who should attend will give prospects more stake
in the outcome, make them more of a partner in the meeting, and
promote buy-in.
Suggest that your sales-person invite a
Sales Engineer, VP of Customer Services or other relevant personnel
to participate in the presentation. If you operate a manufacturing
facility, offer the client a plant tour. While this requires advance
planning and involves giving up some control, it pays big dividends
by empowering others; your sales-person simply orchestrates the
presentation and ratchets up the excitement.
- What tools are you using in your presentation?
-
Describe your preparation and
follow-up.
- What does your presentation look like?
- How can you leverage internal resources for best results?
Grow Client Relationships
It’s not about keeping in touch or
playing golf together. Rather, the objective is to become a
value-added resource. Best methodology: hold a Client Review, a
powerful tool to grow revenues from existing clients. These work in
the same way that a leadership team meets off-site to plan their new
year. In this case, you and your client are the "leadership team"
and you are taking a step back to review the account. (See the
article, “Do Relationships Really Need Work.”)
This strategic meeting elevates the
salesperson from vendor to partner. Ideally, it should be held at a
neutral location, away from distractions. By summarizing past
results, discussing present options and outlining opportunities and
expectations for the future, the process enables your sales-person
to meet more people inside the client company, if a key contact
leaves or is transferred…find out the inside track, to effectively
defend against competition…and discover new ways to work together in
the future.
- What are you doing now to become a value-added resource?
- Where do you and the client need to go together?
- Are you using client reviews to best advantage?
Soliciting Referrals
A line like, “Hey, do you know
anybody?” puts clients on the spot and just doesn’t fly.
Instead, instruct your sales-person to specify key
characteristics and ask, “In the coming weeks, when you run
across someone like this, will you introduce me?” You have to
help your client get laser focused on the type of contact that
you are seeking – In the movie Jerry McGuire you heard
repeatedly, “Help me to help you.” Help your clients help you
by narrowing your criteria for them.
Your rep can even create an email or
phone script so it’s easy for the client to make the introduction.
Sending a hand-written note to thank the referrer and keeping that
person updated reinforces positive behavior, generating more
referrals.
When your reps are laser-focused,
targeting the right prospects with the right pitch, and utilizing
presentations that leverage your resources to the utmost, everything
falls into place. Using Client Reviews, your reps will meet more
people at client companies, introduce new products and services, and
take more business from competitors. By asking for referrals, they
can create sales without cold calling. That’s Account Management
done right! Play To Win!
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