Get-to-the-Point selling
Kevin Sasser in The Sales Wars blog says although many sales methodologies like solution selling, spin selling, strategic selling , selling to the vito (Very Important Top officer) exists and are promoted, the fundamental answer to success in sales is: G.T.T.F.P.Q.
Get To The Freaking Point Quickly
He questions why a potential buyer should care about the:
- Company history
- Existing customers
- Profile of executives and founders
- Analyst views
- Vision of the company
during the sales presentation or pitch?
Why be boring?
Why be bore your audience, when they are listening?
After all the money spent and all the efforts you have gone through for lead generation, cold calling, direct mailing campaigns, emailing campaigns, trade shows, conferences, setting the appointment you don’t deliver. What a waste!
Be happy: you have the appointment and the audience is listening.
Limited number of messages
People can only understand and absorb 2 or 3 messages at a time.
Thus if you waste these 2 or 3 during the intro of the company, then the real important messages on the product or solution are lost.
Grab the attention
In order to grab the attention immediately by telling or explaining:
- How to solve one or several problems of the company problems: tangible benefit
- How to make/save money for the company: tangible benefit
- How to make life better for management: intangible benefit
We would like to add to this:
- Bring something remarkable for them into the conversation: amaze, astonish or excite them
- Show them you understand their complete picture: maybe you are giving away free consulting
- Find a personal benefit for the decision maker (intangible benefit)
- Make ‘em laugh (intangible benefit)
Keep the pitch short
The main advice is to keep the pitch short.
Just claim your intention of the purpose of the discussion and ask for confirmation of this goal.
All of the points in the discussion during the meeting should relate to these.
Keep it simple, to the point and short – less is more.
So we named this Get-to-the-Point selling.
How to know what the lead needs?
In order to start your To-the-Point sales talk without loosing time as suggested by Kevin Sasser in G.T.T.F.P.Q., you better have:
- Investigated on the company upfront: The good, The bad and The ugly.
- Investigated on the people you meeting with: what are their drivers or hurdles?
- Know what they have been looking for on your website
in order to present exactly the solution they need.
All these investigations are supported by LEADSExplorer.
Getting to the point is a good idea. Need to establish some rapport first though, surely (I know don’t call me Shirley). A lot of it gets back to asking well targeted questions and doing your homework before the call. SPIN sort of promoted these but maybe was not explicit enough.
Greg Woodley
Thank you for the mention.
Kevin Sasser