If you don't ask, you won't know!

To get past the first meeting, use questions to discover the right level of information to give a prospect

The mysteriously named Velvet Hammer over at sales recruitment blog The Hire Sense discusses a survey from CSO Insights, along with his own experience that suggests that many sales people aren't getting past the first meeting because, at the stage in the call when it is appropriate to talk about their products and services, the prospect expects more than basic product information (which they can find in numerous places, including the web). If the sales person does provide something new (or unknown), the prospect perceives that there has been no value added by the sales person and therefore sees no need to meet again.

I suspect that in most cases the sales person has plenty to talk about, given the chance. I hypothesize that the reason for this mismatch between what the prospect wants and what the sales person gives is that the sales person is often unaware of the prospect's knowledge level and therefore presents/discusses features that are below their level.

So, here are a list of simple, straight-forward and unsurprising questions to ask a prospect to ensure you hit the right level for them:

• I don't want to waste any of your time - can you give me an idea of how familiar you are with (product type), so that I don't cover old ground?
• What features are most interesting for you to hear about/see?
• In relation to the business issues we discussed earlier, what is it you'd most like to hear about/see demonstrated?
• When you walk away from this meeting, what is it you would like to know/have seen about (the product)?

And keep asking confirming questions to ensure that you are giving the right level of information :

• Is this (demo/meeting) covering the key points for you?
• Am I showing you the features you are interested in?
• Let me know if I'm not covering the stuff you'd like to see
• What else would you like to see?

These questions will be added to the Sales question bank.

Challenging the Solution Selling stages

Double your chances - target senior management

If you attribute any kind of ratings to the probability of your opportunities closing successfully, depending on where they are in the sales cycle, for example, “Pain admitted by sponsor – 25%”, then you have probably wondered whether these ratings actually mean anything or whether they are there to allow your manager to do all sorts of fancy projections for board meetings (come on, you wouldn’t really be so cynical would you?).

I decided to look into this, specifically in relation to Solution Selling’s assertion that an opportunity where the primary contact is with a Power Sponsor (someone with the power to make the decision and sign-off on the purchase) is twice as likely to result in a successful conclusion than an opportunity where the primary contact is with a Sponsor (someone involved in the sales process but without significant influence and sign-off power). Solution Selling rates the former with a 50% chance of a successful close and the latter with a 25% chance of a successful close.

So, I started tinkering around in the CRM system. In the past year’s pipeline, opportunities where the main contact was with Sponsors resulted in a successful close rate of 29%, whereas with Power Sponsors the rate was 60%. After hearty self congratulation for beating the textbook probability rates, I realised that, in this case, Solution Selling was right – contact with Power Sponsors is worth twice that of contact with Sponsors.

In light of this I have been concentrating on finding ways to improve my success rates in getting a Power Sponsor from the start of an opportunity (this includes various sales tools, qualification methods, simply not calling anyone but the Power Sponsor and just plain old fashioned insistence that I only speak to decision-makers).

In cases where access to the Power Sponsor is refused, I now have a set of tools and processes that help me quickly and efficiently deal with these lower-likelihood opportunities, thereby freeing up time to focus on the high likelihood Power Sponsor deals.

And the results? It’s too early to put into reliable figures, but suffice to say it’s looking good. As soon as I have some thing good to tell you, I’ll let you know. In the meantime please comment with your views and experiences.