January 9th, 2024

Uncertain if your customer is motivated by pain or pleasure in making this purchase? 

The answer is right on their resume. 

One of my favorite questions to ask prospects on discovery calls is, “Why have you chosen to work here?” 

Seems like a pretty innocent question, but what winds up happening is that the prospect now has to literally defend the choices they’ve made that wound up with the career that they have. If they are proud of the choices they’ve made, you’ll hear it in their voice and that will indicate they’re a pleasure buyer. 

But if they’re embarrassed by the choices they’ve made, you’ll hear that as well. And then you’re most likely doing a pain sale. 

For more Hacks, check out our YouTube page.

January 9th, 2024

Looking for ways to do even more research on a customer? 

Well stop thinking like a salesperson and start thinking like a buyer. 

One of the quickest ways to learn more about an organization is to have them sell to you, which is exactly what I do on highly strategic accounts. Before I start networking and navigating and doing my research online, I like to do an inbound lead request where I’m presenting myself as someone with curiosities about their company, so that a sales rep will contact me. 

By having that sales call meeting, I probably will learn more in 15 minutes about this organization than I will over several hours of research online.

For more Hacks, check out our YouTube page.

Want quicker response time for your quotes? 

Change your months to Mondays. 

I don’t why we do this, but in sales, we tend to default the expiration dates of our quotes to 30 days. All that really does is it asks our prospect not to look at this quote until the 29th day, and I don’t think I want to do that if I want a fast and furious pipeline.

Make sure all of your quotes expire the following Monday that you sent them. It forces a quicker response for your prospect and more anxiety on their end than on our end.

For more Hacks, check out our YouTube page.

Would you like to get your customer far more engaged even earlier in the sales cycle? 

Promises. Promises. 

You know, the most powerful type of buying signal is when a customer delivers on a promise – they actually do what they said they were going to do. 

So why don’t we make it easy for them? Instead of giving a customer a laundry list of things to do for us and action items, how about give it to them one at a time? Do what I do. 

Ask for simple, actionable closes early so they work the muscle of delivering on those promises, so it becomes a habit instead of an exception. 

For more Hacks, check out our YouTube page.

Struggling to get your email returned? 

Why not sign off with more grace? 

We don’t think a lot about our signature lines in our email, but it all counts when it comes to open rates and response rates. And long signature lines that advertise where we went to school or our graduation date, or our LinkedIn profile only reduces our social value and reduces the likelihood of a return. 

Keep your email signature simple. Leave it to your name, your company’s name, and one phone number. Then maybe you can spend the rest of that email on a topic more interesting to them.

For more Hacks, check out our YouTube page.

Want to know how to gain leverage in any negotiation?

You just got to give a little more. 

We think so much in negotiation about what we want that we sometimes don’t think about what we’re able to give. But the things that we give our prospect, based on the reaction of the prospect when they get it, generally reveals leverage. It lets us know what’s important to them, it lets us know what they value, and it lets us know what they might do more for if we’re able to offer it to them in the future. 

Take some time and outline all the different things that you could possibly give to a prospect during a sales opportunity and have ’em at the ready so that when deals start to stall, you can offer things to keep people engaged.

For more Hacks, check out our YouTube page.

Are you starting to get tired with that stale old demo you’ve been showing? 

Maybe you need a few demos. 

If we make one demo and show it over and over and over again, even if the customer’s never seen it before, we have, and our excitement and enthusiasm is going to start to wane. 

So for my own self-preservation, I like to have multiple demos.

Then, have your prospect earn additional demos. Start with small, broad ones, and then as the prospect starts to invite other people into the deal, you can show more detailed and more interactive demos as a reward for their efforts. 

For more Hacks, check out our YouTube page.

Tired of getting the runaround from customers and prospects? 

Well, maybe you need to start getting more honest with yourself. 

It’s really easy to hear what we want to hear in sales, particularly when we know that rejection often means the end of an opportunity, but it’s really critical that we hear our customers for what they say and we’re honest with ourselves in what we hear. 

The next time a customer says something like, ”Shouldn’t be a problem,” or ”All set,” or “I don’t see why not,” do what I do. Double down on the question and make sure that you’re getting a definitive answer before you tell yourself and your boss what just happened, and that was your hack for today.

For more Hacks, check out our YouTube page.

Want to keep your customer at the negotiation table a little longer? 

Well get ’em committed. 

One of the most critical elements of negotiation is what’s known as commitment, which states that the longer someone is engaged in a process, the more likely they want to see that process completed. 

So it’s important not only that we’re closing for things that are of real weight at the end of the deal, that we’re also closing for little things early in the deal so that the customer stays committed for a longer period of time. 

So, why not do what I do. 

Not only am I asking for the large things at the end, but I’m asking for cell phone numbers, org charts, and success criteria early in the deal to get them more committed to act, to keep them at the negotiation table as long as possible.

For more Hacks, check out our YouTube page.

Still struggling to get your emails returned?

Well – be reasonable.

I know you want a meeting. I know you want a referral, but the goal when you send an email to a stranger is actually just a response or positive engagement. 

So be reasonable in what you’re asking for, and asking a stranger for a meeting is often unreasonable. Try asking for information about their company or maybe the PowerPoint deck of a slide presentation that they gave at a conference. 

Look for a response more than action and find that reasonable request actually get answered. 

For more Hacks, check out our YouTube page.