Sales guru Jill Konrath has a lot to teach us about crafting a strong Value Proposition. But her key point is very simple: Your message has to make the intangible tangible.
Whether you’re selling to C-level executives or small business owners, companies want to know how your product or service is going to benefit them — that’s what the Value Proposition is all about. Continue reading →
You’ve landed your meeting with the CFO. She and her team are all assembled and ready to listen. Barely five minutes into your presentation, you see the disenchanted looks on people’s faces and realize, with that sinking feeling, that no one is really engaged.
Maybe that’s because you never captured their interest in the first place. Continue reading →
“Everyone lies,” as TV’s master diagnostician, Dr. Gregory House, famously noted.
We all do it. Often we’re just being tactful. Telling someone we’re about to walk into a meeting can be an expedient way to end a conversation.
On the other side, when we’re searching for sales prospects, we need to qualify those put-offs and quickly determine if it’s a clear message that we’re barking up the wrong tree, or merely a slight a bump in the road. Continue reading →
I saw this in a recent webinar, and it didn’t surprise me at all: 60% of sales opportunities with executives result in no change – the buyer ends up sticking with the status quo.
For commercial producers this is probably quite familiar, considering how frequently businesses agree to meeting with an outside agent, just to keep their current agent “honest.” But there are many ways to change those odds for the better.
If you’re only competing to lower prospects’ costs, your chances of winning the account are limited to the arena of price. But if you expand that arena to include other things that matter to the buyer, you increase your leverage and clout. Continue reading →