Sales discovery for hospitality

How to create outlook signature

so this is the three-part framework for building impact it's very simple on the surface and I'm going to break down exactly how to do it okay so step one is you're coming off of your business problem discovery summarize the business problem okay you've probably asked four or five questions by now to do your cause analysis and validate the business problem probably a few more than that the most natural way to transition into impact is to summarize okay let me see if I get this right Mr or Mrs customer here's what I've heard so far summarize the problem did I get that right as soon as they say yes now you move on to step number two ask an open-ended impact question right did I get that right yes great can you help me understand the Ripple effects this challenge is having on the business okay I'll walk you through some more open-ended impact questions in just a second and then step number three once you've springboarded into exploring impact with that question is now you'll start asking targeted and impact questions to bring awareness to things they might not be thinking about now you're not just asking an open-ended impact question you're asking about very specific impacts to get them thinking and we'll talk about why it's so important to ask an open-ended impact question before a targeted one and I'll give you several examples of questions but for now remember at the beginning of this course I encouraged you to write things down to take notes this is a great point in which to do that right this three-part framework please remember this it is so incredibly effective I've never seen this not work this is how you make exploring impact feel natural instead of manipulative in kind of rhetorical which is very very common okay so I have already beat a dead horse on making this point so I'm just going to show you what this looks like as we go on but like I said the first step is to summarize the business problem which is these three parts the problem the current state you've understood the cause analysis and then springboard into asking for impact so here's exactly what this would sound like okay let's say they have a conversion rate issue and I'm just gonna you know voice over this so step one remember is summarize step two is open impact that is what this slide represents so let me summarize what I've heard so far you're looking to roll out a call coaching program for your AES and what's driving you to do that is conversion rates are sitting stubbornly at 20 percent and your CEO wants to lift that to 25 now when you think through the cause of this Gap the main issue is that your reps are feature dumping and not selling enough against paying value and outcomes did I get that right so we just completed step one the customer is going to respond okay great so from here can you help me understand the Ripple effects this conversion rate challenge has on the rest of the business that talk track is worth memorizing and inserting the customer's unique problem right I have never seen that not work it is super effective and it feels so so natural and it gets customers opening up like floodgates when it comes to sharing impact so I'm going to give you a few examples of open impact questions okay so this is step two of that three-step sequence step one was summarize the business problem step two is ask open-ended impact questions okay so here are a few of them and then we'll continue earlier I asked what challenges you were facing that would derail you right we started the conversation that way can you help me understand how that would derail you right so asking about how a problem would derail is asking about impact can you help me understand the Ripple effects this challenge has on the rest of the business I found the term Ripple effects to be very effective it's far more effective than saying the word impact because for some reason buyers have come to expect that from sales people so it feels a little bit manipulative and a ripple effect sounds like you've got a little bit of a extra business Acumen than most sales people so give that a try how is this challenge impacting the business as a whole right try that one who else does this challenge impact and how right you're seeing how pervasively this problem affects the rest of the organization which as a side note will help you get access to those other people if you want them what's driving you to solve this issue now rather than later okay they'll start to speak to the urgency and why that urgency exists so take a screenshot of this slide and just have it handy it's a really good way to start practicing asking for impact a really safe way to do it as well go give maybe two or three of these a try on your next few sales calls and see what happens now let's start talking about the difference between open and targeted questions okay so these are step two and three of that framework remember step one was summarize the business problem step two was ask an open-ended impact question and step three is ask targeted questions now here's the difference between those last two open questions are open-ended and they allow the buyer to go whichever direction they choose that is a very important point to understand they give the buyer permission they make the buyer feel in control of the conversation because you're not trying to funnel them into anything in particular yet targeted questions do funnel the buyer into something you want to funnel them into they narrow the buyer's Focus to something specific you'd like them to talk about so an example of an open-ended question or an open impact question is help me understand the Ripple effects this conversion rate challenges having on the business it can go wherever the hell they want right they feel totally free to answer how they want now an example of a targeted question on the same business problem would be to what extent is this conversion rate issue affecting your customer acquisition costs right now we're funneling them in to a specific issue and we're going to talk about how to use these two techniques together okay so here's a couple more examples actually this is the exact same example I just gave I'm ahead of the curve today this is probably worth screenshotting so I'm glad I put it on a slide but we'll skip through this now here's the important point to understand between these two techniques why do you ask an open question before a targeted question okay so think about that I gave you a hint a few minutes ago try to answer that question before we move on here's the reason we already talked about this asking an open question gives you permission to then ask a targeted question okay so if you start by giving your buyer the freedom to go wherever they want and to feel in control and you start that way and then you ask a targeted question now they will play ball with you okay they they feel in control of the conversation because you started by giving them control and now you can start to ask your targeted impact questions without any negative ramifications it works like magic now if you did the opposite let's say you summarize the business problem and you start asking very funneled targeted questions the buyer is going to freeze up and to feel manipulated because you never gave them the freedom to answer how they wanted to now even though in the first situation where you lead with an open question you eventually do try to funnel them they don't feel like they're being funneled because you let them go wherever they wanted to go as a way of starting that part of the conversation okay this is a very important psychological aspect to understand to be a great SAS account executive it's so important so here's a few examples of starting with an open question and then relaying into targeted questions so here's an open one how is this conversion rate impact or problem impacting the rest of the business buyer has freedom they can go wherever they want they don't even have to answer it you've given them the freedom that's the important part now we can start to funnel them how is it impacting your cost of acquisition okay they're not taken back by that because they already feel free to what extent is marketing impacted by this as they think about generating leads for the sales team to convert is your CFO concerned with this metric due to its impact on costs of acquisition and lifetime value okay that conversation will go incredibly well and it's all because you started with an open question and then challenged your buyer to think about specific issues the order in which you do that matters