Unlock the Potential of Sales Discovery for Retail Trade

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hey everybody gary brown with pivotal advisors and today we're going to be talking about what i believe is the most important part of the sales process discovery i think if you do it really well you differentiate yourself you set yourself up for a win you improve your close rates if you don't do it well then you really lag on the back end and you end up trying to get into a price war to try to win the deal so this is an important part of the sales process and i don't think a lot of people do it well i think the really good sellers are awesome at this and the rest of the pack kind of lags behind so we're going to talk about what the differences are and we're going to start with okay or typical or what we see most often and when we see that most often we have sales people that we try to find their pains or their issues or their challenges that's one we might use something we call bant which is budget authority need and timing so do they have the money who's got the authority to make the decision what is the specific needs that you have and what is the timing of when you're going to make your decision i like that as a framework i don't think it's complete enough and then often we only get to one decision maker that happens quite often and there's other people who have the you know input as to what that decision is going to be that's typical that happens a lot that's what most of your sales team is doing and i don't think it's enough so here's what really separates the great sellers from what i just showed you number one let's start with where we left off let's get to all the decision makers when i'm talking about all the decision makers i'm talking about who has the business issue who controls the money who has technical requirements who has to support it uh whatever your solution is who's going to be using your solution all of these people have an opinion on what they want what they need what their real issues are what what are they trying to do with the solution what benefits are they trying to get from it and if we just talk to one or one or two we don't get all of that and by the way if you don't and your competitor does you're in the back seat you are at this big disadvantage right now so number one get to all the decision makers and all the decision influencers number two make them think outside the box you sell your stuff every day you're very familiar with what's possible what's not possible how it could benefit different companies what other companies have done in the past that's value your customer probably knows what they've read on the internet or maybe they've talked to a competitor or two so their their frame of mind is much smaller than yours on what is possible introduce them to things use the words like what if you could what if you had the ability to what would it mean to you if and start throwing different things out there to see get them think about different possibilities and if you're really good part of this is you're using your differentiators for these what if possibilities if you're really good in one aspect of your product and your competitors are not i'm going to ask a lot of pro questions about that possibility and if that possibility is important to them and they answer the questions and say you know what i really like that i want that in my solution and you have it and your competitors don't you just increase your chances of winning that deal next related to their business issues or impact it's not about the feature on your product it's not about how fast it is or what it does it's about what business problem it solves and when i think about business problems it's is it going to make them more money somehow if so quantify that is it going to save them money somehow okay quantify that is it going to help them avoid some big risk that could hurt their business understand what that risk is what the probability of that risk is and how much it would cost them if that thing happened to them the more you can quantify this early in the process and understand the better you are negotiating on the back end if you came in there and said i could save you a million dollars over three years with my solution because of x y and z and they agree wow this this really could do that that would save me a million dollars and then you go to sell it later and it costs them a hundred thousand dollars and they go well can you do any better on that you go we're going to save you a million dollars and the the conversation becomes much easier and becomes easier to close at the end so again we want to make them related to whatever businesses you have go find whatever their business strategy is ask questions around that see if your solution helps them achieve their business strategy that's another great one so this is your biggest opportunity to improve close rates if you get out there and you make them think outside the box you have them look at your differentiators they like your differentiators we're getting to all the right people i guarantee you that your close rate will go up takes practice take some time and uh good questions would be and start trying some new things in your discovery if you need help in getting better at what your discovery is please call us we'd love to talk about this kind of stuff go to our website at pivotaladvisors.com send us an email at info pivotaladvisors.com we would love to talk to you about this we'd love to help you sell more