By this point I hope you have followed Parts 1 – 6 and somewhat have an understanding of how we got here. To recap on our Sales Planning series, Part 1 focused on mindset as you launch into your planing, Part 2 drilled down into the MDS formula, Part 3 explored the activities required, Part 4 explained how to set yourself achievable targets, Part 5 looked at the activities in detail and how to track these activities, and Part 6 brought it all together.
One of the biggest challenges that impede most sales reps is “moving the sales along the customer or prospects buying cycle”.
Typically, as sales reps, we’re unsure of what stage the customer/prospect is at, and therefore we do not ask the right questions. This form helps you in identifying the stage your prospect/customer is at in their buying cycle, and to equip you with the relevant questions to help you move the needle during your next meeting or call.
This form helps you build credibility.
Imagine this scenario, you’ve been trying to get hold of your coach or champion, you eventually get hold of them and you become speechless – reason being you’re unsure of the right level of conversation needed based on the stage they’re at in their buying process.
Another example, you’ve managed to secure a call via your champion with the decision maker, you believe they’re at the “Evaluation of Options Stage”, below are some of the questions you could ask.
- Besides you, can you help me understand the various stakeholders involved and the relationship between them?
- What are the reporting lines?
- Does any of them have experience with our solution?
- Does any of them have experience with the competitions solution?
- What is it about our solution that they like?
- What is it about the competitors solution that they like?
- What is the decision criteria?
- What is the decision making process?
- In your view, what do you feel is the real value of our solution?
- What does success look like for you personally?
- What would be the impact if the vendor chosen doesn’t not meet your requirements?
The goal here is to leverage the form below as a prompt to help you build your own list of questions, which you feel would sound natural when you articulate it. At MDS we believe in win-win selling, by leveraging this system, not only would you build credibility with your prospect/customer, but you will in turn help them validate their own assumptions and where possible introduce you to other stakeholders to validate some of the questions.
Knowledge of this stage is vital since this is how your customers buy and you need to be in resonance with them.
This form should be a working document, this means you need to consistently update the questions as you work on your various opportunities.
As you’ll notice from the form, we haven’t re invented the wheel with the buying cycle, this was a methodology developed by Neil Rackham in his book “Major Accounts Sales Strategy”.
We highly recommend this book for any sales person who wants a paradigm shift from a selling focus to a buying focus selling, more on this to follow in our series on book reviews.
It’s my hope you find this post valuable, feel free to contact me here if you have any questions or require mentoring and coaching.
To Our Growth
Mike