Every client is different. They may have the same basic needs, but their situation is different. This is very important to remember and a key reason not to lean on a rigid script for a sales presentation. Listen and then respond to the prospect’s needs.
If you set the stage correctly, with a high level presentation that hits on your service the way you want to be perceived, then you have a much better chance to create the correct environment to draw out the prospect and discover their real hot buttons. If your presentation is reduced to lowest common denominator, guess what – you will be reduced to a commodity and have no leverage or pricing power.
Set the stage correctly and your chances of differentiating your product, understanding what the client really needs, and ultimately winning the business will increase dramatically.
Brick
Jonathan-
I mostly get what you mean, but can you give an example?
Thanks,
Steve
Sure, let me provide an example by illustrating what we do with our service. We essentially provide a data management service. Prospects will always try and reduce what we do to the number of “names” we provide as a means of comparison and then calculate the cost per name…If we fall into that trap we lose because that’s not our business and the way we collect and serve up our intelligence is very different.
Prospects have a limited attention span as we know and if you don’t engage early you lose so we “set the stage” early so the prospect is very clear about what we do versus the “competition” and then we have their attention.
Magically, we aren’t viewed as a list provider any longer, rather a mission critical service provider to accelerate sales and marketing.
By setting the stage correctly, we are helping the client understand our value proposition the way we want so they arrive at the same conclusion we are aiming for.
Make sense?
It does make sense.
Getting caught in a unit cost per name is a terrible commodity trap.
Good example.