Symptoms:
Marcy, her manager and their product expert just finished a conference call with a hot prospect, and after the last caller signed off, she felt like the last hour had just wasted a month's worth of effort in getting it set up. They had all agreed to dial in, so why was there so little interest, so few questions and no action items at the end of the call? Why was there so little interaction between her team and the audience? Granted, she didn't have too much to say on the call, but the purpose was to show off their company and their offerings. Or was it? Now, looking back, she wasn't so sure.
Diagnosis:
A conference call or webinar is no different from a face-to-face sales call or demo. It's not about the product or service, it's about what the offering does to resolve the problems, pain and priorities of the attendees. It's about moving the prospect to the next step, even if it's to agree that there isn't a fit between what they need to resolve their personal motives and what Marcy has to sell.
Additionally, who was in charge of the call? In this instance, Marcy didn't thoroughly brief her partners about the real reasons for the call because they were "too busy". So her sales manager could only "spray and pray" with the usual selling hype. They started off talking about their extensive history and expertise in the industry and then dove into the features she thought the most impressive. Furthermore, Marcy neglected to ask what would happen next if she had shown them what they were really hoping to see.
Prescription:
People are busy, and very few will waste an hour of their time engaging in a meaningless pursuit. The people on the call were interested because they thought the product might help them with their business goals, priorities and or problems. Marcy and her team should have opened the call with some questions about what the client hoped to accomplish after the call was finished and then use the answers to form the high points for the presentation.
Stay out of your Buyer's way and let them tell you what you need to know to sell them your product, or eliminate them from contention if you can't help them achieve their objective. Stop gazing into the crystal ball, quit mind-reading, and get out of the guessing game. Most likely they'll tell you what they need to see or hear if you take the time to ask. And never enter a team prospecting call without the proper pre-planning.
Critical Thinking:
As stated above there wasn't much effort put into the pre-call planning for this team. How can you make sure you always have the very important pre-call planning and what is on your list of items to cover during the pre-call planning? Take a few minutes to come up with your pre-call planning list/routine so you have it ready to go when joint calls pop up. .
Final Thought for the Morning:
Your Top 3 Goals & Tactics for the Week
LAST WEEK: Update us on how things went last week with your stated Goals and GD Tactics.
THIS WEEK: Please share your Top 3 Goals for this week and the GD tactics you plan to deploy.
