Get Inside the Mind of Your Prospect: Why Are They Even Searching for a Product?
Before you set up a pre-sales evaluation with new prospect, make certain that you know why they decided to search for a product in first place. It’s usually one of two reasons:
1. Solving an immediate pain point, or
2. Proactively evolving their business.
Solving an Immediate Pain Point
Companies looking to solve an immediate pain point are either dealing with:
A deficiency, or
An inefficiency.
Sales cycles are more straightforward when a prospect has a deficiency than when they have an inefficiency. A deficiency must be removed or their business cannot continue to operate. However their business can continue to operate ‘as is’ with an inefficiency, just not optimally. An inefficiency might be causing pain, but it is not a ‘must solve’ situation for them.
Pain Point: Solving for a Deficiency
A prospect with a deficiency needs to fill a gap in their existing technologies, business processes, or regulatory compliance. In this case, it is not a matter of if they will buy a product; it is a matter of which product they will buy. It is also not a matter of when they will buy, because they must buy something at some point.
Impact on your evaluation:
Focus more on your product than on your prospect.
We know… that statement is sales blasphemy. While you should never forget why your prospect needs to solve the deficiency, this is a special type of sales cycle in which your product needs to be the star.
Because you do not need to convince them of the ‘why’ nor the ‘when’, you can focus on the ‘how’. And the ‘how’ is your product.
Create an Evaluation Plan that is laser-focused on how your product solves their deficiency.
A focused evaluation plan proves that your sales engineers understand your prospect’s deficiency and that they are singularly focused on solving it.
The more you add to your evaluation plan, the more you distract your prospect. Your product begins to look more complicated than it needs to be. Your sales prospect begins to feel ‘sold to’ and no one likes that.
Promote all of your other value-add features in a separate-but-related manner.
While the evaluation should be laser-focused, you still don’t want to lose an opportunity to showcase how you can help your prospect overall. Just don’t let the ‘other stuff’ get in the way.
Pain Point: Solving for an Inefficiency
Inefficiencies are a more difficult sale. Your prospect’s business can still operate without solving the inefficiency with your solution or anyone’s solution. That is a big risk to your sales cycle. It makes it easier for your prospect to reduce their level of participation in the evaluation process or stop their search altogether if they start to get busy, if executive support starts to refocus on other priorities, etc.
Impact on your evaluation:
Reinforce the Business Case on the regular.
Talk to your prospect early on about their an internal business case for solving the inefficiency. You need to know the value that they are associating with fixing it and from where that value is coming. If your prospect does not yet have a business case, help them build one.
Keep your prospect engaged in the evaluation by reinforcing the business case and the operational improvements and financial impacts over and over.
Create an Evaluation Plan that gets you to a ‘technical win’ as quickly as you can.
Time is of the essence. With this type of pain point your prospect is more easily distracted with other initiatives, so you need to move them through the evaluation before that happens.
Identity the specific evaluation scenarios that show exactly how your product removes the inefficiencies. This is not a time to showcase everything your product can do. Keep it focused.
The financial impacts are your best friend.
While your prospect’s management team and project sponsors might care about the operational inefficiencies being solved, they really care about financials. Help your prospect communicate with their management team and project sponsors in the language that they understand best. Focusing on the financial impacts of solving the inefficiency can save your prospect’s project from losing priority or budget.
Proactively Evolving Their Business
Prospects searching for a product because they want to evolve their business, not because of a deficiency or an inefficiency, are aspirational. They believe that a new technology is key to helping them advance their business in a new direction or according to a new strategy. This sales cycle is similar to solving for an inefficiency because evolving their business is not necessary. The tone of the sales two cycles is quote different however. Whereas solving an inefficiency has a negative tone to it, evolving a business has a very positive and excited tone.
Impact on your evaluation:
Tap into your prospect’s excitement.
Keep up your excitement level throughout the entire evaluation to keep your prospect engaged in the evaluation. If you are mirroring their excitement back to them they will look forward to talking with you. An excited prospect will look forward to showing you the progress that they have made with the evaluation plan.
Create an Evaluation Plan that swings for the fences.
Your prospect is already thinking big, so identify evaluation scenarios that show how your product can achieve big things for them.
Use your evaluation plan to get your prospect thinking even further into future beyond their current needs.
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