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How to Put More Prospects in a Buying Mood
| Guest post by: Kendra Lee |
Article Overview: A reader shared with me recently that her email prospecting campaign was attracting attention and responses, but most of her prospects weren’t interested in buying right now. So it’s her job to create immediate interest.
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Free Download - Put an end to Sales Prospecting Procrastination: Part Two of a series on Things Sellers Avoid By Kendra Lee |
How to Put More Prospects in a Buying Mood
A reader got in touch with me recently about an issue that lots of us have run into from time to time: Her email prospecting campaign was attracting attention and responses, but most of her prospects weren’t interested in buying right now. While getting some response should be better than none at all, your success in sales is dependent on making something happen. Besides, there’s no guarantee that prospects will remember you later, so it’s your job to create immediate interest.
In other words, to become the top salesperson, you have to learn how to put more prospects in a buying mood.
In my experience, there is one surefire way to grab a buyer’s attention: Focus your prospecting activities on a specific trigger event. In other words, don’t try to interest them in your products; instead, offer a solution to a business issue that they’re facing right now, or likely will be in the future.
Trigger events can come in a number of varieties, but what they all have in common is that they force prospects to think about changing the products they buy, or the way they do business. For instance, one of my IT clients is currently talking to their customers about data backup and disaster recovery, since flooding is a big story in the Midwest. Another is mentioning that they can help firms to be more compliant with federal information privacy guidelines in the medical industry. New products and technologies, changes in legislation, or economic booms or down turns in specific industries could all be trigger events, as well.
In each case, the value of recognizing a trigger event and using it in your prospecting efforts is that it stops you from talking about your solutions, and gets you talking to your prospects about issues that really concern them – their problems. Show them that you can help find the answer to the challenge that would have otherwise kept them up at night, or make them more profitable through a process they haven’t heard of yet, and you’re bound to find an interested listener.
The easiest way to make a prospect interested in buying now isn’t to tell them more about what you sell, but to give them answers to problems they already have. Remember that, and be on the lookout for specific trigger events that can help you demonstrate the value you bring.
In other words, to become the top salesperson, you have to learn how to put more prospects in a buying mood.
In my experience, there is one surefire way to grab a buyer’s attention: Focus your prospecting activities on a specific trigger event. In other words, don’t try to interest them in your products; instead, offer a solution to a business issue that they’re facing right now, or likely will be in the future.
Trigger events can come in a number of varieties, but what they all have in common is that they force prospects to think about changing the products they buy, or the way they do business. For instance, one of my IT clients is currently talking to their customers about data backup and disaster recovery, since flooding is a big story in the Midwest. Another is mentioning that they can help firms to be more compliant with federal information privacy guidelines in the medical industry. New products and technologies, changes in legislation, or economic booms or down turns in specific industries could all be trigger events, as well.
In each case, the value of recognizing a trigger event and using it in your prospecting efforts is that it stops you from talking about your solutions, and gets you talking to your prospects about issues that really concern them – their problems. Show them that you can help find the answer to the challenge that would have otherwise kept them up at night, or make them more profitable through a process they haven’t heard of yet, and you’re bound to find an interested listener.
The easiest way to make a prospect interested in buying now isn’t to tell them more about what you sell, but to give them answers to problems they already have. Remember that, and be on the lookout for specific trigger events that can help you demonstrate the value you bring.
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Article Tags: buyer, buying, generate leads, prospect, prospecting, sales lead, sales opportunity, sales prospect, sales prospecting, sales skills, sales tips, selling techniques
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About the Author: Kendra Lee RSS for Kendra's articles - Visit Kendra's website Kendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert author of the award winning book "Selling Against the Goal" and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. Visit www.klagroup.com to download your free copy of the PowerProspecting Sales Kit valued at $216 and to subscribe to her newsletter. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/KendraLeeKLA, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/KLAGroup, on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/kendralee. Click here to visit Kendra's website   Give Your Prospecting Legs with Social Media Whats Your Value to Prospects Lead Generation Make It Work Create Email Subject Lines That Draw Prospects In Channel Training Trouble Where to Look for Help |
Related Forum Posts
Re: Email Etiquette
- [quote="jvprosperity":24jznj58]
The P.S. suggestion is good but it depends on the type of communication (e.g. Autoresponder series verses one off emails to Clients or Prospects)[/quote:24jznj58]
Andy,
You are right. I was mainly referring to Auto Responder emails. To end a normal email, I attach signatures.
Takuya
Simple way to avoid Cold Calling
- Gary,
A chiropractor I work with hates cold calling (me too!) and he uses a technique to warm people up to using his services - it's so simple!
In Sales your dealing with 3 pools of people:
1. Strangers
2. Prospects
3. Returning Customers
You need to move people from one pool to the next. We'll concentrate on #1 and #2 as it's most relevant to your question.
My Clients does the following (you just have to tailor it to your situation - be creative).
My Client (we'll call him Bob) Bob leverages his time and resources to only get people that need his offer (pain relief) to put their hand up. Dealing with Strangers can get expensive and they don't like to be told what to do as they have no trust or relationship built with him.
So to get Strangers to put their hands up he writes up an offer with a free report on a particular pain relief - let's say lower back pain (note: he can simply just change lower back pain to neck pain and have a new report). and uses multiple marketing vehicles to promote the Free report - magazines, newspaper, forums, postcards, private clinics etc.
The only people picking up this information are the very people Bob would like as customers as they have Lower back pain. Bob's Free report ends with him stating his services and includes a Free in-house Consultation with no obligation.
You'd be surprised at how easily Bob converts Strangers into Prospects. Note: They become prospects when they ask for the Free Guide and in exchange provide their contact details. This gives Bob unlimited opportunity to contact them for the Free in-house consultation with no obligation to continue using him.
At this stage Bob's ability to close the sale lies in his office providing good customer service, Bob's ability to help the prospect and provide value at the free in-house consultation.
Notice, he hasn't had to pick up the phone to COLD-CALL his Stranger pool or his Prospect pool.
Hope that example helps to increase your prospecting!
Re: Why Some Websites Sell and Others Don’t?
- There is myth that if you build websites people will come. It is never through, you need to do a lot of things to make your website to work. You have many models of attracting traffics to your site.
PPC
Article Marketing
SEO
Press Release
Banner Ads
Forum Posting
Classified Advertising
Media Buying
Solo Ads
and a lot of more. If you are not doing any of the above your websites will just be one of the millions of the unknown sites in cyber space
building a list
- Good advice Martin... I've traveled down this path and learned that once you get through that brief learning curve, you'll find that it's well worth it. As you build your highly targeted list, you can trickle in your new offerings over time via 'broadcasts'. I use Aweber too, they have excellent support and a great rep.
Buying a list? I'm not so sure about that... You'd really have to do some research to find a quality list service.
Whether you buy a list or not, I still think setting up a auto-responder should be a priority, your list will GROW.
Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succ
- Pitch Like A Girl: How a Woman Can Be Herself and Still Succeed
Ronna Lichtenberg
2005
From the inside cover:
"As a woman, you probably feel uncomfortable when it comes to promoting yourself and asking for what you want."
WHAT IN THE HECK IS THIS, I asked myself when I read that. Women are the fastest growing business owners in the US and Canada, there are t housands of women executives and CEOs - though not as many as might be expected, admittedly, yet the book opens with this surely out of date stereotype.
However, as she continued to give examples of women who had high paying jobs but were routinely not paid as much as men because it hadn't occurred to them to ask for raises, etc., I decided it was probably true for a majority of businesswomen...
Anyway, more of the info from the jacket:
"Other books have told you how to get what you want by being more like a guy. Pitch Like A Girl tells you why its an advantage to be who you are and how to do better by bringing more of yourself to work."
The TOC:
1. Pink and Blue
2. The Quck-dry Chapter
3. What's In your head that's not in his
4. The Me, Inc Mindset
5. Visioning: Discover What You Really Want
6. Identifying Prospects
7. Pre-pitch homework and heartwork
8. Crafting the pitch
9. Pricing the pitch
10. Packaging the pitch
11. Delivering the pitch
12. Closing
Conclusion
A Word to the guys
The Empathy Quotient
The Systemizing Quotient
Bibliography
And on a side note - non-fiction books without indexes - of which this is one, annoy me.
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