Early in my sales career, my company hired a phenomenal negotiator to put us through a rigorous one-day training.

We learned how to focus on the other individual, generate a feeling of safety, use their language to increase rapport, and tactics for isolating and overcoming obstacles.

At the end of the event, I was confident and energized… until I found out that the procurement officers at my largest client had gone through the same training – two full weeks of it!

That’s what we’re up against as sales professionals, so you’d better be prepared.

Let’s look at five dependable tactics you can use to negotiate a win-win with your most demanding buyers.

1: Choose Your Moment

Before entering into any negotiation, always review the questions that are crucial to closing any deal:

• Can they buy?
• Will they change?
• Are you differentiated
• What’s in it for them?
• Is the timing right?

Many sales reps dive into negotiations at the first sign of hesitation – but if you haven’t created urgency by connecting your solution to problems worth solving right now, no mix of embellishments and discounts will magically close the deal.

Instead of incentivizing quick action, you compromise price integrity early in the process and put yourself at an incredible disadvantage.

2: Know What’s Negotiable

Can you offer a price discount if the client commits to a case study and features your company as a preferred partner?

Can you compromise on deliverables to reach a win-win?

Both are viable solutions. And to offer anything, you must first fully understand what you’re empowered to change.

It’s all about collaborating to find joint value here. Still, if you offer something you’re not authorized to provide, you only risk damaging credibility, trust and rapport – the critical ingredients for complex B2B purchases.

3: Make a Trade

Once you understand all the bargaining chips at your disposal, it’s time to get to work. The first tool at your disposal is the trade-off.

Both examples above fall into this category. The main idea is to listen to the buyer’s position, identify areas of flexibility, and get creative where and when you can.

For example, if you get the sense that one of your deliverables isn’t valued as highly as others, there’s an opportunity to reduce while maintaining price integrity. Alternatively, if the total price is a sticking point and those budgets dry up at year-end, it may be advantageous to offer a discount if the client prepays for services.

4: Sweeten the Deal

Think high-value, low-cost deliverables.

If you host an industry event like Dreamforce, including complimentary passes is a fantastic tactic. Another option is to offer additional training hours or user seats if applicable.

Think back to discovery and uncover additional personal and professional value you can add with these embellishments.

5: Compromise

Sometimes, you have to compromise. Once you’ve isolated the sticking point – whether it’s based on deliverables, terms and conditions or price – find the middle ground that will satisfy both parties.

The key to compromises is to look at a single category: Isolate, confirm and then split the difference.
In the end, companies and humans are incredibly dynamic – especially in Q4 of 2022. And everyone always wants to feel like they’re getting a good deal. No matter your industry, product or tenure, these tactics have served me well over my thirty years in sales. I’m confident they’ll help you propel your business forward as well.

Until next time, happy selling,

Julie

I attended the Sales 3.0 Conference in Philly last week, where many of the talks had a shocking theme running through them: Discovery is dead.

The premise was that buyers hate it. They view sales discovery calls as an annoyance — a roadblock to the demos and nuanced answers they crave from vendors. 

That’s surprising because that’s never been my experience. 

I’ve always found that asking thought-provoking, deliberate and intentional questions is not annoying — it’s engaging. And it’s the critical component that allows sales professionals to make the leap from seller to valued business advisor.

How can we reconcile these two viewpoints? 

It all comes down to what you mean by discovery. In my mind, there are two keys to effective sales discovery calls. 

Step 1: It’s not about you. It’s about your buyer

Salespeople often make the mistake of viewing discovery as a one-time event that’s used to begin qualifying an opportunity. 

As a result, it takes on a transactional light: Give me this info, then I’ll give you what you really want. 

Sellers start the call and attempt to run through their list of questions. Typically, these are situational questions that are stacked at the beginning.

This ends with the potential buyer feeling like they’re being interrogated and putting their guard up, which only makes sense. 

After all, have you given them a reason to answer? Have you added value in your past interactions? Are you prepared to share insights from your research and lessons learned from other customers?

Research shows that impactful business relationships are built on a foundation of trust, credibility and rapport. 

While trust is built incrementally over time, there are two powerful actions you can take to hit the ground running:

• Put the pro back in sales professional: Building your personal brand on LinkedIn is vital to presenting as the talented and dedicated sales professional you are. 
• Put in the time to do quality research: People trust those who understand their point of view. Go beyond pain points to understand the priorities of the prospect’s company and form a narrative of the unique challenges that are most likely already on their radar. 

On the other hand, credibility is something you can establish immediately: 

• Tell a good story: One of the most influential and succinct ways to present as a trusted business advisor is by telling a value-based story. It’s a 30-second opener that explains how you and your company have helped individuals like the prospect in the past.
• Think like an executive: If you come in with a transactional mindset, you put yourself at an incredible disadvantage. When you develop the business acumen to adequately understand how the business objectives, business issues, problems and value connect with your unique solution, you’re ready to sell to decision-makers.=

When you look at rapport building, there’s nothing more powerful than asking the right questions, which leads us here. 

Step 2: Ask the right sales questions.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking there’s a magic number of questions or the perfect sales-call script out there. 

If you do, you’ll fall into the trap of overanalyzing and miss the X-factor that will make your discovery calls valuable for you and your buyer: You need to ask questions that get the prospect talking.

After analyzing nearly one million sales calls, Chorus.ai found that “high-performing reps ask fewer questions per minute than lower-performing reps, but are able to get the prospect to open up more.”

Our research confirms this. When we asked sales leaders what separates their top performers from the rest of the pack, the second most important quality was the ability to ask relevant, targeted questions throughout sales conversations and actively listen to the answers. 

Start with open-ended questions that showcase your familiarity with the prospect’s situation and your interest in helping them. 

For instance, if your research revealed that the company recently brought new executives on, you might say: 

• “I saw that ___  brought on a new CEO & CFO. With those leadership changes in place, how does that impact your priorities for the business objectives and key initiatives that the company is focused on right now?” 

Once you’ve learned about the changes in focus and how those impact the individual you’re speaking to, shift the conversation to better understand their perspective on possible solutions. 

• “When you think about implementing a  ___,  what are you hoping will change as a result? 

Throughout the journey, you’ll want to ensure you’re using the prospect’s language to build rapport and ensure they feel heard. You might say something like:

• You mentioned that ___ could be a potential roadblock in your first few months of ___. What are some of the other challenges you see from a ___ perspective that could get in the way?” 

These are merely examples, but you get the idea: The more the prospect talks, the more you win. 

Of course, not every question can be open-ended. The magic behind the O-P-C questioning technique is the ability to get them talking, go deeper when you need more information and confirm what you’ve heard to improve your understanding and showcase your commitment to uncovering their most critical business issues — and helping to solve them.  

Ultimately, effective sales discovery calls will always expand perspectives and add value. Remember that discovery is a process and must be mutual — the salesperson needs to understand the prospect, and the prospect also needs vital information from the seller.

When you switch your mindset from checking a box to having consultative business conversations, you better serve your potential buyers — and improve your chances of uncovering challenges that your product or service is uniquely qualified to solve. In doing so, you’ll forge trusted business relationships and uncover the value that motivates individuals to act with urgency. 

Until next time, happy selling,

Julie

Accurate and reliable forecasting will transform a sales organization.

When it comes to a process as vital as this, you would assume there’s no room for guesswork — but the reality plays out differently:

In a recent Forrester study, 60% of respondents said they did not have a well-defined or scientific approach to sales forecasting — and it’s not for lack of effort. When asked how much time they spend on forecasting weekly, 25% of all respondents said 100 hours or more. (Outreach)

Yikes! At that point, you’re dedicating a tremendous amount of resources to an educated guess.

Now, that’s not to say the obstacles standing in your way are easily overcome. After all, most sales teams treat qualification as a discrete event, not realizing that it’s a process — one that’s not always linear.

They also typically lack a common language for describing opportunities. As a result, information degrades at every step, and salespeople fall back on their instincts when predicting outcomes. This adds another layer of abstraction and eats up more of sales managers’ valuable time.

What’s the fix? You must embrace a framework for ongoing qualification: A multi-dimensional set of criteria that sellers repeatedly use to mitigate the risk of working unqualified opportunities and improve forecast accuracy.

It all begins with these four questions.

Should they buy?

Problem: There is a significant trust gap between B2B buyers and sellers. To the point that buyers bypass the best solution in favor of the one that offers the lowest risk. (Forrester)

Solution: Clearly, products and features are not the answer. B2B buyers don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Sales professionals must begin by establishing a solid foundation of credibility, trust and rapport with potential buyers. From there, honestly evaluate whether your solution is a good fit.

Is there enough value to prompt action?

Problem: Salespeople will always be tempted to go after the pain — and organizations will always have pain points that they have absolutely no interest in solving.

Solution: Set the ROI of your product/solution on firm footing and ensure that there is enough value — for the company and the individual — to create urgency and motivate change. Because no matter what you’re selling, you’re selling change. Use that to your advantage.

Can they buy?

Problem: Sales reps work hard to forge impactful relationships. As a result, they’re tempted to cling to their champion inside a client organization. However, if you are not talking to the final decision-maker, the deal is ultimately at risk.

Solution: Use the O-P-C questioning technique to ensure you thoroughly understand the prospect’s buying process and have identified everyone who can influence the deal and those who will have the final say.

Is there a plan in place?

Problem: As we get ready for summer in the northern hemisphere, the potential to be blindsided by OoO responses only increases.

Solution: Salespeople should work with prospects to build a two-way understanding of a company’s crucial business issues and the activities required to solve them. This mutual plan is a powerful tool for building buyer confidence — and ensuring that deals don’t unexpectedly stall.

Ultimately, when you treat qualification as an ongoing event, you set sellers up for success — reducing frustrations and no-decisions while maximizing time spent on winnable opportunities. The results are an increase in win rate, the quality of your data and your forecast accuracy.

Until next time, happy selling,

Julie

You’re scrolling through your LinkedIn feed when you receive a request to connect from an account executive. They recently saw you speak at a sales conference, and your talk resonated with them — seems harmless enough.

Of course, you know that there’s a 90% chance this interaction ends in a hard pitch within the next 48 hours — but there’s a part of you hoping to be wrong.

After all, their first message to you was relevant, engaging and had fantastic timing. You can’t help but think: Maybe this will be a different story.

Two days go by with no additional messages.

You see that they liked your most recent LinkedIn post, prompting you to look into their company. Their conversational intelligence tool could be a good fit for some of the sales coaching challenges you’ve been dealing with.

After 72 hours, the dreaded follow-up InMail arrives, and it’s not what you expected.

It speaks to challenges on your radar and is personalized to your role and industry — suffice it to say you’re intrigued, so you click the auto-response “Thanks” and plan to follow up later.

Immediately, you’re hit with a message asking for a meeting. Ten minutes after that, you receive a Zoom link even though you never accepted.

Admittedly, this is a nightmare scenario of when automation goes haywire — but it’s only so far-fetched.

Think of when salespeople send 12 emails within two weeks or call repeatedly armed with only a prospect’s name and title. Where does it get them? Blocked or sent straight to spam.

To generate results that fill the pipeline with winnable opportunities, sales professionals must build strategically-choreographed and multi-channel cadences to dramatically increase the odds of connecting.

Step 1: Carefully Crafted Messaging

The best cadence in the world won’t get you anywhere — unless you start with succinct messaging that proves you’ve done your homework on the potential buyer, their company and their industry.

In virtual selling, you have to maximize every communication. That means going beyond titles and pain points to understand business drivers.

For instance, do you know the CEO’s top three initiatives for Q2? The company’s latest product news, or if they recently implemented new technology?

The key is to develop the knowledge that allows you to present yourself as a problem expert that’s showing up to solve business challenges.

One way to demonstrate expertise is to share third-party content that’s relevant to your prospect’s challenges and establishes you as a subject matter expert. Another effective tool is the value-based story.

These two methods can be used together to demonstrate relevance and build credibility — because, ultimately, buyers spend their time wisely before spending their money wisely.

Step 2: Tailoring Cadences to Target Buyers

There’s been a lot of talk recently about multithreaded engagements — and with good reason. When you’re selling complex solutions to complex buying groups, it only makes sense to engage the different members of a buying committee how, when and where they prefer.

The same goes for prospecting.

Only, there’s a catch: When prospecting, you don’t know your buyer’s preferred communication method, which is why a strategically-choreographed and multi-channel approach is so vital.

Build your cadences using a mix of phone calls, social media actions, InMail messages, email and voicemails — and throughout it all, never forget to add value. In fact, the first few touches should be focused on thought-leadership and sharing valuable content.

When building these cadences out, fall back on your research. For instance, recent research by LinkedIn shows that potential buyers are 65% more likely to accept InMail if they switched jobs within the past 90 days. With these prospects, it’s a safe bet to start with InMail. On the other hand, if your primary prospects are manufacturing leaders, your best bet might be a phone call.

Respectful and personalized persistence is critical. To stay top-of-mind, never go more than five business days between touches — and remember that a typical cadence involves 15 to 17 attempts across 20 to 24 days.

Step 3: Guarding Your Time

Take a page from the playbook of every successful executive and guard your time fiercely.

Schedule non-negotiable blocks of time on your calendar for prospecting and prospecting alone. No coffee breaks or scrolling Instagram. Focus on one task, and you’ll be rewarded. Not only will you achieve the consistency that generates results, but the dedicated and focused effort will help you improve.

Of course, things will come up. The trick is to never let an interruption shorten that prospecting time — move that block to later in the day or the week on your calendar and aim for 10 hours/week.

It sounds simple, but it works. We’ve seen clients create about $6.5M (USD) in pipeline in their first three days of call blocks. Capitalizing on this initial momentum, that same company went on to have the best Q4 in the company’s 24-year history and see a 131% increase in YOY revenue.

Ultimately, there’s no cure-all for your prospecting problems, but when you put in the work with quality research, buyer-centric cadences and consistency, the results speak for themselves.

Until next time, happy selling,

Julie

Think back to the last time you shared a meal with a good friend.

You likely recall the restaurant and the food, the little sensory details like the man smoking the cigar across the street or the squawking birds in the background.

Now, think back to the first meal you shared with this person. Suddenly, it becomes much harder to remember the little details that paint a vivid scene — but I’m willing to bet there’s one thing you do remember: the conversation.

I’m also willing to bet that you talked about more than the weather. You likely talked about ideas, a problem, possible solutions and the motivations driving you to solve that problem.

Those are the types of conversations that build authentic human-to-human connections. And if you want to win more business, you’ll need to find a way to reliably connect on a human level — especially when there’s a screen standing between you.

Let’s look at three strategies you can use to build better connections, have more meaningful business conversations and start marking more deals closed-won.

Step 1: Strategic Questioning & Active Listening

Thoughtful inquiry and active listening are two factors that continue to separate high-performers from the rest of the sales team. And there’s a persistent misconception here: many believe you cannot teach these skills.

I’m here to tell you that they can be taught — but it requires a strategic approach that breaks the desired behaviors into their component parts. Let’s start with questioning:

Here at ValueSelling, we teach the O-P-C Questioning technique. The concept behind it is simple:

• Open-ended questions get people talking.

• Probing questions lead the prospective buyer on a journey of self-discovery to explore the business issue from all angles.

• Confirming questions summarize and validate shared information.

The true magic of this formula is learning to switch between question types seamlessly until you have identified a business driver that your solution will impact in a meaningful and measurable way.

That takes practice and experience — and there’s certainly no shame in stacking the deck in your favor.

Lean into your research to prepare 6-10 open-ended and probing questions that will help you identify problems already on the prospect’s radar, how those issues impact the business, and solutions that your product is uniquely qualified to provide.

Now, don’t rattle these off like a nervous understudy in the school play.

You might even only ask a few in their prepared form. The idea is to help you envision the possible avenues the conversation could take ahead of time — freeing you up to place all of your attention on the other human.

However, just because your attention is where it should be, doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly master active listening. Here too, you have to put in the work — and your recorded sales calls are a gold mine of real-world examples.

Try listening to a call from Q4, then immediately write a summary of the key points, using the prospect’s words. Note what you got right and where you missed the mark; then do it again. Soon patterns will start to emerge, and you’ll be able to identify areas for growth.

Step 2: Accurate Follow-through

Picture this: You’ve had a brilliant first sales call where you told a value-based story that convincingly illustrated how you and your company have helped similar prospects in the past.

All that’s left to do is summarize your conversation in a follow-up note and provide the requested materials: a case study and a pamphlet that includes information on how your solution integrates with the prospective buyer’s CRM.

It’s an easy task, and it better be — after all, you only have 15 minutes to put this email together before your next meeting. Only, when you send over the case study, you send one on the client in healthcare, not the one in pharmaceuticals.

The prospect opens the email and immediately wonders: “Do they know my business at all?”

It might seem like a slight misstep, but trust is built in tiny increments. Every time you accurately deliver on what was promised, trust goes up. Every time you miss the mark, trust falls and must be rebuilt.

There’s no magical trust grade you have to meet, but trust is the foundation on which complex B2B purchases are built.

Step 3: Carefully Crafted Mutual Plan

When does the sales cycle end?

If you’ve adopted a buyer-first approach, you’ll know that a mutual plan is the beginning, a tentative step toward the ultimate goal: value realization.

Keep in mind that a well-designed mutual plan is much more than a to-do list.

It’s a written agreement outlining a two-way understanding of a company’s critical business issues and the activities needed to resolve them — and it’s a powerful tool for building confidence in buying decisions.

The key term here is mutual. To be successful, ensure your plan uses the prospect’s language and covers:

• A summary of the business issue
• How that business issue impacts business goals
• How your company will deliver measurable value to the organization and the individual
• A clear understanding of the prospect’s purchasing criteria and procurement process
• An agreed-upon timeline of the benchmarks and actions both parties will take to realize value

Remember: As the name implies, these mutual plans are done jointly with a prospect to eliminate confusion and build buyer confidence — that crucial element that only human-to-human connection can provide.

Until next time, happy selling,

Julie

How do I be me virtually?

Sure, if you’re a remote worker who has one weekly stand-up on Zoom, you may be tempted to laugh that question off. For sales professionals, it’s another story.

Despite your diligent prep work, your 4K webcam and fancy studio lights, the second you click “Join meeting” the tension sets in.

In some, it’s nearly imperceptible. In others, it’s immediately evident — their posture changes, their expressions become stiff and the greetings feel rehearsed, often accompanied by a nervous laugh or two.

You’re probably thinking: We’re two years into this shift. We expect awkward moments and tech hiccups. Does a slightly rehearsed Zoom presence really matter?

When buyers spend only 17% of their time with you and nearly half (43%) prefer a rep-free experience, Yes, it matters. (via Gartner)

It matters because for large-scale B2B purchases people don’t buy products or services. They buy the confidence that the salesperson instills in them. That little voice that says, This is a smart decision because I’m confident it will bring value to me and the business.

In the end, nothing can replace the true differentiator: you, the salesperson — so, let’s discuss the steps you can take to be you.

Step 1: Break Up with Your Virtual Background

We think we must get it perfect every time.

It’s only natural that our desire to come across as professional and credible pushes us in the direction of blurred or virtual backgrounds — and this has unintended consequences.

The largest factor is curiosity. Humans are naturally wired to wonder: What do they not want me to see? Now, this might only express itself on a subconscious level, but it’s enough to add an element of distraction to an already distraction-prone environment.

The solution isn’t a dedicated Zoom studio or a pristine office. Not everyone has those kinds of resources, but everyone can create a space where they connect with others. Clean out a closet, put up a room divider in your studio apartment, or move your overcrowded bookshelf into frame.

The idea is to show that you’re a human with a personality who is making an effort — embrace authenticity in virtual selling; it’s here to stay.

For more on authenticity, check out this article in Forbes.

Step 2: Create Space for Informal Conversation

With in-person meetings, you would arrive early to catch a key contact on the walk to the presentation room or stay after to walk with the decision-maker to their next destination.

Only, it was unsaid. That’s a monumental difference between in-person and virtual sales. The unsaid must become explicitly stated, and there’s an awkwardness to overcome there.

Once you overcome that awkwardness and lean into over-communicating, the payout is tremendous. Creating space for authentic one-on-one conversations builds credibility, trust and rapport — and our latest research study revealed that it’s those strong human-to-human connections that lead to increased sales results.

Remember: Some of the most valuable conversations are the ones where you talk the least. To better connect with buyers, leverage these questions.

Step 3: Build Your Brand

Most CRMs can pull in news on the prospect’s company and their individual social feeds. Odds are you regularly review this data when prepping for sales calls. What if the prospect did the same for you? What would they find?

The dreaded “Nothing to see here for now” where your LinkedIn posts would appear? Or a string of disconnected likes and shares from your company’s account?

It’s no secret that prospective buyers search salespeople on LinkedIn when deciding whether a meeting is worth their time or not. The research supports this: LinkedIn showed that profile completeness is the most impactful social-selling factor for sales reps who want to hit their number. In fact, the architect of that study was recently a guest on our podcast.

Even for sellers with well-curated profiles, there’s still the danger of coming off as inauthentic. To truly differentiate yourself, share news and research that interests you, articles that allow you to share a personal take instead of merely a summary.

Yes, insights are essential to share too, and when that takes the form of opinion, you provide prospective buyers with a window into who you are — simultaneously building credibility and trust.

Until next time, happy selling,

Julie