Training

Have you ever met an employee that said, “they trained me too much for my job”?

Me neither.

Switching sides

If the sales call feels like you are on one side of the table and they are on the other, then you aren’t going to get the business.

It should come as little surprise that your most transparent prospects later become customers.

We all have multiple (quality) competitors, so quit assuming it is down to you and a couple of schlubs who have no chance. From the outset know that most prospects, especially on larger purchases, will already have a favorite in mind (this is where you lack of marketing will bite you) before they have met anyone. That doesn’t mean they won’t play it close to the vest with everyone to start…but eventually, even the most skeptical/scared/nervous/ignorant prospect understands, the best fix usually comes from the best diagnosis. If they aren’t providing the information without a fight (think Doctor/patient relationship), then it probably isn’t you that they want to do the surgery.

But do they believe in you?

Getting to the final meeting with the prospect comes down to fulfilling one of three scenarios:

1. They were in a lot of pain, you articulated their pain back to them – you listened, you understood.
2. They were in mild pain, you articulated what bad would happen if they let it go for too long and they took heed.
3. They believed you could fix things better than anyone else.

If you do a great job bonding with the prospect, giving them all the unpaid consulting they could ask for, and are adept at finding their top three issues, but they don’t believe in you (and really this is what it comes down to with two equally good companies: belief), they will go with your competitor.

Notice cost was not included. If pain and their belief in your fix is sufficiently high, the customer will pay a premium. If you haven’t done a good job extracting pain or worse, they don’t believe you can really fix it better than Company B, they’ll go with them provided they said about the same things and are slightly more trustworthy, i.e. safe.