In this series of videos, we will outline a sales methodology we have labeled Conversation-Based Selling. As you can probably gather from the name, this approach shifts the focus from selling the product to selling and optimizing conversations with sales prospects.

 

Product-Based Selling

This approach is completely different from how most salespeople sell. Based on my experience of receiving cold calls and cold emails every day, I believe most salespeople use a product-based selling approach. This is where a salesperson primarily talks about the company they work for and the product they sell. And they focus mostly on the last step of the sales process, which is the customer purchasing the product. Even if the salesperson cannot take the order right then, they are still focused on the purchase sales process step by trying to validate if the prospect wants or needs the product they sell.

While that might sound like the most logical way to sell your product—you have a product to sell, so go out and talk about your product as much as you can—it is actually a more difficult way to sell for many different reasons.

Prospects are likely not in buying mode
When you are performing cold outreach, it is more likely than not that the prospects who answer your call or read your email are not in buying mode for the product you sell. This is not to say that they do not need what you sell. It is just that they are likely not thinking about buying what you sell at that exact time.

This means that when you are in product selling mode, you are likely to get create a mismatch between what you are wanting to talk about and where the prospect is mentally at in that exact moment.

Prospects get sold to a lot
If you are performing cold outreach to a prospect, it is good to be aware that there are a lot of other salespeople reaching out to that same prospect. This means that when they receive your call or email, they have already been approached a lot and this can make them guarded at a medium level.

Look like a salesperson who is trying to sell something
When you use a product selling approach, you will flag yourself as a salesperson who is trying to sell something.

Trigger more sales objections
When you factor in the previous three points, using a product-based selling approach, you greatly increase the likelihood of triggering sales objections like:

  • I am not interested.
  • We do not have budget/money right now.
  • We already use somebody for that.
  • We are not looking to make any changes right now.

This increased level of objections will not just mean that you will sell less, but it will actually make selling feel harder and more stressful due to the increased level of rejection and resistance.

Not the next step in the sales process
Another reason selling the product is less than optimum is that in most cases, especially when performing cold outreach, selling the product is not the next step in the sales process. In most cases, the next step in the sales process is simply talking more and having a conversation.

With that, not only is it more logical to simply focus on selling the conversation, but it is actually easier to sell the conversation than it is to sell the product.

 

Conversation-Based Selling

If you agree with those challenges and factors regarding product-based selling, we can completely neutralize that by shifting from selling the product to focusing more on simply selling the conversation. We will show you how to do this with our conversation-based selling sales methodology.

This sales approach will not only show you how to modify what you are doing to focus more on selling prospects and simply having a conversation, but we will also show you how to optimize the conversations you do have so that you get the most out of them, improving your ability to generate more and better-quality leads.