I recently received an email from a salesperson with questions on how to generate leads for software sales. His frustrations, challenges, and questions are very common, so I created this video to go through each to provide these tips to other salespeople that might be in the same scenario.

 

While our software can do more than any others, it lacks a USP.

He then mentions that his software does more, but it does not have a USP (unique selling proposition). If your software is different and better, then you have a USP.

In our sales message brainstorming process, we talk about looking at your features to identify what improvements each feature can create for your customers. What you come up with will be your value proposition. You can go through that same process using the ways you are different from the competition – identify how your differentiation will improve things for your customer. What you come up with is your value proposition for the ways you are different, and that is your unique selling proposition.

 

No customers have a real pain point. No one has issues with their provider.

The salesperson then goes on to mention in his questions for how to generate leads for software sales that none of his customers have pain. For this, I would like to ask this salesperson what pain points he is looking for. Does he have a list of pain points his software can help to solve? If not, that would be the first step that I recommend he takes and that is to create a list of pain points his software can help to solve. Having this will improve his ability to know what to look for and talk about.

The other thing I would like to talk to this salesperson about is how he is trying to find the pain the prospect is having. Trying to look for pain is a step in the right direction, but are you just asking, “Do you have pain?” or “What are you having challenges with?” If so, those are not great pain-probing questions. Our sales message brainstorming process will help you create an optimum set of pain-probing questions for the software you sell.

 

As soon as my cold calls touch on time tracking, everyone shuts down.

Cold calling can be tough, and it is very realistic to have prospects shut you down. However, there are small things you can do to decrease this. For example, if you decrease how much you sound like a salesperson trying to sell something, you will make the prospect less guarded, which will lead to fewer objections.

In the questions for how to generate leads for software sales, the salesperson mentions getting shut down when he talks about his software. This makes me think that he might be using more of a product selling sales pitch. That will definitely lead to getting shut down more. If you change to more of a consultative selling approach, you will see an immediate improvement in this area.