Regardless of what you sell, generating leads and closing deals can often feel difficult and complex. In this video, we discuss one of the factors that can contribute sales being difficult and we provide a few very simple changes you can for how to simplify selling.
Four Categories of Prospects
To help make it more clear what is going on when we are selling, we are going to break prospects into four categories.
1. No, Never
The first category is prospects who have zero need for the product or service you sell because they do not fit with the product being sold. An example of this in the B2B world is if your service can only be sold to prospects who have 10 employees or more. You are going to encounter prospects who have less than 10 employees and these prospects are in this category as they do not fit with what you are selling.
2. No, Not Now
These are prospects who fit with what you sell and might even need your product, but they cannot purchase now. An example of this might be a prospect who would love to purchase your product, but cannot due to either a lack of budget or being locked in a contract.
3. Don’t Know
These are prospects who need your product or service but do not know they need it. For example, the prospect may have pain points that your product helps to solve, but they are not aware of those issues or problems. Or the prospect may have room for improvement, but they are unaware of this and unaware of the ways you can help them.
4. Yes, I Need
These are prospects who need the product you sell, they know they need the product, and they might even be ready to buy from you.
Product Selling Is Not Optimum
When we can see the different categories of prospects, it can provide more clarity for how to simplify selling. That is because, when salespeople use the common approach of product selling, which is primarily going out and trying to talk about the product to as many prospects as they can, they will end up trying to sell to all of these categories of prospects.
When product selling, the only group of prospects that will resonate with what the salesperson is talking about is the Yes, I Need prospects. When talking with prospects from any other group, a product salesperson will either stand to waste valuable time or get shot with objections, rejection, and resistance.
Three Changes to Make
There are three changes we can make to answer the question of how to simplify selling.
1. Ask Questions
The first change to make for how to simplify selling is to simply ask good questions. While this will help you with all different categories of prospects, it will drastically help you to identify when prospects are in the category of No, Never and that will help you to decrease the time you waste with prospects who have zero probability of purchasing from you.
2. Communicate Clearly
The next change is to improve your ability to clearly communicate who you are and how you can help.This will help with all categories of prospects, but it be very key for communicating with the Don’t Know prospects as it will help you to educate them on why they need the product or service you sell.
3. Start Conversations
The third change to make for how to simplify selling is to shift from closing sales and focus more on starting conversations. This will help you with all of the prospects who are in the No, Not Now category as that will help you to get engaged so that you can be there when their “no” becomes a “yes.”
We hope this helps you with how to simplify selling and gives you new ideas!