The tactic for today is to sell like a detective when working in B2B sales. Which probably does not make sense because when you think of a detective, you probably don’t think of selling being something that a detective does.
A detective will typically start with a description of a person who committed a crime. And while they will use many tools and sources of information, one of the main and most effective tools they will use is asking questions. They will ask witnesses and suspects questions to gather key information. And it is this process and the quality of questions they ask that will determine their level of success in finding the people who committed the crimes.
This aligns closely with what a salesperson needs to do when finding prospects. A salesperson has a target prospect or an ideal customer profile that fits well with the product or service they sell. One of the best tools a salesperson has to find the prospects who fit well is by asking questions. With that, if we can try to copy or emulate what a detective does, we can improve our ability to work and filter our way to qualified prospects who fit well with what we are selling.
- Has a picture of the suspect they are looking for
- Asks a lot of questions
- Knows what questions to ask
- Spends most of the time talking about the suspects
- Does not primarily talk about the crime
Create the Picture of Who You Are Looking For
In order to improve your odds of finding prospects who fit well with what you sell in B2B sales, start by creating a picture of what a good and qualified prospect looks like. Here are four areas you might want to add details to your ideal customer profile:
- Demographics
- Current State
- Pain Points
- Qualifiecation
Demographics
Of course, you can start with the general demographic details like location, size, industry, etc. But what is really helpful is to have a list of pain points an ideal prospect will have for them to fit well, or need your product or service.
Current State
Take the demographics to the next level and make a list of the ideal characteristics for the current state for a prospect to fit well in terms of systems, processes, or people.
Pain Points
If you have already created a list of pain points your product or service helps to solve, this list can be part of your ideal customer profile. If you don’t have this list, our sales message brainstorming process will help you to create that.
Qualifiecation
The next thing you want to look for if you want to sell like a detective and try to find prospects who fit well and are likely to purchase from you, is to list characteristics they should have that would make them a qualified prospect who needs the product and is able to purchase. If you do not have a list of those characteristics, we have to use the four areas to determine if prospects are qualified:
- Need to purchase
- Ability to purchase
- Authority to purchase
- Intent to purchase
Create Questions to Ask
If you want to operate like that superstar detective who always solves the case, you need to create good questions to ask. And the trick here is that all we have to do is look at the ideal customer profile in order to create the questions to ask, because all we are doing is asking questions to see how closely prospects we interact with align with the profile we are trying to match people to.
