You’ve got to know “Why They Buy” before you can focus on “How to Sell”

It’s Wednesday afternoon, end of the quarter is Friday and my phone rings. The person on the other end of the line is with a company in my target customer sweet spot. They need what I sell and want to know if I have the time to sell it to them. Ever happen to you? How often do you have someone call you to inquire about buying what you sell? How often do you end up turning that prospect into a customer?

Now compare that to how often you are able to talk someone into buying your services (what is otherwise known as “selling”). The average close rate for B2B sales is about 60 percent for someone who comes to you. If you go to them, the average close rate is more like 5 percent. Prospects that are 12 times more successful for you are pretty desirable, right? So what is different about the company that calls you?

It is probably the most important question in sales and marketing and may be the most important question you can answer to help your company grow efficiently — we’re talking top-line and bottom-line revenue.

Consider this answer: The person who calls you is in the act of buying, where the person you call is in the act of being sold. Someone who is in the process of buying has done two critical things that differentiates him or her from your sales prospects. First, he or she has identified a need or a pain that he or she believes is real. Second, the study of that pain has revealed that it is significant enough for him or her to act. In order to turn someone to whom you are selling into someone interested in buying, you must help him or her do the same two things.

Feel the Pain

There is something called The Rule of Sixes in sales. You need six times your goal in your pipeline to hit your number. You should call someone at least six times before you stop calling. You should do six times as much preparation before an important call than you are doing now and most importantly, your prospect takes six times longer to identify the pain than you do. Think teenager here. It takes a teenager six times as long to understand why he or she shouldn’t speed as it takes you. You were in your 30s before you understood that — the same goes for the teenager. Your prospect doesn’t see the pain as quickly as you do. Plan for that fact and spend your energy working with the prospect, getting him or her to identify and believe the pain is real before you start to talk about solving it. Pretty soon he or she will be on your page — but don’t move forward until then.

Choosing to Act on the Pain

If you have a long list of prospects who “should have bought but made a bad decision,” you have a long list of prospects who don’t yet understand the ramifications of not acting. Until the prospect can quantify the cost and prove it is worth solving, he or she will stay on the “should have” list. To help you through this, consider making your cost-of-doing-nothing tool as sophisticated as your ROI tool. Walk him or her through this cost-of-doing-nothing calculation and get him or her on the I-need-to-solve-this page. When he or she is there, he or she will act.

The effort of co-diagnosing the pain and understanding the ramifications are nuanced, but important. Your prospect relationships will improve; the customer will be happier, and so will you — 12 times happier.