Parts of this post adapted from the Solution Selling Fieldbook (2005, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 978-0071456074 by Eades, Touchstone and Sullivan).

Imagine that you are at a social gathering with your significant other, and you strike up a conversation with another couple that you just met. The conversation naturally progresses to talking about their family. They mention how their youngest child has had a lot of trouble at school lately. They tell you how their child has been late to class several times, turned in homework assignments late and how he has been reprimanded by teachers for talking out of turn.

If this couple shared this type of experience with you, what is your likely natural response?

If you can relate at all to the couple’s story then you might respond by sharing a similar or worse experience. The natural reaction upon hearing a story like this is to respond with one of your own.

Now, imagine how you would feel if a stranger approached you at the same party and asked “So, do you have any problem children?”

At first, this may sound silly, but in essence that is what salespeople are doing when they prematurely ask a prospective buyer to share their critical business issue - their pain - with them.

To earn the right to ask about a prospective customer’s pain, you have to share some pain with them. Sharing a customer reference story is an effective way to establishing credibility, and to share something about a potential pain, so that they are more comfortable about sharing their pain with you.

A good reference story should be expressed in this format:

• Situation: A customer job title and vertical industry
• Pain: The pain of the job title above
• Reason(s): One (or more) of the reasons for the pain biased to your product or service
• Capabilities (when, who, what): In the words of your customer, the business event, the player(s) and specific capabilities needed to address the pain: He / she / they said they needed a way…
• We provided: If the “solution” is described properly above, all the person should have to state is: “we provided… him / her / them with those capabilities”
• Result: Specific measurement is best (articulated in $ or %). The “Result” should address the pain.

So, a good example would be:

• Situation: VP Sales, manufacturing industry
• Pain: Missing new account revenue targets
• Reasons: His customers were required to place all orders via their salesperson. Salespeople were spending all of their time servicing existing customers and not developing new ones
• Capabilities: He said they needed a way… (when) when wanting to order, (who) for existing customers (what) to place their orders directly on the internet thus allowing his salespeople to have the time to develop new customers
• We provided: him with those capabilities
• Result: Over the last six months, existing customers placed 96% of all orders using the internet. His salespeople have increased the size of the customer base 10% and overall revenue 6%

Note that the most important part of a reference story is the result.  A reference story without any kind of clearly expressed results is like ending with “…and they lived happily ever after.”  Great for fairy tales, but not very useful if you are trying to stimulate the interest of a prospect in the value of your solution to their problem.

You can use reference stories in three ways:

1. At the beginning of a sales cycle, after delivering the message in your business development prompter: after arousing the curiosity of a potential prospect, a reference story is the best way to pay it off, and to begin a conversation with the prospect about their specific business challenge.
2. In the early stages of the sales cycle, as part of an introduction during the first call or meeting: reference stories are a great way to break the ice and begin a good business conversation with a prospect.
3. Later in the sales cycle, to be used as a form of proof: reference stories are a powerful form of proof of value for your offerings, after you have helped a prospect develop a vision of a potential solution.

If you don’t have any reference stories, budget some time to call your current customers, and ask them about the kinds of results they have acheived.  This also gives you a secondary benefit of potentially finding some incremental sales opportunities.

Good luck and good selling!

Parts of this post adapted from the Solution Selling Fieldbook (2005, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 978-0071456074 by Eades, Touchstone and Sullivan).

The ability to stimulate the interest of prospective buyers is the lifeblood of sales and marketing professionals. Those that can’t master this ability will always find their sales pipeline wanting for more. As important as stimulating prospect interest is to sustained success in business, it continues to be one of the most pressing challenges for everyone.

A survey commissioned by Sales Performance International and conducted by Equation Research polled sales professionals about the most critical job challenges they faced on a consistent basis. Over 50% of those surveyed said that “prospecting for new opportunities” was one of their top barriers to success.  In a separate survey of sales executives, CSO Insights found that nearly two-thirds (64%) of sales teams need improvement in generating new leads.

Sales Teams’ Ability to Generate New Leads
(Copyright 2009, CSO Insights, used with permission.)

Many sales professionals hate prospecting. They call it all sorts of different names – “business development”, “interest creation”, “demand generation” – because just the mere mention of the word “prospecting” causes people to become uncomfortable.

People who find prospecting to be a challenge usually do so because of one of four factors:

1. They don’t properly define prospecting in the first place. Prospecting should be viewed as the ability to create and stimulate interest. Calling a buyer and asking “Are you looking to buy what I’m selling?” isn’t stimulating interest, that’s polling.
2. They forget “No pain, no change”. Their message doesn’t target a potential pain of the prospect but rather focuses on the selling organization’s product or service.
3. They create tension, not interest. If their goal is strictly to sell something instead of earning the right to have a conversation, distrust and discomfort arise for both parties.
4. They have a fear of rejection. Some rejection would go away by avoiding the three factors just mentioned. However, some rejection simply comes with the territory - not all prospects will be interested in your message or your offering.

Levels of Buyer Need

You will find buyers at one of three different levels of need. By recognizing the level of need of your buyer, you can determine the best tactics for developing the opportunity.

• Level 1: Latent Pain - The buyer is not actively attempting to address their pain, and may be unaware that a potential solution even exists. They may have failed at previous attempts to resolve the pain and therefore have rationalized other solutions as too expensive, complicated or risky. In other cases, they may simply be ignorant that they have a pain.
• Level 2: Admitted Pain - The buyer is willing to discuss pain, difficulty or dissatisfaction with their existing situation. The buyer admits their pain but does not know how to address it.
• Level 3: Vision of a Solution - The buyer has admitted their pain, accepts responsibility for solving it, can visualize the details of a solution, and understands how it will address their pain.

Effective Prospecting Messages

To stimulate the interest of your prospects, you must incorporate their pain into your messages. Consider whether your approach stands up to this Business Development Checklist:

Do your initial messages to prospects:

• take less than 30 seconds to deliver?
• avoid sounding scripted and insincere?
• target a pain the prospect might have or can relate to?
• imply that you have helped peers of the prospect resolve a potentially similar situation?
• avoid a detailed description of your company history?
• avoid in-depth descriptions of your products and/or services?
• exclude asking the prospect to buy anything or to schedule a meeting?
• avoid asking the prospect to admit an assumed pain?

A simple way to ensure that your messages meet these critieria is to use an effective template for a prospecting telephone call, as follows:

This is __________________ (your name) with __________________ (your organization). You and I haven’t spoken before, but we have been working with __________________ (target industry) companies like yours for the last _____ (#) years. One of the chief concerns we are hearing (lately) from other __________________ (job title similar to prospect’s) is their frustration with __________________ (job title’s likely critical issue / pain). We have been able to help our customers address this issue. Would you like to know how?

Note several things about this simple template, which is called a Business Development Prompter: 

• First, it telegraphs that this is a sales call: “You and I haven’t spoken before…”.  This is deliberate - too many salespeople attempt to fool prospects into listening by obscuring the reason for the call.  Our research shows that this rarely works.  Better to be honest and straightforward, and get to the heart of the matter.  Real prospects appreciate this - the one thing buyers abhor the most is salespeople who waste their time with pitches that aren’t relevant.
  
• It provides a basis for credibility: “We have been working with companies like yours.”  If you have the relevant experience, use it as the basis for your prospecting calls.  In fact, if you specialize in a particular industry niche, you should say so - it explains clearly why you are calling the prospect.
• It focuses on a customer business issue - their probable pain: “One of the chief concerns we are hearing…”.  If you’ve done the proper pre-call research, you can make a good guess about what this pain may be, and greatly increase the relevancy of your call to the prospect.
• It provides a benefit for speaking further: “Would you like to know how?”  You are offering useful information in exchange for further dialogue - a fair trade.
  
• It is designed to stimulate curiosity.  Note that it does not ask for a meeting or further commitment from the prospect.  It only asks of the prospect would like to know more.  This is a much easier step for a prospect to agree with - it is certainly easier than to take the “leap of faith” that most salespeople ask of prospects with a meeting or further commitment of valuable time.

This kind of customer-focused, solution-centric message is much more effective than the usual, product-oriented, hard charging “sales pitch” used by most salespeople.  And it makes an effective script for voice mail messages, too. 

If you find that you are having trouble stimulating the interest of potential prospects, then perhaps your messages need to be more focused.  Use the Business Development Checklist, and the template for an effective Business Development Prompter message, and see how your success rate improves.