Hey Sales RX'ers,

You've probably heard it before, but understanding your buyer is so important. It truly is a key to sales success, but it's only talked about at a surface level. What does it truly mean to understand your buyer?
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Do I need to know where they went to college, what their pet's name is, and their favorite hobby? Should I know everything and anything about the role they perform at the company and the challenges associated with those responsibilities?
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Well...it's a bit of both.
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Above and beyond it's the perfect blend of the two. So let's talk about it.

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❓ What do they want to be from the time they close their laptop to the moment they open it back up?

Okay, so I've never been a fan of socially stalking your prospects. Nor do I think that just because you know where they graduated college means you've personalized your interaction. That said, there is a healthy balance of professional and personal that can lead to the perfect sale.

A great example is anytime I saw ANYTHING related to golf with a prospect. A picture of a course in a LinkedIn header image, previous work experience during college at a golf course or country club, anything remotely close to say this person wants to have golf be part of their identity.

I would bring that specific identifier up and then dig a level deeper in an intro call while building rapport. "Hey I saw you had a beautiful oceanside golf course in your header image on LinkedIn, where is that from? How often do you still get out and golf? Yeah, I consider myself the world's best worst golfer, I'm a liability on a par 4, but I can hang on a par 3."
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These are all examples of a conversational rabbit hole I would go down with my prospect for the first 2-3 minutes of our call to draw a personal connection to them of what they want to be outside of their 9-5, or their "SOCIAL IDENTITIY" as I've called it in the past.

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❓ What is the lexicon or vocabulary that they use inside their business?

This is where we start to dig deeper into the professional side of understanding your buyer. I think most of us selling a product or service know the main challenges our buyers face, or at least the common industry problems. That said, do you know the metrics those challenges affect, and what the benchmark of those metrics should be?

Once you can take this information a level deeper, now you're having conversations with them the same way they are having them internally. This in turn helps when you turn over written word, or documentation over to your champion to co-sell your deal to the decision makers, budget holders, and economic buyers.

If you can use the same type of language they do inside their business, and have that translated into any and everything you hand over to them for review, the better off you are when trying to establish clarity in the ROI of your product or service.

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❓ Where does solving this problem rank on their list of priorities?

If you were bitten by a zombie on your arm and had 5 seconds to amputate before the virus spread to your brain, you probably wouldn't be as concerned with the fact that since the apocalypse it's been increasingly hard to brush your teeth consistently. FYI, dental hygiene will totally go out of the window in a zombie apocalypse, but that's rarely visited or integrated into the shows/movies - odd.

As graphic and insane as the comparison is, most sellers don't understand why deals no-go or ghost all the time and this is a primary reason. Your buyer had a different priority they chose to pursue that felt more urgent than this one. It's incredibly common that when prospects are in our discovery calls it feels like this is the biggest thing they have going on right now, the fact is, it's likely not.

I've passively looked at products and services as a buyer in the past myself with truly no intention to make a purchase anytime soon. There's even a lot of buyers who just enjoy seeing what relevant tech is out there and how it works.

By finding out where a certain problem ranks on their list of priorities to solve, you now have the upper hand with building urgency and establishing ROI. If you find out it's low on the list of priorities, then you can work to establish cost of inaction and why NOT solving this problem is bleeding money.

If you don't know how to find out where this problem stacks and ranks on their list of priorities, The Sales Doctor can help.

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Conclusion:​
In closing, it's almost the end of the shortest month of the year, and we're seeing a lot of scary writing on the walls for sales teams. On the heels of more layoffs attainment is getting lower and lower while quotas are getting higher and higher.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. As a sales leader, asking for help from an outside source doesn't mean you don't know how to solve the problem. By bringing in an expert it means you are solving the problem, and that's what you were hired to do.

Don't be afraid to reach out to The Sales Doctor and see how we've helped companies raise over $100M in VC funds through improving their sales processes, and increased rep attainment by 28% in just 60 days.

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Time to get prescriptive ya'll 🩺

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