Friday Funnel Focus by EPOCH Sales Management Solutions
The past two weeks we wrote about focusing on the right priorities and building healthy pipelines. This week, we want to share how to win more of those deals from your healthy pipeline. Let’s pretend we have a healthy sales pipeline of opportunities, okay?
What is the most important step in the sales call process?
When I ask this question in groups, here are the most common answers:
- Closing the deal
- Picking up the phone
- Building Rapport
- Discovery and qualification
What do you think?
Closing the deal? It is important and we don’t get paid without it, but we believe at least one step is more important.
Picking up the phone? Again, creating new opportunities are critical and many small businesses need help in doing better at building healthy sales pipelines. But for this exercise, we will focus on steps after the opportunity is created. Understand that “picking up the phone” can be important in following up on open deals in the pipeline.
Building Rapport? If you don’t do this right, your Discovery and Qualification will suck, so it is important. But we believe that the most important step in the sales call process is Discovery and Qualification.
When done right, Discovery and Qualification makes the presentation, proposal and closing process feel like you have a “take home test” to complete with your at home answer guide.
Win More Deals Sales Process
We break our “Win More Deals” Sales process into 3 areas:
- Prepare and Open Calls
- Discovery and Qualification
- Present, Propose and Close more deals
Prepare and Open Sales Calls consists of 3 items
- Prepare for the Sales Call
- Build and Establish Rapport
- Open the Sales Call
The preparation and opening of the sales call sets the table for a great discovery and qualification step. We already mentioned the importance of building rapport to conduct an outstanding discovery and qualification. We will cover these items in more detail in future blog posts. Here is a sample sales call opening that we use on an initial sales call:
First Name, thank you for taking time to visit with us today. I believe we set this meeting up for 60 minutes, are you good for the entire 60 minutes? (Their reply.) 60 minutes should be plenty of time, but if we get into some meaty subject, is that 60 minutes a hard stop? (Their reply) First Name, what do you want to make sure we accomplish in these 60 minutes? (Their reply) I am prepared to address that, but before we get started, to make sure we talk about the most important things to you; it would help me to understand a little bit about where you are, where you want to go, what problems or obstacles you see in getting there and this may sound crazy, but why do you want to get there? Sound fair? (Their Reply) So, where are you today?
We find that the sample opening above sets the table for the Discovery and Qualification Step.
Discovery and Qualification
It is time to be super curious and learn all we can prior to the presentation and proposal steps. Here is the outline we use for our discovery and qualification process:
- Learn where they are today
- Frequently use confirmation questions in your current situation questions to understand where they are today.
- Have them paint a picture of where they want to go
- Be ready to follow-up your prepared “Desire State” questions with probing questions to gain a clear picture.
- Together, uncover what might get in their way
- Again, plan to probe to find the need behind the need or dig deep to uncover the impact of a problem or obstacle.
- Understand their motivation.
- Why do they want to get there?
- Summarize and verify the top 3 problems, issues, aspirations or motivations.
- Determine the importance of moving forward with anyone (take yourself out of the picture).
- Explore their commitment in the areas of time and people resources and request permission to talk about budget.
When fully qualified, it is time to match your benefits to their needs in the Present, Propose and Close phase.
A well executed discovery and qualification step will greatly improve your present, propose and close process to win more deals.
Want to explore the process further, schedule a free 30-minute consultation.
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