There are essentially four parts to planning and executing a winning sales call.
1. Do Your Homework. You should know as much as possible about your customer’s organization as well as each of the buying stakeholders you are expecting to engage with. You should have knowledge around your customer’s financials, recent mergers and/or acquisitions, new leadership, and any issues you may have uncovered about the organization. You should have a clear understanding of each of your buying stakeholders current and recent backgrounds so you can ascertain where they may be with respect to buying from you. For example, the VP of Sales has had five sales leadership roles in the past five years—he or she may not be your best champion. However, if they are new to the company, they may be making changes and could be your champion.
2. Ask Questions. You need to understand what your customer’s issues are. Good questioning is essential to understanding their key challenges. Customers buy what they think your product or services will do for them. Therefore, it is up to you to prepare a call plan where you have crafted a series of questions to fully understand your customer’s key challenges. Craft questions that will uncover the problems facing them and the impact it is having on the organization. The questions should be open ended so you can get a broad perspective of the the company’s challenges. Ask questions that get to the root cause of their issues. For example, their challenge may be that they can’t retain good salespeople. Ask why. Keep digging until you find an answer like: We don’t properly onboard our sellers and therefore they struggle to be successful. The answer may be that your customer needs to shorten their reps speed to proficiency. Now you have something to work with!
You also need to understand each buying stakeholder's position with regards to purchasing or not purchasing your solutions. There are buyers who realize your solutions can help them and the company. There are those who may be resistant to change and are happy with the status quo. Your questioning process needs to uncover each person’s reason for wanting or opposing your solutions. In the next step, present information, you will need a strategy to leverage the support of those who are in favor of your solutions and a plan to overcome the those who are resistant.
3. Present Information. Tie how your products and services can help the organization solve their key business issues and how your solutions will help each buying stakeholder. There are many reasons buyers will buy from you. Here are a few:
Buyers buy because they are currently in trouble and need to fix where they are today.
They perceive trouble is on the distant horizon. Buyers in trouble are ideal for a seller because they are looking to solve their problems right now. If they perceive you can help them, they will lobby other buyers to gain support for your solution.
A third example is WIIFM—what’s in it for me. If a buyer thinks your solution will get them promoted, make their job easier, get a raise, they will likely champion your solution.
When presenting information, look to share a story from another customer you have worked with that has a similar situation. Tell them how you were able to help them with their challenges and how your products and services have helped them achieve quantifiable results.
4. Define Call Results. For every call, you should have specific and measurable results you want from the call. For example, the call result may be to have a subsequent call with a higher-level buying stakeholder. Or the result may be to present your solution to the board of directors on the next call. Getting a commitment before ending the call is essential. When call results are clearly defined ahead of time, it will help you steer the call to the best possible outcome. Without these, calls can end poorly, oftentimes resulting in one of the risks discussed in our blog: Risks of Poor Call Planning – Is It Worth It?
A strategic part of ZZ Sales Systems’ Consulting and Advisory Services is to help sellers create and execute solid call plans so they can:
Effectively understand their customer’s challenges and leverage champions.
Address each buyers’ resistance to change.
Tie how your products and services can help each buying stakeholder and their company resolve challenges.
Achieve a solid return on their customer's investment.
Increase wins and revenues for their customer.
If your company needs help to execute its Call Planning strategy, contact us for a complimentary consult.
Jerone Jackson
1-404-918-9524
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