Browsed by
Author: Chandra Bodapati

You finally got to speak to a prospect on the phone, or a tradeshow! How do you start?

Within few seconds, the prospect will make a snap decision to..

1. Ignore-you,
2. Tolerate-you
3. or Give-Undivided Attention.

To get undivided attention, the prospect needs to have a strong sense, within those initial seconds, that you likely have the knowledge & expertise they need to solve their problem.

Two important things for you to keep in mind as you visualize your pitch:

1. The prospect first needs to buy into YOU – They need to respect your expertise, before they buy into your solution
2. The length of your response does not matter – As long as you are saying things that makes the prospect eager to hear your next sentence, and the following,.

Here is a 3-Step Response Formula ( followed by an example of how I use it)

Here is a 3 step process I developed to retain my target prospect’s undivided attention, and it works like a charm almost all the time. I taught this to several sales & marketing teams, and they have seen much higher prospect engagement level during their first conversation

This method works for any product or service you sell. I hope it works for you too.

1. Make prospect believe you understand their problem

Quickly articulate the most significant problem the prospect is likely facing, in a manner that shows “you have deep knowledge about the consequences of that problem”. Also show you have heard about this issue directly from several customers. Ideally you will pick the problem that your product / service addresses the best.

The key at this stage is NOT to spray the prospect with multiple problems, just pick the most significant one, and go through this sequence. If you do this right, you will get lots of time later to do everything else. Even if you get the wrong problem, you will get a shot at that problem if they think you know a lot.

The idea is to answer the question as well as you can, without asking any further questions from prospect. If you start asking questions, you will be no different to any other average sales person. If you get this right, the prospect will spend all the time you need later.

2. Show one believable reason why problem exists

Here you need to come across like an Expert with hidden insight on why that problem exists. Any history of how the industry grew & how the problem grew can make you look like an expert.

3. Show how your solution uses above knowledge

Articulate concisely how your solution leveraged this knowledge & insight, to help design the core benefit of your product or service. To be effective & credible, your solution MUST have a direct connection with point #1 and #2..

Usage Example

eGrabber Prospect:

“I am not having much success getting prospects on LinkedIn to respond. Do you have something that helps?”

eGrabber Response:

Sales people initially love LinkedIn, because they actually get to see where their ideal prospects are working. As bonus they also get nice conversation starting points from the Profiles.

The problem starts when they start engaging them. They are surprised by how few respond back to their InMail messages. That’s mostly because there is a disconnect between how they as sales people want to use LinkedIn and how most members actually use it.

(I am Guessing this might be their problem)

Members see LinkedIn as a career-site. They direct messages from LinkedIn to their private gmail like accounts, just as they would if they were on a dating site!. and read messages during their personal time & weekend – not during work hours.

LinkedIn site is great for recruiters who are trying to recruit; and it has been fantastic for sales people once they figured out an alternate way to get to these same prospects at their work place.

(Am I coming across as an expert on LinkedIn & why businesses might be failing?)

With eGrabber solutions, you will be able to do just that.

With our solution, you would continue to pick prospects on Linkedin, but instead of sending InMails to their personal IDs, you would click a different button & send the same emails to the prospect’s work email ID.

Since your Linkedin prospects get your email within seconds of you sending it during the time they are work-focused, you will more then likely get an immediate response if you hit the right chord.

—
Did the solution address the core problem articulated by the prospect earlier?
and also, did the example show you how to leverage the 3-step formula to cast your own spell on your prospect?

 ———————-

Here is an example of an eGrabber tool you can use to reach prospects on LinkedIn at their work place Account-Researcher):

Bottomline: You will get a better hearing from the prospect, if they think you have expertise that they don’t have, to solve their problem.