Episode 136: 3 Sales Process Changes That Grow Close Rates

Hi everyone, I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our.

Amazing planet has to offer.

You're listening to the Stronger Sales Team podcast where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate and keep together highly effective sales teams. Teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits along the journey. We also provide great insights and actionable.

Steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive year is not.

Only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious sales leader.

Who wants to build the highest performing.

And engaged teams, stronger sales teams is.

Right where you need to be. Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop super powered sales teams. There are times when I'll have calls with any one of our clients and think, wow, that was a really good call. They got so much value out of that that I can see them paying for their whole program. Right? Just from that session. I can see them moving the dial by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in revenue. I can see them pumping up close rates by 5, 6, 7, 8%. Yes, I've seen close rates grow by that much from one single session. And please don't think this is a bit of PR for my business, but more me saying that there are some times after that session when I need to get better at actually sharing that information on a broader scale. And that's actually what I'm going to do today is I've come out of a coaching call with a great customer based out of Melbourne today. A terrific team, really lovely owner of the business and the people that were involved in his business, equally lovely as too. And they had something in there that it's hard to always find in teams and that's that willingness to learn, to listen, to take on feedback. But what actually comes out of this session, and in fact most of the sessions with this team, is some really good outcomes for them because they come in with an open book, there's no chip on their shoulder. They've all been doing what they do for a long period of time, right? Decades. But they are prepared to think about how they can improve and grow. And this time I'm gonna set the scenario a little bit because I would encourage everyone in sales to keep listening, even if this isn't your exact style of scenario, but really does set the scene for how this can work and for businesses and salespeople that have perhaps different styles and modalities that their teams will sell through, some by phone, some by face to face, some of their times by teams meetings or WhatsApp. Right. Or web chats, whatever it may be, to start to think about how you might be able to cross pollinate this from the example I'm talking about today into a wider part of your team. So let me set the scene here. This is a customer that deals very much in the B2C space. So they're a professional business providing a product to direct end users, Right? They are, broadly speaking, in the medical field. I won't go into any more detail than that. However, broadly speaking, they're in the B2C industry medical field. And a lot of their sales in the early stages of lead generation is done via phone. They also utilize email a lot and they also utilize face to face visits. Right. But the area we're talking about today is, is really nailing that first period when a lead comes into your business to how you get them qualified to the point where they're having a really strong face to face consult. Now, certainly you can switch around the face to face consult with video consults, with extended phone calls, with any other form of your business. That's the point where you start to close and win deals. But, but the bit I'd really encourage you to think about and have that open mind to today is around how you are increasing the number of leads that you are getting to the really qualified stage of being able to make the decision. Okay, so the areas that we focused on today are around the lead comes in and we're starting to qualify that lead to get a quote from us, right? So the leads come in, we've generated some interest and we're starting to think about, all right, how do we create that quote for them? And the first area that we worked on as that team was around getting really clear on what the customer actually wants. This is not your typical type of questions that says, tell me about your lifestyle, tell me about your business, tell me about what you do, but about taking this from not just asking them those questions, but what the end result looks like for them that makes them really happy. Right. So some examples might be a result that they get from a product, a result that they get from a service. It might be that a product allows their house to run more cheaply, that their house stays cooler in winter, warmer in summer, that they have more time to spend with their kids, that they're able to invest their money into you and get a return of a certain amount that they're able to learn a new skill that allows them to then go and take on a new role or a new job. But we're starting to think about the outcomes that get them to say, yeah, yeah, hand up. I mean, I want to do exactly what you guys are doing. And the reason this is really important is because it moves us away from decisions being made on just price. And unfortunately, as salespeople, when we lean into quickly to pricing without attaching some real value and particularly emotion, I think that aspirational journey around where you want to be when we move too quickly to that price becomes the infinite decision maker. It becomes the one that people lean on most heavily. But when we can create some real alignment around the outcomes and the results that our customers are looking for, that's when we start to be able to align everything we talk about to that result. So if the result was a product that allows someone to spend more time with their family, then we get to focus on how our product or our service allows them to do that. We get to roll it into our quote. We get to use it in our language. We get to talk about stories where other customers have done it. We get to talk about times where we've done it. We get to perhaps relate to them when we have families of our own. Right. But by understanding really clearly exactly what they're looking for out of their engagement with your type of product or service, we can then align the rest of their journey around that. Take some discipline, because it requires you to slow down, put your brakes on, and actually dive into what the customer might want. But for me, my experience says that when teams, when people, when leaders do this and they can line up the rest of their process around these type of outcomes, close rates grow significantly. That dial really moves. So that's the first piece there. Really starting to think about what a great outcome looks like for our customer. Right. And it's some great robust conversations in this business out of this session today has actually regimented that into their sales process that they can't pass on the lead to be quoted until it's got some details around what success looks like for the customer. Right. So the quoting team, the principals in this business, actually won't quote unless they know that. Terrific. Right. Ensures it happens with every lead. Second piece here is to start to think about who else is involved in the decision. Now a little bit more difficult in B2B, often more forthcoming to be able to understand who it is, but a little bit more difficult to perhaps interact with all of these people. But in B2C deals, you're generally going to find that the others involved in the decision are either going to be their spouses, their parents, or their friendship groups. Sometimes a professional advisor that they really trust might roll in here, but more often than not, it's going to be spouses. So understanding exactly what their spouse wants out of this process just adds another layer to the personalization of their journey that you can provide. Right, by understanding what is important to their spouse. It stops those moments when your quote goes through. The person ticks off everything. And the master of finances, as a lot of people call it, being the husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever the partner is, say, no, no, we can't go ahead with this, it's too much money. And that's because they simply haven't been able to come along on that journey where you've had the value created for them. They're simply looking at this as an economic transaction where their partner's gone and done something and they don't like it, so they're saying no. So where we can engage the other key people involved in the decision, that can be super, super impactful in moving the dial around. Close rates. Now, that may mean creating messages directly for the other decision makers, it may mean trying to get them on the call, it may mean doing a separate FaceTime call with them, it may mean bringing them to your consultation, it may mean including them in the product quote, it may mean calling them separately and having a conversation. It doesn't matter, as long as we can find out what's important to them and bring them into the inner circle of this decision making process. Because once everyone involved in the decision feels heard and that the value is created, of course we're more likely to move ahead. Now, if we're talking about this, and I will divert into a B2B situation, this is where I start to talk about making sure that we know the decision makers, but that they also know us. And often we'll have procurement and operations or service or finance or leadership or board level people involved in decisions. We need to be able to understand exactly what's important to them so that we can then be tailoring our pitch and all of our communications around these areas. Right? So so far, when we're looking to set up a deal that's going to close, and this is based off real life experiences with multiple clients, but in particular a client from today is by understanding exactly what our customer wants, the outcome that they're looking for, we get to tailor all of Our communications moving forward around that. Right. And thereby continue to really drive some value for that potential customer. The second part was around making sure that we bring in to the inner circle anyone else who's involved in the decision, particularly at a B2C level, where we often see it's a significant other, but where we can bring them into the process, we also start to align that journey around what's going to create value for them. Because once we've created that value, the decision around price and price comparison or even inertia, winning that is doing nothing versus moving forward, that starts to disappear because we're creating great layers of value. Okay, and the third piece and the final piece I went through with this team today who, who by the way, now have enough work for a month, right. To go and roll this out and really make an impact, was around understanding what they're going to do next. So where we start here is confirming with the customer what you're going to do next. Right. What's going to happen. You're going to receive a quote, you're going to receive a video, you're going to receive a phone call, you're going to come in for a consultation, whatever that may be, what their expectations should be, and confirming what you're going to do with them after that point in time. So if we take this company, for example, this business was all about sending a quote. That was what was coming next. So they will step them through exactly what to expect, but also confirm when they want to call or when they want to catch up again to run through any questions that they have. And this business post, our session today will actually be setting up that next time they're going to have a phone call with the customer, setting up some automated text messages that will go out to them to remind them that they're going to receive that call. Right. But it's all about asking permission from the customer around when they're going to engage next. Now, of course, as businesses, we'd like to see that happen as soon as possible. And I always suggest you start with the day after your quote. However, for some people, they're going to have different time frames. And as long as we can work within reasonably quick time frames. Right. We're able to continue to build that relationship. Now, if a customer said, hey, I'd like you to call me in a week, I'd be really encouraging you to try and add in that, hey, would you mind if I called you in a couple of days just to see if you've got any initial questions? And then we'll set up our main call for a week's time. Would you mind if I sent you across any information, created a video for you. Right. Sent you some sites to look at whatever it is. We want to be making sure that we're keeping that engagement up between now and that seven day period. But certainly what we want to be doing is setting up that we have an agreed time when we're going to talk next. Easy, easy in theory, not always easy to roll out. Next piece here is we start to confirm how we're going to communicate. Whilst everyone's different, we know the best ways that we build business. For me, when I'm dealing with customers, if they ask me to send across a quote and then to follow up via email, I'll politely refuse. I actually won't send the quote because for me I know that I need to be talking or meeting or doing video calls with customers to really understand if what I've put together works for them. So if we can't agree on a time we're going to follow up and talk through that quotation, I actually won't send it across certainly in the very vast majority. So it's working out A around what the modalities are that work for your team, but B also aligning that with what might work with your customers. Some customers prefer different types or different modalities of communication. We've got to find a way to match what we do and what works with something that's going to work with our customers. If they don't like phone follow ups and they don't want another extended period of time, we might be able to talk to them and say, hey look, would you mind if we had a really short 5 minute phone catch up at a time that works for you? It's important because of these key reasons. It's important to make sure you understand what we're doing. It's important to be able to answer your questions, it's important to be able to answer questions of anyone else involved. It's important for us to make sure that we've communicated all the right information to you, whatever it may be, but making sure that we agree on when we're going to contact customers and the modality in which we're going to do it, that is phone, sms, video, come in and see us, whatever that may be. Right. So that there is a little bit of skin in the game on both sides. Now, of course there's no requirement for the customer to turn up to that meeting. I absolutely understand that. But at the same time, generally when people make commitments, my experience is that they are more likely to keep them and engaged around them than they would be if there was no agreement on time. So they're the three things that we work through with this customer today. And look, I will guarantee that moves the dial for them around their sales process. And if you're able to make some change to your business around these three areas, I really do expect they'll have some positive impacts for you. But those three areas, we're getting really clear on the outcomes that the customer wants so that we can align everything we do moving forward around that. Number two was about making sure that we're really clear on who else is in that process of making a decision and what's going to be important to them so that we can add that into our communications moving forward. And number three was confirming when we're going to meet or talk or communicate next and how we're going to do it. Right. So that it allows both parties to be really clear on expectations. And as I said, in my experience, more often than not people will lean in and honour those commitments. Right. Three ways, short and punchy that make an impact to improving. Particularly B2C phone based type of initial consult where we're trying to step customers through to making a decision on our product. Anyone who wants to know more about this, you want to engage further in it, you know where to find me. This is stuff I love talking about. I do it all day, every day. But for now, what I hope is you've been able to take one, two or three things out of today that you can do to slightly adjust your sales pitch, the pitch of your team or the pitch of your business. Right. To be able to grow faster and make more sales. That's it for this week. Until we meet again next week, please keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve. Bye for now.

Want to be kept up to date with any of our free materials to help you build the best sales teams possible? Well, the easiest way you can do so is to follow us on your favourite social media channel. We're onger sales teams on most of them and if you DM us stronger, we'll send you right back some great resources to help you build your super powered sales team. If you'd like a little more help, please get in touch directly and book a free discovery call with me. I run a limited number of these sessions and they're free for my podcast listeners.

I'd love to help you out.

Until then, see you next week for.

Another podcast of stronger sales team.