A breakdown of NEPQ, a sales method that uses seven phases to close deals by engaging both emotional and practical outcomes. The phases move from connection through situation and problem awareness to solution, consequence, commitment, and presentation.
Any PQ is a sales methodology which has seven phases. Connection, situation problem awareness, solution awareness, consequence phase, commitment phase, and then presentation. In any pq, the first phase is connection. The point of connection is to essentially establish a rapport between you and the client. But then most importantly, it's to figure out what is the overarching goal. There's many different ways in which you can do this, but the whole point of it is just to get the little tippity top of the goal. And then as you kind of build rapport that person moving forward, then you can really kind of dive into those problems and expand them. Phase number two in any PQ is the situation phase. As we said, phase number one is connection, where we're trying to get the overarching goal. In phase two, what we're trying to do is essentially get an understanding of what they're currently doing about their situation. So like, hey, I want to lose weight or how to make more money. Hey, what are you currently doing to kind of help yourself make more money? Right? So we're getting a little land. Now, the thing with situation questions, we don't ask too many of them because people feel like they're getting interrogated. Phase number three of NAPE Q is the problem awareness phase. Once we've figured out their situation, then from there we want to figure out four things. One, what is the problem that's preventing them from being able to achieve their goal? How long has it been a problem? What's causing the problem, and what kind of impact is that problem having? Once we have those four key things, then we can start to expand it, have an understanding of like, really what's going on here so we can move them forward into the next phase, which is solution awareness. Phase number four in any PQ is solution awareness. This is where we're going to try and do two things. We're going to try and get the tangible outcome of what happens when they solve said problem. So in the very beginning, we get a little tip of the iceberg problem. Now that we've been with this person for a little while and we have a deep understanding of their problems, now we can really start to explore what are the tangible outcomes we're still looking for. Once all the problems are solved, then from there, and most importantly, we're going to attach an emotional outcome to that. So, yes, I want to make more money so that I can buy my family home, which would make me feel like this. So we want to have both sides of the brain engaged, and we want to have not only A tangible but also an emotional outcome. So we can anchor that into a positive feeling which we then change moving forward in the next phase. Phase number five of any PQ is the consequence phase. Now this is probably the most difficult for sales reps, but it's also the most important. So once we've established all the positive, emotional and tangible outcomes and solution awareness, we then take them away and bring them back down to reality and then explore the consequences of never achieving said goal, never solving said problems. So what this does, and the reason why it's difficult is because you have to be willing to have a somewhat awkward conversation with somebody and explore failure. And most people do not like like exploring failure. And some people put up a bit of a fight. However, it is in their best interest to have an understanding of what happens if they never actually do anything about their problems and never hit their goals. Phase number six of any PQ is the commitment phase. So once we've got the problem, the solution and the consequence, now from there it's a commitment from them to fix these things so that that consequence, the inevitable failure, if they don't do anything about it, that that is not a reality in which they're willing to accept and they have to commit to themselves to actually doing something about it. It's a very important phase a lot of people, because again, it is more difficult in the salesperson to ask these things, but you need to get them to commit to themselves to actually make a change before you present your offer. Phase number seven, NDPQ is the presentation phase. Now one of the interesting things about NDPQ is that we do not have long presentations. They're only about 10 to 15% of the total time of the sales experience. So if you're doing a B2B sale and it's a 10 call close of 60 minutes, you have a fair bit of time. But for most people, let's say we do a one or a two cold close and it's like an hour, maybe 90 minutes total that we have with the person. You're only going to want about a 5 to 12 minute presentation. The reason for this is it's very difficult for most salespeople to be able to carry the emotional tidal wave that they've created through all the other phases with a 27 minute long PowerPoint presentation. And they just bore the prospect to death. They actually put in too much detail which then gets all the analytical side of the brain going. They start thinking about time and money and everything and you're inducing objections. So we have a nice short presentation which is designed to. To basically go, this is what we do, and this is how it solves your problem. And then we go through the funding, and then we make the sale.
