Everyone wants to believe they’re only going after high-value prospects, but the truth is far too many times the strategy being used is one that attracts low-value prospects.
If anything in your sales prospecting strategy is price-oriented, then guess what? You’re naturally going to be attracting low-value prospects.
You might be saying that’s fine because business is so slow that low-value prospects are better than no prospects. We will naturally attract what we set out to attract. If you talk price, you’ll get price, if you talk benefits, you’ll get benefits.
The key is to have everything you do to be focused on helping the customer with their needs and allowing them to build confidence in you and what you provide.
Price should not even be a tool you use in prospecting.
If you are forced to use price to attract prospects, then you haven’t figured out how to distinguish yourself from the competition. And differentiating yourself through benefits leads to high-value prospects.
A key reason why I’m against using price as a prospecting tool is because once you start using it, you and your customers will become addicted to it. The level of profit you lose will be huge, both in the short-term and the long-term. Sadly, you will become slightly blind to this because focusing on low price will be your go-to method.
To help keep the focus on the needs of the prospect, make sure you’re asking them questions that get them to expand upon what their problem is. Remember, your objective is to either help them overcome a problem or allow them to achieve a gain. That’s it. Don’t over complicate things. Keep your focus on the customer’s wants and needs and you’ll avoid having to go down the price trap road.
When you focus your prospecting approach in this manner, you’ll find yourself quickly building up a library of great questions you can ask.
You’ll become extremely comfortable and confident in asking such questions.
The end result is you’ll find yourself dealing with even higher-value customers than before, all while moving further away from price as a prospecting tool.
If this hits home with you, then I suggest you take a moment and check out my Sales Prospecting Program.
It is full of ideas and strategies you can put to use right now to help you increase your sales.
Or if you don’t want to attract more high-value prospects and close more sales at a higher profit, you could just keep doing what you’re doing.
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
