A (0:01)

You're listening to the Sales Hunter podcast. My name is Mark Hunter. And hey, really, what are the steps you need to take right now to improve your value proposition? It's the most critical part of the sales call, your value proposition, and it really determines whether or not the customer is going to buy or not buy. I got four things I'm going to walk through with you. And the show begins right now. You're listening to the Sales Hunter podcast with Mark Hunter, where the focus is to help you as a salesman, sell with confidence and integrity. And now, here's your host. Okay. I'm talking about how to improve your value proposition. Four things I'm going to walk you through. I'm going to give you the four, then we're going to break down each one of them. First one is proof of performance. Yeah. Second, certainty of the process. Third one, confidence it will take to solve their problem. And the fourth one, trust in you and your company. You've got to get these four things correct, otherwise the customer is not going to buy. And you know what's going to happen. You're going to wind up selling on price and price alone. And what does that mean, a low price? Let's get into the four. First one, proof of performance. Remember, this is what the customer thinks. It's not what you think. This is where so many salespeople make the mistake. You've got to get the customer to verify that this is what they are looking for. You got to ask them questions. Hey, help me understand exactly what you're looking for. How have you made decisions like this in the past? You've got to get very frank and very direct with them on questions early on in the sales call. Because if you don't understand what they're looking for and why and how they're going to measure whether or not this is the right option, you're toast. Now, what are some other things that you do? Well, one of the best ways is with a story of another customer in their field, another customer that they can relate to. If you can share a story that they can connect with, it is amazing at how they begin to see proof of performance. There's another way that is give them references, give them referrals. I have this all the time happen to me where companies say, hey, we'll bring you in to speak, but we want to hear some references. We want to see some things that fine third one that I like, but I don't like. And that is allow them to test your product. Allow them to test it out what it Is. But here's the problem. You have to control the test. If you just say. If they just say, hey, why don't you let us test drive it for 60 days or something like that and we'll get back to you. You give it to them and they never get back to you because they never get around to testing it. You've got to control the test. You've got to. You've got to make sure that. That they are actually testing it. And that means they have to be vested in it. I always say, fine, you can test it, but it's going to cost you. There has to be either financial or time involved on the part of the customer. Test it. So that's the first step. Proof of performance. Let's get into certainty of the process. This is absolutely critical because certainty of the process is not proof of process. See, Go back to the question I asked earlier and ask them, how have you made decisions like this in the past? I'm listening for names, I'm listening for processes that they use. Because here's the whole thing. I've got to make sure that I get these people on board. If there are other people lurking in the shadows, I got to make sure that I've had conversations with them. Now this becomes more and more of an issue. The more complex the issue is, or the more complex the deal is, the more critical it is to the customer you're selling to. But what I want you to do is you need to make sure that you have everybody on board. And this is not just the decision maker, but this is the economic buyer too. These are the users of it. Because again, many times in the certainty of the process, there can be somebody who comes out at the last minute. The lurker. The lurker who really just wants to sabotage the deal to make them look good for some other reason. Or it may be legal. Legal may suddenly come in and say, hey, hold it. You can't do a contract like this. It may be procurement, but certainty of the process is absolutely key because again, I can't even begin to put my value proposition on the table until I've got certainty. And this is where so many times people put a value proposition on the table and then it breaks down and we're going back to square one and reworking everything. Number three, confidence. It will solve the problem. Okay, now think about this. Gotta ask yourself, what are the steps that you took the customer through that's going to give them confidence? Have you addressed all of the options they might be looking at now? Don't bring up unknowns. Okay, don't bring up unknowns. But you do want to make sure that you've addressed all of the options, all of that. In other words, have all of their objections been handled? You've got to make sure that you know that. Because otherwise what happens is they're going to come back up when you really begin negotiating the deal. They're going to come back up when you put the value proposition on the table. I can't stress this enough. You see, what I'm looking for also is, has the customer run the numbers? In other words, has the customer run the numbers? And what I mean the numbers, it may be their return on investment or has the customer really seen and understood how what you are selling them is going to help them, is really going to help them satisfy the issue. Now, this is absolutely key because this comes up essential when you deliver the proposal. Because when you deliver the proposal, your value proposition, you have to restate to them the confidence factors that they have in why they're going to buy from you. This is absolutely key. You see, they've always got criteria. And this is where so many salespeople fall down because they don't take the time to really understand what is the confidence that the customer's looking for. It's not about your confidence. You may know your product works, you may know your solution works. That's terrific, outstanding. But it's about the customer feeling comfortable. Now, here's the whole thing. You have to play it back to them. And don't hesitate to ask a question as you play it back then, because you play back the answer that they shared with you. But then, guess what? You're going to ask them a question. Hey, are we still on track with this? So many salespeople get scared of asking that. And then there's a problem. You see, what happens is salespeople skirt around this confidence issue because they're making assumptions very fatal. The fourth one, do they have trust in you and your company? How do you see this? Well, it's what I look for. Are they sharing with you confidential information? Are they sharing with you insights that are not known publicly? Are they inviting you into meetings and into conversations? Now, you might say, hey, Mark, hold it. Okay, yeah, you're right. That may only happen on very large, complex deals. But in smaller deals, begin to ask yourself, are they really having open and frank conversations with you? Are they taking your phone calls? Do they respond to you? Do they value what it is that you have to say? Or are they just valuing the product. You see, if they're just valuing the product, then we have a price sale. In order to maximize margin, it has to be trust in you and your company. So here's the question I'm going to ask. In terms of trust, are you connected with them on LinkedIn? Do you see them in other places? Do you see them in other spaces? Trust in you is many times developed through the industry, through trade associations, through conferences, through events. This is why I say you it is so important to create the relationship before you need it. That's one of the reasons I wrote the book Integrity First Selling, because trust in you and your company is a reflection of the level of integrity you have. And I go through it in depth in my book Integrity First Selling. In fact, all of these things that I've talked to you about today are in my book Integrity First Selling. Because here's the whole situation. Salespeople make a big giant mistake when they try to gloss over and they're actually afraid to ask the tough questions. This is especially early on in the sales call. And what happens is then they get down to proposal stage, value proposition stage, and they run into objections and things stall out. This is very, very harmful. And it's why so many deals never ultimately close and they just die. Now, what's happened is you've spent a tremendous amount of your time going through the process to develop and get them there. You know, you've made calls on them, you've had them in your pipeline, you've done all this stuff and probably it's in your estimate. And then guess what, it goes away. Because what it comes down to is you weren't taking the time. Now do. Do all four of these derail it? No, but all it takes is one of the four to derail it. And I'll tell you what, if they do, and the dump and the one that jumps out at me the most is, number three, confidence. It will solve the problem because the customer is not going to buy anything unless they feel confident that what they're going to buy is not going to make them look bad. Bad. Think about that for a moment. Hey, I'm Mark Hunter, the sales hunter. You've been listening to the Sales Hunter podcast. Do me a favor, buy the book Integrity First Selling. Pick it up, it's there to help you. And hey, would you leave me a review if you buy it on Amazon? Leave me a review for the book on Amazon. And hey, leave a review for the podcast, would you? Because every week you get two episodes, one like this. Short single topic second, where we do a deep dive with the subject matter expert. My name is Mark Hunter, the sales hunter. Great selling.