Last week in Sales and Marketing Lessons from LOST – the beginning, I tried to set the stage for a series of sales and marketing tips drawn from themes ideas and concepts in the television series Lost. For me it’s really about bringing together things that are of great interest to me personally, and using that as my muse.
While this week’s episode “This Place is Death” brought me a few wonderful nuggets to work with, I feel compelled to elaborate on what I touched on last week.
Draw Them In
My last post touched briefly on Lost’s incredible ability to hook and draw in new viewers. When we apply the concept to business, we’re all striving for the same things in a great deal of our prospecting effort. We too aim to draw them in through some initial form of contact either via our websites, blogs, mailers, billboards events, cold calls, etc.
Across the board, regardless of our ultimate big hairy goal for each of these methods, part of that approach is hoping to hook the audience – either as a means to an end, or as the end itself.
Capture | Captivate | Compel | Cultivate
In the context of business by phone - and specifically B2B prospecting - a prospector’s opening statement provides the framework in which a cold call grabs your prospect’s attention, and sets the stage for a business conversation.
Within few precious seconds prospects will determine whether or not they’re willing to spend any time at all listening or acknowledging you. Without a strong opening statement, that conversation doesn’t happen. Or what’s worse in many scenarios, the conversation does happen, but since you haven’t truly captured their attention, you’re speaking with a prospect who’s half-participating, half-focused on what they were in the middle of doing when you called… in these scenarios you’re drawing dead anyway, but wasting more of your precious time the process.
If the goal is to go into a meaningful, authentic business conversation, your opening statement needs to more than simply grant you permission to talk. You need to do everything possible to ensure you have an interested and enthusiastic participant in the conversation.
Capture:
- How do we create enough interest so that they will willingly and eagerly participate in discussion?
- You must answer the burning question, “What’s in it for me?” for the listener, or they will immediately begin the getting-rid-of-you process.
- In SPIN Selling, one of the keys to an effective opening statement is providing a “Buyer-centered purpose for the call”. This means more than just a pretty value proposition about reducing costs, boosting performance or increasing somethingility. This “buyer-centered purpose” needs to be more intimate. This needs to be something that relates specifically to this person at this company at this time. Do your homework, and tell them what’s really in it for THEM.
Captivate:
- When you’re in discussion, how do you keep them “on the hook”? How do you prevent prospects from deflating or getting fatigued as you continue?
- Even if your opening captures their attention and bring them into the conversation, if the context of your discussion doesn’t meet the expectations, you’ll lose them.
- Intrigue is key. In the sales profession, we inherently need to know everything about our product or solution, but your prospect only needs to know what they need to know. Unless you know exactly what they need to know, less is more…
- Breed curiosity with concise value propositions and benefit statements that beg questions from your prospect. Questions they ask will help you to identify what’s troubling them, or where their interests lie.
- Leave them wanting more.
Compel:
- Compel them to take action. What action? Depends on what you’re after. Are you driving for an appointment, demo, attending a webinar, etc.?
- What about Plan B? Despite your best intentions, you can expect some less positive outcomes. How do you make the less positive outcome more positive? Identify an intermediate action or next step or two you may fall back on. In doing so you can maintain momentum, and reduce any evaporation that happens after your first conversation.
Cultivate
- Where do we go from here? Once we’ve experienced success on our first touch, how do we maintain it across the life of the sales cycle and beyond? Are we captivating and compelling at each stage of the game?
- What else can we do to water this so it continues to grow?
- For prospects that evaporate, what tactics do you have lined up to go back and revisit and revive?