If you don’t know how prospects are handling things without your product or service, it becomes a lot more difficult to convince them to work with it. Your prospects don’t want to change how they’re doing things, which makes the “status quo” one of their frequent choices.
According to research from the Sales Benchmark Index, 60% of all possible sales are lost to “no decision” on the part of prospects. Many of those lost opportunities came from good prospects who were pretty far along in the sales process when they decided they didn’t want to go through the hassle of making a change.
Address their needs
Unless you understand how prospects address their needs right now, it’s difficult to put together a good rationale for change. It takes time and energy for prospects to change what they’re doing.
To get started, ask yourself these questions:
- How does this prospect do things now without my product or service?
- What problems might they be encountering with their current way of dong things?
- How do these problems impact efficiency? Costs? Revenue? Other departments?
- What effect does the status quo product/supplier have on achieving their objectives? What’s the biggest case for making a change?
- What issues might come up if they continue to do it themselves or use competitive products or services?
- What are they already buying from my competitors?
- What do we offer that they might not have right now?
- What might my competitors have overlooked when they initially sold this customer?
- Have any changes occurred that could get them to rethink their original decisions?
Adapted from: “Agile Selling,” by Jill Konrath, a sales strategist whose clients include IBM, Microsoft, Staples and Hilton.
