When you begin a conversation with a prospect, you start by building bonding and rapport. With this connection established, you can move toward the Pain Step by establishing an up-front contract with the prospect. Among other things, the up-front contract dictates that you both are committing to a certain amount of time to go over his agenda as well as yours.
By the way, because you established a good up-front contract, the prospect has agreed on one of two possible outcomes after the meeting before it’s even begun. Either you’ll schedule another meeting to move forward, or you’ll agree that you don’t have a match and part as friends. As an alternative, you may agree in the up-front contract that by end of that particular meeting you will decide to work together and move forward with the purchase/ sale, or you will close the file and part as friends. Again, you will always leave every sales call with a yes, a no, or a clear next step, such as another scheduled meeting.
the pain funnel in action
With the ground rules established, let’s take a look at an example of a salesperson who works for a contractor in the business of building navigation systems for fighter jets. This salesperson has gotten in front of a buyer, Henry Jones, who has an engineering background and a very technical approach. As you’ll notice, the salesperson is going to use questions from the Pain Funnel to understand the prospect better and logically move him toward a sale. Watch how at the start the questions are broad and intellectual and then narrow in on more specific and emotional elements. This allows the prospect to grasp the problem and really see how it is affecting his company as well as himself individually.
Henry asks, “Can you design a system that will easily retrofit our F-16s so that rewiring will not be problematic?”
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March - April 2108-Ausgabe von The Smart Manager.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March - April 2108-Ausgabe von The Smart Manager.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
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Building A Quality Culture
A strong company culture defined by its values, beliefs, and behaviors, has a profound impact on its products and services. More so in today’s VUCA world, where to stay relevant and maintain a competitive edge, it is critical for organizations to build a culture that focuses on quality. Suresh Lulla, author of Quality Fables, elucidates through significant examples how creating a culture of quality is imperative to driving success and productivity.
Customers For Life
The history of General Motors in India can be traced back to the 1920s, when it became the first automotive company to set up an assembly plant in the country. The relationship since then has not been as fruitful as GM would have hoped. GM’s flagship brand, Chevrolet, was introduced in India to build upon the success of the popular Opel marque. However, success has been fleeting at best—an issue that GM India is determined to rectify. It aims to do so by adopting a two-pronged approach: using customer feedback to influence product development, and delivering a superior sales-to-service experience.
The Digital Shift
… technology will radically disrupt HR in the near future. Indeed, it is already changing the way HR works and the role it plays and opening the door to a new type of “digital HR” function.1 The rise of digital and social media is changing the dynamics of HR and creating new ways of hiring, engaging, and retaining employees.
The Story Of Telling
“The best brands are built on great stories,”* this remark by Ian Rowden best captures the strategy of diligent brand building. Much more than attractive logos or the products themselves, what builds a brand is how successfully a story is woven around it. Brand marketers have to be good storytellers indeed.
Complexity Is Simpler Than You Think
Kay Kendall and Glenn Bodinson, authors of Leading the Malcolm Baldrige Way, shatter myths about excellence models such as Baldrige and EFQM.
Proponents of Isolation Never Become Victors
Multilateralism in the political and economic space has always led to frameworks that favor the mighty. WTO was no exception. With agriculture kept out of its purview, it could never become a truly fair and free trading system. China was the only large emerging economy that exploited relative openness in low-cost manufactured goods to take full advantage of the system. Other emerging economies could at best garner minor gains.
A History Lesson (From Year One) for Trump and the Brexit Crowd: Isolationism Has Never Worked!
Professor Stephane Garelli on growing isolationism.
A Win-Win Game
Business is not a sport where some stakeholder has to lose or fare badly for others to do well. Building an atmosphere of trust and transparency between all stakeholders will help companies retain them even during adverse times.
A Sustainable Model
With a total market value of $4.3 trillion and an employment base of at least 1.3 million direct employees and millions of others indirectly employed, platforms have become an important economic force.*Companies today are constantly looking for ways to build platforms—Infosys Ltd announced its plans of monetizing its platforms to make them a $2 billion business by March 2021. But are all platform businesses successful?
Custom Made
…three in four consumers said they receive too many emails from brands, and one-fifth said they could not handle the current volume…69 per cent have ‘unfollowed’ brands on social media, closed their accounts or cancelled subscriptions.*In these times, when the market is flooded with products and services, the most efficent way to engage customers is to offer them customized content. To achieve this, brands need to focus on observing the nuances of individual preferences.
