Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling by Jeb Blount

Author:Jeb Blount [Blount, Jeb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119144755
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2015-09-28T22:00:00+00:00

Weinberg says you need to answer the question, “Why do my customers choose to do business with me?” This is how you define why you are truly different from your competition—not just your company, product, or service, but you. Like Weinberg says, “Differentiation gets the attention of your prospect.”

WIIFM—The Power of Because

According to Robert Cialdini, author of Influence, “A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor, we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.”

I don't use the term value proposition very much. Honestly, I don't like the phrase. It sounds complicated. I like simple and straightforward. In prospecting, all you really need to do is give your prospect a good enough reason to meet with you and they'll say yes. It doesn't need to be perfect—just good enough to get in the door.

I'm also realistic. To be efficient at prospecting, you must pack lots of prospecting touches into a short period of time. In most cases, you will be prospecting to a similar group of prospects who share a common set of issues. Stopping to craft a perfect, unique value proposition for each one of these prospects is inefficient and impractical.

Instead, you need a compelling message that works most of the time with most of your prospects. It has to be quick, direct, and persuasive, but it cannot sound like a cheesy script. It's got to be natural and authentic.

Of course, if you are calling a C-level contact or high-potential prospect, it's critical to craft something specific and relevant that answers their unique WIIFM question.

Let's get real, though. For most salespeople, most of the time, you won't be in this situation. You need a message that can be delivered in 10 seconds or less and gives your prospect a reason or a “because” that's good enough to get them to say yes.

In a landmark study on human behavior, psychologist Ellen Langer and a team of researchers from Harvard demonstrated the raw power of because. Langer had her team of researchers cut in line in front of people waiting for access to photocopiers.

She discovered that when the researcher politely asked to jump in front of the person waiting for the copier without giving a reason—“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the copier?”—the person would say yes about 60 percent of the time. However, when the researcher qualified the request with a valid reason—“because I'm in a hurry”—the person said yes, on average, 94 percent of the time.

Here's where the research became interesting. When the researcher gave a nonsensical reason like, “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the copier? Because I have to make copies,” the person still said yes 93 percent of the time. It was a truly stunning finding. Saying the word because—giving a reason—was more important and powerful than the reason itself.

Now, I want to be absolutely clear that I am not advising you to make up nonsense and use that while prospecting.

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