I Feel Like Chicken Tonight
“I would never cook using a ready-made sauce” said Jack at a recent coaching session “... because I wouldn’t know the ingredients, how they all go together and why they work with what I’m cooking”.
His analogy was so profound I nearly fell off the chair. Profound for Jack, for me and every salesperson who wants to close more forecast business on time.
It turned out to be the essence of the way Jack works and as we talked, more ‘light bulbs’ kept switching on.
How does a ready-made sauce affect closing
business on time?
Vital ingredients of the deal
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“I like to clarify that the team understand why we are working on something, that we have set the right goal and that we know why we have decided on our plan of action. Many people get so focused on the end goal they forget to look at the ingredients required and how they go together to achieve the goal”.
Now Jack isn’t a salesperson but if you play any part in closing forecast business on time take a closer look at Jack’s last sentence. Are you, or the team, over-focused on your end goal (the sale)? Often sales managers ask “how much is it worth and when will it close?” They want to know these for the forecast but they aren’t helpful questions to establish the real answers to them!
Which brings me to the first and vital ingredient of a sale (and often the part that’s missing) - focus on the customer’s goal (the value to them) - it’s what will make it happen!
Here are some helpful questions to check you are focusing on this vital ingredient when talking to customers or internally. Take any opportunity you are working on and ask:
- What is it the customer wants to achieve (the outcome)?
- Why is this important to them (the motivation)?
- What are their key issues and challenges (what they need to overcome)?
They’re called The Two Minute Check because if you know the deal well you’ll be able to answer the questions in less than two minutes. If you know the answers you know the Value to the customer.
More ingredients will follow in the next edition of Sphere. And if you have any vital ingredients, get in touch as I’d love to hear about them.
PS. If you’re of a certain age you’ll remember those cheesy adverts mentioned in the title! If you don’t get out much, you can find them on YouTube.