Building You Sales Process PDF

Building Your Sales Process
A step-by-step guide to building an efficient and effective personal selling system for B2B sales
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© 2017-8 David Masover ! All rights reserved
www.davidmasover.com
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By David Masover
© 2017 David Masover
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without
permission from the publisher except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For
permissions or other inquiries, please visit the author’s website:
Cover image: Hannu Viitanen/Dreamstime.com
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© 2017 David Masover ! All rights reserved
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Welcome to Building Your Sales Process:

The Self-Paced Sales Process Development Workbook!
INTRODUCTION: How to learn how to sell
This eBook/workbook was created to help you develop your own professional B2B sales
process and personal selling system no matter what your industry, location, background,
or level of experience.
The methodology you will develop using the exercises in this guide will be helpful for you
even if you already get enough good-quality Leads from your company, follow a company-
prescribed sales process, or are only involved in part of the sales process.
I have used the concepts and exercises you will find here with hundreds of sales
professionals over the last several years, and one of the main themes of the feedback I
get sounds something like this:
There is nothing groundbreaking here . . . but that’s not the main value. By working
through the steps of the sales process as described in this program and with the
questions presented in these exercises, it’s easy to create an effective plan for
generating new business – from existing or new customers – and to execute those
plans efficiently, effectively, and consistently.
And that’s exactly the point: to have an effective plan for selling that you can execute with
discipline.
I noticed early in my career (and ever since) that most of the best salespeople are
consistent, methodical, and disciplined about how they work. By bringing disciplined
execution to my own work, the work of teams that I have directly managed and others for
whom I have coached, consulted, and trained, I have seen the transformative power of
disciplined execution in sales.
Now, you can easily create your own disciplined, executable personal selling system in
your own work, just by following this guide – and by doing the work to adapt the principles
here to your own unique set of circumstances. To truly excel, you will need to work on
these processes iteratively and for as long as you are selling, but this guide provides a
quick and easy but complete and effective way to get started with what sometimes feels
like an overwhelming question:
How to sell!
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How did you get here (and where are you going)?
There are a number of ways you may have found this eBook/workbook. In any case, I’m
glad you did – but know that I offer this workbook-style eBook as a compliment to some of
the other books and programs that I have created. This eBook/workbook is the foundation
of the “roll up your sleeves, and get to work” aspect of these books and programs.
In case you are interested in complimenting what you read here with additional
perspectives and insights on these same concepts, ideas, tactics, and strategies, let me
share a few quick sentences about these associated books and programs:
The Salesman’s Guide to Dating

You might be reading this because you were directed here after reading The Salesman’s
Guide to Dating (SGTD).
SGTD is a fast read (probably under and hour). It’s a fun look at the parallels between the
pursuit of a connection in the context of sales and in the context of dating. Unless Amazon
does strange pricing tricks, which they sometimes do, the book is usually available for free
on Amazon as a Kindle book and through other online booksellers, and if you want to
check it out, you should. It’s a great way to put the sales process into a context that you
can easily grasp and in a fun and playful way. Get The Salesman’s Guide to Dating on
Kindle at Amazon by clicking this link.
Mastering Your Sales Process

Mastering Your Sales Process (MYSP) was my first book, published back in 2010. It is a
detailed walk through the same seven-step process you will work through here. If the ideas
in this eBook/workbook make sense to you, but you want to dig a bit deeper into the
underlying concepts, MYSP might be a good resource for you. This eBook you are reading
now leans more towards short and tactical; MYSP is a bit longer and somewhat more
theoretical. They will both help you think about and build a process, but this is how they
are different – plus, this one is a bit shorter and more recent, so it benefits from a lot of
practical application that took place in the seven years since I wrote MYSP. The Kindle
version of MYSP has price fluctuations driven by Amazon, but it is usually at or near $10.
You can check it out on Amazon by clicking this link.
Managing the Sales Process

If you are a sales manager or an executive in charge of a team of B2B salespeople,
Managing the Sales Process (MTSP) was written for you. It takes the same seven-step
process we use in this eBook and in MYSP and shows managers how to help their teams
apply these concepts and how to work with salespeople to optimize performance
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individually and across the organization using this methodology. You can learn more and
buy MTSP on Amazon by clicking this link.
The Self-Paced Sales Process Development Workshop

While not a book, you might want to check this out to get some additional input and
support for the completion of this workbook and the process you will build as a result. The
Self-Paced Sales Process Development Workshop is a prerecorded (and inexpensive)
sales process development online training course. I don’t want to turn this introduction into
promotion, but, if you are interested in the online workshop, you can click this link to learn
more. The workshop will walk you step by step through the same work you do in this
workbook but with additional details, insights, and ideas to supplement and support the
work you are doing here.
Personal and Group Coaching and Training

Finally, for those who want the truly personal touch, feel free to contact me directly via my
website at www.davidmasover.com, or consider one of my coaching packages designed
specifically as an extension of the work you will do in this eBook/workbook. I have always
enjoyed working with salespeople, sales managers, and executives individually and in
groups. If you are interested in working directly with me, please contact me, and we can
talk about what might make sense.
So, those are some resources for you to consider as supplements to the work you will do
here, if needed. Now – before we dive into the work – let’s make sure this eBook you are
reading is the right one for you right now.
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WHO IS THIS FOR?
When I am selling my sales training and consulting services, I get asked a lot about
whether I have worked with others in the industry of the person I am selling to.
In other words, if someone is in the construction industry, he or she wants to know if I have
worked with the construction industry as a way of determining if I can help with
construction industry sales issues.
It’s a common question, and on the surface it seems like a good one – but it’s not. Truth is,
I consider it to be an Objection and I treat it like one.
Why?
We’ll talk about the importance of subject matter expertise later in the book – and it is
critically important to your success in sales – but there is something else that is at least
equally important.
Sales is also a discipline and a skillset.
Having industry expertise will make you better at sales, but having industry
expertise alone won’t make you good at sales.
In other words, prospects of my sales training and consulting services could certainly hire
someone with knowledge about their industry – but let’s face it: the company should
already have that.
What is usually missing is competence regarding issues related to sales and selling that
apply to all industries. This is the part that is most often missing from sales organizations
and salespeople who are not as effective as they could be.
But this book wasn’t written for sales organizations. It was written for salespeople. What
kind of salespeople? Let me explain and answer the question, “Who is this book for?”
(If you just want the answer, go ahead and skip a few paragraphs to the section called “So,
who is this for already.” But before I get to that, I’m going to give you some backstory with
one of my first experiences in sales....)
This book was written for me – the “me” in 1991 when I got my first sales job. Let me
explain what I mean so that you can see if the book is right for you as well.
In 1991, I got my first sales job selling consumable computer supplies – disks, printer
cartridges, and a lot of other stuff that isn’t even sold anymore. Products that were used
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with computers and computer-related equipment that was consumable – so people had to
buy more of the stuff we sold when they used up the last ones we sold them.
These were hardcore commodity products; everyone sold the same thing. It was a rough
introduction to sales.
What made it rougher is that I got no training.
At all!
My boss spent a few days telling me about the products we sold – but nothing about
selling.
When we were done with the product training, he showed me my desk, gave me the
contact list of the person I had replaced, patted me on the back, and said, “When you get
an order, write it up on one of these forms, and give it to Mary over there. Good luck!”
That was it.
And there I sat – looking at my phone, listening to the chatty (and seemingly but
mysteriously effective) sales conversations of my colleagues, and having absolutely no
idea who to call, what to say, or how to get an order.
I simply did not know what to do.
Luckily, one of my colleagues saw my situation for what it was and gave me her copy of
The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy. It was an audio book (on cassette tapes – it was
1991 after all), and it was way over my head.
What it did for me, though, was to make me realize that there are people who write and
speak about how to sell.
I couldn’t find any one resource that immediately and completely answered my core, basic
question: how to get started the right way and, once I started, how to keep getting better.
So, I read a lot of books, went to lectures, tried to learn from my colleagues and
experimented.
Eventually – from so many lectures, concepts, books, conversations, experiments,

observations and experiences – I built up my own personal selling system.
That core system is the same one I still use and write about now – decades later.
It’s the same one you will read about and learn here in this book and in almost all of my
other work as well.
Why?
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Because it works!
Over the last two decades, I have coached, consulted, and trained many salespeople,
frontline and senior managers, and company leaders from a wide variety of industries
using this selling system concept as the core of the work...
....but my greatest joy comes from working directly with salespeople – and a special kind of
salesperson.
Are you one of them?
So, who is this for already?!?
OK – so whether you read the story or not, here is the answer to your question.
I have been a Business-to-Business (B2B) salesperson my whole career. I don’t know

anything worth writing about for B2C or FMCG. Some of what I write might apply, but my
content comes from B2B experiences and is best directed at B2B salespeople.
I’m not going to go into why B2B may or may not be different – but, if you are a B2B
salesperson, this was written for you.
More specifically, though, I write for the kind of B2B salesperson that I was when I started
(see the story above if you skipped it for more on that).
At that time, I was determined to succeed but not sure how to do so. Of equal importance,
I was committed to taking responsibility for my own personal and professional
development.
Are you like that too?
After a short time and a rough start, I was able to “get sales” (in both meanings of the word
“get” – acquiring AND understanding) but I wanted more than just to get sales.
I wanted a selling system.
I wanted a systematic way to focus my efforts at all stages of the sales cycle:
• Finding new people to sell to

• Making sure they were likely to buy before I spent too much time with them
• Learning what it was they needed so that I could suggest the thing they would say yes
to
• And then finding a way to reach an agreement with them
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If you are determined to succeed in B2B sales and want more than a collection of tips and
tricks to string together, this book was written for you.
Now, don’t get me wrong – some tips and tricks can be useful, but they work a lot better
when you have a selling system to plug them into.
Think about it like the skeleton of your body or the frame of a car. Having great parts
(heart, liver, carburetor, tires) is important, but you will be better able to use them of you
have a framework to “bolt” them into.
We’ll build that framework here.
But more than that.
I’ll take you through the seven-step sales process I developed early in my career and used
for decades – on my own and with many others – and help you build your own system. Not
just at a conceptual level, I’ll teach you what to do, what to say, and how to say it at each
step along the way.
You will want to personalize the system, of course, and express these concepts and these
tactics in your own style. Think of it like learning music; the music teacher teaches the
song the way it is written, and the students play it as it is taught until they learn it well
enough to add their own style.
That’s when the students stop playing notes and start playing music!
So, think of this book as the sheet music. Both the melody (the framework) and the notes
(what do say and how to do it).
Once you work through it, you can make your own music – and have a personal selling
system that is efficient, effective, and tailored to how you want to work and win and that
you can keep with you for the rest of your career.
Sound good?
Then let’s get started!
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SALES PROCESS OVERVIEW
Critics of my writing tell me I spend too much time on set up – like the old movies that
spent the first five minutes showing you who was in them rather than just jumping right into
the action like the modern ones do.
My kids hate that about the old movies – and, admittedly, the new style is growing on me
as well....
So, am I sensitive to this criticism of my writing style?
Not really.
I am a big believer in the idea that, when you set something up right from the start, you get
through it with more success. It’s one of the core principles in this book. We’ll look at this
idea that I call Front Loading, more closely in Step 5, later on in the book.
That said, I know that different people have different styles, so I try to accommodate (like
when I told you to skip the story above if you wanted to).
In the same spirit, it is possible that you are familiar with the basic construct of my seven-
step sales process from one of the books I mentioned above or somewhere else. In case
this is your first exposure to my seven-step sales process, though, I’d like to give you an
overview as we’ll use this process throughout the book. If you are familiar with it, though, I
don’t want to give you stuff to read that you already know – so let’s do this (still one of my
favorite lines in sales):
Here is a link to a blog series on sales process I wrote some years ago and updated
around the time I published this book. It will give you an overview of the process we will
develop as we work through the exercises in this workbook starting in the next chapter.
Once you feel you have the big picture of the seven-step process down (what are the
steps, how do they connect to each other, how do they build on each other, etc.), then you
can read on – or just jump in and refer back to the process series posts if you feel you
need to. Whatever works best for you.
Starting in the next chapter, we’ll get into the detailed tactics of exactly what to do to set up
each step of your selling system for success, how to tie each step to the others, and how
to mold the whole seven-step system into a solid sales process that you can use to build
your own sales success system – personalized for you and your situation, even as that
situation evolves over time.
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So – as my kids would be shouting by now – enough of the setup already! Let’s get right
into the first step: figuring out who to talk to in the first place.
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SALES PROCESS STEP 1 – LEADS

Who should I be talking to, and where can I find them?
If you want to sell something, you need to be communicating with someone who is likely to
buy your product or service.
The second step of our process is about reaching out and initiating that communication.
But we don’t want to waste those efforts – so, in this first step, we will answer the question
of who you should be directing your sales communication efforts towards and where you
can find these people.
We call this stage “Leads” – or, more completely, “Lead generation.”
Even if you get good Leads from your company or somewhere else, do this work anyway.
It will help you to think about Leads holistically, meaning how they fit into the rest of your
process and how you can optimize the rest of your process based on the Leads you get –
by your own efforts or otherwise.
Let’s get into some exercises that will help you do that.
A quick note about making your plan
Instead of just reading these exercises, you’ll get a lot more out of this workbook if you
actually do the work to think about and answer the questions as best you can and then
write it all out into a complete plan that you can refer back to, adjust, and optimize as you
execute your sales work.
The process we create with this book builds as you go, so don’t skip around – start at the
beginning (here), and work your way through from start to finish.
What I’m saying here is that you should be taking notes and writing up a plan as you go.
You’ll get a lot more out of this work if you do, and you will have a solid place to start from
once you complete the eBook.
Got your pen and paper (or an open blank document with some kind of inspiring “power
title”)? Great – then let’s go!
Leads Exercise 1 – Who needs the help I can provide?
The best way to start looking for Leads is to think about who is using your products or
services now. These can be your own customers, the customers of a colleague, those of a
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competitor, from your imagination (useful if you are a startup) – it doesn’t matter. The point
is that you want to know who will receive some benefit from using what you sell.
Why?
If you start down the path of engagement and communication as described in the rest of
the steps of our sales process, your best bet for success will come when the person you
are talking to realizes that your product or service will help him or her to do something that
is important to them (or to prevent something that they don’t want to happen).
So, let’s start by asking these questions and writing down the answers on your sales plan
document. (You are taking notes, right?)
1) Who is using your products or services now? Why? Why yours? Why not something
else?
• Are your customers individuals? Families? Companies? Government agencies?

• Whatever you decided above, how can you narrow the definition further?
•Families with children – how old?
•Newly married people looking for a first house?
•Companies in what industry?
•Local or national government or something else? Which agencies?
• Can you get even more granular and detailed than that?
•Who in the family or company or agency is using your product?
•Who ultimately makes the decision?
• Husband/wife/mother/father/kids – how old?
• Certain job position in a company or agency?
• Seniority?
• Do they decide on their own, or do they have to ask for input or permission
from others?
2) What problems are they solving with your products or services, or what problems do
they hope to solve?
3) What benefits are they getting from your products or services? How are your products
or services helping them? To do or avoid what?
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Once you have asked and answered these questions, you will have a clear idea of exactly
who you, your products and your services help and what you help them with. This is a
good first step, and sets up the next – creating a buyer persona.
NOTE: This is the first exercise you can write up in your notes. The Leads and Prospecting
sections will have a lot of opportunities for notes, and working through them with discipline
from the start will help set you up for success with this eBook and in building your personal
selling system.
Leads Exercise 2 – Creating a buyer persona
A “buyer persona” is an imaginary, composite person you make up to help you visualize
your target buyer. There is a great definition on the HubSpot blog that I’ll use here to
define the concept:
A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on

market research and real data about your existing customers. When creating your
buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns,
motivations, and goals. The more detailed you are, the better.
So, let’s build some buyer personas for your selling efforts based on the answers from the
first exercise above.
1) To help you focus your Lead Source-searching efforts, create one or more buyer
personas based on the answers you gave to the questions in Leads Exercise 1.
2) Be sure to include as many personal characteristics of these personas as you can

(industry, company type, age, gender, education level, things they are responsible for,
concerns at work, pressures they balance at home [if applicable]). If you need to, split up
your buyers into as many personas as are useful.
3) Give each persona a name (a personal name or a name you can remember – like “Bob
the Builder” for a construction-related persona). Now, write a paragraph or two describing
this persona, just to help get your imagination focused.
HINT: If it helps, use a current customer as a model for this. If one specific customer
makes a perfect persona, that’s great – or, if you need to combine things from a few
customers, that’s OK too. The idea is to have a clear picture in your mind of who your best
target prospect is, and the persona is a great way to get clear about that.
Leads Exercise 3 – Where can I find these people?
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Now that the buyer personas are clear in your mind, let’s consider where you can find
these people. In other words, where can you find people who fit your persona and who
have problems you can solve?
• Are there exhibitions that address the need where you can exhibit or attend or just
contact the exhibitors once you know who they are and why they are at a particular
show?
• Are there associations where these people congregate – live or online?
• Are there social media groups or platforms where these people can be found and
targeted?
• Is there something that a lot of these personas are reading?
• Are there certain things they are searching for online or certain questions they might be
asking related to the problems you help solve in their Google searches?
• Is there a way to bring them to you using some kind of inbound or content marketing
strategy? (Note: This is time intensive – be sure about this, or work with your marketing
department on this if you have one.)
• Are your best prospects names you may already have?

•Existing customers?
•Old customers who have not bought for a while?
•Leads from your marketing department?
There are no wrong answers here. Some will be better for some reasons, some worse –
just be sure to consider many things, including...
Leads Exercise 4 – Cost of Leads (money AND time BOTH count here!)
1) What will it cost to find qualified, actionable Leads in each of the places listed in Lead
Exercise 3?
2) Are there some free ones? If so, be sure to consider the return on investment (ROI) on
your time as well.
In other words, if you can find a lot of free Leads somewhere, but it will take a lot of your
time to do so, is that better than spending money on another Lead Source or paying
someone to do that work for you? I know that some salespeople or small business owners
who need to generate their own Leads come up with a method and then hire someone on
a platform like Fiverr or Upwork to do the work for them.
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Even if you don’t outsource your Lead generation efforts, think about the cost of
outsourcing as a way to quantify the value of the time it takes to do this yourself. If you are
doing this work yourself, price out what it would take to outsource it just for sport, and then
you can decide if it is really worth your time or not. You might even use the information you
find to help you build a case to your boss for hiring some support if you can quantify it well
enough and show the ROI from the investment.
Also recognize that, as a salesperson, the value of your time will change as your
effectiveness, revenue, and income grow, so you’ll need to revisit this question from time
to time. What you do with your time when you are making a five-figure income (dollars,
euros, pounds) should change as you start moving into six-figures.
Leads Exercise 5 – The journalism questions – Bringing it all together
When I was in school, we learned that a newspaper article (yes, we read newspapers
then...) should start with what was called “the journalism questions.” The first paragraph of
the article should answer all of these questions right off the bat: who, what, where, when,
why, and how.
To consolidate the answers from our Lead generation exercises, we can use these
journalism questions to make a composite from your answers to the exercises above:
• Who will buy from me (persona)?

• What can I help them with (problems your product or service solves)?
• Where can I find them (and what will that cost in time and money)?
• When can I reach them?
• Why will they talk to me?
• How can I reach them?
Try to make 3–4 sets of answers using the journalism questions, one for each promising
persona that you created in Lead Exercise 2 and each potential Lead Source you wrote
into Lead Exercise 3. Remembering to consider the costs in both time and money from
Lead Exercise 4.
Now – finally – consolidate the answers to these journalism questions in one sentence:
" <Lead Source> is a great source of Leads for me BECAUSE…
Once you can answer this question – clearly, decisively and with the answers to the
exercises above to support your thinking, you should have a solid handle on who you can
help, where you can find them and why this is a good place for you to target your sales
efforts – which means….
We’re done with Leads!

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So, we’re done with Lead Sources – at least for now. A few thoughts about that:
You’ll never really be done with any of this, because the world changes, and you’ll need to
keep up (no one ever steps into the same river twice, right?). But, for this cycle, we’ve
done what we needed to do with Leads, so we’ll move on.
The magic of this process is that, when you need to adjust, improve, or do something new,
you can work through again and optimize for current conditions.
Please note: The Leads and Prospecting sections of this book and the exercises
associated with them will take you some time to get through, and it might feel like you are
doing a lot of work on things that come up before you even get into a conversation with a
prospect – but remember this:
You need to get these parts right, or else actually executing the later parts of the process
will take you a lot longer than they should, and they will be a lot less effective. This is that
bit about Front Loading that I mentioned earlier in the book - when you set yourself up for
success early in the process, the end of the process can be a lot faster and/or easier. This
will pay off for you!
So, now that we’ve done this important first step, and indeed this hard bit of work, let’s
move on to Prospecting. We’ll spend a good chunk of time there as well – and then we can
build on these solid foundations and move through the rest of the steps with the kind of
focus that will make our sales work both efficient and effective – now, when developing our
system, and also when we are executing the work itself.
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SALES PROCESS STEP 2 – PROSPECTING

Getting into the conversation
About prospecting
Let’s start with a simple definition. Prospecting is whatever you do to get into a dialogue or
a conversation of any kind with someone who might eventually buy from you.
In other words, if Lead generation is about identifying someone, Prospecting is the attempt
you make to engage them in dialogue.
This can be in any format – online, on the phone, or at a conference. It can even apply to
what might seem like a one-way communication. If you are speaking at an event, and you
invite people to contact you and give them a way to do so, that can be considered
Prospecting. Or if you (or your company) have some online content or presence, and
someone reaches out to you or engages with your content, that also starts a conversation,
so to speak, so it fits our definition.
As with Leads, we will want to carefully consider our efforts and the ROI of both time and
money that we get from our Prospecting efforts.
In other words, if you are bouncing around on social media and not getting engagement or
giving a speech but not leveraging that into something tangible, it might feel like you are
working to develop new business, but you’re really not.
The goal is not Prospecting activity. The goal is Prospecting results – which means being
in a dialogue with a prospect that is likely to buy from you. That’s a pretty specific goal.
Let’s talk about some things to you can to do reach it consistently and efficiently.
The reason is the magic
It is possible that what you sell is important to your prospects – and I hope it is; it will be a
lot harder to sell if it isn’t. But, even if it is the most important thing in the world, you need
to get the attention of your prospect to have the chance to let them know about it.
But here’s the thing about most people these days:
People are busy, right?
Distracted too.
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And Prospecting is essentially asking busy people for some of their time – so, if you want
to be successful, you need to have a good reason to ask for some time from your
prospect.
And what is a good reason?
I’ll give you a hint – it’s not what’s important to you....
A good reason is what is important to them!
So, a great Prospecting effort – at its core – will be one that starts with a reason for talking
that is important to the prospect and puts you into a position to leverage that reason into a
dialogue about how what you sell is important to the prospect based on that reason.
I won’t write that last long, clunky sentence down again, but go back and reread it.
Really!
That’s pretty much the whole game right there.
If you have a good Lead Source, a good reason (as defined by its importance to the
prospect), and a way to get into the conversation, you are pretty far down the path to the
starting line.
...uh, starting line?!?
Yes, just the starting line, I’m afraid. There is a lot of selling left to do. But I use the starting
line analogy for a reason: If you don’t get to the starting line, you won’t even be in the race
– and if you are not in the race, you won’t have the chance to finish.
So, now that we know what Prospecting means and how important it is, let’s get busy and
talk about how to do it. Let’s learn how to create or identify and then leverage reasons for
a prospect to talk with us so that we have the opportunity to sell.
The two main ways of looking at Prospecting
To keep this focused, I am going to break down Prospecting into two big categories –
inbound and outbound. There are a lot of ways to slice and dice these categories and lots
of levels of detail in each, but, for the purposes of this workbook, let’s use this as a general
guide for now.
Outbound Prospecting
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When people think of Prospecting, they often first think of what are called “cold” efforts –
like cold calls or cold emails.
By “cold,” I simply mean that there is no prior contact with the person you are reaching out
to – nothing to “warm up” the relationship before you reach out and ask for engagement of
some kind.
As you can imagine, then – and as you may have experienced – cold calling and cold
email are not considered particularly fun by most salespeople.
That said, when done right, cold calling and cold email can be effective – but that’s not the
point I want to make to get us started.
Cold calls and cold emails are a good way to illustrate what is meant by outbound
Prospecting efforts, though they are by no means the only methods you can consider.
Think about outbound Prospecting this way: Outbound Prospecting is anything you do to
proactively and directly reach out to someone who might buy from you. So cold calling
and cold emailing certainly fit the definition of outbound Prospecting, but so does reaching
out to existing customers for another sale or to someone who was referred to you and lots
of other things that are a lot warmer.
So, let’s look at a few examples of outbound Prospecting efforts – warm and cold ones –
and then I’ll show you how to use them to prospect effectively.
HINT: Remember, effectiveness has a lot to do with the reason – you know, a reason that
is important to the prospect.
Some outbound Prospecting methods
Reaching out to existing customers
Unless what you sell is something that people only buy once or very infrequently, your
existing customer base is one of the best places to generate your next sales.
Where most salespeople fail here is that they have no systematic way of organizing their
follow-ups with existing customers.
What do I mean by that?
Ask yourself this. If you made a list of your 10 or 20 best customers that are not in the
middle of a sale right now, do you have something scheduled for them in the future?
In other words, if you are in the middle of something with a customer, you probably have
something scheduled for them, or at least you have a plan to contact them at some future
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stage of the current opportunity. But what about those who don't have a current project?
Where are they on your radar (or your calendar or task list)?
Most salespeople don’t have an organized calendar, and even if they have one, they don’t
use it well – if at all. If that’s true for you, shame on you! You know there is one on your
computer or on the web somewhere – why aren’t you using it?
Learning to proactively leverage your existing customers into a source of new business is
painfully easy.
Just get in the habit of scheduling something for every client you have at some time in the
future. Then, contact them when their names come up on the schedule.
Sounds stupidly simple, right?
It is.
But what should you schedule? And when?
Ah – that’s where beginning with the end in mind comes in.
Knowing what to schedule with each existing customer and when can be simple too if you
keep the concept in mind as you go along in your regular sales work. Here’s how it can
work.
When you are done with a sale or some other customer communication – in whatever form
that takes – just ask your customer when you should plan to follow up again. When they
give you a date, ask if there is something specific that they will be working on then. That
becomes the reason for your next call, i.e.:
Hi, John. We last spoke in April, and you asked me to follow up now about the Yaka-
Maka project – is now a good time to talk about that?
Asking for a time and a reason for the next follow up and then making the call when the
time comes up will take you very little time and give you a positive, proactive reason to
contact your best customers regularly (and before your competition can)! It keeps you top
of mind and makes sure you are there to help when the time is right – and in position to
maximize your existing customers.
Much warmer than a cold call too – right?
It’s also much better than forgetting about them for a while and then contacting them with
the all too common (and very lame) “Hey, I’m just checking in.”
Think about the contrast between the “checking in” call and your pre-planned call. It’s not
hard to look professional when you are, so do the little things it takes, and you will be!
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Boom – Lead Source and Prospecting – done and done well for your best source of new
business – your existing customers.
This doesn’t have to be hard; you just need to think about it and plan a bit. So many
salespeople I meet fail to do this one simple thing.
Don’t be that salesperson!
Have you been that salesperson? Do you have a bunch of good customers with no
scheduled follow up?
Not to worry – just be honest, and reach out from there with a call or email that sounds
something like this:
“Hi, <customer>. I was going through my calendar, and I realized that I don’t have
any kind of follow up scheduled for you. When would be a good time for me to
contact you next, and what should I prepare to discuss with you then?”
If there is some kind of buying pattern that you can establish, this can also be a good way
to create a reason to contact established customers. If the buying pattern suggests that
they should be buying something about now, that’s a great reason to contact them.
Hi, <customer>. I was looking at your order history, and it looks like you might need a
few bags of Yaka-Maka seeds – is that something we can help you with?
Even if not, you have shown that you are proactive and paying attention. You might win
this battle (sale), and you might not, but you position yourself as a professional, and that
will help with all of your battles!
Reaching out to “cold” customers
With the same basic concept and mechanism as reaching out to existing customers, you
can also reach out to customers you have not talked to in a long time or who have not
bought from you in a long time. In this way, everyone your company ever sold to is a
potential prospect.
The other salespeople at your company are probably ignoring them, so why shouldn't you
have a chance with them? Make a plan to reach out to the old neglected past customers
that none of the other salespeople are contacting, present it to your boss, and show how
you will execute and track it – and boom, a big pile of Leads!
Hey, Boss – I took a look at the database, and we have 350 companies that once
bought from us and haven’t in two years. I don’t think anyone is following up with
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them. Can I try reaching out to them to see if I can get some of them active as
customers again?
It will help if you already did this kind of outreach to the old customers that are assigned to
you, if that’s the way it works at your company. Show your boss what you did with your
own old neglected customers and, hopefully, the sales that came from your efforts, and
propose the idea that you can do the same for the old customers of everyone else – they
aren’t doing it, why shouldn’t you?
Whether it is for some or all of the old customers, for this kind of an outreach to old
customers, the reason you are contacting them is straightforward: you are curious to know
why you have not heard from them in a long time. It might sound or look something like
this:
Hi, John. We haven't heard from you since you bought six cases of deluxe widgets
back in September 2015. I wanted to reach out to see if you are still the right person
to talk to at ABC manufacturing about widgets and if that is something we can still
help you guys with?
Boom!
Asking for and reaching out to referrals from customers
Some of the best prospects are people your current happy customers or your friends and
acquaintances can introduce you to. Let’s look first at referrals from existing customers.
For existing customers, find a time that feels right, and ask them something like this:
Hey, John. We’re working on expanding our customer base; do you know anyone we
might be able to help with widget waste reduction?
I like to ask after some positive event (a great meeting, a closed deal) or even a negative
event – like a deal you lost that should have gone through. Don’t try the lost deal approach
if you lost the deal to a competitor but, rather, if you were working on something, and it fell
apart for reasons that are frustrating to both you and your prospect, like some dynamic in
the customer’s company that derailed the deal.
Or, try something like this:
YOU: John, you are happy with us as a supplier, aren’t you?
CUSTOMER: Yes.*
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YOU: Great – we’d like to expand the pool of happy and satisfied customers like you.
Is there anyone you know who we might be able to help with our <what you sell
here>?
*If they say no, please don’t ask for the referral – rather, dig into this, and get them happy
again – but you knew that, right?
If they say yes and give you some names, thank them, and then build on it like this:
That’s great, I really appreciate it. Would you be willing to send them an email to let
them know I will be reaching out? Maybe you can copy me on it, and I can take it
from there.
In this way, you are taking a referral – which is really, really good – and turning it into an
introduction – which is even better!
If you don’t see an introduction email in a few days, send them a sample to send so that all
they need to do is cut and paste, like this:
Hi, John. I’m sure you are busy, but I’m hoping you haven’t forgotten about
introducing me to Sam over at Acme. To make this effortless for you, I wrote a quick
email you can cut and paste – I hope this helps. Please be sure to copy me on the
introduction email, and I will take it from there.
Many thanks for your help!
The email you write for them to use can be as simple as this:
Hi, <person your customer is referring you to>.
I just had a meeting with a vendor of ours, <your name here>, who helps us with
<what you do here>, and it occurred to me that you might also find their <your
product or service here> useful.
<your name here> has been a great and reliable vendor for us. I hope you don’t mind
that I copied him/her on this mail. If you are looking for some help with your <your
benefit or delivered value here>, I am sure that <your name here> would be a good
resource for you as well.
Make it easy for them to introduce you, and they might.
If a week or two goes by, and they don’t send the introduction email, send them a quick
email, or give them a call, and thank them for the referral. Let them know that you’ll reach
out directly, and then reach out to the name they gave you as a referral. It’s not as good as
an introduction, but it’s still pretty good! In this case, be sure to copy the person who gave
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you the referral on the email to make sure they know that you reached out and to add
credibility to the claim that the referral came from who you said it did.
For this direct outreach email, the reason you are reaching out to the referral is because
your customer gave you their name – so use your customer’s name in the first sentence of
your call or the subject line of your email or other message to most effectively leverage the
common connection with your customer and to emphasize the trust they expressed in you
by offering the referral.
Asking for and reaching out to referrals from your friends and acquaintances
Now, a lot of people are uncomfortable asking friends, family, and acquaintances for
business referrals – and with good reason. You don’t want to be that annoying friend who
is always talking about business and trying to milk your social network for sales.
So, here is a way to do that without being a sleazy salesperson.
When you meet people, it is VERY common for them to ask what you do for work, either
right away or later in your first conversation.
The trick here is to describe your work in a way that is leverageable with respect to
Prospecting, referrals, and introductions.
What does that mean?
If you give your job title or something like that, the response is usually some variation of
“that’s nice,” or “uh-huh,” or something like that, so don’t say,
I’m an account representative for Acme Chemicals...
...even if that’s true.
A better way to answer the question – which is still 100% accurate and even more
interesting – is to describe who you help. This will not only paint a clearer picture of what
you do for the person you are talking to but will present you as an elegant professional
and, if it feels right, can be leveraged into a potential referral.
Here’s how.
Let’s say that you work for Acme Chemicals, and Acme sells chemicals for farmers and
gardeners to keep pests away and to increase the nutritional content and yield from
commercial and personal gardening and farming efforts.
What you don’t want to say is something like…
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I’m an account representative for Acme Chemical, the world’s largest producer of
agricultural chemicals.
Why is that bad? Because it’s vague, unactionable.
On the other hand, if you use a description of your job that starts with “I help...,” it paints a
clearer picture of what you do and can lead to more fruitful things – like a graceful and
seamless request for a referral.
Want that? If so, try something like this:
I work for Acme. We help farmers and gardeners get more healthy food from their
farms and gardens.
Now, if this is at all interesting for this person, it will lead to a conversation where you can
say,
Well, if there is anyone you know that might be interested in learning more about
what we do, I’d be happy to reach out.
How you position what you do will lead to very different conversations, so give this some
thought, and see what your next party or social event might do for your business without
being a salesy sleazebag.
Cold calls and emails
We started this section using cold calls and emails as an example of outbound prospecting
methods, let’s finish up the section by looking at them a little more closely.
There is an awful lot written about cold emails and cold calls – so I don’t want to go too
deep here. You really need to nail these right off of the bat if you want to succeed. More
and more people will tell you that these methods are less and less effective – but you still
may need to or want to try.
If so, I suggest you dig deep and experiment on your own. One book I really like is called
Cold Calling Techniques (That Really Work!) by Stephen Schiffman.
It describes a methodology very focused on “the reason for the call,” which has always
been important to me as well (as a result of reading the book in the early 1990s, by the
way.... But don’t worry, it has been updated since then!).
Others will tell you that, in email, you need to be really focused, sometimes even
outrageous – all kinds of advice.
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In any case, the thing to recognize here is that when you “go cold”, you need to grab
someone’s attention quickly. You can do that by being outrageous or novel, but that won’t
necessarily lead you to where you ultimately want to go.
The best approach is to focus on – you guessed it – the reason you are reaching out, and
making sure that reason is important to the prospect (more on that below). This will take a
bit more creativity when you use a “cold” approach because you have to guess. With other
prospecting methods, the prospect does something (goes to an exhibition, bought
something from you in the past, knows someone you sold to in the past, etc.). You don’t
have something like that to refer to when you make a cold approach, so really concentrate
on the reason, and recognize that even your best efforts will be likely to convert less
frequently than an effort that is less cold for one reason or another.
As such, going cold is a numbers game. You’ll need to make a lot of effort to get results, so
be sure you have a good plan before you start. Read the Schiffman book, and search the
Internet to help build your strategy and hone your tactics. What you decide to do will have
to be very much tailored to your personality, your business, your culture, and, ultimately,
what is effective (you’ll need to measure).
It’s beyond the scope of this workbook to go much deeper than that – my readers are from
a very diverse set of backgrounds – but I can tell you this:
Whatever you choose, the reason you are reaching out is still the core of the outreach,
and, if that reason is important to the prospect and well-articulated, you’ll set yourself up
for success.
Let’s review this “reason” idea in the context of all these outbound Prospecting methods to
drive home the point, and then we’ll talk about a few inbound methods before moving on to
the rest of our sales process.
The reason is (still) the magic – Here is where we are on outbound
Maybe you picked up on this, but let me highlight it for emphasis:
Aside from cold calls and emails, all of the outbound methods we discussed in the last
section have one purpose – to fill in the blank in the following sentence:
The reason I am contacting you is because....
If that reason is important to the prospect, then you can continue; if not, then the
conversation (and your effort at making a sale) is done.
So – for example, in the case of existing customers, you might say,
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The reason I am contacting you is because we spoke last April, and you asked me to
follow up now about....
Or, in the case of customers who did not buy for a while...
The reason I am contacting you is because we haven’t heard from you in a while....
Or, in the case of a referral…
The reason I am contacting you is because John Smith thought that you might also
be interested in the <service / product / benefit> that we help him with….
And that’s what makes the cold efforts tricky – you have to guess at the reason, and your
results will depend on the degree to which you a) guessed right and b) communicated your
guess quickly, clearly, and compellingly. Not impossible, but not simple.
In any case, and in all of these cases, it comes down to the reason you are contacting
them. (Thank you, Steve Schiffman, for helping me to see that so early in my career!)
So, Prospecting is about initiating the conversation, and success in Prospecting is about
having the right reason for doing so. Success, then, will come when you do something to
set up that right reason.
Starting with this in mind – that you need to be able to have the right reason and that this
right reason is something you can set up, create, or position yourself for – will help you
succeed in Prospecting.
Remember that, and proceed accordingly.
Inbound Prospecting
Inbound Prospecting simply means that the first outreach directly between the prospect
and the salesperson or the company that the salesperson works for is initiated by the
prospect.
From the sales perspective, inbound Prospecting is not that different from outbound
Prospecting.
You might initially reject that idea, but remember: Lead generation is about finding the
names or stimulating the potential for outreach, and Prospecting is you reaching out to
initiate the sales conversation.
In this context, whether you do something to get into the conversation (outbound) or the
prospect does (inbound), the Prospecting part is the same. You need to follow up that
initial contact with a reason to talk that is important to the prospect.
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With inbound, the only difference is that the prospect initially approaches you or your
company rather than the other way around. From there, we still fall into the same pattern:
The reason I am contacting you (or wanted to talk or am writing) is because you
downloaded our white paper / visited our stand / etc.
So, to set up success with inbound Prospecting, you or your company need to be
somewhere where you can be approached (trade show, online, advertisement, retail
location, etc.) and express value in such a way that a qualified prospect is compelled to
engage.
This can be very powerful – but a word of caution for salespeople.
It’s tempting to dive into content creation or social media to drive your own inbound, but
most quota-carrying reps should be very cautious about this.
It will take time, practice, and a lot of patience to get inbound and/or social selling right.
Many do, but realize that, before you do, you will need to find your voice or message,
experiment with different mediums and platforms, actually create the content, distribute it,
measure engagement, etc.
If you are a quota-carrying rep, investing your time like this can be a risky move. It may
pay off in the long run, but you need to balance that with what you do in the short run to
meet your numbers.
Ideally, your company should be helping you to generate inbound Leads. If not, and you
want to experiment, be disciplined, and dedicate a few hours every week – BUT NO
MORE! If, over time, you find (and can demonstrate) the effectiveness of your own efforts,
that’s great – you can build from there based on demonstrated and measured results.
Unfortunately, many sales reps just post a few things on LinkedIn, send a few InMails, or
like a few posts from other people and hope sales will come.
That’s not a strategy.
Again – if you want to make a strategy, do it – many have, and it can work. Mapping one
out for you as an individual is beyond the scope of this book, but there are other places to
look for that kind of help. I only encourage you to be measured about this – be disciplined,
be strategic, and measure. This way, you can try it and decide based on data if the ROI is
worth it relative to your revenue goals.
OK – so enough of the lecture. Here are a few ways that you can leverage the inbound
efforts of your company and bring the prospects generated by these efforts into your sales
process.
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Some inbound Prospecting methods
Exhibiting at trade shows / exhibitions / conferences (having a booth or a stand)
Trade shows and exhibitions can be exhausting, especially if you do them right – but I love
them as a Lead Source.
That said, most companies and sales reps do a really bad job at exhibitions.
How do I know this? From the many times I have asked clients about trade shows and
been told that they don’t work followed by an admission that the business cards or Lead
forms from the last show are still in a drawer somewhere and were never followed up.
The picture that gets painted from this situation is one of reps having conversations while
working in the booth and then failing to follow up with the people they met once they get
back to the office.
No wonder they get no results!
So, what should you do instead?
Much like my suggestion of ending the conversation with existing customers by asking
when to call next, we want to end the good conversations we have at trade shows and
exhibitions with a suggested next step as well.
Note: I said the good conversations – not all of them!
So, what is a good conversation that is worth following up quickly?
When you are in the stand, and you get into a conversation, categorize the person, and
think about him or her in one of three ways – I use letters to designate:
A – I will follow up with this person in the first week after the show, because this feels
like it has potential to lead to business.
B – This might lead to business – I will try to get to this person in the first week after
the show but definitely within the first two weeks.
C – I don’t think this will lead to business.
So, in the booth, you need to qualify.
Even with the As and the Bs, you usually don’t want to talk for 30 minutes. But get a good
general understanding of the thing you can help them with, and then agree on a follow-up
plan for after the event, such as…
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That’s great, I’ll send you those documents next week when I get back from the
show. What’s the best email address to use?
...or something like that.
Recognize this? You set up the reason for the next outreach to this prospect!
One really important thing here: you may have up to a few hundred conversations or more
at a three-day event. If you meet with an A or a B and make a follow-up plan, take a
moment after the conversation to write down when you promised to call, what you
promised to call about – and here is a pro tip to really seal this for you...
...also write down something unique about the conversation. Something funny you talked
about, some unique thing about them or what they were wearing. This way, when you call
after the show, you can reconnect around that unique and shared memory.
Remember – if you spoke to a lot of people at the event, they probably did too. They may
get barraged with follow-ups, and they, too, may have had hundreds of conversations at
the event. Remind them of something that will bring them back to your conversation, and
you can start where you left off, momentum and all.
Also remember – keep the Lead sheets, business cards, follow-up forms, or whatever you
use to capture Lead information segmented. Keep the As and Bs separate from the Cs.
You want to come back from the event with a stack of As that you are ready to contact.
This is how to set yourself up for success here!
The other “pro tip” is to begin this whole process with the end in mind.
If you know that you are going to an event like this, clear your calendar for the week after
the event. Exhibitions are usually planned months or more in advance. Once you know
you will go, block your calendar, and don’t schedule ANYTHING unless you can’t avoid it.
Why not?
While you are gone, plenty of things will pile up, and, if you have a full calendar plus the
things that piled up while you were at the event, you’ll struggle to find time to do your
follow ups from the event (which is the usual excuse for the drawer full of uncontacted
Leads from the last show).
Your company will spend a lot of money to get to the show, and some of the people you
meet are potentially highly qualified. Set yourself up for success and make the most out of
the opportunity by having a plan for after the show.
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Exhibiting at a trade show or exhibition can be a great Lead Source and Prospecting
method – use it for what it can be worth if you make the investment to maximize it!
Leveraging online content (social media, blogging, white papers, etc.)
Warning: I’m going to repeat myself here, but it’s important:
Trolling LinkedIn and making random comments is not Prospecting.
Period.
There are strategies for using platforms like LinkedIn as a Lead Source, and, if you like,
you can spend a few hours a week researching and experimenting. It’s beyond the scope
of this book to go into details about this here – but be measured, and be systematic.
If you are lucky, though, you work for a company that does produce online content and
does channel Leads to you from that content.
Your job, then, is to leverage these Leads into business by your Prospecting approach.
Here, too – no big surprise – the reason for the call is the ticket to success. Luckily, again,
the thing the prospect did sets up the reason quite well and should give you some insight
into what is important to them.
For example, what did they do? Download a white paper? Attend a webinar? Comment on
a post or on one of your company’s blog posts?
Whatever they did, that's the reason for the call – at least the first part of it:
The reason I’m contacting you is because you downloaded our white paper....
But wait – there’s more!
What was the subject of the white paper or the webinar or the blog? If your company set it
up right, the subject of the thing the prospect interacted with should give some insight into
what they are working on, trying to solve, or worried about – which sets up the second part
of the reason for your outreach:
The reason I’m contacting you is because you downloaded our white paper on cyber-
cryptography solutions for financial institutions, and I wanted to follow up with you to
see if you got your questions answered and if there was some other information that
we could provide for you.
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If your prospect replies, you are right into the conversation you want to have – what more
do they want to know? – which leads us right into the rest of the sales process:
Qualification, Needs Analysis, Offer, and so on.
But what if all they did was post a comment or a like on some content from your company?
No problem – simply reach out on the platform where the like or comment happened,
acknowledge it, and ask for a small next step.
Hey, <name>. Thanks for the like on our post about cyber-cryptography. I can see
from your profile that you are an IT manager. Is the cyber-cryptography issue we
discussed in the post something you have experience with?
Don’t push for too much here, like by asking if they are responsible for or interested in or
looking for… Don’t jump on them like a hungry salesperson – even if you are one. Try to
simply get a conversation going that starts with their action and builds slowly and
incrementally from there. If they respond, just have a conversation. If they are a real
prospect, you’ll uncover that soon enough if you don’t push too hard.
OK – a brief diversion here. I hope that you are starting to see a pattern. The way you set
up who you talk to and how you open has a lot to do with the success of your attempts to
close and what needs to come first.
You will notice that we are on the second step of the process and well into the workbook
here, and we have barely even begun to interact with the prospect. That’s deliberate.
When you set it up right from the start, the rest is SOOOOO much easier!
We’ll get to the rest of the sales process – the part most people think is hard but which
doesn’t have to be when you set it up right. But first, let’s look at one more inbound
Prospecting method. It’s one of my favorites.
Presenting at seminars and conferences
Whether it is you or someone else from your company, being on stage is powerful. When
you speak and present, you can be seen as an authority.
Unfortunately, many leave it there. Like our exhibition example where Leads are left in the
drawer, many present on stage but don’t set up the potential success that can come after.
What are some ways we can turn that around?
First: the subject of the talk should always be a filter. Use a subject and seminar or speech
title that will attract people who want your solution and repel those who won’t. Generally
speaking, identifying a problem or a solution is a great way to do this.
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For example, if you work for Acme – the agricultural chemical company we spoke of earlier
– the presentation title might be…
How to increase commercial vegetable yields in the era of climate change
....or something like that.
The only people who will come are people interested in that!
From there, you need to think about how you will reach out after the speech. There are two
basic possibilities. You can (and should) use both if possible.
In the first, you have the names of the people who are there. This is ideal, because, then,
you can simply call or email them all afterwards and leverage the problems you identified
in the speech. You can ask if it makes sense to explore the specific issues that the
prospect might have in relation to those problems and how you can help. So it can look
The reason I’m contacting you is to thank you for coming to the seminar on vegetable
yield and climate change. I hope it was useful for you.
In the seminar, we spoke in general terms about the problems we have been seeing
across a wide range of clients. Does it make sense to discuss your specific
challenges and the way we have helped other companies in similar situations?
In this case, the topic of the seminar and the fact that you have their contact information
sets up the reason for the call and creates a bridge to a discussion about their specific
needs.
But what if you don’t have their contact information?
Sometimes, you will speak at a conference or at an exhibition, and you don’t invite the
attendees – someone else does – so you may not have access to the names.
In this case, you or your company should set up the speech such that you give some
information but offer a resource with more – like a white paper or a research study or an
eBook or a free diagnostic or something.
IMPORTANT: Don’t offer to give away cash or an iPad or some other something that
everyone and anyone might want. Offer something that only qualified prospects will want,
something that ties into the theme of what was discussed in the speech and that helps to
identify something the prospect is concerned about or trying to solve. This is what will
generate the “right” reason for the follow-up call, so give this some thought before you
decide what to use and how to use it.
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To do this, simply direct them to a website or a landing page or an email address – some
way for them to reach out to you to get the bonus content and to give you an email
address or some other contact information you can use to follow up with them.
...From there, the reason for the call is the same as with the online content. They asked for
some information, and you are following up on it:
The reason I’m contacting you is because you requested our white paper on cyber-
cryptography solutions for financial institutions, and I wanted to follow up with you to
see if you got your questions answered and if there was some other information that
we could provide for you.
Before you dismiss this as spammy – because, yes, a lot of people give away content and
then spam the living daylights out of the poor requester – remember that this comes after a
speaking engagement, which has a lot of goodwill associated with it. If someone saw the
speech and asked for the content, then they are signaling an interest. If you build on that,
it can be done in a very professional way, especially because it started with the speech
which is why I love this Prospecting method so much!
Final thoughts on Prospecting
If you take nothing else away from this section, remember this: Prospecting is about
reaching out to the prospect to start a conversation. If you have a reason to do so, and
that reason is important to the prospect, you are more likely to be successful with your
efforts.
Keep this idea in mind – that Prospecting efforts are about creating a good reason to reach
out to a prospect – and design your Prospecting efforts around that. Giving a speech or
going to an exhibition or doing stuff online can be fun – but it can also lead to business if
you remember that Prospecting is about creating that reason for outreach and to leverage
that outreach towards a sale.
That seems like a pretty good start to me – what about you?
Now – once we are in a sales conversation, we need to make sure that the conversation is
a good use of time for us and for the prospect. That’s the next step in our process:
Qualification.
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SALES PROCESS STEP 3 – MUTUAL QUALIFICATION

Is it worth my time (and yours) to get to know each other?
At the end of a successful Prospecting effort, your prospect has agreed to have a
conversation with you. That’s great! Now what?
The first thing you should do once you are in that conversation is to make sure that having
a conversation will be a good use of time for both you and the prospect.
We call this part of the process Qualification.
Please recognize that unless you sell the same basic thing to the same basic people each
time, you will need to qualify your existing customers for new sales as well as new
prospects.
In sales, you usually hear about Qualification in terms of qualifying the prospect – and this
is critical.
Why is it so important?
If your prospects aren’t qualified, then the time you spend with them is a waste – and you
CAN figure this out before you invest the time.
Do so!
From the perspective of the salesperson, Qualification asks the question, “Is this person
likely to and able to buy what I have to sell?” If the answer isn’t yes, your time should be
spent somewhere else.
Period.
What are the typical elements that determine if a prospect is likely to buy (i.e., qualified)?
Before you invest too much time with a prospect, you want to be sure that
• There is a (current and pressing) need

• There is a budget or an ability to pay that is in line with your solution
• The person you are talking to is the decision maker, or you understand the decision
process, participants, and your prospects’ role in that process.
What happens when a salesperson skips this step – which they often do?
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Then, Objections kill the sale at the end after the investment of sales time – Objections
that are often tied to what could have been discovered much earlier, just after the
conversation started.
Objections like…
• We can’t afford that right now (Qualification element – is there a budget?)
• It’s not a priority / it’s not a good time (Qualification element – establish the need)
• I have to ask someone (Qualification element – who is the decision maker / what is the
decision process?)
Have you ever heard Objections like those at the end of the sales process when you try to
close? Those are things you need to try to ask early on – during this part of the sales
process.
Qualification.
Because that’s where we are now. We found a person (Lead generation), initiated a
conversation (Prospecting), and now we are starting that conversation.
After Qualification, we get into Needs Analysis, which is critical and could take a decent
amount of time based on what you are trying to sell.
After that, once we understand the situation and how our product or service might fit into it,
we make an Offer based on what we learned in Needs Analysis.
If our Offer is off the mark or if we didn’t answer all of the open questions before we make
it, we get Objections. These are just those questions we failed to answer earlier, but now,
after the Offer, they are harder to manage.
All of these things can take a lot of time depending on what you sell. If there is any
complexity at all to what you sell – and most B2B sales done by professional salespeople
still have at least some complexity – then you want to make sure that it is worth the time to
get into the details of the customer’s situation before you actually suggest something to
sell and try to secure the deal. That’s why qualifying the prospect is so critical – before you
spend the time to do all of that.
But Qualification is a two-way street. If prospects don’t feel that the salesperson is
qualified to be selling to them, then, in many cases, they won’t have enough confidence to
agree to the sale – even if everything else seems right.
So, let’s look at Qualification from both sides, qualifying the prospect and qualifying
yourself as the salesperson to the prospect – Mutual Qualification – and let’s make sure
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that it is worth everyone’s time to go through the sales process with at least a reasonable
chance of success for both sides before we decide to invest the time.
Qualifying yourself to the prospect
Let’s start with what you can do to qualify yourself to the prospect – not only because it is
often overlooked in most sales texts and trainings but because, whether you recognized it
or not, you have already done a few things to qualify (or disqualify) yourself and can do a
few more before you even get to the actual sales conversation itself.
First of all, let’s consider what the prospect is most likely looking for in a salesperson.
Think about the last time you talked to a salesperson about buying something. You were
essentially asking for their advice, their expertise, or maybe just some information.
Essentially, you were asking for their opinion about what might be good for you based on
what you have told them about your situation...
...but, at the same time, you know that they are trying to sell their solution, not someone
else's.
To make this all work, then, your prospects need to trust you. They need to trust that you
know what you are talking about and that you are considering their best interests as well
as yours.
It helps if they like you, too, but most importantly, they need to trust you.
They need to trust that you are competent in your line of work so that you can make a
good suggestion, and they need to trust that you are professional and have integrity – that
you have done this before, successfully. That you are not new or desperate for a sale.
So, how do you establish all of this – and so early in the sales conversation?
Luckily, if you have followed the path of this workbook, you have already done a few things
to help set up this critical salesperson Qualification.
Let’s look at some of those things again from the perspective of Qualification so that you
are aware of the power of what you have done already. Then, we will look at what you can
do after Prospecting and before Needs Analysis to make sure that the prospect feels good
about you as a source of information, which is the foundation upon which you can make a
recommendation to them that they buy your solution.
What have we done already – pre-engagement?
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Some of the things we have discussed already fit into this section – what have we done
already to qualify ourselves to the prospect – but some come even before then. I’ll touch
on them briefly here, but don’t think that means they are not critical to your success.
The first is your mental attitude about sales and selling.
In my 2010 book, Mastering Your Sales Process, I wrote that the sales philosophy that
leads to success is as follows:
• I am a subject matter expert.

• My job is to help...
• qualified prospects...
• make a good decision...
• about using my products or services.
If we break that down, there is a lot baked in there, but the overall mentality is exactly what
the customer wants from you.
(I blogged about this here some time ago; take a look if you want to read more about this
winning sales philosophy before continuing on with Qualification – the two have a lot to do
with each other!)
While you have the goal of making a sale, the customer’s goal is to make a good decision
about solving a problem. If you know your business well (subject matter expert) and take
the opportunity of prospect engagement to really try to understand what the prospect is
trying to do – and then to use your expertise to try to help him or her – the prospect will
feel this, and trust you.
What if it’s not a good fit, and I can see this right away?
It is possible that you will go through the Qualification process and realize that your
products and services are not a good fit for the customer. What should you do then?
In the long run, your best bet is to act with integrity. It is the only right choice within this
model.
That’s why your goal needs to be helping the prospect make a good decision. Just like
children and animals have a sense of who is a good person and who may cause them
harm, prospects can sense when you are being honest and trustworthy with them.
I don’t know how that works or if it has been proven, but, in my gut, I believe it to be true –
maybe you do to.
But let’s get practical. How to you “manage” that?
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By being authentic in your approach. Work to be and consider yourself a subject matter
expert about what you sell – one who is here to help the prospect make a good decision.
Take this perspective, and trust me, your sales efforts will be a lot easier.
Selling something when it is not a good fit is either hard or manipulative. Personally, I
prefer things that are neither of those – so, at this early stage of the process, if it seems
that someone is not a good fit for what we offer, cut it off, and move on. That’s why we do
Qualification now – so that we can walk away if we decide we should BEFORE too much
time and energy have been invested.
When we suggest to prospects that our solution might not be a good fit for them, based on
our current understanding – a few things might happen:
In some cases, the prospect will resist and insist that there is potential for the sale, and
you will continue but with enormous trust from the customer.
In other cases, you can ask for a referral at this point and maybe get one.
But, in any case, if you feel the fit isn’t right, you should say something and have that
discussion with the prospect right then. You will feel better about yourself, the prospect will
feel better about you, and it’s the right thing to do.
Beats the heck out of manipulating your way through a sale that may be hard, may blow
up after you make it, and, in most cases, will wind up causing nothing but stress, hardship,
and bad feelings – don’t you think?
Subject matter expertise
So, now that we’ve touched on the integrity side of the sales philosophy / mentality
equation, I want to spend a few words on one other part of this winning philosophy: subject
matter expertise.
If sales is about offering a solution for your prospects’ situation, you can only be good at
that if you understand their situation and if you understand how your solution can help.
Beyond that, you need to understand three things: their business and/or personal
environment, the industry as a whole, and your competitors.
In other words, you set yourself up for success if you maintain the attitude of a student –
learning your trade and your products, learning sales, learning about your customers,
learning about business in general – and maybe ancillary issues as well. If your business
has elements that require knowledge of international shipping, customs, taxation, zoning,
safety issues – anything that relates to the decision your customer is trying to make – you
should work to develop expertise in all of those subjects.
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When you do, and you enter into a discussion with a prospect, your expertise will show,
and this will help your prospect to trust you.
Alternatively, if you are faking it, maybe they are uninformed enough, or maybe you are
slick enough to pull it off – but is that really how you want to play?
It’s better to just be a lifelong learner in your business. People trust you when you know
what you are talking about, so do the work to make sure that you do.
It will help you in your Qualification efforts all the way through the sales process and just
with life in general.
OK – I’m done with that now – we can move on....
So, those are the things we can do before we engage with a prospect – be authentic, be
an expert on our business, and have a personal sales philosophy about helping the
customer make a good decision.
You’ll like looking in the mirror better too when you take an approach like this. Nobody
likes a sleazy salesperson – maybe not even the salesperson.
Let’s look next at the things we can do in that sliver of time between the end of
Prospecting (when we set up the sales conversation) and the start of the sales
conversation – which is the official start of the Qualification step.
What can we do even before the actual sales conversation starts?
The sales conversation is what you ask for in Prospecting. It starts when you start talking
to prospects about their situation, their needs and desires, and what you and your product
or service can do to help with whatever the prospects might need some help with.
But there is a sliver of time in between the agreement to talk and the conversation itself,
and we can leverage that in a few ways.
If the “sales conversation” will happen at a later time (e.g., at the end of the Prospecting
effort, you scheduled a call or a meeting), then you can do your best impression of
Columbo (you know, the trench coat-wearing detective who always had a “by the way” kind
of a question just when the bad guy thought he was leaving).
So, channel your inner Columbo, and ask a few “by the way” questions before you end the
Prospecting conversations – questions that will set up success later, like…
Thanks for setting up the time to talk. To make sure I am well-prepared, what is the
key area of focus that I should prepare for when we speak?
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or
It would be really helpful if you had some data about the XYZ ready for us to look at
when we meet. Do you think you can prepare that for our meeting?
By using these kinds of questions, you do a lot.
With the “what should I prepare for” question, you get the prospect to tell you what the
most important thing on his or her mind is – which is a big step towards establishing the
need, a core component of Qualification.
By using the “can you do some homework” question, you establish your expertise by
showing that you know what you are after, that you have done this before, and that you
want to get off to a fast start. Oh, and you also set up the right conversation when you get
to the time when you’ll have it.
If you ask the homework question and get agreement from the prospect to prepare
something, you can start the sales conversation by asking to review the homework.
If they have it, great – start with that. If they don’t, and they promised they would, they will
feel bad. But let them off the hook, and either go get it together or just discuss it, and make
a formal report of their deliverable after the meeting if that seems like the next best step.
I have done this homework approach many times, and, in many cases, when the
prospects forgot to do what they promised, they feel bad because they realize it is
important, time is valuable, and they didn’t keep their promise – and, in more than one
case, the prospect asked me to come to his or her side of the desk and look at the
computer together so that we could look at the data right now, together, in real time.
Now, imagine that scene – you are looking at the computer of the prospect and discussing
in real time what is going on with their business as it relates to what you want to sell.
Unless you don’t know your stuff (which isn’t the case because you think of yourself and
behave like a lifetime learning subject matter expert, right?), you have now qualified
yourself.
It sure feels that way, doesn’t it?
As for the priority question, simply start the conversation with that – whether they gave you
an answer or not. If they told you their key priority, you can start the Qualification
conversation with something like this:
So, when we spoke, you told me to prepare to discuss your XYZ situation. Can you
tell me more about that (or can I ask a few questions about that)?
Here, too, you are well on your way to establishing the need.
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Or, if you asked when you were Prospecting, and they didn’t give an answer – maybe they
said something like “Why don’t you just come, and we can discuss it then?” – you still gave
yourself a great opening into the part of Qualification about establishing the need. You
simply open the conversation by saying something like…
So, when we set up the meeting, you told me that you would help me understand
what kind of issues we should focus on. Can you help me understand where your
priorities are with respect to <the products or services you sell or, better, the solutions
you offer> so that we can make the best use of our time and focus the conversation
there?
By asking the right questions before the sales conversation starts, you can jump-start the
sales conversation and get right into the needs part of Qualification as early as possible.
But what if you didn’t do this before the sales conversation? Or what if the Prospecting
ended with an agreement to start the sales conversation right away, as often happens on a
first phone call if it is done right.
In either case, no problem!
Just adopt the questions we discussed already about needs and data, and use them as
the opening of the sales conversation, even if it happens right away. Remember, your goal
right now is to get a high-level understanding of the need before going into too much
detail, and these questions will help you get started.
For example, if you didn’t get to ask what to prepare and the homework questions before
you start the sales conversation, or you jump right into the sales conversation as an
extension of the Prospecting conversation, you might start the sales part of the
conversation with something like this:
So, people usually meet (or talk) with a salesperson like me in the <your industry>
business because they are trying to solve a <your benefit>-related problem. What
were you hoping to achieve by meeting with me today?
Or, if the homework / data piece is important for you, you can start with something like this:
So, to help me understand your situation better, it might help if I had a look at or if
you could tell me more about XYZ.
In any case, you want to start the first formal sales conversation by establishing a need –
what is it that the customer is trying to achieve, and is that something you can help with?
Without that, you are lost, but with that – even at a general level – you can move
seamlessly into the other two key parts of Qualification.
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Qualifying the prospect – establishing the need
With all of that pre-Qualification work understood, let’s actually define what it means to
qualify the prospect. Generally speaking, qualifying the prospect is about at least these
three things, which were mentioned briefly at the start of this section:
• What is the need, and is it important and time-sensitive?
• Can the prospect afford it, and is he or she willing to spend on it?
• Who makes the decision, and where does the person I am talking to fit into that?
In the last section, we identified some ways to get into the part of the sales conversation
related to needs immediately after we’ve agreed with the prospect to talk about his or her
situation and how our products and services might help.
VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: Did you recognize that we didn’t start our sales
conversation with a product demo, sales pitch, company history, or some other
information about us and our company and what we need to sell?
I’m not a big believer in most of the statistics generated by popular business consultants
and authors these days. The underlying methodology usually misses the mark of scientific
accuracy by more than a long shot (i.e., if you can’t lie with statistics, you can’t lie;
correlation isn’t the same as causation; etc.), but I think the actual numbers look
You will be approximately 35 kazillion times more likely to succeed in professional sales of
any kind if you start by understanding what the prospects want and then make your
suggestion for what to sell to them in the context of what they have told you.
The opposite approach – opening by telling the prospects all about you, your products,
and/or your company before learning something about them and why they want to talk to
you in the first place – is sometimes called “throwing up on the client.”
This includes starting with a demo. How can you do an effective demo if you don’t know
which parts of what you do are most important to the prospect?
So, let’s not do that.
Instead, we open the conversation by asking about their needs.
Now, remember: we’re still in Qualification, where our goal is to see if this opportunity is
worth the time to explore fully. We’re not going to do a full and detailed Needs Analysis
here – that comes later – but we want to ask enough questions that we can say to
ourselves something like this:
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Yes – it seems that they have a situation in which our products or services can help,
and it seems like it is important enough to them that they will act on it if I can show
them how our solution might help.
The questions we asked about priorities, homework, why they wanted to meet with us AND
the follow-up questions we asked to more fully understand the need at a high level (and to
demonstrate our professionalism and expertise) should take you most if not all of the long
way to a general, high-level understanding of the need.
Once you know that – the basic need or problem the prospect needs to solve at a general
level – don’t make the mistake of jumping into your pitch or even a full Needs Analysis.
Rather, jump into the rest of Qualification. Luckily, from establishing the need at this
general level, we create a very elegant and seamless way to do that.
Establishing the budget
So, once again, our three core elements of Qualification are a need we can solve, a
budget, and an understanding of the decision-making process (and assuring that we are
plugged into that).
We’ve arrived at this point by establishing a general understanding of the need – so what
now?
Ideally, we should get a sense of the budget and the decision process before we move on.
In other words, you have a high-level understanding of the need when you have a general
idea of what kind of solution might solve it and a price range – wide as it may be – that
might be required to solve it.
You still need a lot of details before you can nail down a fully fleshed-out solution, but
unless and until there is a budget number floating in your mind during Qualification, you
need to work on getting a more detailed but still high-level picture of the need until you
do...
...because that’s a funny thing about us salespeople. As soon as we have even a general
sense of what we can sell, the numbers start floating around in our heads. Does that
happen to you? It does for me and every other salesperson I have ever met.
Should we blurt the number out at this point?
No – that would be silly, pre-mature, foolish, etc. But the number is actually quite useful.
Here’s how to use it to help you qualify.
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Once we have a number floating around in our heads from a general understanding of the
need, it is a signal that we should pay attention to, because it helps us complete this
Qualification stage before moving on to Needs Analysis and the rest of the sales process.
Now – once you do have that general budget number floating around in your head, you
need to ask about it before going into more detail about the needs.
So, that’s the balancing act here – but how do you ask about the budget? You can’t just
ask – so what should you do?
The basic understanding of the need along with your subject matter expertise is the
perfect launching point for a Qualification-level exploration of the budget question.
Here’s how to do that.
Once you feel satisfied that you have a general understanding of the need, try to
summarize it back for the client, and make sure that they agree that you have a general
idea about what they are after. You might say something like…
So, if I understand well – and please correct me if I missed something – you are
trying to achieve....
You don’t want to name a product here but, rather, the solution the prospect wants for his
or her business in the words that relates to him or her and the business. For example:
So, if I understand well – and please correct me if I missed something – you are
interested in
• Increasing revenue per sales rep by 20% in the next six months
• Streamlining your accounting process to eliminate errors and reduce

headcount
• Preventing data leakage of customer information from your internal data

storage systems
WARNING: You will only be successful here if you know your business well – so
don’t try this until you do!
Why the warning? Because, at this point, you are going to need to float a very high-level
solution with a number – a price.
Obviously, you don’t know what the ultimate solution is, or the price that goes with it – but
you need to learn at this point if you and the prospect are in the same price expectation
neighborhood.
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How can you do that?
After you confirm with the prospect that your general understanding of the need feels
right to them, ask something like this:
Well, there are a lot of details we need to go over, but, in most cases, solutions to
problems like this for a company your size could run anywhere between $50,000 and
$80,000 – is that the kind of budget you were thinking about for this project?
What you are looking for here is a casual acceptance or a shocked response. If the
prospect says they were expecting to pay about $3000 to solve this problem, it’s good you
found out now! Imagine what would have happened if you didn’t ask until the end of the
sales process!
A few words here:
First, you can make the range really big, but don’t provide a number that is lower than you
expect to be able to offer. Making the range big gives you room to narrow down as you go,
which is good for you and the prospect, but don’t make it too low – really! If you do, you
will be amazed at the precision of your prospect’s memory when you present your Offer.
Also, if you wind up at or near the top of this range when you make your formal Offer, be
prepared to explain why it was at the top of your initial suggestion and not the bottom. It’s
not a problem if you have a good reason, but have a good reason – or, better yet, try to
create a range that will give you room to be in the bottom half or middle third with
justifiable reasons for it.
If you do make an estimate at this stage and the project starts to look like it will be more
expensive as the detailed look at the specifications unfolds in the Needs Analysis stage,
simply bring it up:
You know, I estimated $50–80,000 when we first met, but I see now that you also
want me to work with your branch offices. That’s probably going to add 30% to the
cost of the project – are you OK with that?
One of the other problems you might run into now is choosing from a number of ways to
approach the project based on the high-level information you have. It might be hard to pin
down a single price estimate.
No problem – simply adjust your “testing the price range” sentence like this:
Well, there are a lot of details we need to go over, but, in most cases, solutions to
problems like this for a company your size fall into one of three categories with
different price ranges.
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• The Alpha solution includes A, B, and C and could run anywhere between
$50,000 and $80,000.
• The Omega solution takes a Smurf-based approach and is closer to the

$100–$150k price range.
• Or some who just want to deal with this at a surface level consider the
Gamma approach, which only includes Yapple-Dapple and is about $10–
$15,000 for a company your size.
We should discuss all of these options in detail against the specific outcomes you are
looking for and the depth to which you want to take this in your organization, but at
this point – just to see what your thinking is – which of these three approaches and
budgets do you think makes the most sense for us to focus on from the outset of our
exploration?
Again – you are not quoting a price or asking for a commitment – all you want to know is
that you and the prospect are in the same general neighborhood when it comes to price.
Once you have established that, it’s time to find out who can approve (or derail) a project
or purchase like the one you are about to discuss.
Identifying the decision makers
Just as the need conversation led to the budget conversation, the need + budget
conversation leads to the decision maker conversation.
Just like you suggested the budget range then, you are also going to want to suggest
some ideas about the decision makers to confirm this part of the process before you go
any further.
I have found it effective to first clarify the need and the budget, as we have just discussed,
and then to say something like…
So, based on the project as we have discussed it so far, who will we need to work
with internally to make sure that we have all of the buy-in we need to be successful
with implementation?
or
For a project like this, we usually work with the head of finance, the head of IT, and
the head of HR plus the senior division manager such as yourself. Does that sound
like the right group here, or is there someone else we will need to involve as well?
or
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Most of the companies we work with have the CEO making decisions like this. Is that
the case here too, or are there others we should be sure to involve in the decision?
You may not get the whole story here, but you want to ask in case you do learn about
someone you need to involve.
The bottom line about Qualification
There is no shortage of stories about salespeople who asked all of these questions at the
start of the process only to be given some new piece of deal-killing information at the end.
There are no guarantees here.
However, if even some of the time you are able to disqualify a prospect, reframe a project,
or include additional decision makers and influencers by virtue of asking these questions
at the start of the sales conversation, you set yourself up for success more often than if
you never asked these questions.
I have so many clients who started their work with me by telling me that their salespeople
send out too many Proposals that get rejected. Many of those rejections came from things
that could or should have come up at the Qualification stage. So, ask these kinds of
Qualification questions early on, and, if you can improve your success rate by 10% or 20%
or 50% or more, it is all upside.
Furthermore, when you approach the sales conversation by first trying to frame the
situation at a high level before diving in to details (or, heaven forbid, a sales pitch), you
establish yourself as a professional, as a subject matter expert, and as someone who
respects your time as well as that of the client.
When you get through this successfully, you are on the right track to enter the next – and
arguably the most important – step of the sales process: Needs Analysis.
Even if you don’t get through the Qualification stage successfully 100% of the time, you
will still avoid end-of-the-deal problems more often and streamline your overall time and
effectiveness by being as disciplined about this as possible.
In other words, it doesn’t have to be 100% successful to be worthwhile.
I hope that you can see how worthwhile it is.
Most salespeople skip Qualification. Some seem to feel that it is too early, and they don’t
want to do anything that they think might create resistance.
Don’t be like that.

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The best salespeople in the world actually consider this stage to be about DIS-
Qualification. Think about that, and re-read this section before moving on if you have to.
It’s a powerful concept for powerful salespeople who value their time.
Now you know how and why.
So, is the prospect qualified? Do you want to move forward with the prospect after all of
this?
Great – then let’s learn what’s really going on with them in Needs Analysis so that we can
suggest a solution that makes sense and that we can close more easily because it does.
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SALES PROCESS STEP 4 – NEEDS ANALYSIS

What’s the deal?
If selling what you sell has any complexity at all, Needs Analysis is the heart, the soul, the
core, the gist, and in every other way the be-all-end-all of your sales effort.
Let’s look at what I just wrote more closely.
There are two parts – the part about complexity and the part about the be-all-end-all.
Are your sales complex enough to need you?
First, does what you sell have complexity?
Here’s the thing. If it doesn’t, there is probably no need for a salesperson, or there won’t
be soon. These days, if something can be sold Amazon-style, it will be. Salespeople are
expensive and not always something the customer seeks out.
But...
That said, even for most of what is called a commodity product, B2B sales almost always
have at least some complexity (financing, packaging, delivery, etc.).
So, how do you know if your sales effort has any complexity? Here is a simple test:
If you need to ask some questions of your prospect and then use the answers to suggest
any variations to what you offer, then there is complexity.
From the perspective of the prospect, if prospective customers often feel the need to reach
out and ask questions about how what you sell can be best utilized by and/or adapted to
their specific set of circumstances, then there is complexity.
Obviously, some sales are more complex than others – and some sales cycles are longer
than others – and some decision processes have more people and more issues – but, if
there is any complexity at all, Needs Analysis is THE big deal part of your big deal.
And that’s the second part of the first sentence in this section that we want to look at.
How can Needs Analysis be the be-all-end-all of this process?
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If this sales process we are looking at has seven steps, how can Needs Analysis – step
number 4 – be the be-all-end-all? What about steps 5, 6, and 7?
Think about it this way: instead of thinking about sales in seven steps – which is right,
because each of the seven steps needs to be considered for success to be reached –
think of the sales process in three groups of steps:
Group of steps 1 – everything that leads to Needs Analysis
Everything you did up until now (found some Leads, got into a conversation, and did your
Mutual Qualification) was about getting you to this point; setting up and getting you into
this Needs Analysis conversation.
Group of steps 2 – the Needs Analysis itself
Now that you are in Needs Analysis, your task is to ask questions and talk with the
prospect to learn about their situation as it relates to your product.
Group of steps 3 – what comes after (or during?) Needs Analysis
After Needs Analysis, you will make a Proposal, answer any questions (Objections,
attempts to negotiate, etc.), and try to agree to move forward. These are the last three
steps.
Think about these last three steps of our sales process. If you do Needs Analysis right, the
last three steps are all extensions of what you learned in Needs Analysis.
• A Proposal destined to win should be a direct reflection of what you learned in Needs
Analysis. If it isn’t, or if you didn’t do Needs Analysis well, the Proposal won’t match up
to what the customer is interested in and/or needs.
• Objections can be thought of as questions that were not yet answered earlier in the
process (meaning during Needs Analysis or during the Qualification that led to Needs
Analysis). If you did Needs Analysis right, Objections will be either nonexistent or
relatively easy to manage – more on that very soon.
• And Closing – well, if you thoroughly understand the situation and suggest a solution
that evolved out of a properly conducted Needs Analysis process, then Closing should
be pretty easy – more on that soon too.
We’ll have chapters on all of the steps of the process, so look for more details beyond
these short descriptions of the Offer/Proposal, Objections and Negotiations, and Closing
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parts of the process – but let’s be clear from the start: Needs Analysis is where your deals
of any complexity are won and lost.
If you don’t do Needs Analysis well, it’s, at best, a lot of hard work to recover from a
Proposal that doesn’t match the situation well. If that is the case, you will have too many
tough Objections about things you should have covered earlier – and good luck when you
try to close after all of that.
By the time you reconfigure your Proposal (if you get the chance) and muscle through a
tough set of Objections, your relationship with the client isn’t the same – which makes
Closing harder because there is more friction in the relationship.
On the other hand...
If you do Needs Analysis well (with a qualified prospect), then the three steps that follow
Needs Analysis can be easy and seamless or even, to some extent, practically eliminated.
Yup – eliminated.
Really.
Read on – I’ll show you how.
So, how can we do Needs Analysis properly? That’s what we’ll get into right now.
A conversation with a curious expert
Needs Analysis works best when it feels to both parties like a conversation between
someone with a situation and a subject matter expert that is trying to understand it as a
basis for offering suggestions about a solution.
The problem we have right now – you and I – reader and author – is that you have a
unique situation, and I want to offer something in writing that can work for a wide range of
unique situations, including yours.
But take heart – this isn’t quite as tricky as it might seem. Here is how we will address that.
Let’s reverse-engineer it!
What’s the solution?
I’m going to jump right into the work here, and then I’ll explain how to put the pieces
together a bit later in the chapter – so trust me here (or read ahead and come back – no
one will know, right?).
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In your notes (you are taking notes, right?), start by writing down what you sell – these are
the solutions that your company can offer to the prospect.
If you sell many things or the things you sell have many variations, try to consolidate them
so that you have no more than half a dozen things on your list. If you have services, try
listing the kinds of services you sell or the packages you offer.
Don’t overcomplicate this by listing every specific product or service you offer or
oversimplify it by keeping it too high-level and only listing the big general category of what
you sell. The idea is to have 3–6 “solution categories.” This number will allow us to move
through the rest of the exercise more easily, so try to capture that first.
What’s the problem?
You should have 3–6 solutions that you offer written down in your notes. These are the
things you sell – which is ultimately what your Proposal will be for and about.
Now – under each of these solutions, list 1–3 problems the prospect could have that can
be fixed by each solution.
What’s the situation?
Under each problem, write the situation the customer might be in that will lead to those
problems.
WARNING: These are only short sentences about problems and situations, but
deeply understanding these with your prospect is critical. We’ll dig into this more as
we go.
OK – now what?
Now, with this preparation work done, let’s talk about how you can work through your
Needs Analysis conversation with the prospect starting from the end of Qualification and
working your way towards the solution you will offer in your Proposal.
Let’s start before the beginning
Remember how I keep mentioning that each step of the process builds on those before it?
Let’s start with that!
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LEADS:
You chose your Leads because the product or service you sell solves a problem for the
persona you identified in the Lead Source exercise.
PROSPECTING:
You reached out to your Leads with a reason that was important to them, ideally based on
some problem they have and how that connected to some solution you offer.
QUALIFICATION:
In Qualification, you asked a general question based on the setup from Leads and
Prospecting about the need – something like…
So, people usually meet with a salesperson like me in the <your industry> business
because they are trying to solve a <your benefit>-related problem. What were you
hoping to achieve by meeting with me today?
If what you sell is more commodity-like, you might have asked something like…
Most people who use <what we sell> already have a supplier. What is it about the
relationship or situation with your current supplier that you would like to be different
if you had a new supplier?
In Qualification, you started to get a general sense of the need – the problem that needs to
be solved and/or the situation that underlies it. Once you had a general sense of the
problem, then – if you did Qualification right – you digressed a bit and confirmed that the
prospect had a sense of the budget required and you had a sense of the decision process
that would be involved in reaching an agreement to do business together.
And now – Needs Analysis
So, after you establish the general parameters of need (problem), budget, and decision
makers (i.e., Qualification), you need to pivot back to a deeper level of the need in this
Needs Analysis stage by saying something like this:
OK – this is a good start. It looks like you have a situation we can help you with, you
understand the general budget range, and I have a sense of how the decision will get
made. Let’s get back to your situation – I’d like to more fully understand the situation
to help me make the best recommendation possible.
Not everyone in every culture or with every selling style will be comfortable with the first
part of this paragraph. You can skip it if you like and start with “I’d like to more fully
understand...” or something like that. See what feels right to you, but try the full thing at
least once. It might feel better when you say it than when you read it, and it is a great way
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to summarize and then build up from where you are. Remember, you should be leading
this conversation – but you knew that, right?
The point is, once you have a sense that the prospect is qualified (pressing need,
adequate budget, transparent decision process), then it is time to more deeply understand
his or her situation to help lead you to the solution you can suggest that will be a good fit
and a winning Offer.
Situation – Problem – Solution
Earlier in the chapter, we talked about developing a Needs Analysis methodology by

reverse-engineering the Needs Analysis process. We worked backwards from your
solution to the prospect’s problem to the situation that leads to the problem.
Graphically, that preparation work might look like the left side of this table:
This is what you wrote down in your notes. (You did that, right?)
Now, in the section above, I showed you how to go from the end of the Qualification
conversation with the prospect back to a discussion of the situation. That sets you up to
work through the Needs Analysis process with the prospect – the execution of Needs
Analysis – which is represented on the right side of this table and which is what we wanted
to set ourselves up for with everything we have done up until now.
So, now that it is time to do the Needs Analysis with the prospect, we begin with the end
(solution) in mind but start at the beginning from the prospect’s perspective, which is the
situation he or she is in – that’s what you need to start with, because that’s what the
prospect knows.
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You need to start by talking about the situation of the prospect as a path to the problem
and the solution you offer – here again is the transition statement you can modify until it
feels right to you and then use to get from the end of Qualification into the Needs Analysis
conversation. (Yes, these next two paragraphs repeat what we did above.)
So (again), after you establish the general parameters of need (problem), budget, and
decision makers (i.e., Qualification), you need to pivot back to a deeper level of the need
in this Needs Analysis stage by saying something like…
OK – this is a good start. It looks like you have a situation we can help you with, you
understand the general budget range, and I have a sense of how the decision will get
made. Let’s get back to your situation – I’d like to more fully understand the situation
to help me make the best recommendation possible.
From here, you will start talking about the prospect’s situation, the problems that occur
because of the situation, and, ultimately, how a product or service you sell can help the
prospect solve the problem and rectify the situation.
Start with the prospect’s situation, and walk that path together. There are no shortcuts
here.
To get through this conversation – from the prospect’s situation to the problems that exist
because of it and, ultimately, to how what you sell solves that problem – you need to rely
on your expertise around your products and services, the customers’ situation, and the
business in general.
Remember, the best Needs Analysis feels like a conversation with a subject matter expert
who is trying to understand the situation. It is from that exploration and understanding that
the solution should seem to evolve naturally or emerge from the conversation – discussed
and derived together with the prospect.
Therein lies the magic!
So, remember that your mental perspective here is to start asking questions to understand
the situation as best you can.
When you feel like you understand the situation, or some aspect of it, you can quite
naturally and seamlessly ask about the problems it leads to.
...see where we are going here?
Once you know the situation and the problems, you can offer the right solutions.
Your success here will depend on how well you ask questions, how good the questions
are, and how well you can guide the conversation WITH the prospect to help you both get
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to your solution as the solution to their problem – which has been clarified by the
conversation – together.
This will depend on your expertise and your style – so work on both!
VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: Did you recognize that we didn’t start with a product
demo, sales pitch, company history, or some other information about us and our
company and what we need to sell?
Ah yes – I wrote that earlier too.
This is critical!
Setting up the sale with proper Leads, professional Prospecting, effective Mutual
Qualification, and then deep and disciplined Needs Analysis IS selling.
Remember what we called it when you start by telling the prospect about you and your
products and your company before understanding their situation? “Throwing up on the
client.”
Remember?
See the difference?
I hope so!
When you approach the sales conversation in the way we have described so far, you
position yourself to make an Offer that meets the needs of the prospect, solves a real and
immediate problem, is something the prospect is prepared to pay for (because you
outlined budget parameters in Qualification), and is something you have addressed with all
of the decision makers in mind – or, better yet, you have involved the decision makers in
your Needs Analysis when their input was needed to make sure you understood the
situation and the problem from all of the relevant perspectives.
You are here
So, where are we now?
Once you have completed the situation analysis and discovered the problems that the
situations lead to, you have a qualified prospect, and you understand the situation that
leads to certain problems he or she is having that your product or service can solve.
This is good!
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When this is, indeed, the case, you have finished what might be called “classic Needs
Analysis.” (We’ll talk more about this in the next chapter.)
When classic Needs Analysis is complete, we might feel like we are ready to make a
suggested solution in the form of an Offer or a Proposal, which is the next step in our
process – but not so fast...
It’s really easy and quite tempting to rush into a formal Offer at this point, and it is a critical
mistake that most salespeople make. Before you make that same mistake, realize that,
once you make a formal Offer or Proposal, the dynamic between you and your customer
changes – a lot.
There is no need for that, and, if you want to massively improve your chances for sales
success, recognize that, right now, you are not yet ready to make a Proposal – so what
do we need to do before we are ready?
We’ll look at Offers and Proposals in the next chapter, and we’ll look closely at what you
can do to avoid the common mistake of rushing into an Offer or Proposal and, rather, set
up an effective way to leverage the work you have done and the place you have arrived in
the sales process such that you can most effectively – and easily – turn that all into a sale.
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SALES PROCESS STEP 5 – OFFER/PROPOSAL

Here’s a solution that might work well for you
Remember when I told you that Needs Analysis is the be-all-end-all of the process, even
though it is just the fourth of seven steps?
This is where that declaration will start to really make sense and provide great value and
utility to your sales efforts.
In the last three sections of our sales process – Offer/Proposal, Objections, and Closing –
we’re going to do a bit of a “disruption to the space-time continuum.”
OK, maybe that’s a bit dramatic – but we’re going to push things from these last three
steps into the earlier steps – a concept I call “Front Loading.”
Front Loading
The last three steps of our seven-step sales process (Proposal/Offer, Objections, and
Closing) are all real, important, etc. – no question about it. But what if we could push them
all up and get all three of them 80–90% or even completely done during Needs Analysis?
Sounds weird, I know – but bear with me. After decades in sales, this has been one of the
biggest revelations for me and one of the most effective lessons I have been able to teach.
It’s a concept I call Front Loading. When done properly, Front Loading can effectively
eliminate the last three steps of our sales process by folding them all into Needs Analysis.
OK – are there seven steps or four, and what really comes after Needs Analysis?
Fair question – let me explain:
Getting into the Needs Analysis conversation is critical, and the things we talked about in
the first three steps will help you get there — and get there set up for success.
But...
...and here is the big, key concept....
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Using the Needs Analysis conversation to close the deal is a powerful way to
accelerate your sales success and the way we will discuss this last half of the seven-step
process through the rest of the book.
This is what I mean by the term “Front Loading.”
...then why bother counting seven steps at all?
Separating the last half of the sales process into distinct steps is useful – there is a
Proposal to be made, there may be questions, and you do need to tie it all down – but you
will make your life infinitely easier if you simultaneously understand those three distinct
sections AND fold as much of them as you can into the Needs Analysis conversation.
We’ll go through each step in the last half of the process in the rest of this eBook, and I will
show you what each is all about, why each matters, and how to Front Load each part into
your Needs Analysis conversation for maximum sales efficiency and effectiveness.
So how do we do that?
Let’s think back to the formal or “classic” Needs Analysis for a minute – where we started
discussing the prospect’s situation around the need identified in Qualification and then
moved the conversation towards the problems that the prospect is experiencing as a result
of that situation.
In the classic model, Needs Analysis stops here, and, as a next step, we present our
solution based on our understanding of the problem in a formal Offer.
But there is a problem with that.
If we determine our solution for the prospect at the end of a classic Needs Analysis, when
we THINK we understand the problems and then immediately or after a trip back to the
office present a Proposal or an Offer based on what we THINK the prospect needs to
solve the problem, we’ve missed out on a huge opportunity.
What is that opportunity?
The opportunity we missed is the opportunity to have the prospect CONFIRM our
understanding of the problem, and (here is the really powerful part)...
... to help us create the Proposal before we even write it.
Think about this for a minute. How much more compelling will our Proposal be if the
prospect helps us write it? How different is that than the classic model?
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If the prospect worked out the Proposal with us, how do you think that would impact our
chances of being successful with it?
Does that sound too good to be true – or to be done? It’s not.
There is a simple addition to the Needs Analysis process that we need to blend in, but
once we do, we can include the prospect in the Proposal-writing process and ultimately
present the prospect with a Proposal he or she helped us to develop.
So, what is that one thing......?
Trial Solutions
Imagine yourself back in the Needs Analysis conversation.
The prospect just described a situation to you, you discussed it with the prospect, and,
after some discussion, you think you understand the problem.
To set things up from here – and for the sake of clear communication – you repeat the
problem back to the prospect to confirm – to both you and the prospect – that you both
understand the problem in the same way.
Now...
If you want to write the Proposal before you leave this current conversation, take this step
of the Needs Analysis process one step further, and insert a Trial Solution here.
What is a Trial Solution?
A Trial Solution is nothing more than a suggested solution to the problem that you have
just come to understand. What makes it a Trial Solution is that you are presenting it NOW,
during Needs Analysis, when you and the prospect are just in exploration mode.
This does a few things for you.
When you present an idea in a formal Proposal, it has a certain rigidity to it. That you
presented it formally suggests that you feel that you understand the situation well (which
you might or might not) and that this is your suggestion for solving it, which is a reflection
on the professionalism and expertise of both you and your company.
On the other hand, you could make a suggestion during the Needs Analysis conversation
before you make a formal presentation – it doesn’t have to be a formal idea, just an idea
that you will discuss with the prospect.
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Let me show you what this looks like.
How do I insert a Trial Solution into the conversation?
Imagine you just came to understand a problem and confirmed it. Right afterwards, say
something like…
You know, we had a similar situation with a client of ours last quarter, and we used
the inky-dinky approach to mitigate the damage. Does that sound like it might fit here
as well?
So, what you did here was to suggest something you could sell as a solution to the
problem that was just identified, but, unlike in the formal Proposal stage, it doesn’t matter if
the idea is accepted or not; in this case and at this stage, both are positive outcomes.
WARNING: If you present what might be considered a “stupid” idea by the prospect,
you will lose credibility – so you can’t suggest just anything. Use your subject
matter expertise to suggest a smart solution. It may or may not be the right one for
this situation that you are still learning about, but that is the value – you suggested
it as a part of the learning process, which is why it is so powerful. As long as it isn’t
a “stupid” idea, there is a lot of potential value in suggesting it. For example...
If the prospect says “yes” or “tell me more,” then you can explain the idea of using your
solution to solve the problem until the prospect fully understands. At that point, you can
even suggest a ballpark price for a solution like that – and voila – you have all or part of
your Proposal or Offer done and agreed to.
If there are multiple problems or products, simply repeat the process until you have
covered them all. We’ll touch on that a bit more in the next section called “How do I know
when I am done?”
But what if the prospect doesn’t like or accept your idea?
Guess what – THAT’S EVEN BETTER!
Why?
Imagine what would have happened if you put the idea that your prospect doesn’t like into
the formal Proposal. You lose, right?
But because you suggested it as a suggestion for discussion during Needs Analysis, you
get to ask WHY it’s not a good solution, which helps you learn more about the situation,
the problem, and the solution that WILL ultimately be accepted.
That’s all very good stuff!

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How will I know when I’m done?
I don’t know who first said it, but there is a lot of wisdom in the old expression:
“When in doubt, ask.”
It applies here too.
In my 2010 book Mastering Your Sales Process, I wrote about a concept called “The
Professional Close,” which was inspired by the awkwardly named but absolutely brilliant
“Inoffensive Close” that I read about in a book called Baseline Selling by the great Dave
Kurlan. It’s a great read, by the way!
The Professional Close has three questions. To answer the question in this section (How
will I know when I am done?), you will know that you are done with Needs Analysis and the
Proposal-building Trial Solutions – and everything but the writing up of the Proposal (which
should just be a formality) – when you have asked and received good answers to all three
questions of The Professional Close.
So, here they are:
The Professional Close
The three questions of The Professional Close that you will ask the prospect during your
Needs Analysis with Trial Solutions are these:
1) Do you agree that I fully understand the problem/situation that we’ve been
discussing?
2) Do you agree that the solution I’ve suggested solves the problem, fits the budget,
and is something that me/my firm/my product can deliver?
3) When do we start?
The trick, of course, isn’t asking these questions; it’s setting them up to be asked at a time
when they will be answered affirmatively.
Does that sound like a lot to accomplish?
It’s not – and we’ve already laid out how to do it. Let’s look at that. There are only two
steps. There is a lot of conversation that needs to happen for each one to make sure it is
fully considered, but it’s only two steps.
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The two things that lead to The Professional Close (HINT – we already did them)
1) Everything you did in Needs Analysis was about assessing a situation until you
uncovered a problem.
2) By using Trial Solutions, you suggested solutions to the problems you found.
That’s everything you need to do to set up The Professional Close for success.
That’s it.
Oh – OK – one other thing – you need to keep track.
Here’s how you want to play this out.
Remember our approach – every time you explore a part of a situation with the prospect,
your goal is to uncover a problem and then confirm with the prospect that you understand
the problem.
When you do get agreement about what a particular problem is, highlight the problem in
your notes, whatever form that takes in whatever way is comfortable for you. I like to make
a big asterisk on a handwritten note pad where I take meetings notes; maybe you use a
tablet or a laptop and will bold or highlight or whatever – it doesn’t matter. You just want to
be able to scan back later and find the problems, so do something here that will make
them easy to find later.
Then, go back and do the same when you suggest solutions.
For each problem you highlighted, write the solutions that you discussed with the prospect
when you suggested them as Trial Solutions.
Finally, as you go through the conversation, probe to discover and make sure to note any
and all problems (which you highlight in your notes after they are confirmed) and any and
all solutions that you and the prospect agreed on as making sense, including the budget.
Your goal here is to make sure that you have all of the problems captured and all of the
solutions confirmed – which is the gist of the first two questions of The Professional Close:
1) Do you agree that I fully understand the problem/situation that we’ve been
discussing?
2) Do you agree that the solution I’ve suggested solves the problem, fits the budget,
and is something that me/my firm/my product can deliver?
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If you get a negative answer to the first question – great! Go back and find some other
problems you can solve.
If you get a yes to the first question and a no to the second question, probe more until the
answer becomes yes. Remember – this is still Needs Analysis. We’re just talking here.
You’re just clarifying the problems and what might solve them.
This is the selling part! But it is also the part where you come to understand the situation
and how your solution will solve it.
Same thing!
If you get a yes to the first and a yes to the second question in The Professional Close,
logic dictates that there is nothing to do but move ahead. Your solution solves the
identified, important problem(s) and fits the budget – so you should be done, right?
Professional Close question 3) – When do we start?
There’s really nothing else to do because of how you set it up.
That’s the magic!
So, when will we talk about Proposals and Offers?
OK – reality check – this is the chapter about Proposals and Offers, and we’re still talking
about the last step in our process – Needs Analysis and the Trial Solutions that go with it.
We’re also talking about Closing – which is the last step of the seven-step process – so
when will we talk about Proposals?
Remember when I mentioned the disruption of the space-time continuum? Yeah – we’re
doing that now.
Take a step back, and look at what we’ve done here.
We have essentially drafted our Proposal and secured client agreement to it before we left
the Needs Analysis conversation.
Pretty slick, huh?
If we did this for all of the identifiable and important problems – suggested and confirmed
Trial Solutions for each one, then asked The Professional Close questions after going
through our highlighted list of problem/solution pairs – we have outlined our Proposal
WITH the prospect instead of waiting for later to “surprise” him or her with our creative
solution – and often to have the prospect surprise us with resistance to it.
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Trust me – doing this together with the prospect is MUCH better and much more effective.
This solves a MASSIVE problem
In my consulting and training practice, I have worked with a number of consulting and
engineering firms.
One of the big problems I have been asked to solve for many of them is that they have
expensive “sales consultants” who spend enormous amounts of resources putting together
Proposals that don’t win.
Why does that happen?
More often than not, it is because these highly paid sales consultants do what we have
defined as a classic Needs Analysis – remember this, where we ended the last chapter?
Because these “sales consultants” are really engineers or other subject matter experts and
generally have little or no sales background, they work with the client to understand the
problem, and, as soon as they THINK they know how to solve it, they run back to the office
and spend enormous time and resources putting together what they THINK is the world’s
greatest Proposal as a way to suggest their proposed solution.
This often fails because the proposed solution and the associated budget were not
discussed with the prospect before the Proposal was given. Rather, these sales
consultants waited to let the Proposal do the talking for them.
Why do they do this?
Maybe they are uncomfortable talking about business issues with the client and prefer to
stick to their subject matter expertise, or maybe no one ever taught them how to ask the
business questions in a way that was just a natural extension of the Needs Analysis
conversation.
Hard to know why, but it sure does seem to happen a lot!
Does this happen with you? If so, I hope you can see now that there is a better way.
It’s so important that you do!
Classic Needs Analysis frequently fails because it didn’t benefit from Trail Solutions where
the salesperson might suggest a solution that the prospect might reject and then tells the
salesperson why it won’t work.
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When that non-acceptable solution is presented for the first time in a formal Proposal, it is
a source of debate (or outright rejection) – but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
This “debate” is often discussed in the context of sales training as “Objections and
Negotiations,” which is what we will discuss next.
We’ll continue our space-time continuum disruption and move on now to the next stage of
the sales process called Objections and Negotiations, where we will discuss a concept
called The Border – and show why our Professional Close helps Proposals to be
successful and also helps keep Objections and Negotiations to a minimum as well.
...all while still in Needs Analysis, of course...
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SALES PROCESS STEP 6 – OBJECTIONS

Handling question, comments, concerns, and attempts to negotiate
I had lunch with a friend of mine several years ago, and he described a concept to me that
is so simple but so incredibly powerful that I have been talking about it and using it as a
part of my sales training material ever since.
What is that concept?
He called it “The Border.”
What is “The Border”?
The Border is simply a point in time – specifically, the point in time when a salesperson
makes a formal Offer or Proposal.
So, why is this point in time so significant that it deserves its own name?
Because, as my friend described it, once you are on the other side of The Border – the
side that comes after you give the Proposal – everything changes.
He explained it this way:
Before you present a formal Offer or Proposal, you are simply having a conversation with
your prospect. Questions are just questions, and the conversation is just a conversation.
But...
AFTER you make a formal Offer or Proposal – once you have put a proverbial stake in the
ground around a suggested solution to the problem that you think you understand and the
price you expect the prospect to pay for it – everything changes.
On the post-Proposal side of The Border, questions are no longer just questions; they
become Objections...
…and your conversation as a whole is no longer just a conversation. On the post-Proposal

side of The Border, conversations transform into full-blown Negotiations.
Now, there is nothing wrong with Objections and Negotiations – it is an important skill to
know how to deal with these. But they do feel a bit more edgy than questions and
conversations.
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So, how can we minimize or even eliminate the kinds of Objections and Negotiations that
come on the post- Proposal side of The Border?
Let me share a small bit of wisdom that I learned from my first martial arts teacher that will
help clarify this point about your sales work on either side of The Border.
Avoiding the attack
It might be a bit melodramatic to call Objections and Negotiations attacks, but maybe not –
some prospects can be pretty tough!
So, with this in mind, here’s the advice I received from my first martial arts teacher.
He said:
If you don’t want to get hit, don’t be where the attack is.
Pretty profound, no?
But what does that mean, and how can we use it?
There are three basic ways to avoid an attack in the context of martial arts:
1) Block the attack directly
2) Dodge the attack
3) Create an environment in which the attack doesn’t happen in the first place
Without going into too much macho, gory detail here, I think you can imagine the best
solution here.
Blocking and dodging are things you do when you are being attacked. They are critical
skills to have in the event that an attack happens. In the context of sales and selling, we’ll
talk later in the chapter about what to do when Objections and attempts at Negotiations
come.
But consider option 3 – creating an environment in which the attack doesn’t happen in the
first place.
Now, think about our Trial Solution and Professional Close technique in the context of The
Border.
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If questions and conversations are just questions and conversations on the pre-Proposal
side of The Border, and we address all of the questions and have all of the conversations
before we offer our formal Proposal, then, once we cross The Border, there are few or
even no question/Objections or conversation/Negotiations left to have.
By using Trial Solutions and The Professional Close as supplements to the classic Needs
Analysis process, we create an environment in which Objections and Negotiations don’t
even happen in the first place. Then, all you are left with is question number three of The
Professional Close:
3) When do we start?
In other words – to continue with our disruption of the space/time continuum – when we do
what we are supposed to do before we offer a Proposal, we don’t need to spend much
time or energy on Objections, because there won’t be many of them left to deal with. We
dealt with most or all of them proactively in Qualification and in a thorough Needs Analysis
that included Trial Solutions and The Professional Close.
Pretty slick, huh?
But what if there are Objections anyways?
Yup – that happens. No doubt.
Let’s face it – no matter how thorough you are before you suggest your solution,
sometimes there are questions (Objections) and conversations (Negotiations) after you
propose your solution.
Let’s not dwell on why – I am convinced that some prospects just don’t feel like the
process is complete without a bit of sparring over the Offer. Maybe that’s true, or maybe
something was missed, or maybe someone on the prospect’s side got involved late in the
game and asked something that wasn’t considered before.
It doesn’t matter.
You can and should try to learn from your experience and try to avoid post-Proposal
questions to the extent you can next time, but, when you are in the situation, you need to
do something to handle the Objection.
In other words, if there is a question that comes after you offer your Proposal, of course
you need to address it. So let’s talk about that.
Here are a few things to try:
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Is this Objection real?
I have three kids, and, in my effort to be a good father – something very important to me –
I sometimes read about parenting.
One of my all-time favorite parenting books (with an awful, misrepresentative name) is

called “Scream Free Parenting.”
How is that relevant here? Let’s consider the subtitle:
“How to raise amazing adults by learning to pause more and react less”
I underlined the last few words – that’s the part we want to focus on here.
The core takeaway for me in the book was this:
Parents often want so much to help their children any way they can (a good thing) that
they instinctively take ownership of the problems their children are having as a way to
solve them (a bad thing).
What does the book suggest as a better approach? When a child talks about or
demonstrates a problem, instead of taking ownership of it and jumping in to solve it, the
parent should just acknowledge the problem and help the child figure out how to solve it
him or herself, maybe with a bit of guidance.
For example, if a child is having a problem with a teacher at school, a parent taking
ownership might look like this:
“That’s totally unacceptable. I’m going to call the school right now and get to the
bottom of this.”
From that point forward, the problem is no longer the responsibility of the child; the parent
has taken over.
Alternatively, the parent could use a technique from the book and simply acknowledge the
problem by saying something like this:
“Wow, I can understand how that would be frustrating for you….”
...AND THEN STOP TALKING!
(That’s the hard part – for parents and for salespeople.)
An action-neutral, acknowledging statement like the one above lets children know that
they are being heard and understood without the parents taking ownership; it’s still up to
the children to carry the ball forward.
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Often – and I can tell you this from personal experience – the child may respond to the
reply by speaking more and move towards his or her own solution – immediately or after a
few more ownership-free acknowledging or clarifying questions.
Or the child may just lean in for a hug, happy that he or she was heard, which is
sometimes all that’s needed.
So, that’s nice, if you are a parent – but how can this help us with sales, and specifically
with Objections?
...and no, we are not looking to have our prospects hug us – at least not literally.
What are we trying to do here, and how is this parenting analogy relevant?
Old-school Objection-handling techniques are like the blocking or dodging strategies we

described above for martial arts. With this classic “use a technique” approach, you feel as
though you need to do something to take ownership of the Objections, to engage
prospects and their Objections directly and take action to move them to a place where they
are no longer Objections.
However, if we resist taking ownership and work to clarify an Objection with a prospect by
repeating it back or acknowledging that it seems like a problem but asking for more
clarification, sometimes the prospect can solve the Objection on his or her own with just a
bit of guidance.
For example, the prospect might say that the price is too high – a classic Objection, right?
Instead of taking ownership of the Objection and immediately trying to justify the price
against the value you created, keep the ball in the prospect’s court with a confirming
statement like…
Yeah, this will cost some money, that’s for sure. What other options might make
sense?
or
Yeah, this will cost some money, that’s for sure. How much did you expect to pay to
solve this problem?
or, if you are a minimalist, you can try something like…
That’s true; this is an expensive solution.
WARNING: Before you try something like this, recognize that if the problem is not
important to solve, and if you have not built up value in your solution already, then
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the prospect could consider doing nothing as an alternative to buying your product
or service.
This is not a technique that you can pull out at the last minute to save a poor sales effort!
If you want to be able to close your Proposals, you need to set them up right – and, in
Qualification, you should have determined that this is a pressing need – remember?
Nothing on the back half of the process will work well or at all if you don’t do the first part
well.
But, if it is a real problem that needs to be solved, then this kind of question can lead to a
good discussion – one where you are involved in the solution. It’s almost like you put
yourself back on the friendly side of The Border and get back into Needs Analysis, if the
Objection is real....
Or the prospect might even immediately recognize that it is a silly Objection and move on.
I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me.
I have become convinced that, sometimes, a prospect will push back on price – or on
something else – simply by instinct. If you qualified well, established value, and offered a
good Proposal, then sometimes just a little question will jar the prospect out of his or her
automated habit and remind him or her that you already discussed why the price is what it
is and why it is worth it.
An old friend of mine just used to respond to price Objections by saying, “Compared to
what”? He was pretty aggressive, but it fit his style – the one he had set up throughout the
relationship – and it worked for him.
Find some things that work for you within the context of not taking ownership, and help
your prospects answer their own Objections.
Again, if you did your job before this point well, you discussed all of the important issues
and essentially gave them the answers to their own questions already. Just give them
space to remember this on their own – with one or a few guiding, clarifying, and
acknowledging questions – and sometimes, there won’t be any “screaming” at all.
The main point here is this:
By responding to an Objection or any question that comes up after your Proposal is

offered by acknowledging it and putting the prospect back into the lead of the
conversation, you offer the space to either better understand the Objection (which is a
good thing) or give the prospect time to address it on his or her own (which is even better).
Don’t take ownership as a knee-jerk reaction. Continue behaving as if you are on the
friendly side of The Border – but again, we get ahead of ourselves....
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Free your mind
Aside from the specific idea of not taking ownership of the Objection, you can also put
yourself in position to win here by simply reframing in your own mind what is happening
here.
Remember how we spoke about the old-school approach of Objection handling as being
the martial arts equivalent of blocking and dodging?
To some extent, at least as far as our analogy goes, seeing it that way is a choice.
If a prospect has a question after you give the Proposal, you are free to get defensive and
treat it like a hostile Objection.
Please just recognize that this is a choice – an option that you have selected. There are
other ways to think about this.
Like what?
Well, you can reframe the situation in your own mind and consider it a question, and just
answer it or talk about it.
If you have established a relationship with your prospect based on trust and value, this will
come naturally.
Sales is a conversation, and you are a part of it. Your perspective will influence the tone of
the conversation. Keep this in mind, and do what you can to create the conversational
tone that will set you up for success – just like you did before we crossed The Border!
In other words, just because you crossed The Border doesn’t mean that you have to act
like you did.
Maybe you have seen something similar with small children. Often, when they fall down,
they don’t cry immediately – especially if they are not really hurt. Instead, they look around
to see how the people around them will respond.
If their parents rush up to them and make a big fuss, often the child will cry and seek
comfort.
But – if the parents come over and just help them up and are more casual about it, the
kids recognize that there is no real problem and go on playing.
You can do this with your prospects too if you choose the mental approach that supports it.
When Objections come, treat them like questions, and, sometimes, you can go on playing
quite nicely.
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Hard- and soft-style Objection handling
One more concept to keep in mind when thinking about Objections is the concept of hard-
versus soft-style Objection management.
Sticking with martial arts analogies, let me tell you about my brother.
When I started studying martial arts, I chose to study Tae Kwon Do – a very aggressive
martial art. It’s the one you see in the Olympics with the acrobatic kicks. (I can’t do those
anymore, that’s for sure – but I digress….)
Among martial arts, Tae Kwon Do is considered what is called a “hard style” because of
the direct nature of the attacks and counterattacks. Think blocking punches and kicks with
your arms and legs directly and, hopefully (at least in practice and in formal competitions),
with lots of pads!
My brother, on the other hand, studies Tai Chi – the soft, balanced martial art usually
shown on TV or in movies as being practiced in the park with slow, deliberate, and
balanced movements. In contrast to Tae Kwon Do, Tai Chi is considered a “soft-style”
martial art.
What I learned by playing around with my brother in the back yard was that Tai Chi is a
serious martial art. It uses principles based on absorbing the energy of the opponent
instead of blocking it directly, like Aikido – another soft-style martial art.
Now, consider this. In a hard-style martial art, it can feel like you are learning quickly. You
make the kicks and the punches with lots of force into the air in the practice hall, and you
feel like you know something – until you face an opponent and realize that the awesome
kicks you did in the air are not as effective as you thought in a real situation with another
person.
Soft-style martial arts take longer to learn. It takes a lot of self-knowledge and perception
to be in tune enough with the opponent to be able to use soft-style martial arts effectively.
But – when you do complement your martial arts skills with good self-knowledge and clear
perception of your counterpart, you can be highly skilled and effective and can more easily
create win–win situations with little or no tension or friction along the way.
Think of putting someone into a restraint position to stop their attack without hurting them.
Much less brutal than trying to kick and punch them into submission.
When done properly – by a well-trained expert with self-control – it can feel like it just flows
naturally and happens almost effortlessly – like a conversation with a subject matter expert
here to help solve a problem...
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Despite what we discussed earlier as the power of The Border, when you choose to think
of questions that come after the Proposal is given as questions and just respond them that
way, many of them can just be talked through.
As with the soft-style martial arts, this will take some self-knowledge and a clear
perception of your prospect, but remember – you set yourself up early as a trusted advisor,
a subject matter expert who is here to help. If you position yourself this way all the way
through the process, you will have much more success at the end when it comes time to
work with the “energy” of the prospect to reach consensus rather than aggressively
counterattacking.
Hard style versus soft style...
The things the prospect says in the form of Objections might be the same – but how you
react can make a huge difference. This goes beyond the words you use and gets its
direction from the way you think about and react to these things that are said.
So free your mind. Realize that you and the prospect are partners in this. (Remember, you
created the Proposal together.) If you take this perspective all the way through, it’s much
easier to find common ground than if you are aggressive and confrontational.
Quarantine the Objection
OK – so we tried to resist taking ownership of the Objection, and we tried to think about it
as nothing more than a question – but sometimes, none of those things work, and you still
have a thorny Objection to deal with.
What then?
When this happens – and it will happen – your best strategy is to quarantine the Objection.
If you are going to wrestle with an Objection directly and fight through it, you want to know
that it is the only one.
Have you ever had a situation where you worked hard to address an Objection only to find
that it wasn’t the only one?
We want to avoid that.
So ask! Something like:
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OK – so I understand that the financing terms are a sticking point, and it sounds like
we are going to need to work on that a bit more together – but let me ask you this. If
we are able to resolve that, is there anything else that will keep us from moving
forward?
If there is, you need to assess the situation.
If you got to this point, and the prospect rattles off three or four potentially deal-killing
problems, then you missed a lot along the way, and you have a lot of work to do.
In this case, you need to try to get back into Needs Analysis mode.
Let the prospect know that you are surprised, that you thought that you had addressed all
of the issues. Either the deal ends here (it’s not winnable), or you go back into discovery
and sort out the problems and situations and solutions again until you can arrive back at a
modified Proposal without so many Objections.
On the other hand, if the prospect tells you that this is the only sticking point, you
effectively have what is called a “conditional Close” – meaning that, if you solve this one
thing, then the deal will move forward.
I like to make this a declaration with the prospect. Something like…
OK – good – then let’s see what we can do about these financing terms, and then it
looks like we can move forward with the project/sale/deal. Does that sound right to
you?
If the prospect agrees, that’s great – go solve the one problem, and close the deal.
That’s what we mean by “quarantining” the Objection – isolating it and addressing it,
knowing that it is separated from the rest of the otherwise healthy, almost-closed sale.
Now, after addressing the quarantined Objection, you still may find that there are other
things that the prospect is concerned about and didn’t tell you. This speaks volumes about
your relationship with the prospect; if you have a relationship built on trust and mutual
respect, then this should happen less often than you might imagine.
None of these ideas in this chapter will help you if you have a weak relationship with the
prospect. Your job is to build up this relationship in those early parts of the process to
make this part easier.
That’s what we’ve been saying throughout this book – set it up right from the start, and it is
MUCH easier to finish!
Final thoughts about Objections

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When I started selling, Objection-handling techniques were talked about like magic tricks.
Not in the sense that they appeared to be magical but rather from the perspective of the
magician. If you knew how to make it look like the card disappeared, then it could seem to
your audience like it really did.
I never liked Objection-handling techniques – not for any of my almost three decades now
in sales.
These days, in the age of transparency and information at the click of a button, more and
more people you sell to know about the kind of old-school techniques that salespeople
used to use and when they used to use them.
They know that, when they ask questions about your Proposal, they may be subjected to
“Objection-handling techniques.”
Now more than ever, it is important to simply have a good relationship with and be a
trusted resource for your prospects. Especially those you want to turn into customers.
Whichever side of The Border you are on, the way you think about your job and the way
you approach it will make a huge difference in your success.
This is true of all of the steps in our sales process – no matter how much of a time warp
some of them are put through.
The main point for this step – the step about questions after your Proposal or Objections –
is this.
If you try to eliminate them by creating the right relationship and answering as many
questions as you can before you make your Proposal, you will limit the number of
Objections you get after you offer the formal Proposal and cross The Border.
And, for those Objections you do get, treat them like questions, and make sure that they
are real and the only issues to deal with – but do that in the same professional,
conversational, relationship-focused, helpful manner in which you conducted the rest of
the sales conversation, and you will dramatically improve your chances for success.
As a bonus, you will feel like someone who is working to help your prospects solve
problems, not someone who is trying to shove something down their throats or tricking
them into buying your stuff, as is so often the perception of salespeople – especially the
bad and/or aggressive ones.
Won’t it be nicer to look in the mirror and see a problem solver rather than a stereotype?
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What’s next?
After the prospect’s situation has been well understood, the pressing problems have been
identified, a solution has been suggested, and all of the questions have been answered,
you are pretty much done.
The only thing left to do now is to wrap up the deal and agree to move into
implementation. In sales, and in the sales process, we call this Closing.
Let’s look at that next.
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SALES PROCESS STEP 7 – CLOSING

Let’s do it!
In the first few weeks of my first sales job – way back in 1991 – I started out struggling and
quickly started studying.
I laugh to admit it now, but, as I read about sales and selling in those first weeks of my new
sales career, I kept hearing this word “Closing” and the expression “close the deal” – and I
actually didn’t know what that meant.
I did eventually lean that it’s just a sales way of saying “finishing.” Getting the deal.
Reaching an agreement.
So that was progress...
At the time, Closing was considered the big event in the sales process. The hard part. The
part you had to perform right to get the deal.
I don’t think about it that way anymore.
But how can that be? If you don’t close, you have no deal – so what gives?
Remember how we finished the last chapter, with the idea that, if you set the sale up right
from the start, then it is MUCH easier to finish? That’s how we’re going to think about
Closing – in the context of the process as a whole and the time warp we’ve been
developing in this book.
And we’re going to do it with pizza!
A recipe for Closing success (sorry...)
Think of the sales process (the seven steps for selling that we have worked through in this
book) like a recipe – maybe for pizza with a homemade crust. (Sorry, my cooking skills are
pretty basic – this is the best I could imagine….)
Going with this analogy, then, Front Loading our pizza project means doing things like
measuring and preparing the ingredients before you start assembling them – so you look
like the cooks on the cooking shows who just grab the little bowl with the just-right amount
of the fully prepared next ingredient and whip through the preparation like it’s a breeze.
Don’t you want your sales to be like that?
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When you Front Load and prepare for success in the later stages of the sales process by
what you do in the early stages, going through the steps of the sales process is like
following the steps of the recipe – preferably without having to stop along the way to grate
the cheese or realizing that you are out of tomato sauce when you are halfway through.
Delicious analogy, no?
I don’t want to push the analogy too far, but it works well to illustrate what should be
happening in the part of our sales process called Closing.
So what part of our pizza-making process is Closing?
Put it in the oven for baby and me
If we follow our homemade pizza analogy for Closing, then Closing is like putting our
uncooked pizza into the oven.
It’s not a perfect analogy, but here is the part to think about:
To get a good pizza, you will put your pizza in the oven only after all of the preparation
work is done – right? The actual placement of the uncooked pizza into the oven is a final
step based on a set of steps taken before.
If you didn’t do something right before putting it into the oven, that will show up in the final
cooked pizza, but there is nothing you can do while actually putting it into the oven that will
change that.
At that point, it’s too late!
That’s why the pizza – or any recipe requiring baking – is a good analogy for the sales
process – and the part where you put it into the oven is a good analogy for the Closing
step.
If you missed something during the parts of the sales process that lead up to the Close,
and you try to close, your Closing attempt will be highly likely to fail.
On the other hand, if you did everything that leads up to the Close correctly, Closing
should be just the logical conclusion of a thorough and well-executed process.
Now, this doesn’t mean that there is nothing to do at the Closing stage, but the point is
that, if you set it up right, it shouldn’t be much.
In our pizza analogy, it might involve setting the oven temperature correctly, pre-heating
the oven, setting a timer so that we remember to check the pizza and don’t let it burn, etc.
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None of these things will help a poorly prepared pizza to become good, but they will make
sure that a well-prepared pizza is completed properly.
So, again, what about sales? What do we actually need to do in sales to close the deal if
we set it up properly with a well-Qualified prospect and a complete Needs Analysis
process as we have described up to this point?
It should be as easy as a simple question, like one of these:
• When should we start?
• How should we get started?
• Where should I send the contract for signature?
• How would you like to pay for that?
Or some other incredibly simple question.
Why is it so simple?
Because everything has already been done!
You got a qualified prospect with a problem, understood the problem, suggested a good
solution, confirmed that it was a good solution, and answered any questions.
What’s left?
Shouldn’t be much – right?
The Professional Close Revisited
Let’s do a reality check of where we are here.
We completely or at least mostly bypassed the normal Proposal, Objection, and Closing
steps of the sales process by using Trial Solutions and The Professional Close – these are
the “space-time continuum” and “time warp” concepts I keep coming back to.
Now – whether your attempt to close with the simple question comes during Needs
Analysis when you ask the three Professional Close questions or after you have presented
a formal Proposal that you wrote up after confirming it during Needs Analysis, there is a
possibility that we need to discuss.
What happens when you follow the entire process as described, and you get a yes answer
to the first two questions in The Professional Close and a no answer to the third?
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While this possibility is logically odd, it can and will happen – so let’s look at that.
The logic-defying humanity of a Professional Close that failed
As I hope you have realized by now, Closing is not an event. There is no trick; there are no
magic words.
When we work through our sales process correctly, Closing should be nothing more than
the logical conclusion of everything that has led up to the end of the sales process.
If – on the other hand – you skipped steps or did things halfway, then Closing will be a
struggle and one that you will likely lose.
In the sales model presented in this book, we introduced the concept of The Professional
Close during Needs Analysis, the fourth step of our seven-step process.
The Professional Close works not because it is a clever Closing technique but because of
the way it was set up.
Let’s review:
• We approached our sales work as a subject matter expert here to help.

• We chose Leads that need our help.
• We approached them with the right reason (something important to them – their
problem).
• We qualified them as being able and likely to buy.
• We did a thorough Needs Analysis.
• We used Trial Solutions to set up an effective Close at the end of Needs Analysis and
before we wrote the Proposal.
• Our Proposal was simple to write, because, when using The Professional Close, it is a
confirmation, not a tool of persuasion.
• And we had very few Objections, if any, because we worked hard to address them
before we presented the Proposal and were able to deal with them as questions on the
friendly side of The Border rather than as Objections on the post-Proposal side.
So here we are – we have presented our Proposal, we addressed any Objections or

questions that came up, and it is time to get this deal agreed to and into implementation or
delivery, as the case may be.
So, what happens if we do everything right up until now, but it still doesn’t go?
Two yesses and a no
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You ask the first question of The Professional Close – “Do you believe that I fully
understand the problem that you want me to solve or the situation that we are discussing?”
Your prospect says now or already said yes.
Then, you ask the second question of The Professional Close – “Do you believe that we
can deliver the solution, that the solution fits the budget, and that it solves the problem?”
Your prospect agrees with that too.
We have decided to believe until now that life makes sense, and anyone answering yes to
those first two questions would certainly answer yes to the third – something along the
lines of “Great – so then let’s get started.”
But what if they say no?
What if they said yes to the first two Professional Closing questions and no to the third?
It makes no sense at all – if the prospect is qualified, as we have described it, the problem
is acknowledged by you and the prospect to be well understood, and the solution makes
sense from every considerable angle, then the deal should close – but what if it doesn’t?
What does that mean, and what can we do about it?
In my experience, the reason for this is almost always one of the following three things:
• First, the prospect is not the decision maker.

• Second, the prospect tells you that he or she wants to think about it.
• Or third, you missed something, or the prospect was not fully honest with you about
something.
You will know which of the three you are dealing with by the way the prospect says no.
The prospect might say no by telling you that he or she needs to check with a boss, the
committee, his or her wife or fortune teller, or someone else before committing to moving
forward. In that case, it is a decision maker problem.
If the prospect wants to think about it, he or she will usually just tell you.
As for the third, if something new and difficult to deal with comes up at the end of the
process, then it is probably one of two things: Either you covered everything, and the
prospect was not fully honest with you – intentionally or not – or you missed something,
and it is now coming back to haunt you.
Let’s take a look at each of these three possibilities and discuss what you can do to get
past these roadblocks to a successfully completed deal.
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What if you learn late in the game that the prospect is not the decision maker?
The decision maker problem is really the simplest, although not necessarily the easiest.
In this situation, you get to the end of the process and get ready to finish the deal, and
your prospect tells you that he or she needs to check with someone else before giving the
final approval.
This can be very, very frustrating, especially if you asked the prospect in the beginning and
were told that the prospect was indeed the decision maker.
Before talking about what to do about this, let’s look back.
If you are in this situation because you didn’t ask or clarify this during Qualification, shame
on you – it is coming back to haunt you now. Try to do better next time.
If you did ask and were told that the prospect was the decision maker, don’t feel bad – this
actually happens a lot.
Early on in Qualification, the prospect may have given you a brief, even partially true
answer to keep things moving because you didn’t have a lot of credibility yet – remember,
at this point, you were just starting your relationship, so you didn’t have a lot of history or
rapport yet with this prospect.
Maybe the prospect felt that saying they were A decision maker was accurate even though
you were trying to learn if they were THE decision maker or to find out who else was
involved.
The other thing to remember is that, throughout Needs Analysis you can be looking for
clues and even ask questions designed to flesh out who else might need to be involved in
the decision – so be sure to pay attention for clues, and try to elicit some of your own as
well.
In any case, whether you did some of that, none of that, or all of that, you can still wind up
at the end of the sales process and learn that there are more decision makers than you
had accounted for.
So what should you do?
First, acknowledge the situation by saying something like…
OK, so I understand that you need to check with your fortune teller (or whoever they
say they need to check with)...
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In the same sentence, confirm what you have been working towards through the sales
process – that the prospect is convinced about your Offer – by saying something like…
...but, if the decision was yours to make alone, would you agree to move forward?
Asking this is really important. Sometimes, a prospect will tell you that he or she has to ask
someone else as a way of saying no because the prospect is not convinced about your
Offer.
If the prospect tells you that he or she would not move forward even if the decision was
only up to him or her or gives some kind of evasive answer that implies the same thing in
not so many words, you can be sure that your prospect won’t be very convincing to the
other people who may or may not be involved in the decision.
Asking this question also gives you an opportunity to find out why your prospect is not
convinced and to explore that.
If you let your prospect go with “I need to check with someone else,” and he or she is not
convinced, then the game is over – although you may still invest some or even a lot of time
chasing the prospect around until you learn that for yourself.
So be sure to ask this – and, if the answer is no, then treat it as an Objection. Try to learn
what about the Offer is not acceptable, then work to resolve it – and try to Close again
once the issue seems resolved.
If, on the other hand, the prospect tells you that he or she would move forward with the
deal if it was just up to him or her, then lock in a follow-up plan.
Tell your prospect that you understand that he or she needs to check with whoever they
need to check with, but schedule a follow-up call or meeting at a specific time sometime
within the next week.
This way, the prospect knows that they need to get the checking done and pick up where
you left off.
If you have built up credibility throughout the process, your prospect respect your follow-up
meeting and will most likely check with whoever he or she needs to check with.
If you feel it is appropriate, you may also offer to meet with the other decision makers.
You can justify this by offering to relieve your prospect of the burden of having to explain
everything that you went over with him or her.
This also solves the problem of having your prospect sell for you by proxy, which is never
as effective as if you did it yourself.
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So that is what you can do when you learn about more decision makers at Closing time.
What if your prospect wants to think about it?
The second common Objection that someone may use when he or she said yes to the first
two Professional Close questions and no to the third is that they need to think about it.
Now, “I need to think about it” is a very common Objection and a very challenging one for
most salespeople to get past. It is challenging because it seems very reasonable. You are
asking someone to make a decision, and it makes sense to think about a decision before
actually making it – right? How can you not let your prospect do that?
Because we empathize with prospects this way, we let them off the hook and tell them that
of course they can think about it. Then, in most cases, we spend a bunch of time following
up and never getting the sale.
“I need to think about it” usually means that the prospect is just not quite 100% convinced
about the idea of buying your solution.
It is not very likely that a prospect will convince him or herself by thinking about it alone,
so, if you want to get the deal, you need to do something while you are still with the
prospect – but what?
Your successful approach to “I need to think about it” is rooted in what you did during the
sales process.
If you followed the process outlined in this book well and thoroughly, approached the sale
as a subject matter expert here to help the prospect make a good decision about using
your product or service, and spent time in Needs Analysis asking great questions, seeking
to understand the prospect’s situation and offering Trial Solutions, then the entire
communication with the prospect has been the two of you really thinking about this
situation together.
If you did all of that, then the “I need to think about it” Objection can be managed in a
simple, straightforward way.
Simply review The Professional Close questions that you already asked and had
answered with your prospect. You may say something like…
I am surprised to hear that – I thought we had fleshed out all of the issues already.
Is there something about the situation behind the problem that we forgot to address?
Remember, this is the first question in The Professional Close – and you have already
worked through this with your prospect.
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If they change their answer now, you need to explore that, but if they agree (again) that the
situation is well understood, then go to the second question:
Well, is there something about the solution that doesn’t solve the problem or fit the
budget?
This too is something they already agreed to, and when they agree again, go to the
second part of The Professional Close second question and ask:
Well, is there something about my firm and our ability to deliver that has you worried?
If they give a “green light” answer to all of these – questions you have already asked and
discussed with the prospect earlier in the process – then you have earned the right to say:
So, given all of that – that the problem is well understood, the solution solves the
problem and fits the budget, and that you have confidence in me and my team to
deliver – then please help me understand what is it that you wanted to think about.
You don’t want to be – or even need to be – aggressive about this, but if you have done
everything we have talked about until now, it is a fair question.
You invested a lot of time together with the prospect and went through the issues
thoroughly, and you and the prospect both have a vested interest in finding a good solution
to the situation, which may well be the one that you are trying to sell.
By going through this process with the prospect, you might even give the prospect the
confidence he or she needs to commit by reminding them that you have already thought
through everything together and that it really does make sense to move forward.
One last thing you might try here is to suggest that – if indeed there is something to think
about – it might be better to think about it NOW when everything is fresh in everyone’s
minds and to think about it TOGETHER since you have a lot of information to add to the
process of thinking about it.
At the end of the day, it is just better for you to be in the room when the decision is
finalized, so do whatever you can to get the “thinking about it” process happening right
then while you are still there.
If not, you’ll probably lose this deal because there is uncertainty that you have not
resolved, and it probably won’t get resolved without you.
And what if the prospect lied?
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The third possibility for our two yesses and a no problem is that the prospect lied to you.
OK, that is a little harsh; let’s rephrase that.
The third possibility is that there is something about the decision-making process that was
not addressed. Either you missed something, the prospect was not fully honest about
something, or something came up during the sales process that changed things.
There is no magic bullet to solve this. A similar approach to the “I need to think about it”
Objection is best.
But remember – this approach only works if you earn the right to use it by being very
thorough in your Needs Analysis, by getting into the meeting the right way, by choosing the
right people to get into the meeting with in the first place, and by starting the process with
the right mentality.
In other words, here we are at the end of the seventh and last step of the sales process –
and, as you can see, everything we have done from the very start builds up to help you get
through each stage and all of the stages of the sales process.
Final thoughts about Closing
Closing is not an event. This is not the time or place for fancy techniques or tricks.
If what you did before you attempted to close was professional and complete – as we have
described here in this book – the Close will be either a simple question, or you will have
some things to work on before you close – but things that are well defined and easy to
work through because of the relationship you established throughout the execution of the
sales conversation with the prospect.
Your success in sales comes from what you did from the start through to the finish. You
can make up lost ground once you’ve lost it, but it’s not easy.
This book has been about thinking about the end of the process before you begin.
A sales process-based approach to selling is a lot less useful if you think about it as
separate parts. To be truly successful with this approach, think about the whole process
while thinking about each part, how the parts fit together, and how the early parts set up
the later parts for success.
I hope that you can now see how succeeding with Closing – finishing the deal – starts with
the mentality you have before you even start the process and builds with every step of the
process you go through and the way you go through it from there.
It’s cumulative.
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If you can take even just that one concept away from this book, that’s wonderful!
If the specific ways that you learned here to get through each step and to tie the steps
together are also useful, that’s even better!
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FINAL THOUGHTS
The idea of a sales process is often criticized.
Some say it’s too rigid and forces a salesperson to behave like a simple telemarketer
reading a script off a screen.
Some say it is too formal.
Some say it is too abstract.
Some even say that it doesn’t exist – that there is no such thing – because it’s the buyer
who controls the journey of the sale, and the salesperson simply needs to be along for the
ride.
While there can be some or even a lot of truth to some of these ideas in some cases, I
think there is a different and more useful way to think about sales process.
That is what this entire book is about – not parts of the sales process but the whole of the
sales process and the power that the holistic approach can manifest for you.
The concepts in this book are not revolutionary or even new. There may be some
techniques or some specific ideas you had not heard about before and some things you
may have thought about differently than they were presented here, but, ultimately, the
power of the ideas in this book is not in their novelty.
The power comes from understanding each part deeply and understanding how each of
the parts fits into the whole process.
...and then, of course, having each part work with the other parts such that the whole
process is compressed and easier to complete.
In many ways, this holistic approach to sales process and sales execution is simple, but it
takes time and practice to get used to it and to learn to execute it well and consistently.
You will also need to invest time to find the right way to execute each part of the process.
The sample sentences in this book are just that – sample sentences. You probably won’t
say them exactly as they are written, and that’s fine. Try to understand the big picture and
what you are trying to achieve with each step of the journey, and then let your own words
and your own style emerge over time and with experience.
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It’s not the words that are important here; it is that you have a solid path to follow and that
you work on following the path and building towards success with each step you take.
However long it takes you to become comfortable with this approach, it is a powerful and
effective way to approach sales.
I hope you can see that now and can see how it can work for you – and how you can
achieve a high level of sales execution mastery for yourself by following the path laid out in
this eBook.
This eBook was designed to help you build your own personal selling system, and I truly
hope that it has been useful for you in this respect. If you would like some additional help
or resources to continue your quest to build an effective personal selling system and the
skills and perspectives to execute it well, please read on for some additional ways I can
support that quest with you.
CLOSING THOUGHTS – AND MOVING FORWARD
While this eBook was designed to help you build your own sales process – in effect, your
own personal selling system or methodology – from start to finish, please recognize this:
As long as you are in sales, you should never think of yourself as being done with this kind
of work. Working on a process like this is always about tinkering – but having a process to
tinker with is immeasurably more valuable than throwing random ideas into an
unstructured methodology for working.
If you would like to keep working on and optimizing your personal selling system with
some additional help from me, I would be honored and happy to help. I have three different
suggestions for how to do that from this point – please select the one that feels the most
right to you.
THE BOOK
In 2010, I wrote “Mastering Your Sales Process” (MYSP) as a book-based guide for
developing this same kind of sales process. If you are a book-oriented person, this would
be a good, inexpensive, and thorough way to dig deeper into the kinds of questions that
will help you build your personal selling system, the one you started by working through
this workbook. There will be some overlap between this eBook and MYSP but some
valuable additions as well. The book is available on Amazon at this link:
Mastering Your Sales Process by David Masover on Amazon
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THE ONLINE COURSE

Having taught this process for almost two decades now, I have taken the frequently asked
questions and insights learned from working through this on my own and with many, many
others and built them into an online course that is self-paced, reasonably priced, and very
thorough. In the online course, you will essentially go back through these workbook items
but at a much deeper level. Click here to learn more about the course and if that feels right
for you.
Building Your Personal Selling System – an online course by David Masover
PERSONAL COACHING
If you prefer a live, one-on-one approach or for any reason think it makes sense to work
with me directly on this, I am happy to help. Here is a link to a page that describes a
standard live one-on-one coaching package related to this workbook or to reach me about
any custom programs you may wish to explore together.
Personal Selling System 1:1 Coaching with David Masover
If none of that feels right to you or you want to reach out to me directly about anything else
that’s on your mind, you can reach me through my website contact page, and I will try to
get back to you as soon as possible.
Here’s to your success!
-David Masover
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Building Your Sales Process

Building Your Sales Process

© 2017 David Masover

Cover image: Hannu Viitanen/Dreamstime.com

Welcome to Building Your Sales Process:

INTRODUCTION: How to learn how to sell

The Salesman’s Guide to Dating

Mastering Your Sales Process

Managing the Sales Process

The Self-Paced Sales Process Development Workshop

Personal and Group Coaching and Training

WHO IS THIS FOR?

Sales is also a discipline and a skillset.

What made it rougher is that I got no training.

That was it.

I simply did not know what to do.

Eventually – from so many lectures, concepts, books, conversations, experiments,

Are you one of them?

So, who is this for already?!?

I have been a Business-to-Business (B2B) salesperson my whole career. I don’t know

Are you like that too?

I wanted a selling system.

• Finding new people to sell to

We’ll build that framework here.

But more than that.

Then let’s get started!

SALES PROCESS OVERVIEW

So, am I sensitive to this criticism of my writing style?

SALES PROCESS STEP 1 – LEADS

We call this stage “Leads” – or, more completely, “Lead generation.”

A quick note about making your plan

Leads Exercise 1 – Who needs the help I can provide?

• Are your customers individuals? Families? Companies? Government agencies?

Leads Exercise 2 – Creating a buyer persona

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on

2) Be sure to include as many personal characteristics of these personas as you can

Leads Exercise 3 – Where can I find these people?

• Are there associations where these people congregate – live or online?

• Is there something that a lot of these personas are reading?

• Are your best prospects names you may already have?

Leads Exercise 5 – The journalism questions – Bringing it all together

• Who will buy from me (persona)?

" <Lead Source> is a great source of Leads for me BECAUSE…

We’re done with Leads!

SALES PROCESS STEP 2 – PROSPECTING

The reason is the magic

But here’s the thing about most people these days:

People are busy, right?

And what is a good reason?

I’ll give you a hint – it’s not what’s important to you....

A good reason is what is important to them!

That’s pretty much the whole game right there.

...uh, starting line?!?

The two main ways of looking at Prospecting

Some outbound Prospecting methods

Reaching out to existing customers

What do I mean by that?

Sounds stupidly simple, right?