Hey all. Curious what methods people have that get clients to move absent a compelling event such as a regulatory deadline or M&A etc. We always talk about compelling events, but in reality not that much is truly compelling for companies that are mired in their typical purchasing process. In my experience, a price trigger rarely does the trick, nor does the tried and true “our resources will be deployed to another project”. The client simply doesn’t care. I always like to look at it from the client’s perspective and make it in their best interests to take action. For example, if they’ve stated they want to go live in October 1st, then I create a work-back schedule to lay out when they need to start implementation, and by extension when they need to sign by. Sounds great in theory since it is about them, not me, but this can easily fall apart when they just decide to move the start date back to December 1. Again, lack of urgency…
In the sales enablement space, I’ve used the average sales cycle to create urgency to act when clients are behind on their numbers. It’s not foolproof, but highlighting how long they need to reach revenue may create urgency. Still not sure, and doesn’t address a compelling event issue.
This is a great topic, @andrew.gibian and worthy of exploration by the extended community here. Some of the questions and follow up questions I typically ask my EB’s are:
What happens if you do nothing?
What type of impact would that have in relation to your competitive landscape and your self-named peers?
Do you have a plan in place to move from current state to future state of the business?
Like @jack, this doesn’t address the compelling event issue but definitely thought provoking questions for prospects.
A common objection I hear is “no budget for new tools” but executives at the same company will have laid out X% revenue growth expectations by a certain time period in a recent earnings. So I try to I try to align to how we can help meet those expectations.
Great topic and agree with what Jack and Will are saying.
My only addition to this is business pain. Goes back to a comment I made in another post, but our job as Sales Professionals is much like a Doctor. When a patient comes in because something hurts, we need to poke and prod to see where the center of the pain is located.
Once you find the pain, then you need to find that Champion who experiences the most pain and then drag them through the glass.
sometimes you need to create the compelling event.
Quick stroy…
After running a discovery meeting, the prospect mentioned to me they really don’t have that problem, they have “a guy” who knows everything can has his pulse on the business. He was really showing signs of no interest.
I responded to him saying, “Looks like you have this all under control and don’t have a need for our solution…” before I finished, he said, “Wait…what I didn’t tell you is that “my guy” has threatened to leave twice and each time we have to pay him more money to stay. My biggest fear is if he leaves, we are screwed.”
So what is the compelling event in this story??? he doesn’t know when his guy is going to leave. We ended up closing the deal for 500k. Additionally, “the guy” was super happy to have this burden off his shoulders so he can focus on other things more valuable to him and the company. Win - Win.
There are two hidden messages here:
Sometimes you need to create your own compelling event
Be confident to walk away. If there isn’t a fit, there isn’t a fit. that just means you have to go back and take another angle.