Nudging Your Clients

Yes, cornering your client. What does that mean? How do we set them up?

In other words, I want to talk today about how do you reduce price resistance by asking simple questions up front so when the customer sees the pricing, there is no sticker shock. You corner your client or your customer with their information.

Let's say I'm selling a $200,000 sales training package.

Immediately when you saw that, you're probably thinking, "$200,000 sales training? Victor, my God. What kind of sales training is that? That sounds too expensive."

Now I'm going to show you how I deal with that all the time. Let's say you're selling a service, a sales training service, and you do a presentation, and it's awesome. Then you present the price, $200,000, and the customer freaks out, like, "What? $200,000? That's a lot of money. I don't if we can afford that right now."

Now at this point, if you're a typical sales person you're going to defend yourself and explain that it's not expensive.

The customer is not even listening to you at this point. They have checked out. They don't want to make a decision, their amygdala is telling them to flee

Now if we could go back into the matrix and rewind this whole scenario how would we do it?

Well, it begins by cornering your client.

What I mean by cornering your client; the average salesperson practices what to say. The superior salesperson practices what to ask.

There's power in controlling the conversation.

Too often, we as sales people think the job of the salesperson is to talk. Present well, know the product, demonstrate how much you know, talk about things you know, demonstrate your expertise. But in reality, the best sales people know what to ask.

Here's what I mean. Let's go back to the scenario. Let's say that before I presented my pricing, I said, "Mr. Customer before I get into my presentation there's just a few questions I'd like to ask. Do you mind?"

What do you think the customers going to say?

In most cases they're going to say, "Yeah, sure". right?

I would say, "Talk to me about what you sell." (Now I already know what they sell, but I just want them to explain it from their perspective.")

Whom are you trying to help? Tell me about your market.

They tell me about their new product, their new service they're selling, then I ask a question like, "Well how many salespeople do you have?"

They say, "Five, Victor. We have five people who are out there constantly pushing our product."

"What's the average price of your product?"

They go, "It varies. From A to Z we have different pricing." If we had to put a number on it we'd say $10,000 would be safe."

Great. I write down $10,000.

"Now for every salesperson, for every salesperson, how many deals do they close a month? How many deals are they actually closing a month? "

"Well, it varies".

"Yeah, I know Mr. Customer, but on average how many deals?"

(I always bring them back to, "Yeah, on average how many deals?")

They say, "Well on average, we'll say four." They close four deals a month.

The last question before I get into my presentation is their close rate.

"Well, maybe 2 out of 10 deals, so 20%." I write that down.

Now, so I say, "Well Mr. Customer, the reason I'm asking you this questions is for the following; because I really want to understand your business.

"You're telling me that your average deal is $10,000?"

"You told me that on average your salesperson closes about 4 deals a month, which means 10,000 times 4, basically you're generating 40,000 per salesperson.

"So 40,000 per salesperson times 5 salespeople, that means right now for this particular product you're generating $200,000 a month."

I said, "Last thing. You told me your close rate is 20%. If I do my math here, you have to put 20 deals in front of your sales people, in other words, your sales people have to go after 20 opportunities and they'll close 20% of that which gives them four deals?" (Now how did I arrive at that? You take 4 deals, divide it by .2, and you'll get 20). This means if they have 20 deals, they will gain revenue from 4.

Well, that means they're losing 16 deals. If they're closing 4 out of 20, they're losing 16 deals.

16 deals per salesperson, multiplied by 10,000, that means that's a $160,000 that's lost in lost revenue. "If I multiply that out by 5 salespeople, that means you're losing $800,000 per month in potential revenue.

If I were to multiply that out by 12 months, that's 9.6 million dollars in lost opportunities.

I've just emphasized to the customer how much money they're losing. See by asking these questions early, doing this analysis, I've created this eureka moment. Hardly anyone ever really thinks about how much money they were losing.

Now you say: "let me tell you what that $200,000 represents. Through our program, I can help your salespeople close 1 deal per month, extra. Instead of closing four, they're now closing five. That means each person is closing an extra $10,000, that means by simply closing one more deal every month you're generating $50,000 more than you are today. Now, I'm selling you a program of $200,000 which means that if you can generate an additional $50,000 within 4 months (200,000 divided by 50,000), within 4 months you will hit a break-even point."

Now, you see how that's a much more powerful and persuasive presentation because I'm using their numbers and telling them where the break even point is. The best approach here is that you're asking these questions early, not later.

If you ask these questions early on you control the conversation. You're using their numbers to control the flow of where you want them to go. If you wait to the end to really talk about this, they're not going to want to give you the information. It's too late to ask for the information after you presented at the price of $200,000.

The key is here; early on you want to corner your customer.

Get that information that you need by asking great questions and then after you present your price you now have a way of structuring your presentation to let them know that it's not that much money, $200,000 is not a lot of money compared to the 9.6 million dollars annual revenue that you're losing.

Remember the saying, the average sales person practices what to say. The best of the best, superior salespeople practice what to ask and that's what I want you to start doing. Ask questions early on. Know how to corner your client.

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Victor Antonio has a B.S. Electrical Engineering, an MBA and built a 20-year career as a top sales executive, then President of Global Sales and Marketing for a $420M company before becoming a sales trainer, author, and keynote speaker. He has shared the stage with top business speakers: Rudy Giuliani, Paul Otellini (CEO of Intel), and John May (CEO of FedEx Kinkos). He's the author of 12 books on sales and motivation and 200+ sales training videos. More info at www.VictorAntonio.com