Understand Our Prospect's Personal Payoff and We Understand Their True Reason for Buying

Whenever we engage with a prospect or have an expansion conversation with a client there's a degree of friction. Not in the physical sense (hopefully), but mentally and emotionally because no matter how great our rapport is with the other person(s) in our conversation we are still a salesperson who is not to be trusted.

Reducing friction in our sales cycles starts with building rapport and mutually agreement to our agenda and expectations with the other person at the beginning of our conversation.

Then we dive, not into a self-centered features-and-benefits presentation, into our prospect's reasons for wanting to invite us in. No one invites a salesperson in without a reason.

Aside from understand all of the reasons for inviting us in, whether those are problems that need solutions or opportunities that need paths to realization, we further reduce friction by understanding the payoffs, to both our prospect's organization and to them personally, for solving those problems or realizing those opportunities.

We get to the payoffs for two reasons.

First, we differentiate based on how we sell instead of what we sell. Our competitors that stop and the surface reasons say things like, "turnaround time's a problem? We've got the best turnaround time in the industry!" Oddly enough that's the same thing (or at least sounds the same to our prospect) as the last salesperson so now both are lumped into the "commodity" bin in our prospect's mind.

Second, talking about "payoffs" keeps our conversation positive and prompts our prospect to keep talking. Another way of saying "payoff" is "impact," but from experience, both physical, mental and emotional, most people don't want to talk about impacts because impacts hurt. On the other hand people love to talk about payoffs because they picture themselves winning.

Some of our competitors will get information about business payoffs from their prospect more by default than by design, but few salespeople will ever go to the personal payoff because sales has always been an arm's length transaction even in "relationship" sales. A salesperson might believe they have a "great relationship" with a client, but if they're asked "what was they payoff to your client personally for solving the problem they brought you in to solve?" we'll probably get a blank look and some mumbling about "good price/service/quality."

Personal payoffs fall in one of three buckets:

1. Time - either more or less. More time with their family or less time worrying about Problem A.
2. Money - could be a bonus or a raise, clearing debt or other money-related payoffs that are personally profitable to our prospect.
3. Recognition - especially when we are working with gatekeepers. Our clients often hear that the payoff to their gatekeeper prospect is getting (or not) a promotion or another type of personal recognition that is meaningful to that prospect.

Years ago a client asked us for some coaching because they were afraid that some work they did at an industrial facility wasn't what their client expected. Our client had recently won this business from a competitor and they were concerned about having their new client go back to their previous vendor. We suggested they ask, "why did you buy from me?" because our client was providing essentially the same service at essentially the same price as their competitor.

Our client had the courage to ask and reported that their primary contact at their client company responded, "because with the previous vendor I was always out here fighting fires that they should have resolved or avoided entirely. Since I started working with you I've got to see my kid play hockey every game this season and I've even got to a few tournaments." The personal payoff was time. Time to watch their child play hockey, which was outside the realm of answers to "why did you buy from me?" before our client asked.

Understanding our prospect's payoffs won't feel comfortable at first. If we practise and resist the urge to skip this step when qualifying we'll reduce friction and be less likely to be though of as a commodity by our prospect (even if we literally sell a commodity).

Until next time... go sell something.