You got a lead, now what?

Congratulations! You have mastered the art of generating a robust sales pipeline and dispatching the pipeline workload between yourself and your marketing teams: the leads are now rolling in.

However, you’re struggling to advance your business opportunities to the next stage. It might be because you fail to make a powerful first impression and differentiate yourself from the average sales rep.

Symptoms of average reps :

The initial meeting with a potential customer sets the tone for the entire relationship and, ultimately, your success in closing the deal. Let’s face it: average reps do certain things particularly well.

• They fail to create rapport and establish credibility: they jump into the conversation without sharing proper positioning or relevant success stories.
• They don’t set the rules, share their agenda or state the call objective. They subvert their own objective – if any- to customer’s goals.?
• They have high talk to listen ratio: they don’t engage in meaningful, two-way conversations. They dominate the discussion and fail to ask the questions that surface customer’s true needs.
• They focus on timing over depth: they are more concerned about sticking to a schedule than truly exploring the customer’s pain points.

Asking average questions:

Typical average questions sound like this.

• "Could you introduce yourself?"
• "Could you introduce your company?"
• "What are you looking to achieve?"

The first two questions are inherently bad questions: they should be replaced by information and insights shared during the handover with SDRs and completed by thorough research.

Not knowing everything or not being 100% sure is acceptable. Seeking validation is always better than conducting a discovery process from scratch that might suggest to your customer that you are unprepared or do not care.

The third question is not bad. This sounds like the ultimate discovery question from the good old days of Solution Selling. Remember however that you are trying to offer your customers a different experience. After a proper handover with your SDR, you should be able to:

• Summarize your findings: share what you’ve learned about the customer business and your contacts. This is not homework. This is genuine interest in customer business and key stakeholders.
• Drive the conversation: lead with the insights you’ve gathered and use them to guide the conversation towards uncovering deeper needs and getting pain admitted.

All about your company?:

A common mistake made by average reps is focusing too much on your company, products, and achievements. The typical agenda of average reps may look like this:

• A company presentation that covers everything from corporate vision to R&D budget, but neglects to address the value proposition that fits the customer's industry and personas.
• A logos wall that fails to convey a compelling narrative on customer-like-you stories.
• A product presentation which is all about features and functions.
• A scripted product demo that has little to do with the pain the customer is trying to solve.

You want to showcase what you bring to the table, and that’s understandable. However, your prospect’s attention span will wane quickly. Every minute counts -don’t waste them talking about how good you are.

The “Spray and Pray” Approach :

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Average sales reps often use a “spray and pray” approach: they deliver a one-size-fits-all pitch and hope something sticks. They rely heavily on the belief that a great product will close the deal, so:

• They fail to probe the hidden customer’s needs behind the meeting request: the customer is always right and there is no questioning their needs or exploring further. "Customers should pick what they need from my generic pitch".
• They don’t challenge the prospect on the implications of NOT doing anything. If a prospect has accepted the meeting, there must be valid reason and sound judgment behind it. "My pitch makes it clear you can’t do without my product and must take immediate action".
• They don’t craft a story that helps prospects envision themselves in the future state or weave a narrative that helps them visualize themselves as a customer. "My pitch covers ALL the benefits of happy existing customers, so change can’t be an issue".

Many sales reps resort to rigid and scripted sales pitches filled with overused terms like 'leader,' 'outstanding,' and 'state-of-the-art' to describe their offering and their company. These pathetic words fail to capture attention or raise awareness.

They mistakenly believe that a great product will sell itself and rely too heavily on showcasing capabilities, rather than focusing on enablers that address customer’s specific needs and challenges. If it were enough, B2B organizations would not need sales reps. Robust ecommerce websites powered by clever AI agents would do the trick.

The next time you have a lead, remember: in the age of information overload, selling is not about you or your product. It’s primarily about your prospect. If your opportunities are stalling at the discovery stage and leads are reverting to suspects for further nurturing, it's time to reassess your approach.

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