Grab Your Prospect’s Attention by Crafting a ‘Compelling Reason’ challenges War and Peace for length. It is a LONG read, but a good one that covers many selling topics. There are 6 pages to the online article so I will simply hit on some of my favorite points.
The author’s main treatise is to define a process for defining your company’s “compelling reason.” Consider it your value proposition to use a different euphimism. He states that you will know you have driven deep enough into your compelling reason when it passes the “so what?” test.
When I asked her to list the benefits of her service, she responded with the following statement: “We have an online reporting system that automates your administrative duties.” My response? “So what?”
We used this approach before and it is quite effective. Many salespeople struggle with defining their value proposition in a succint manner when contacting new prospects. We struggle with it ourselves. It is important in any sale to know what are the differentiating points of your product or service. The “so what?” question will get you to that answer quickly.
Now that you have developed your compelling reason, you need to come up with variations of it for other departments.
It’s one thing to tout the intoxicating benefits of your product that the company as a whole would want to realize. However, if you’re speaking to one person in HR, they may not do cartwheels when you tell them that your product or service will save the company money or increase company profitability. As important as this may be, it may fall upon deaf ears. Therefore, you want to have a buffet of benefits that you can use depending upon the scenario and the person you are talking with.
Finally, you have to find the greatest pain for that particular position in regards to your compelling reason.
If, during a conversation, you can pinpoint and then articulate their greatest challenges or concerns, you demonstrate your knowledge about their specific problems, that you really get what their situation looks like through their own eyes. This will foster a deeper connection with each prospect you speak to.
Again, this is a long article but the author does an excellent job walking the reader through the process of defining a strong value proposition. As a tie-in to our previous post, remember to focus your value on an overall solution as opposed to a feature-benefit problem solver. This approach will keep you speaking at a level that relates more closely to their “painful” situation as opposed to your marketing talking points.