Start selling anything in days, not months
Every day, we all receive sales calls or emails. Most of which go like:
Hey there,
I saw your company. Are you looking for a <insert product category>?
Our solution is great. It has feature A, feature B and yeah feature X. And of course, our pricing is the best.
Should I schedule a demo?
What’s wrong with this pitch?
There are several problems with it.
The most important one, of course, is that it is feature based. In short, customers care about their pain points and not your solutions. An excellent book on this that we highly recommend is Demand Side Sales 101; below is a summary from this website:
Another big problem - this pitch takes a lot of time to learn
In a fast growing sales team, this is a big problem. Since this pitch is “solution based”, the sales person needs to learn a lot before they can start talking to customers.
You need to know domain deeply, the top features and specific problems they solve. Since the prospect may ask, you also need to know the nitty gritties - accuracy of the each feature, how it compares with the competitors, and so on.
For example, if you are selling a CRM that has a feature of transcripting your meetings, then you need to know the pre-requisites, supported meeting tools, etc etc.
This means a new sales person needs 2-3 months of time before they can start talking to customers. And even then, depending on the product complexity, they may still not be prepared adequately.
Problem based pitch - a contrasting approach
At Cutshort, we aim to be problem focussed and not a solution focused. After all, features and solutions are all subject to change over time.
Our sales and customer facing teams are no exceptions. Instead of pitching our solution, we try to talk about the problems our prospects face.
To show the difference, our approach to talking to a customer will be like this:
Hey,
As you know, as a business your objective is to do X. However, we have observed companies facing several issues viz A B C in achieving this objective.
We are solving these challenges fundamentally by <describe
higher level approach>.
<And only when the prospect asks>
We do this by offering capabilities (features) A’ B’ C’.
The difference?
First and foremost, the above approach is more effective. The prospect gives you attention since you are talking about their problems and not your solution which may/may not fit.
Second, this is easier to learn for a new sales person. They just need to understand:
What are the objectives of our target market?
What are their pain points?
How do we describe our higher level approach to solve them in just one line
What are 3 feature “themes” that exemplify our approach?
Learning this doesn’t take months. 2 weeks should mostly cut it.
The results?
We have started onboarding our new team members with this approach.
They are able to start talking to prospects in just 2 weeks, not 3 months.
They are much more confident since they are not fielding questions, but interacting freely with the prospect about their problems, expectations etc.
And the results are telling.
Hrishikesh who joined Cutshort a few months ago
has this to say after he switching to this approach to talking to customers:
Earlier, before going to customer calls, I felt I had a lot of ground to cover. The background, the features, their names, how they worked and so on. It was overwhelming. As a result, the conversations didn’t feel that natural.
Now, I’m confident. I have no ground to cover - I now just talk about the problem space we are solving and freely engage with the customers as they start sharing their thoughts.
So, is this is all that’s needed to close the deals?
Of course not. This is just a starting point. 🤓
A starting point from where you can add the missing pieces one by one. As the customer conversations go to the next level, the sales person of course needs to know the product well, competition, value metrics, buying process, buying roles and so on.
But the main win here is - a sales person doesn't need to wait 3 months before going to customer calls. They start gaining the confidence they need to start closing deals as fast as possible.
Question for you
How long does it take for a new sales person to start doing sales calls? What all they need to learn before doing that?