Vol. 1 Iss. 17
This week's theme is missed connections.
🔥 Hot Take
We’re Boring Our Prospects
Imagine a time when you were facing a difficult challenge. Now consider which of the following two calls you’d take:
“Hi, I’m an expert in the thing you’re trying to solve. I want to help you. Want to meet?”
“We sell solutions that have the following features…”
When we fail to connect our real impact with our prospects’ top priorities, we miss the connections we should be making. It takes real effort to make it happen, and it’s easier to simply talk about what we want to sell. But it’s not working, and prospects often feel it’s a waste of their time.
🔗 Link
This Survey Proves It
We like the surveys and data that this company, Gong, puts out. In one of their latest, there’s a really stark contrast that we noticed:
13% of prospects say they believe the seller’s message is addressing a relevant challenge they’re facing.
3% of sellers are happy with the response rates they get from prospects.
Hmm, that looks like a lot of missed connections, right there in the data.
💡 Big Idea
Look Up
We can’t sell to priority in procurement. Their priority is to commoditize you and buy on price. If we’re going to defend our margin, we must find people higher-up in the organization who set bigger priorities than price.
They will take your meeting, but only if you don’t miss the connection. What do they care about? What are they working to solve right now? How can you help them do it?
💬 Stories We Hear
We talked with one seller who recounted a tale of swift recovery with a triumphant ending. Delayed on takeoff, he was all but guaranteed to miss his connecting flight – and his meeting. It was a tough one to schedule, and he was upset about making his travel plans too close to gametime.
Sure enough, he didn’t arrive in time and had to begin trying to reschedule the meeting. Later that day, waiting for a flight home, he struck up a conversation with someone who was a prefect prospect for what he sold. The next day, they were outlining a proposal and weeks later, it closed. We asked “Did you tell your boss?”
Laughing, he said “I thought about just coming back and saying ‘All good, we closed it!’ But I came clean and went back to try again.”