As a Sandler Sales Trainer and Sales professional myself, I often get asked, how can we stop discounting to get new business.
My question is, when did you discover the Prospects Budget in your Sales Process?
Sales People are often “uncomfortable” with asking about money and budget questions and as a result “surprise” prospects during the presentation stage.
At Sandler, we recommend salespeople spend a lot of time uncovering prospect problems and why it is in their best interest to fix these problems and what the “hard and soft costs” of not fixing these problems represent to the prospect company.
With problems quantified and meaningful to the prospect, you can now confidently address the Budget Step.
The budget step involves three questions: time, energy and money.
Time: will the prospect invest sufficient time with the salesperson to understand the prospect situation and present the right solutions?
Energy: if we work together, will the prospect continue to be willing to invest the necessary time to work together to solve the problem.
Money: you will need to be prepared to ask 3 or more questions to get these answers. You might try…
- What budget has been established for fixing these problems?
- What were you hoping the investment would be to fix these problems, not that I can do it?
- Other clients with similar problems saw themselves investing between “xxx and yyy” dollars, let’s pretend that was appropriate here, is that even Possible and Available?
No “Mutual Mystification”. If the Prospect is unwilling to share the budget, then the prospect is disqualified until a later time when these problems are a big enough priority to allocate investments to solve.
Start qualifying and stop hoping to make sales.
Happy Selling. To learn more visit www.wall.sandler.com
Owner & President Sandler - Milton, ON
