Who Cares About Your Proposition?

Who Cares About Your Proposition?
By: Alvin Day

What do you spend time thinking about before you walk into any sales situation? You probably think about the benefits your product/service will bring to your prospects. You may have spent time thinking about how it can help your prospect. You may have thought about the many issues your product/service can resolve. More often, you have probably thought about the importance of closing this deal and what it will mean to your paycheck.

There is one problem. Even though you have spent hours, days or even weeks thinking about your presentation, your prospects haven't and when you walk into a sales situation armed with the best price solutions, the best examples, and the most convincing data, many times, your prospects don't even care.

Imagine the following scenario. Weeks ago you made a cold-call to Matthew, the owner of a small business that could benefit greatly from your product/service. You caught him at a good time and, after hearing a short synopsis of what your solution can do for his, Matthew set up an appointment for you to come into his office. You put time into planning, did research on his industry and crafted a great presentation.

You showed up to the meeting bright and early, but there was a problem. Through your whole meeting, Matthew was distracted. By the time you got to your bar charts and graphs (just two thirds into the presentation), he informed you that he would have to cut the meeting short and would call you ''if he was interested.'' You left the store deflated knowing you would probably never even be able to get him on the phone again.

What happened here? You lost relevance. Let's look a little deeper into Matthew's world.

When you called weeks ago, he was in the middle of a crisis that was directly related to your product/service. In fact, while you were on the phone he told you a little about it and why your product/service ''would help me out a lot right now.'' On the day of the presentation several things happened: his alarm clock didn't go off, causing him to drop the kids off to school late, a staff member hurt herself on the job, meaning that worker's comp would have to be involved and another staff member announced that she was having a baby would be needing maternity leave soon. He had a lot to deal with and none of the issues were any way related to your product/service.

As he sat in that meeting, Matthew was not thinking of you or the crisis that occurred weeks ago when you called him. He had moved on to several other small crises since then and had completely forgotten why he even had you in his office taking him away from the million things he had to do at that time. When you begin your presentation it is your job to bring Matthew back to the state of mind he was in when he last needed your product/service desperately.

Action Step: Begin each presentation with a ''Situation Review.''

A Situation Review is a brief recap of the situation that your product/service resolves. Remind your prospect of the problem that your product/service resolves right at the beginning of your presentation. Tug on emotions by using real stories as examples of times when product/service is needed. If you have an example from the prospect, just as Matthew had previously given an example, use it to bring yet more relevance to your presentation.

When you succeed in conjuring up the emotions your prospect has when faced with a situation your product/service can resolve, you get closer to a proposal that he or she actually cares about, one that he or she is more likely to act upon.