Ask Your Prospects for an I-Date
You’ve just asked your prospect for the order and you got the most dreaded answer in sales: a big, fat “maybe.” There’s no worse answer for a sales rep because, unlike a “no,” which lets you know where you stand, a “maybe” freezes you in a state of limbo. To move that prospect out of maybe, try asking him for an I-Date, suggests William “Skip” Miller, author of Ultimate Sales Tool Kit (AMACOM, 2007) and president of M3 Learning, a sales and management development company. Miller isn’t suggesting a romantic encounter. Instead, he urges sales reps to focus on critical dates – not features and benefits –to bust through indecision. There are two parts to the approach:
1. The I-Date. When sales reps think about key dates, they tend to think about milestones in the sales process: presentation date, closing date, contract signing, and so on. But prospects couldn’t care less about these things. Prospects instead focus on when they’ll be able to start using your product, when it will be fully functional, and when it will start paying back on their investment.
Find out what date is most important to the prospect, says Miller. What’s happening in the organization that’s driving their need for your solution? When is that event happening? When does your product need to be up and running because of an impending change? That’s the I-Date, or Implementation Date. Say a prospect is in the process of acquiring another company and needs to fuse their different software programs so that the two companies mesh seamlessly and transparently to their customers. Don’t try to sell your fantastic technology merging capabilities, says Miller. Instead, focus on pinning down dates such as when the acquisition is scheduled to take place and when the prospect wants the software integration to roll out. Those are the I-Dates, he says, and you can use them to drive a sense of urgency and plan back to when a decision must be made in order to meet those milestones.
2. The Dragons. Dragons are what cause an I-Date to be firm. They are key events, commitments, promises, tasks, goals, and objectives tied to the I-Date. In the example above, the I-Date might be September 22, but the dragon is the acquisition. Or say you’re an ad agency. A prospect’s I-Date might be driven by the launch of a new product – aka, the dragon. “Something, anything that makes their calendar, has their attention,” says Miller. “Ask them about their dragons, not about your features and benefits. You have to get a complete description of the dragon to see what kind it is so you know if you can slay it.”
Miller tells the story of Karen, a business professional who was looking to buy a new laptop computer. Rather than try to sell her on features and benefits, the sales rep, Scott, pushed for an I-Date. “Why do you need this laptop?” he asked her. Karen said her other one was getting old and she wanted a newer, faster one. Scott pressed the date issue, saying, “Why now? What’s causing you to look today?” Karen said she was starting a new job next Friday and the projects she would be handling were large and required a computer with more memory than her current one. Scott asked if there was anything else that was driving her to look that day and Karen explained that she would be on a business trip all week and wouldn’t return until Thursday so it was her last day to look.
Armed with her I-Dates and dragons, Scott pointed out that if Karen bought the laptop today, she could take it on her trip, transfer her necessary files before Friday and put the learning curve behind her before starting her new job on Friday. It was the revelation she needed. Karen bought the laptop.
Next time you have a prospect mired in “maybe,” try shifting the focus of your pitch from product capabilities to important dates and events. It may be just what the prospect needs to jolt him or her into action.
For more information, visit www.m3learning.com.
1. The I-Date. When sales reps think about key dates, they tend to think about milestones in the sales process: presentation date, closing date, contract signing, and so on. But prospects couldn’t care less about these things. Prospects instead focus on when they’ll be able to start using your product, when it will be fully functional, and when it will start paying back on their investment.
Find out what date is most important to the prospect, says Miller. What’s happening in the organization that’s driving their need for your solution? When is that event happening? When does your product need to be up and running because of an impending change? That’s the I-Date, or Implementation Date. Say a prospect is in the process of acquiring another company and needs to fuse their different software programs so that the two companies mesh seamlessly and transparently to their customers. Don’t try to sell your fantastic technology merging capabilities, says Miller. Instead, focus on pinning down dates such as when the acquisition is scheduled to take place and when the prospect wants the software integration to roll out. Those are the I-Dates, he says, and you can use them to drive a sense of urgency and plan back to when a decision must be made in order to meet those milestones.
2. The Dragons. Dragons are what cause an I-Date to be firm. They are key events, commitments, promises, tasks, goals, and objectives tied to the I-Date. In the example above, the I-Date might be September 22, but the dragon is the acquisition. Or say you’re an ad agency. A prospect’s I-Date might be driven by the launch of a new product – aka, the dragon. “Something, anything that makes their calendar, has their attention,” says Miller. “Ask them about their dragons, not about your features and benefits. You have to get a complete description of the dragon to see what kind it is so you know if you can slay it.”
Miller tells the story of Karen, a business professional who was looking to buy a new laptop computer. Rather than try to sell her on features and benefits, the sales rep, Scott, pushed for an I-Date. “Why do you need this laptop?” he asked her. Karen said her other one was getting old and she wanted a newer, faster one. Scott pressed the date issue, saying, “Why now? What’s causing you to look today?” Karen said she was starting a new job next Friday and the projects she would be handling were large and required a computer with more memory than her current one. Scott asked if there was anything else that was driving her to look that day and Karen explained that she would be on a business trip all week and wouldn’t return until Thursday so it was her last day to look.
Armed with her I-Dates and dragons, Scott pointed out that if Karen bought the laptop today, she could take it on her trip, transfer her necessary files before Friday and put the learning curve behind her before starting her new job on Friday. It was the revelation she needed. Karen bought the laptop.
Next time you have a prospect mired in “maybe,” try shifting the focus of your pitch from product capabilities to important dates and events. It may be just what the prospect needs to jolt him or her into action.
For more information, visit www.m3learning.com.
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