You’ve successfully delivered your 30-second value proposition. Your customer has a suspicion of value and they’ve asked to know more. It didn’t happen in a formal meeting – of course. It happened at a tradeshow, a social event, a meeting on another topic, or a chance meeting. It’s not an appropriate or adequate opportunity to make a fact filled, helpful, presentation. This is a common reality for all business people and certainly salespeople.
When a prospective customer asks for more information, we have the opportunity to create a sense of urgency needed to advance the sale faster. By articulating opportunity costs and/or benefits that compel decision-makers to feel like they’re losing ground by not taking action, we create a sense of urgency. When we learn to do it with a three minute conversation we make tradeshows and social events into real opportunities to help customers. Some of the best practices I’ve seen, in creating a sense of urgency in three minutes, comes from sales professionals at Boeing and those who sell smartphone components.
At Boeing, their salespeople have tools to quickly show the average fuel cost savings and payback periods that airlines can achieve by replacing airplanes with outdated technologies. In the early days of the 757 and 767 airplanes, Boeing salespeople could show cost savings from having two people in the cockpit versus the three that were required in early generation airplanes. In each case there was an opportunity cost for not learning enough to make an informed decision.
On the benefit side, Boeing salespeople were educated enough to advise airline executives on new routes they could add with estimates on the additional profit that could be realized by the airline. They had the depth of information to offer advice on the best locations for hubs and where to store spare parts. Boeing salespeople are among the best examples of trusted advisors.
In the smartphone industry, there are a few key innovations that dramatically affect the usability of the device. One of the most impactful is innovations in glass and sensor technologies. These components contribute greatly to user satisfaction. With each successive innovation we benefit when touch, typing and scrolling gets better – glass gets thinner, lighter and more durable – the phones get easier to use.
Glass manufacturers like Corning, Samsung and LGE, employ salespeople who can quickly describe the benefits of new generation glass and the opportunity cost of not making a decision to go. In minutes they can forecast reduction in phone sales without the new technology. They forecast lower customer satisfaction and translate that into lower sales. They calculate increased support calls when users see their phones not working as well as others. They talk about manufacturing capacity for building the new generation glass creating a sense of urgency to reserve that limited supply.
Regarding benefits, salespeople for glass manufacturers have estimates on how fast users will move to the new generation phones and share the benefits of being an early adopter. They have examples of the kinds of new designs that are possible with lighter and more durable glass. They’ll give advice on the additional services mobile carriers can offer with the new devices.
In both cases, salespeople use three minute conversations to introduce the potential opportunity costs and benefits in a way that presents them as helpful advisors and not simply salespeople looking for an order. When we use the three minute conversation to create a sense of urgency, we open minds, get meetings, close business and take steps to winning lifelong customers.
©2015 Rick Wong – The Five Abilities® LLC
