How to Tell a Prospect What's Next Without Breaking Rapport

Our salespeople sell our services more often than their prospects attempt to buy services like ours (hopefully 😊) so we want our salespeople to own our process and increase their credibility.

Unfortunately, when one of our salespeople takes “owning” our process too literally they will sound to their prospects like a pushy aggressive salesperson who the prospect will string along before ultimately ghosting all while our salesperson’s telling us “the deal’s coming before the end of the quarter!”

To avoid our salesperson unintentionally breaking rapport by being a little too literal with owning our process we want them to share conversationally and bring their prospect with them side by side.

Let’s say our salesperson is wrapping up a “first contact” call with a prospect – phone, video or in the same physical space – and they and they prospect have agreed to get together for a longer discovery call the following week. Our salesperson owning our process might sound like:

• Salesperson – Prospect, I’ll send you an invite for our conversation next week. Are you okay if I give you a sense of where we might go after that conversation if we still want to keep talking?
• Prospect – sure, what am I committing to? <grins>
• Salesperson <grins> – well played. I’m not going to “show you the way.” We have a process for creating successful outcomes for our clients and I thought you’d appreciate hearing about it. Should I keep going?
• Prospect – totally okay. I’ve had salespeople “show me” before then assume I was going to buy.
• Salesperson – I get that. Not the case here. So we already talked about how, if we want to keep talking after our next visit we would book another time for you and I, and possibly additional people from your side and mine, to get back together, walk through a demo and review a proposal. Right?
• Prospect – yeah, that’s right.
• Salesperson – cool. So if we fast forward to the end of the demo, you and your colleagues love what you see, you believe it would solve the challenges you’ve told me about at a high level today. What would you see as our next steps?
• Prospect – umm. I dunno. When we implemented our current platform we bought the one down the middle of the three we saw.
• Salesperson – but that’s one of the reasons we’re talking today if I heard you correctly.
• Prospect – you’re right. We bought for need last time. We want to buy for fit this time.
• Salesperson – you and I are aligned on that. Our platform isn’t a fit for everyone. May I share with you what typically happens at the end of our demo conversation, provided you and your colleagues believe it’s a fit?
• Prospect – yes, I’m flying a little blind.
• Salesperson – thank you for sharing. Typically, when we get to then end of our demo conversation you’ll believe, sometimes before the end, that our platform is the right fit. If that’s the case we’ll be at the point of signing an agreement, picking a kickoff date, getting set up in your account payable system and scheduling training. What showstoppers do you hear in those next steps?
• Prospect – none. Provided we believe it’s the right fit.
• Salesperson – totally. We may not even get to that point if we decide to stop after our conversation next week, but if we agree to continue are you comfortable with the steps I’ve laid out from now to potentially working together?
• Prospect – yes. I’ll need to get a couple of people into our next conversation to ensure they don’t derail us at the demo.\
• Salesperson – great. Let’s talk about those people and what they’ll want to talk about when we get together next week….

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By making the future clear, but without handcuffs, and first engaging the prospect to understand their buying process before offering our typical next steps our salesperson raises their credibility and reduces the potential for hearing “this looks great we’ll get back to you…. (never).”

Practicing talk tracks like the example above regularly with our team instills “muscle memory” so they truly own our process without being pushy.

Until next time… go lead.