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The most important sales conversation that your reps are having with your prospects is the first one.

Think about it- if that conversation doesn’t quickly deliver tremendous value, there won’t be a follow-up meeting, a demo or a proposal.

Getting a prospect on the phone to have a conversation about your products and services is hard enough. We are currently in the noisiest selling environment in history. The American Marketing Association says that the average consumer is exposed to up to 10,000 brand messages a day. And it’s becoming more and more difficult to reach decision makers as gatekeepers and decision-makers receive hundreds of emails and dozens of calls each day.

Cutting through the clutter and getting the attention of your prospect requires serious effort, with the Online Marketing Institute saying that it takes an average of 7-13 touches to convert cold outreach to a prospect willing to get on the phone with you. Today you’ve got to research your target prospect, follow their activity on social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, personalize the communication and build a cadence that delivers.

IF you are successful and manage to get your target prospect on the phone, you have to grab your prospect’s attention in the first few minutes of the conversation and communicate enough value so they will agree to a more in-depth conversation. A conversation where you can demo your product or go to another level of detail on how your product or service can benefit their world.

So why do so many reps try and “wing it” in the first conversation or worse yet, take an inquisition-style “20 questions” approach that today’s executives don’t appreciate? And why are sales leaders not training their reps to execute a first conversation proven to predictably get prospects to agree to a more in-depth conversation?

The result of “winging it” and lack of formal training is a first call that doesn’t convert to an expanded conversation or demo. The sales professional blames marketing for poor quality leads, marketing blames the rep for lack of sales acumen and meanwhile, no one is making their monthly number.

We’ve seen seasoned sales teams with first call conversion rates in the single digits. They had a great product and the SDR team were providing plenty of first conversations, but the leads simply weren’t converting into sales.

The sales leader, their job in jeopardy, was stressed out and having to answer to the C-Suite for poor performance. Perhaps this is one reason why Gong.io reports that the average tenure of an SVP of Sales has precipitously dropped to just 19 months.

The prevailing idea that reps can wing their way to a more in-depth conversation without certifying against a proven framework is possibly why Clari reports that more than 50% of sales reps are NOT hitting quota. Prospects who need their products and solutions simply aren’t perceiving enough value in that first conversation to take the next step. No next step, no sale.

So what can you do today to stop the blame game in its tracks and significantly increase conversion rates in the early stages of your sales cycle?

CERTIFY YOUR REPS ON THE CONTENT OF A PROVEN FIRST CALL PLAYBOOK

Even (especially) seasoned reps need to stay on message in the first conversation. Worn frameworks like BANT are exhausting to the prospect who is getting the distinct notion they are being “qualified” for a sale and not listened to or understood. Have you ever put yourself in the shoes of your prospect? Think of having to sit through several different vendors back to back, answering the same 20 questions over and over again! Yikes.

New reps need a framework that is portable to their actual selling conversations. Something more robust than 60 slides of product and company knowledge from marketing. They also don’t need to monologue with their prospect, they need to have a conversation. They need a framework they can remember and can live in, one that gives the prospect ample opportunity to respond.

You certainly can’t rely on the relational magic of your resident sales unicorn if you want to scale your sales team. Many top-performing reps are doing what they do by intuition, not instruction and have little understanding of WHY it works. What that means is they are unable to transfer that knowledge to others. Some of your BEST reps could potentially be your WORST sales managers.

The truth is, whether you have a quick, transactional sale or a long, complex sale, the first conversation should be structured in a way that your prospect perceives tremendous value and predictably agrees to a follow-up appointment or demo (if they are a fit). It also needs to be simple enough that the most junior BDR can see results quickly. It needs to predictably convert, so senior sales rep on your team will adopt and execute. And, there’s no point in even attempting to saddle your unicorn… it can’t be done.

So how do you do that?

You provide a framework that follows these 5 steps and then train and certify your reps against it so that you KNOW they can and will execute it in every first call they have with prospects.

STATE THEIR GOALS

You should know what your prospect is trying to achieve. With one simple statement, your reps can communicate that they understand what your prospect’s goals are. You don’t want to appear to be completely clueless like the last vendor who came in and grilled them for an hour on what they do.

Hot Tip: Understanding your target prospect’s goals is fairly simple. If you want to understand what they were hired to do, simply do a Google search on a similar title in a similar industry. The nomenclature may change, but sales leaders and CRO’s are all hired to increase revenue.

ELABORATE ON THEIR CHALLENGES

Have your reps speak to known challenges in their prospect’s world. As experts in the space and with experience working with others in their position, they can do that with 90% accuracy. You should already know the typical challenges your prospects are facing and be able to speak to them in a way that connects.

Please, for the love of God, don’t let your reps ASK their prospect “what keeps you up at night?” No, they should walk in the door and TELL them what’s keeping others in their position up! If they have done their homework, their comments will hit the mark. More than that, your reps will instantly be perceived as an authority, as experts in the field instead of a clueless moron who is running them through a sterile checklist of financial qualification questions.

TELL THEM WHAT IT MEANS

Understand that scientists have now confirmed what many sales reps have known for a long time, which is this: People make decisions based on meaning & emotion and justify those decisions based on logic and reason. During the conversation, train your reps to find an emotional anchor point in the conversation. Emotion creates memory and without an emotional anchor, the chances of their presentation being remembered past day 1 are nill.

Also, because the most intense emotion we attempt to avoid is pain, your reps need to create a painful moment in the conversation and allow their prospect to live in that. This can be done by simply elaborating on known challenges and asking them, “what does that mean?”

Example: If a sales leader can’t hit their revenue goals quarter after quarter because they can’t move their prospects through the sales process, what does that mean? (It means they better dress up their resume!) OUCH.

PAINT A PICTURE OF A BETTER TOMORROW

Value is perceived in a contrasting worldview. It’s in the distance between what their world looks like today (WITHOUT your product/service) and what their world could look like tomorrow (WITH your product/service) that your prospect perceives value.

But that doesn’t mean your reps have 45 minutes for a feature dump. Don’t let your reps tell them about what your product or service DOES, but have them show them what THEY can do differently as a result of using your product or service. And have them do it succinctly, in a few short, “what if you could” or “imagine if you could” statements like this example:“What if you could arm your reps with a scientifically proven framework and messaging to communicate high value in the early stages of your sales process?”“What if they could predictably and consistently advance prospects to the next stage of your sales process?”“Finally, what if you could increase your peace of mind knowing your team has the right messaging and framework and are able to execute it?”You can with MasterMessaging.

PROVE YOU HAVE DONE IT BEFORE

Your reps can’t make claims you can’t back up with proof. That proof is simply a customer testimonial or story. Again, keep it brief, this is the first conversation and you have maybe 20-30 minutes. I call them one sentence testimonials and we coach our clients to use them all the time, like this one:

“Our clients have seen the conversion rate of their first conversations increase by up to 580% in one quarter by utilizing our messaging and corresponding training.“

See what I did there?

I leave you with this question:

HOW MANY LEADS ARE YOU WILLING TO BURN THROUGH WHILE YOUR REPS PLAY LOOSE WITH THE MESSAGING? 

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We understand that it can be difficult to follow a conversation flow like this from memory, that’s why we’ve created a Sales Conversation Roadmap “Cheat Sheet” that you can download here.

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