It’s like you and your prospect are sitting across from each other in a card game. Your prospect has their handful of cards and you have yours. Whoever lays down all their cards first loses.
As a salesperson, some of the main cards you hold are value and pricing. The prospect’s cards are answers to your qualifying questions: budget, timeline, pain point, decision-making authority, etc.
The prospect holds more cards than the salesperson (which is why making a sale is always an uphill battle).
To increase your chances of closing the sale, you as the salesperson have to find out more than you divulge (which is why you have to control the conversation and be the one asking the questions).
The trick is to get the prospect to play all of their cards before you put down your own (ideally, you can get ALL of your prospect’s cards before you play ANY of your own).
Example #1:
For example, a prospect might ask you in the first few minutes of a pitch:
“To be honest, Cole, I don’t have time for the pitch. Can you just tell me how much it costs?”
If you play your pricing card too early by answering this question, then the prospect might get sticker shock and end the encounter. At the very least, your prospect will have their guard up and resist allowing themselves to fall in love with a product that they think is too expensive.
Instead, you have to answer a question with a question.
“That’s why I’m asking you these questions, Susan. I need to know more about your situation before I can recommend a price point. Can you tell me a little more about [insert pain point]?”
Example #2:
Here’s another question you might hear from a prospect:
“Cole, I’ve heard the same pitch from five different vendors. Can you just give me a quick 30-second summary of what you’re offering?”
Especially if you’re selling a more complicated SaaS product, you can’t summarize your value like this. You have to go slowly through your pitch/demo and it’s going to require some patience from your prospect. Even if they don’t like it, your prospect will be forced to be patient if they think there might be value in what you’re offering.
The salesperson could respond with something like this:
“I wish my job were that easy, Susan, but it’s going to take a little longer than 30 seconds. We are the #1 vendor in this space so I think you’ll find it worth your time to hear about some of our unique features. Could you tell me a little more about what features are most important to you?”
Imagine playing poker against someone where you got to see their cards and you didn’t have to show them yours. That would be easy winnings. You could bet when you had the better hand and wait when not.
This is the situation we want to set up for ourselves on a sales call.
If we can get the prospect to play their pain point card, we can bet big on our specific value that solves this pain point.
For example, if we know that our prospect has cash flow problems and can’t afford a big down-payment, we can bet big on our pay-as-you-go option.
This way, instead of unloading your whole arsenal of value and wasting your prospect’s time with unnecessary information, you’re selling them on the exact value that will be most convincing for their specific situation. You can only do this if the prospect plays their cards first.