Today I have the opportunity of interviewing The Three Value Conversations: How to Create, Elevate, and Capture Customer Value at Every Stage of the Long-Lead Sale
“. Tim is the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer of Corporate Visions. Tim has more than 20 years of experience in marketing and sales. He was a co-founder of Customer Message Management.
He has also worked with LLC, where he was the CEO until it was acquired by Corporate Visions in 2008. Before CMM Group, Tim was CMO and VP of Strategic Services for Ventaso. Tim is also an author and has co-authored serval books. He brings a lot of great insights to a sales conversation and during this episode, he offers some great thoughts relative to his book.
Here are some of the takeaways:
“Value is created when a salesperson’s lips move.” – @TRiesterer 
Salespeople are still needed when a solution is complex and difficult to make a decision on. As a sales professional, it’s your responsibility to educate people and offer value to the prospect.
Most salespeople get stuck creating enough pipeline. They also get stuck at the proposal stages because they don’t establish enough value. Another place is getting caught up on margins and prices.
How to create enough pipeline:
- Your biggest enemy is status quo. Help your prospects recognize they need a change before you can get them to buy.
- Learn people’s situation.
- Help your customers create a buying vision
- Why should I change?
- Why should I do it now?
- Why should I do it with you?
- Help the customer understand why they need to change NOW!
- Customers may think they are different, but many of them are the same. Sometimes you try to reinvent the wheel as a seller, but in actuality, you can lead with the same story.
- Known problems won’t kill people, it’s the unknown problems that you need to point out. When you can do this, you become unique.
Whiteboard vs. PowerPoint
People will follow the visual whiteboard stick figure story more than the clicker with a PowerPoint. This makes you have more credibility.
Learn How Your Prospects Make Money!
- 80% of business deals need to be signed off by a CFO. However, only 10% of most opportunities have a CFO as a contact. Learn to speak the language of your CFO prospects. Become versed in their story.
- If you can’t have a big boardroom conversation, you will get delegated to lower level folks.
- Executive buyers value people who can bring value to a conversation above someone who has good relationships.
Pivotal Agreements
- When the customers ask for something, have something for them to do in exchange.
- If the prospect asks for pricing, references, pilot programs, etc. it doesn’t necessarily mean the deal is moving forward.
Major Takeaway:
Great conversations can purposely move people. It is way more science than we think.
Stay in Touch with Tim:
- Corporate Vision’s Website http://corporatevisions.com/
- Tim’s on Twitter @TRiesterer
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