Why Inside Sales Efforts Should Focus on the Prospect, Not the Product

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In your everyday life and interactions, how many times have you ever wondered, “What’s in it for me?” You might think you don’t ponder this question that much, but the truth is that a lot of what you do is motivated by “what’s in it for me?” Whether you’re eating, sleeping, exercising, or even helping a friend, you’re doing it all with this thought in mind, even if just subconsciously.

The same goes for when you see a product or offered service. You may ask yourself, how will this item help me? Does it solve a problem that I have? Will it make my life easier? People don’t just buy things for the sake of it – there’s always a reason and a purpose that the item or service will fulfill.

No One Likes Pushy Sales

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That all being the case, it’s a shame that many sales teams approach leads without keeping the “WIIFM” in mind. Reps without the proper tools and education will fall into the habit of quickly listing off all the benefits of their product and will rely on a script that fails to address the needs of the prospect.

This hyper-focus on the product can push prospects away and give them a negative impression of your business. As the saying goes, first impressions count, so coming at a prospect too strong and with only your product in mind can mean that you completely lose out on a potential customer.

Put the Focus on the Prospect

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According to the sales experts at VanillaSoft.com, sales teams should be using sales scripts that focus more on the prospect, rather than the product. But how exactly do you go about doing this?

For starters, you need to ask questions and prompt the prospect to respond to them. If your product or service is B2B, ask them about their businesses and challenges. Turn to Allego’s sales enablement platform (https://www.allego.com/blog/what-is-sales-enablement/) for conversation intelligence and learn what has worked for other sales reps in closing the deal.

From there, make sure you are asking follow-up questions that generate further feedback; ask them to elaborate when necessary. Throughout the process, it’s important that you are focused on listening – if necessary, reps should even consider muting themselves so that they don’t get tempted to step in and interrupt.

Filling dead space in a conversation is a common occurrence with many sales reps – a rep may feel nervous and jump in too soon, cutting off the prospect. The important thing is to realize that this spacing is natural and that it just feels longer than it is because of the pressure the rep feels during the call.

Adopt a Sales Engagement Platform

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You can make your rep’s lives a lot easier by adopting a sales engagement platform that utilizes logical-branch scripting. Traditional sales scripts are linear and often can’t account for some of the responses that a prospect may give.

A SEP’s logical-branch scripting instead provides an on-screen click-and-response program that offers reps dynamic scripts that change according to what the prospect is saying. This feature helps remove any awkward delays and helps calls sound more natural; it also ensures that the rep is always on track and solely focused on the prospect.