






Tim Sullivan is the Corporate Vice President of Business Development at SPI.



On this episode of The Salesman Podcast Tim shares how we can collaborate with the buyer, differentiate ourselves from the competition and win more business in an increasingly buyer driven world. 



Resources: 



* Sales Performance International * Tim on Linkedin* BOOK: The Collaborative Sale: Solution Selling in a Buyer Driven World

#599: How To Collaborate With The Buyer To Lock Out The Competition With Tim Sullivan

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Closing the sales is tough, I get it. You do all the work building rapport and qualifying the lead, only to choke when it’s time to seal the deal. Sound familiar?
Many reps leave money on the table because they wait until the very end before asking the big “will you buy?” question.
Talk about awkward! No wonder we avoid it. My buddy Sam would sweat bullets trying to close at the final sales meeting. But my other friend Walter takes a smoother approach by closing throughout the entire sales process. He asks micro-closing questions after each call to see if the prospect is ready to move forward. That way, there’s no big scary finale – just a series of small commits.

Want to boost your commissions? Then get comfortable asking for the sale my friend! Sprinkle micro-closes throughout your calls. The more times they say “yes”, the likelier it is they’ll say YES to that final purchase.
Stick around, as I’ll share a the 3 simple steps to micro-close throughout the sales process.
Step #1: “Does It Make Sense To [X]?”
Alright, let’s dive into the first step of micro-closing, which might just be the simplest tool in your sales toolkit.

Have you ever thought about just asking, “Does it make sense to [X]?” depending on what you’re selling? This isn’t just a question; it’s your secret weapon. “Does it make sense for us to get this installed for you next week?” or “How about we jump on a call to sketch out a rough business case for your manager?” It’s smooth, isn’t it?
What’s genius about this question is it’s all about timing, not commitment. You’re not cornering anyone; you’re just checking if the stars align for a small step forward. If they hit you with a “no,” it’s not about you; it’s just not the right time. And that’s your cue to figure out what needs to shift  for the buyer to move forward.
Why does this ninja move work so well? First off, it drops the pressure. No one’s expecting a laid-back question like that. You’re updating the prospect  on the process, nudging them to think logically about the next step without the emotional baggage of a hard sell. And here’s the kicker: it’s simple. It’s about collaboration, not coercion. You’re showing you care about being on the same page, building trust and rapport without even trying.
Now, if you’re nodding along, thinking, “This could change the game,” you’re right. But what if you get a “no”? Stick around because that’s exactly what we’re tackling next.
Step #2. “What Do We Need To Do To Move This Forward?”
Hit a “no” on your first micro-closing attempt? Don’t sweat it. Remember, a “no” isn’t a door slamming in your face; it’s just a nudge towards a different path. So the prospect says, “Now’s not the right time”? Perfect opportunity to pull out your next move.

Ask the question: “What do we need to do to move this forward?” This isn’t just any question; it’s like asking for directions when you’re a bit lost. It’s collaborative, not confrontational.
Your buyer is your co-pilot here, guiding you through their buying  process. They haven’t shut down the idea of buying; they’re just not ready to take the leap. Yet. By asking for their opinion on what the  next step should be, you’re not guessing what they want; you’re letting them lay down the roadmap. This way, you’re not playing a guessing game; you’re building a strategy together.
And if you want to notch up your game, sprinkle a little bit of social proof into your question. Something like, “I hear you. Company X was in the same boat and found that doing Y helped them immensely.

Unlocking the Secrets to Closing the Sale

In today’s fast-paced market, knowing how to sell a product is crucial for business success,. he truth is, the art of selling has evolved, and staying ahead means adapting. The good news? I’m here to guide you through this transformation. To sell a product effectively, you need to navigate through six essential steps we’ll uncover in this video. These steps are designed to not only grab attention but convert that interest into tangible sales. Let’s begin:
Step #1: Find Your Ideal Customer Persona
Kicking off our journey into mastering sales, the first thing you gotta nail down is finding your ideal customer persona. Think of this as detective work where you’re piecing together a profile of your dream buyer. Why? Because aiming your pitch at the right crowd makes everything else smoother. You’re looking for folks who get what you’re selling, feel the pain it solves, and basically have their wallets out already.
Now, you might be wondering, “How do I find these dream buyers?” Easy! Dive into your past sales and spot the common threads.

* What job titles keep popping up?
* Which industries?
* Any patterns in company sizes or locations?

This detective work helps you sketch out a buyer persona that’s not just a shot in the dark but a targeted blueprint of who you’re after.
Now, why bother with all this profiling? Because knowing your ideal customer is like having a treasure map. It leads you to sales gold. Once you’ve got this down, crafting a killer value proposition becomes a piece of cake. That’s what we’re diving into next. Step #2: Build A Value Proposition
Step #2: Define Your Value Proposition
Alright, you’ve got your dream buyer in mind; now let’s chat about your value proposition. Imagine you’re at a party, and someone asks, “So, what do you do?” Your value proposition is that killer response that has them saying, “Wow, tell me more!”
Instead of looking for the nearest exit. It’s your sales pitch’s secret sauce, promising your buyer why you’re their best bet.
Think of a value proposition as your business’s pledge to your customers,

minus the fluff and filler. It’s where you spell out the perks of choosing you over the guy next door. But here’s the twist: it’s not just any promise; it’s a laser-focused, jargon-free promise that shows you get your buyer’s needs like no one else.
Why’s it a big deal? Because when what you’re selling fits like a glove with what they’re itching for, it’s like magic. They’re more likely to say, “Where do I sign?” This alignment is crucial, and it’s your job to broadcast it loud and clear.
Crafting this golden message isn’t something you leave to chance or pass off to a marketer who’s never chatted with your buyers. You’ve got to roll up your sleeves and build it yourself, with insights gleaned from understanding your audience inside out.
A good structure to present your value proposition is – I help X person, solve Y problem, by doing Z thing.

For me selling sales training to B2B salespeople and small business owners at Salesman.com I might say – I help B2B sellers, find and close more deals using proven, step-by-step frameworks.
A rock-solid value proposition isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s your secret sauce when we get to the last step: Closing. That’s right, stick around because, in our last step, we’ll dive deep into how this all comes together to seal the deal.
Step #3 Use A Cadence
So, you’ve got a killer value proposition. Now, how do you get it in front of those dream buyers? Welcome to the world of sales cadence—a fancy way of saying “a killer follow-up plan.” Without a plan, you’re just throwing darts in the dark, hoping to hit the bullseye.

How To Sell A Product: 2024 Step-by-Step Guide

In this video we cover 5 strategies to increase sales no matter what you sell or the industry you sell within.
Strategy number one is to make your value proposition more specific.
1: Specific Value Proposition

The more specific your value proposition is, to the needs of your specific buyer the more meetings you’ll book from your prospecting and the higher your closing percentage rate will be.
Most sellers try and aim for a broad value proposition during their cold outreach thinking that if they cast a wider net, they’ll hook more prospects onto a call.
This isn’t how it works in reality.
Imagine you need to get rid of a body. I won’t question why you have a body that you need to get rid of… but it needs to be gone ASAP.
Lets say you get an email that offers to get rid of whatever waste you have in your home. Well that is somewhat compelling. But if you were to get an cold email that shares a new way of getting rid of a body, when they need to be disposed of FAST, then obviously that’s the one you’re going to reply to.
You have to be bold with your value propositions when engaging with potential customers.

You have to avoid playing in the zone of indifference. Push the fact that you can improve or solve a specific problem to get out of this zone of indifference in the middle that most sellers play within.
Next up, I want you to stop talking about features and benefits.
2: Features, Benefits, Desires
Stop talking about the features and benefits of your product. Literally, nobody gives a shit.
Your widget or software has this button? Comes in this colour? Does this thing?
Nobody cares. 
Instead, focus on the buyers desires.
Think of the buyer’s desires being at the very core of their decision making process.
Let me give you an example:

* Feature – com Academy has step-by-step training videos.
* Benefit – The training videos will help you better implement our frameworks.
* Desire – We will remove the stress and overwhelm from executing an effective sales process and achieving your financial goals.

This third layer of value that we call desire should be the focus of 90% of your communication to the buyer. This only shifts towards the end of the sales process when we might communicate more of the practical features of the product as the prospect justifies their emotional purchase decision with logic.
Next let’s take a look at how we can put the right desires in front of more of the right prospects.
3: Refine Your ICP
If you are booking meetings, then you should constantly be refining your ICP or Ideal Customer Persona.

B2B sales becomes way easier when you put the right message, in front of the right person, at the right time.
Once you’re booking a steady stream of meetings from your cold prospecting each week, it’s time to sit down and refine your ICP.
Look at all the people who booked a meeting with you and see what they have in common. It could be:

* Job titles
* Industries
* Locations
* Company size
* Specific goals
* Target pain points
* Current solution
* Buying process
* Technologies leveraged

Your goal becomes simple: Find more of the people who buy big and buy quickly.
Stop wasting time with the wrong prospects. Start spending more time with the people that actually want to work with you.
Once you have a better idea of your ICP it’s time to start building a step-by-step sales cadence.
4: Step-by-Step Sales Cadence
Most salespeople live in what I call the roller coaster of sales. That is, some weeks they prospect, other weeks they don’t. Some days they cold call, other days they chase their tails with another random task.
That leads to an up and down, boom and bust cycle of results and failure.

5 Strategies to Increase Sales in 2024

If your buyers don’t have a reason to move forward in their buyer’s journey, then they will stand still.

This leads to 26% of all deals that are forecasted as a likely win, to turn into a “no decision” according to CSO insights.
That is a massive amount of revenue that you’re leaving on the table every quarter. It could be the difference between hitting quota or not.
So, let’s take a look at why this happens and then what we need to do to create too much urgency in our buyers that they get the deal done, quicker than ever before.
Pain of Implementation
The main thing that kills urgency in B2B sales is the “pain of implementation”.

This is where the buyer has casually come to the conclusion that the pain of implementing the solution and then seeing the benefits, is more painful than just plodding on with the issues they are currently facing.
For example, lets say someone is dramatically overweight. They might come to the conclusion that even though the benefits of losing the weight and becoming healthy would be life changing, they don’t want to go through the effort of dieting and exercising to get there.
Outside looking in, everyone else can see that this is dumb. But for that individual, it makes sense in their brain. They’re thinking short term, rather than long term.
In a business context, lets say that the prospect is struggling to use excel spreadsheets to complete all their financial reporting. You offer them a new software solution, designed specifically to fix this issue, it seems like a no brainer for them to get started working with you, but they don’t.
It’s likely that the prospect feels the pain of learning a new tool and then getting the benefits of that software don’t outweigh the small, niggling pain that they’re in right now where excel crashes once every couple of hours.
You’ll know if you’ve a lack of urgency in your deal because of the pain of implementation if you get hit with objections like:

Which begs the question, how do we turn these objections on their head, add more urgency to the deal and get it over the line?
To do that we need to re-enforce the “reality gap”.
The Reality Gap Method
If the buyer doesn’t have a clear understanding of their current reality and their future reality then they can trick themselves into a state of procrastination.

Alternatively, if the prospect truly knows the risk of staying where they are and the upside of taking action to move to the bolder, brighter future reality they could be living in, then the amount of urgency to make the change increases.
It’s our job to coach the prospect to better understand their current and future realities with questions like these.
Current reality: 

* You shared that this problem takes X time each week, what is the financial cost of that to the business?
* What is stopping you from solving this yourself?
* When does this problem need to be solved?
* What happens if it doesn’t get solved by then?

Future reality: 

* If you could stop this issue happening in the future, how would that make you feel?
* What would be the knock-on, positive consequences of this being fixed?
* What’s stopping you from getting started with this today?

These questions need to be asked constantly, throughout the entire sales process. This is because buyers get distracted easily.

Sure, right now you are their main priority but tomorrow something else is bound to break. The next day, their wife is threatening to leave them. The next week they’re not even sure if they want to be working for their current employer at all.
Buying Temperature
So, urgency needs to be managed at all times. If you haven’t spoken to your prospect for a couple of weeks, their buying temperature will decrease.

So,

Creating Urgency in Sales (Obliterate the Status Quo)

Want to find better buyers and weed out the crappy leads that only end up wasting your time? Then be sure to ask the 9 qualification questions we’re talking about in this video on each of your discovery calls.
Diagnosis calls are slightly different to traditional discovery calls because they cover discovery, qualification, product positioning and micro-closing in a single call rather than spreading all of this out over multiple engagements.
1) Uncovering Pain
Is your prospect dealing with a problem? And are they in enough “pain” to drive the right amount of urgency to buy?
A “yes” to both is downright necessary. And to get to the bottom of it, you can ask two questions in particular…
“You booked this call with me today, what led to getting this call booked in?” 
What’s the main reason they’re talking with you right now? You’ll have to do a bit more digging of course. But even in the most tight-lipped buyers you’ll still uncover at least a kernel of truth.
“What’s stopping you from solving this issue yourself?” 
One of my favorite follow-ups to the previous question. Not only does this question uncover any roadblocks to implementation you may hit down the road. But it also gives you a clearer idea of how big this problem really is. Because if it really was a problem, the buyer should have been working to solve it themselves.
2) Timeframes
Not all timelines will line up. And one of your chief concerns when qualifying is whether your prospect’s timeline matches your own.
When do they want this problem solved? Today? This quarter? Next year?
As a rule of thumb, the buyers you want to work with should all want to solve their problems quickly. Because if they don’t have urgency, they won’t be compelled to act. And that might mean feet dragging, ghosting, and an overall waste of your time.
“When does this issue need to be solved by?”
This straightforward question gives you no-bullshit timeline you can use to assess if your timeframes are a match.
3) Confirming Fit
And for this category, you actually need to ask yourself…
“Do I have the solution for this buyer’s problem?”
Honesty is key here. The best reps don’t oversell their product’s capabilities. Why? Because they know a dissatisfied and duped buyer ruins reputations, doesn’t provide referrals, and never ever comes back to buy again. So you need to think long and hard about whether your solution will really make the buyer’s problem a thing of the past.
4) Calculating ROI
No matter how big or how small, every new solution takes effort to implement. Buyers need to change vendors, hire new staff, train on novel systems, or fight for a change to the budget.
The question is, is the value your solution provides worth that discomfort?
How much will they have to change to accommodate it? And when all is said and done, will they look back on the investment as a good purchase or one that ate up too many resources?
You can start figuring that out by asking…
“How would things be different if we solved this for you?”
What will actually change for the buyer once they implement your solution? Is it a simple quality of life difference? Or does the switch lead to real change for the business on a fundamental level? This one’s key because no matter how well you think you understand the industry, every business is different. And asking the buyer outright will give you better insight into the real value your solution offers.
5) Understanding Process
Be sure your buyer is willing to adapt to your process before working with you. Check to see if they’re willing to stop working with current vendors, put in the necessary time for training, and whatever other “musts” need to be done to get maximum value from your solution.
To get to the bottom of this one, ask…
“When your organization has done similar projects in the past,

#599: How To Collaborate With The Buyer To Lock Out The Competition With Tim Sullivan

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