Compelling Events Are Magical
- by Elay Cohen
- July 27, 2015
- Sales Skills
Compelling events are proven to qualify deals and close deals faster because they help executives with challenges take action. Compelling events are not price or discount driven.
When we uncover compelling events through thoughtful discovery with the right executives, magic happens.
It’s so important that Ken Krogue, founder at InsideSales.com, wrote an article in Forbes including compelling events.
He writes:
Our buyers are coming to us with business issues they want to solve. They believe we can help them solve their problems and grow their businesses. They wouldn’t be talking to us if they didn’t. Once we uncover their problems, all too often, we fall short in mapping a solution to their challenges to a sequence of events or mutual plan. The purpose is not to create urgency around a date that maps to signing a commercial contract. The intent is to provide a realistic set of expectations to increase the likelihood of success, by a certain date.
Once we understand the pain, resist the urge to jump into a demonstration. Dive deeper. Ask probing and layering questions. Understand why it’s important and for whom. Quantify the impact of not solving their stated problems. Find out what happens if they don’t solve this problem, by a certain date. Put a number to it. If our prospect is hesitant to share the impact then ask more questions. It could be we’re talking to the wrong person, getting back to Ken’s article that coaches us to start with who.
If we’re not solving a problem that maps to one of a company’s top five initiatives, then our deals are less likely to happen.
Be curious about which executive owns the problem and associated top initiative. If an initiative doesn’t exist, then it’s our job to help sell it internally, making it one. That’s where the fun part of selling begins.
Use Compelling Event Messaging In Sales Campaigns
Once a compelling event is uncovered (or created) and validated with our champion and executive sponsor, it’s great to anchor all communications around it. Friendly reminders in all communications serve to reinforce the need to solve this problem by the date needed to meet the company’s go-to-market initiative. Remember, it’s not our date, it’s our customer’s date.
Here are some tips to integrate compelling event messaging in our sales communications:
And don’t forget to add compelling event as a field on your Salesforce/CRM system to drive better forecasting and deal coaching.