036 - The Most Overlooked Issue in Sales

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Welcome to Master Dealmaker’s Secrets. Today, we're going to be talking about one of the single most overlooked things in sales that cause a massive disconnect between the number of clients that are being converted and the ones that aren't. 

Let me give you a bit of background that one of the biggest requests that I get is people tell me that their guys aren't converting or not converting enough. The word closing has the connotation of something that happens at the end.  

Everyone's obsessed with what happens at the end of the actual sales conversation. What they are often not aware of is that the decision to actually work with you or to purchase from you actually happens a lot further upstream in the process than many people are aware of. 

It really does boil down to this: a purchase takes place first in the mind of your potential client only when the perceived cost of doing nothing becomes greater than the investment in your product or service. We can boil this down to as simple as an analogy as you sitting on the couch. 

Bear with me for a cigarette. You're sitting on the couch, watching television. I'm not talking about getting up off the couch; but my question to you is: at what point do you change positions on that couch?  

If you're comfortable on the couch, you are not going to change positions on that couch until one thing happens. As human beings, we won't move from where we are until we become uncomfortable enough to do so.  

This analogy can be extrapolated out into almost any area of life. It's most certainly applicable in a sales context.  

Let's say I'm talking to somebody and they tell me that they have got a 1% conversion rate and that's ridiculously low. You've got a 1% conversion rate and you have an average transaction size of $10,000. So for every 100 inquiries that you get, you're converting one of them $10,000.  

I would ask them how long has it been like that, and they might answer that it has been six months. I will ask again how much they are spending on advertising. And they might say, $10,000 a month.  

I might say that they’re spinning $10,000 a month, and for every 100 inquiries, they're making $10,000 in sales. Then I will ask them, how is that impacting things?  

It's like if you have a problem in your life, you think about it a lot and you focus on it, it gets bigger. In a sales conversation, the more that we create an environment where the person can examine the problem that they've got, the more that problem gets bigger.   

The bigger that problem gets, the smaller your investment in your product or service. So often we talk about what is the return on investment.  

But often we need to look at COI. What is the cost of inaction? Because in many cases. that is what is going to get people across the line. 

Something that you can measure is a quantitative measure. If you've got a percentage conversion rate that you're looking to improve or you're looking to get a better return on the amount that you're spending on advertising, that's pretty easy.  

But the other part of it is there can also be qualitative things - things that you can't measure, but they can be as if not more powerful.  

So a qualitative measure could be: I can't sleep at night. I'm stressed and I'm working 80 hours a week. I'm not spending any time with my kids.  

Those things can be absolute as if not more powerful than the actual monetary or measurable things. You need language to confirm somebody’s choice to go ahead at the end of a conversation. 

But I think people have fixated on it. I think that if you get this bit right: exploring and creating an environment where the person can uncover the cost of doing nothing, a much more powerful place to examine your sales process and to look at how you can increase the likelihood of somebody coming on board.   

I wish you all the best in implementing this. If you can get it right, I think it will make a massive difference. 

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