#011: 8 tips to win more deals

This week we are sharing some tips and tricks to help you close deals faster and increase your win rate.

But before we dive in, we’re on the 11th edition of this newsletter! To help us better serve you, please let us know what topics you'd like to learn more about.

Community Highlight

OpenAI just released a brand new game-changing feature allowing users to build their own custom GPTs — without needing to code!

In less than 20 minutes, I created a custom GPT trained on successful prospecting emails and the psychology of how scientists make decisions.

The outputs are pretty incredible.

Give it your company website, tell it who your target customer is, and let it create multiple prospecting emails for you.

You can find it inside the community.

1: Respond immediately to inbound leads

When your prospects reach out to you, they’re well-informed and often well into their buying journey. They’re likely already narrowing their options. They’re not just evaluating you, they’re evaluating their current state and your competitors. If you don’t respond quickly to their inquiry, you’re far less likely to win the deal.

In a white paper authored by Google, 50% of sales go to the vendor that responds to prospects first. In other words, with each passing second you don’t reach out, your competitors could snap them up.

Why is that? The first company that talks to that prospect is the one shaping their initial decision criteria that anchor that prospect to their offering.

Build a process that allows you to respond to inbound inquiries as fast as possible.

2: Avoid the “pain and pitch”

When we have Discovery conversations with prospects we look for problems and pain points because that’s ultimately going to motivate the prospect to take action. When we hear a prospect bring up a problem or pain point that we can solve, we can immediately launch into our pitch about how we solve that problem. This is called the “pain and pitch”. It’s jumping to solution mode before you’ve been able to understand the root cause and impact of the problem.

If your car breaks down you would never try and fix the problem without knowing the root cause. The same thing applies to your prospect’s business. You can’t solve a problem without understanding the root cause.

3: Identify the problem, root cause, and business impact

Most reps are great at uncovering problems that customers have. But that’s where they stop. Very few will peel back the onion to diagnose the root cause and uncover the business impact. Root cause analysis is where you can show your expertise and provide insights into why a certain problem is persisting.

Once the main problem or pain point in identified, simply ask “What’s your opinion on why that is happening?” This will start the discussion to identify the root cause. Provide your own experience from other customer interactions. “I’ve heard others say [root cause] can lead to [problem]. What’s your take on that?”

Once the root cause is identified, don’t stop there. Create urgency for the buyer by helping them understand the impact of not solving it. “What deadlines would be missed if this doesn’t get solved quickly? What are the downstream implications if that deadline is missed?”

Only now that they understand the root cause and implications of not solving this problem, should you start talking about potential solutions.

4: Align to a critical event

Nothing drives more urgency in a buying process than a deadline for a prospect. This could be a go-no-go decision to move a program forward. A grant or publication deadline. Upcoming board meeting to share critical data. A contract with an existing vendor is up for renewal.

Identify and align your solution to a critical event. Create a “work-back” plan to ensure they will get the results they need by that deadline. Layout all the steps that need to happen between now and that date. Include the time they take to complete and show them when certain decisions/milestones need to be completed. Now you can execute that plan together to help them be successful.

5: Tilt the decision criteria in your favor

79% of buyers can only see a minimal difference between offerings. This means you’re likely being evaluated on the same criteria as every other competitor. Ask for the most important decision criteria they are looking for in a solution.

Introduce unconsidered needs that tie back to your differentiated capabilities. What are you really good at that makes you different from the alternatives? Why should your prospect care about those capabilities? What makes those capabilities matter when solving the root cause of the identified problem?

Make sure that capability is a key part of their decision criteria going forward.

6: Don’t be an order taker

Prospects are more informed than ever. They can find information to most problems by searching the web or talking to colleagues. This puts sales reps in a tough situation when a prospect comes inbound and tells you “exactly” what they want. Many sales reps will get happy ears and try to help them get that order placed as quickly as possible without doing proper discovery.

The problem is, that prospect is going to multiple vendors and doing the same thing. If you try and “take the order” without discovery and or addressing decision criteria, you’ll be a commodity in their eyes. It'‘s the reason so many deals are lost on price.

Take a step back to discuss the overall goals of their experiment and go through a proper discovery process.

7: Enable your champion

Most decisions are made when you are not in the room. They happen when your champion takes your proposal internally and pitches it to the decision-maker. The problem is that most scientists aren’t salespeople. They don’t always know the best way to position your product or service against all the other priorities the decision-maker is focused on.

It’s your job to enable your champion to sell on your behalf. Help them build a business case, show the ROI, and give them talking points they can use. You sell your product or service every single day. If they want to work with you, partner with them to ensure they pitch it properly internally.

Here is a one-page template you can use for your next deal.

8: Proactively guide the decision process (legal, procurement, etc…)

Many salespeople try and avoid legal and procurement at all costs! But this is a fatal flaw. Most deals will likely have to involve legal or procurement at some point and it’s not worth trying to fight it. Imagine it’s the last day of the quarter and you expect your deal to come in, only to find out you need an MSA before they can create a purchase order and move forward. Now you’re at risk of missing your target.

Instead, proactively talk about these processes as early as possible and work on them in parallel to any other sales activities that need to take place. While the MSA is being worked on with legal, you can be multi-threading and having conversations with different people in the organization that are involved in the decision. Bring it up early to avoid last-minute surprises.

TL;DR

1. Respond immediately to inbound leads

2. Avoid the “pain & pitch”

3. Identify the problem, root cause, and business impact

4. Align to a critical event

5. Tilt the decision criteria in your favor

6. Don’t be an order taker

7. Enable your champion

8. Proactively guide the decision process

That’s all for this week! Don’t forget to take the poll above to help us create the most impactful content for you.

We were on a podcast!

Nick and I were on the Life Science Marketing podcast recently where we debated some challenges that exist between sales and marketing. Let us know who you think won the battle!

Read the recap and listen to the full episode

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