Wednesday, July 07, 2010

If your sales force is having trouble closing sales, provide them with a diagnostic.

Is your sales force begging you for additional marketing support because sales just aren’t where they should be?  Don’t worry, the problem may not lie within your marketing program.  It could be that your company's prospects just don’t think they have a problem that needs solving or they are not in enough pain to be motivated to buy your solution. That’s where a diagnostic tool comes in. A good diagnostic tool can come in the form of a questionnaire or a tool that measures the monetary size and scope of a problem. Diagnostics can help expose issues and problems that were not readily apparent to the buyer. Just remember, your diagnostic needs to uncover problems that you can solve. And be sure your follow-up proposal or pitch addresses solving the problem head-on. In addition, we often encourage our clients to charge for their diagnostic as it adds more weight and credibility. Otherwise they may brush the results off as a sales tactic vs. really uncovering major issues that need to be resolved.