DOJO
As an early stage start-up you may find yourself in a tricky situation: you are selling a product (or service) that does not yet exist. You are selling an idea. In this video we go back to the basics to look at what problem you are solving and the problem’s context for your customer and your customer’s colleagues and organization. It can also be helpful to create a suitable image to describe your product and to speak in a language that will be more personal for your audience. Your attitude also matters. If you want to succeed in sales you need to build a relationship with your customer first - your attitude and approach will be very important. We’ll cover a few typical attitude pitfalls and how to avoid them. Don’t forget to keep making intelligent mistakes, and that (especially in the early stages) it is all about learning as much as you can about your customer and their needs.
This exercise is intended for individual or team sales agents as a way to practice and reinforce learnings. Incorporate this practice into your day and, if possible, into your ongoing sales work. This practice shouldn’t take you more than 10-15 minutes a day. Keep it simple. Good luck and have fun!
Introduction: “A picture can say more than a thousand words” - let’s take time to practice describing products and processes you know well using pictures and metaphors from other areas of life such as medicine, sports, cooking, nature, etc. You’re going to practice your creativity and storytelling skills here.
Step 1: Work alone or with a colleague and identify a product that your company sells - you are going to practice explaining its functioning and its features using a metaphor.
Step 2: Choose your picture. Are you going to explain how your product works as though it were a cure (or a symptom reliever) of an illness? Perhaps your product is like a fertilizer to a weak plant? Perhaps the product answers a problem related to a low period in a business life cycle: kind of how dogs need flea repellant more in the summer than they do in the winter. Get creative with your own mental picture.
Step 3: Make sure your mental picture describes the problem, the potential solution and the relief that follows in detail so that your audience can really see that picture in their mind's eye.
Step 4: Identify another product(s) that could also benefit from a painted mental picture. Perhaps your company has internal processes that are unique - what are these processes like - what can you compare them to for others to understand them more easily?
Goal for the week:
Tuesday: Paint a mental picture of a product during at least 2 client calls today
Wednesday: Paint a mental picture of a product (perhaps a different product or process?) during at least 3 client calls today
Thursday: repeat the same process during at least 4 client calls today