3 Key Questions You Must Answer For Effective Sales Prospecting Messaging

How do we create effective prospecting messaging?  That’s the question we’ve been discussing.  Regardless of whether we are inbound or outbound we are dependent on messaging to engage our target audience.

The Buyer’s Journey

Here you see the buyer’s journey we’ve been working with and the questions customers ask at each stage.

The Three Why’s

Initially, you can simplify these questions down to three basic questions:

• Why Change?
• Why Now?
• Why You?

Answering these three questions will take you a long way towards crafting your message.

So let’s look at answering these three Why’s.

Answering The Three Why’s

Why Change

The first of the three Why’s is “Why Change?”  Statistically, approximately 50% of all sales are lost to no decision.  In some industries it’s even higher.  That makes “no-decision” the biggest competitor for most organizations.  This is an amazing statistic.

“No-Decision is the #1 competitor for most organizations.”

Let that sink in for a moment.  You biggest competitor is not another company in your same space at all.  It’s inertia – the tendency for your prospect to keep doing what they are already doing.

So what does that mean?

It means is that a compelling business case for change was never sufficiently developed for the prospects to change what they are already doing.

“…a compelling business case for change was never sufficiently developed for the prospect to change what they are already doing.”

This is a big deal.  It’s the number one reason for prospecting messaging failure.   And it’s especially important for us in outbound prospecting because we are speaking to the awareness stage of the buyers journey.

This is a key point:  The number one reason for prospecting messaging failure is never sufficiently developing a compelling business case for change.

“The number one reason for prospecting messaging failure is never sufficiently developing a compelling business case for change.”

Why Now

The next question is “Why now?” and it speaks to the urgency of the change.  What important trend, or dangerous pitfall requires that they act now?  Customers have a ton of options they can spend their money on.  We need to articulate why solving our particular problem should be at the top of their list.

Why You

And the third question is “Why You?”  This is the differentiating question.  Why should the customer pick you over other solutions out there?

I have no doubt that you all have this message down.  While some organizations have trouble articulating this, on the whole, companies do good job of positioning against other competitors inside their space.

Where they are almost always lacking is in the messaging around all the other alternatives that are outside their particular class of solution.  That’s a big mistake, and a big contributor to the 50% no-decision metric.

Messages For Outbound Prospecting

For us in outbound prospecting – because we are engaging net-new prospects – we’re going to be speaking primarily to the why change and why now messages.

Remember – the golden rule of sales engagement is: Meet The Customer Where They Are.

In outbound prospecting prospects are generally unaware that they should make a change or why they should be making that change now.  So when we answer these questions in a compelling way we raise our success dramatically.

What’s the best way to do this?

I’m excited to show you a messaging framework based on brand-new, cutting edge research that you can use for all your messaging.  And while you can use it for all your messaging, it is especially good at addressing the Why Change and Why Now questions.  In fact, very recent studies have proven that this formula is the best so far discovered at getting customer to:

• Engage… (that is change)
• and Act Now.

And that makes it especially good for what we need in outbound sales prospecting.

Stay tuned…

Prospecting Secret:  The number one reason for prospecting messaging failure is never sufficiently developing a compelling business case for change.  When we answer the Why Change and Why Now questions in a compelling way we raise our prospecting success dramatically.

Until next time!

James

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