Dec. 8 2021
B2B sellers face many challenges. One of which is deciding which deals to work on and which ones to drop as unqualified.
- Did you know a study shows that 67% of all deals marked “closed lost” were never qualified in the first place? OMG!
Another is keeping a 3x pipeline of highly qualified opportunities.
100% guaranteed you’d drive more growth if your sellers or channel sellers didn’t waste so much bandwidth on deals that were never going to close from the beginning and instead had a 3x pipeline of qualified opportunities.
My sales system called the 5Cs has stood the test of time helping B2B sellers fill pipelines and qualify better so sellers could stop wasting time chasing the wrong opportunities and instead close more of the good ones.
I know firsthand how a proven system can drive significant revenue growth having done so at; RBC, Bell, Cisco, Compugen, CDW, Softchoice, Dimension Data (NTT) SHI, Sun Life, TELUS and others.
To help revenue drivers harness the power of the 5Cs we are sharing 4 revenue driving tactics
- booking meetings
- qualifying
- filling pipeline
- handling objections
to help you drive more growth.
What Is the 5Cs System?
5Cs is a selling framework that helps B2B sellers conduct extremely thorough discovery meetings to enable them to qualify better and uncover more real opportunities.
Weak or shallow discovery is the root cause of bad qualifying and insufficient pipeline. This is your big problem and why approx. 50% of all sellers each year fail to make plan
Weak discovery is why. Fix this and you solve your revenue growth challenges.
The 5Cs System teaches sellers to use a proven and thorough discovery framework. It can be used with new hires during on boarding and with veteran AMs who need to expand inside their existing base.
In addition to discovery mastery, the 5Cs System includes topic such as:
- Confidence for Sales Pros
- Prospecting
- Prioritization
- Qualifying
- The funnel formula
- Handling objections
- Closing
- Reducing risk
- Selling value
- CX & Merchandising success
Tactic 1. Booking meetings.
- Sellers are uninvited interruptions
- Therefore, the first objective on the call is to break the prospects’ pre-occupation
- To do so sellers must temp them with something relevant – like an implied solution to a very real problem they have
- Pitching a product will not work, talking about your company will not work
- Instead try this approach to engage them and book a follow up meeting
The Breakthrough.
Hi, it’s CB from Peak Co. I know I am interrupting you; may I have 20 seconds to tell why I called?
This approach immediately gives the prospect a solution to their problem, getting off this call, all they have to do is grant 20 seconds and the seller will be gone. Often, they agree.
Now it is up to the seller to tell them something so relevant and compelling that they want to book a meeting.
If your sellers or channel are trained and coached to say something customer outcome focused and very engaging in those 20 seconds, then the number of new meetings they book will skyrocket.
Tactic 2. Qualifying.
This is so easy it is shocking that not every sales manager in the country uses this method.
Make a list of the top 10 characteristics of the ideal prospect. For example. the list might include:
- The prospect has a problem that needs to be solved quickly
- They have budget
- Your prospect is the decision maker
- They are not speaking with your competitors
- They want to decide quickly
Etc.
Once you have your list take your top 20 opportunities and score them against your list.
Any opportunities that have 7 or more of the top 10 characteristics are an “A”, any with 5 or 6 are a “B” and any with < 5 are a “C”.
Direct sellers to spend 50% of their time on As or finding more As. Forbid them from spending time on Cs.
This is easy for any sales manager to do. This tight focus on scoring and working on As keeps sellers spending the bulk of their time on their highest qualified opportunities and forces them off the poor ones.
Do your sales managers have the discipline and guts to do this? Take a wild guess what I’d suggest if they don’t.
Tactic 3: Building pipeline.
Accomplishing this goal depends on understanding two key points.
- No problems = no sales
- Before a person can be a solution seller, they first have to be a problem detective.
– Their first job is to uncover the buyer’s struggles, concerns, challenges, frustrations, difficulties etc.
The tool sellers use, like Sherlock Holmes used a magnifying glass is the Challenge question.
Challenge questions must include a Challenge question BUZZ word like, issues, concerns, struggles, problems, frustration etc.
If the Challenge question does not contain a “buzz” word, the buyer will not know to tell the seller about their struggles and sellers will flounder trying to build a 3X pipeline. Which is exactly where half your sellers and channel sellers are today.
Find more problems = build more pipeline. Challenge questions are the primary tool to master.
Tactic 3: Building pipeline.
Accomplishing this goal depends on understanding two key points.
- No problems = no sales
- Before a person can be a solution seller, they first have to be a problem detective.
– Their first job is to uncover the buyer’s struggles, concerns, challenges, frustrations, difficulties etc.
The tool sellers use, like Sherlock Holmes used a magnifying glass is the Challenge question.
Challenge questions must include a Challenge question BUZZ word like, issues, concerns, struggles, problems, frustration etc.
If the Challenge question does not contain a “buzz” word, the buyer will not know to tell the seller about their struggles and sellers will flounder trying to build a 3X pipeline. Which is exactly where half your sellers and channel sellers are today.
Find more problems = build more pipeline. Challenge questions are the primary tool to master.
Tactic 4: Handling objections.
Buyers are held back by status quo bias and safety bias. Two powerful forces that must be game planned for.
These manifest in the words (let me think it over). Even when it is illogical, and they know they must change. The is maddening for sellers. Buyers are afraid of making a mistake, hurting their company, and being humiliated.
Objections are emotional.
One way to deal with objections is to, where you can, suggest baby steps. Recommend they buy something small, do a POC, take a baby step to control risk. The more you can reduce fear & risk in their mind the easier it is to overcome the objections.
Another way is to highlight the cost of living with the status quo. With the clever use of 5Cs questions get them to tell you how bad living with the current situation is until they become a driving force for the change. This is easy to do once a seller is trained how.
Driving More Growth
- Sellers can use a proven system like the 5Cs to qualify, build pipeline and close more B2B sales.
- When sellers use the 5Cs they become more strategic about which opportunities they work and which they drop and by protecting their time they invest more of it on better deals which leads to bigger revenue growth.
- Learn more about the 5Cs System and how it can help you increase the sales productivity of your in-house teams or channel partner sellers to drive bigger revenue growth, contact Chris to see for yourself.
There you have it, 4 tips to drive growth, pick one and do something about it.
p.s. Ask me about the only thing sales managers can control. Hint, they cannot control numbers yet most of them obsess over them and wonder why they are behind.
