If you’re a sales manager, or even the CEO, go look at the opportunities your sales people have put into their CRM. Comb through each opportunity, look at the notes, next steps, past emails, look through the entire thing. I bet you can’t find it. I bet 90% of the opportunities you look through don’t have it and that “it” is costing you and your company hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. In this podcast, I will tell you what IT really is!
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What is “it”?
If you’re a salesperson, look at all the opportunities in your CRM.
If you’re a sales manager, or even the CEO, go look at the opportunities your sales people have put into their CRM.
Comb through each opportunity, look at the notes, next steps, past emails, look through the entire thing.
I bet you can’t find it. I bet 90% of the opportunities you look through don’t have it and that “it” is costing you and your company hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars.
What is it that you can’t find? What is it that I’m making you scurry about looking for?
It’s the reason the prospect is looking to buy.
I’m referring to why your buyer wants to buy.  I’m referring to your buyer’s motivation, what is behind your prospects or customers desire to spend the time and money to change their situation?
The motivation or the reason an organization or individual is looking to buy is the greatest and most important piece of information in the sales process, yet few sales people know it, document and even worse sell to it.
If you’re serious about getting to the close, if you’re serious about being a trusted advisor, if you’re serious about making quota, there is nothing more important in your CRM than the reason why the prospect is looking to buy.
One of the first questions I ask when I’m evaluating an opportunity with a sales person is; “Why do they (your prospect) want to buy?”
The answers I get will astound you, however, the most depressing and most standard answer is; I don’t know.
As a sales person, how can you not know why your prospect wants to buy?
When a salesperson thinks they know, their answers are commonly off target. They respond with things like; They’re not happy with their current system, or they want to be more efficient, or they’re on an old system, or they have a new CMO, and they want something different.
Believe it or not, these are some of the best answers I get. Unfortunately, they are terrible answers as they lack substantive, measurable reasons.  Why aren’t they happy with their current system and why do they think they need a new one? Why do they need to be more efficient, and how do you define “more efficient?”  Why does the CMO want a new system? Why don’t they like the old one?
None of the common answers I get offer the insight required to understand the intrinsic motivation of their buyer. They are missing the root cause of the prospect’s motivation.
To be successful in sales, requires you to start with the buyer’s reasons for a change. What’s happening in your prospects environment that they feel must change and why must it change must be documented in the CRM.
It’s not enough to know, to have it in your head. It needs to be documented in the CRM and constantly revisited. It needs to be robust and complete. I suggest at bare minimum these CRM fields:
Why do they want to change?
Outline thoroughly what’s happening in the current environment and why they need to change. Why did they finally decided now was/is the time to make a change? What happens if they don’t change? What are they hoping to accomplish by changing? Be as detailed as possible. Also, don’t accept surface level answers like, it’s inefficient,