Smarter, Not Harder: How to Triple Your Closing Ratio, Work Less, & Earn More Money by Chet Holmes
Robert Smith and Associates
September 07, 2006
Imagine I could put you in a giant stadium right now as the presenter, and the entire audience is completely comprised of your most perfect prospects. Are you ready right now? Could you walk out on that stage and present to every one of them and do it perfectly? Now before you say yes, let me make the stakes higher. Before you walk out there, the audience is told: “You had to come, but you don’t have to stay. If this person (you) fails to keep your interest, you can simply get up and leave.”
Now let me even further complicate the situation by telling you the good news and the bad new.
The good news: At any given time 3% of your prospects are currently in the market to buy your product or service and looking right now to get it. Another 6-7% are open to it, but not currently looking. The other 90% are divided into three nearly equal categories: A) Not really thinking about right now. B) Think they’re not interested (but might be, if you did a good job at presenting to them. C) They know they’re not interested.
So let’s say you sell brooms. And let’s say it’s a fantastic broom. But remember 90% of the audience isn’t in the market for your broom at this time. At least they think they’re not interested. That means if you walk out there and start right off saying how great your brooms are, 90% of your audience is going to get up and leave.
So you need to open your stadium pitch (as I call it), with what I call “wow’s.” This means that all great presentations start off with information that makes your prospects say: “wow, I didn’t know that.” The focus must be on them and things of interest to them, not you. So rule number one of a great presentation is that it must be focused on the prospect and not on you (at least not initially).
I’ve built presentations that increase closing ratios from one out of ten to eight out of ten. I’ve even built presentations that dramatically increase your ability to get in front of prospects in the first place. How? Let’s bring that stadium pitch down to its most practical application; Offer prospects something of value outside your product or service. Something important to them.
Let me give you a case in point. I have a client who sells employee benefits and insurance to companies. His sales team was used to calling up a client and saying: “We want to come and talk to you about your health care benefits.”
Since 97% of prospects THINK they are happy with their current broker, that’s a really hard call to make. However, when they created a presentation that pointed out: “The Five Dangers Facing All Employers and How Knowing What Those DANGERS Are, Can Dramatically Reduce Costs and Increases Profits,” it made not just the sale go better, but also the getting the appointment go much better.
Meaning that information that is of value to THEM, like “Five Dangers Facing You In Your Business,” creates what I call a “superior access vehicle.” More….
Another client of mine sells telephone systems. Prior to the learning curve in this article, they’d call prospects and ask the prospect: “We want to come and talk to you about getting a new telephone system.” Needless to say, the appointment setting process was slow going. However, when they built THE ULTIMATE PRESENTATION, one that offered (something like): “How You’re Wasting Money In Five Major Areas of Your Voice and Data Spending,” -- Suddenly, they went from getting three appointments per week (with four salespeople trying all day) to getting 30 appointments per week. This effort is already tripling their sales in a single year.
So rule number one, again, for building a killer presentation, is to have information that is OF VALUE to your prospects even if they have never heard about your products or services. Information that is above and beyond the product or service you are offering will be considered extremely valuable to them.
I had another client that was trying to sell law books to lawyers. Over the years, they had been reduced to talking to just the librarians in these law firms. And since the lawyers are the ones using the law books, their ability to get new product into the market became severely hamstrung.
We helped them build a presentation that laid out: “The Five Most Dangerous Trends Facing All Major Law Firms Today,” which resulted in meetings with entire committees of lawyers. The data was excellent, legitimate and packed with bad news. Oh, did I mention the part about bad news?
A great presentation is loaded with bad news to your prospects. Why? Because bad news motivates. We’d get in front of a group of lawyers and show them that lawyers keep growing, but the annual billings are flat (less money per lawyer): That their firms would be sued (something like 44% of large law firms will be sued by unhappy or dissatisfied clients): That the case law from which they must find their information is out of control now, with more than THREE MILLION cases to chose from when trying to find a single precedent. This presentation was packed with bad news. Much of this news had nothing to do with law books. Keep in mind, it didn’t matter. Bad news motivates, even if it’s unrelated.
Your prospect, when viewing a great deal of bad news, will suddenly feel the need to take some action. Any action they take will make them feel better. In the case of the law book company, every lawyer in the room wanted more information or wanted to purchase the law books outright, after they saw the presentation.
Now don’t take this too far. The more the data in the presentation sets up a need for your product or service, the higher your closing ratio. So in the case of the law firm, the massive case law to be studied, created a need for law books that already studied that for you. Plus, we tied the litigation against lawyers directly to the massive case law, so that seemingly unrelated pieces of data, pieced together with other data made the bad news more excruciating.
So rule number two to building a killer presentation is that the data should “set up a buying criteria” in which your product or service becomes the most logical choice. When my telephone client laid out all the ways most companies were wasting money on their voice and data spending, it made the prospects open their arms and invite my client to look at how they might help them. This almost always ended up being a new system that would help them save money in many different ways.
What’s your client’s current buying criteria? Is it price? Easy to overcome with the right presentation. Is it that they want to buy only from the biggest provider? Easy to overcome with the right presentation. Is it that they don’t think they even need what it is that you sell? Easy to overcome with the right presentation. Data can motivate your prospects in all and any of the situations mentioned.
I have a client that is a distributor in a market where they once had only four main competitors. In the past several years, many other types of companies have added my client’s type of product as an add-on. Since it’s not their main product, these hundreds of new competitors can sell it even cheaper than my client can. Result? My client was in big trouble and fading fast.
Presentation to the rescue.
We used data, compelling and riveting data to show that these competitors didn’t know anything about this particular industry and as a result, in the long run, poor choices in purchasing were going to cost their penny wise and pound foolish buyers a lot more money later. The presentation set up a buying criteria where price became secondary to expertise. Will that work with you? I do not know. But I do know this. There’s no situation where one of these presentations, properly prepared, can’t overcome any challenge you may be facing.
Declining market? Price is the main motivator? Inability to get appointments? Inability to get to see the higher decisions makers? All of these challenges can be met with a fantastic presentation.
The Core Story.
I call these “Your Core Story,” or your stadium pitch and they serve another extremely valuable purpose. I had one client who used to take four months to train a new person on all the subtleties of why a prospect should buy their product. The Core Story used data as the motivator and suddenly, this core story could train an outsider how to really sell this product and in a single pass through the information.
So a great core story makes for a fantastic new-hire training tool.
How to build a core story.
Let me tell you, it isn’t easy. But greatness never is. If you want to be the ultimate player in your market, you have to take the time to carefully craft one of these, using data as a powerful access vehicle as well as an urgent motivator for your otherwise slow moving clients to make faster and more urgent decisions. You are the only one these prospects what to buy from.
Here's how to build a good stadium pitch or core story:
Step One: Research your industry over a thirty year period. That’s where you’ll find trends that no one else has spotted.
Step Two: Look for the bad news. That’s what motivates. Specifically, look for bad news that you might be able to tie to a solution that involves your product or service.
Step Three: Manipulation of that data is the most difficult part of it. It is an art form onto itself. Stack the info, cross reference the info, blend it with other info, etc. I do all the original panels by hand on 3X5 index cards. This way you can erase info, and keep shifting the order of how you want to present the info, all in a delicate balance of insight that eventually leads to that prospect wanting YOUR product or service over all of your competitors.
Do NOT pitch your product until the very end. You want the material in the front and 3/4 through to all be a “set up.” Then somewhere toward the end, you want a section that says: “What to look for in X type of provider.” At this point you would present all this data about yourself without really saying it’s you. In the telephone company example, they presented: “What to look for in your telephone system provider” and they had five things and every one of them set them up to be the most logical provider.
A great title is critical. Here’s a great title for everyone: “The Five Most Dangerous Trends Facing all (your prospect’s type of company or issue here) XYZ Type Companies/consumers.”
The second panel is always “Areas Covered,” and is used as a teaser and pre-sell opportunity. It should make their mouth water with anticipation. The rest of the layout and ideas on graphics and how to utilize them is covered quite effectively in your module entitled “Effective Presenting” (That module is in both the Business Growth Masters Series and Mega Marketing).
In summary, your core story can accelerate:
Training
Client access
Decision making process
Appointment setting
Closing skills
Rapport opportunities
Increased credibility,
Chet Holmes is sponsoring a Karate Master Takes on 5 Business Owners and Solves Their Biggest Challenges over the phone on Sept. 13. For more information visit www.chetholmes.com/5on1.htm
Now let me even further complicate the situation by telling you the good news and the bad new.
The good news: At any given time 3% of your prospects are currently in the market to buy your product or service and looking right now to get it. Another 6-7% are open to it, but not currently looking. The other 90% are divided into three nearly equal categories: A) Not really thinking about right now. B) Think they’re not interested (but might be, if you did a good job at presenting to them. C) They know they’re not interested.
So let’s say you sell brooms. And let’s say it’s a fantastic broom. But remember 90% of the audience isn’t in the market for your broom at this time. At least they think they’re not interested. That means if you walk out there and start right off saying how great your brooms are, 90% of your audience is going to get up and leave.
So you need to open your stadium pitch (as I call it), with what I call “wow’s.” This means that all great presentations start off with information that makes your prospects say: “wow, I didn’t know that.” The focus must be on them and things of interest to them, not you. So rule number one of a great presentation is that it must be focused on the prospect and not on you (at least not initially).
I’ve built presentations that increase closing ratios from one out of ten to eight out of ten. I’ve even built presentations that dramatically increase your ability to get in front of prospects in the first place. How? Let’s bring that stadium pitch down to its most practical application; Offer prospects something of value outside your product or service. Something important to them.
Let me give you a case in point. I have a client who sells employee benefits and insurance to companies. His sales team was used to calling up a client and saying: “We want to come and talk to you about your health care benefits.”
Since 97% of prospects THINK they are happy with their current broker, that’s a really hard call to make. However, when they created a presentation that pointed out: “The Five Dangers Facing All Employers and How Knowing What Those DANGERS Are, Can Dramatically Reduce Costs and Increases Profits,” it made not just the sale go better, but also the getting the appointment go much better.
Meaning that information that is of value to THEM, like “Five Dangers Facing You In Your Business,” creates what I call a “superior access vehicle.” More….
Another client of mine sells telephone systems. Prior to the learning curve in this article, they’d call prospects and ask the prospect: “We want to come and talk to you about getting a new telephone system.” Needless to say, the appointment setting process was slow going. However, when they built THE ULTIMATE PRESENTATION, one that offered (something like): “How You’re Wasting Money In Five Major Areas of Your Voice and Data Spending,” -- Suddenly, they went from getting three appointments per week (with four salespeople trying all day) to getting 30 appointments per week. This effort is already tripling their sales in a single year.
So rule number one, again, for building a killer presentation, is to have information that is OF VALUE to your prospects even if they have never heard about your products or services. Information that is above and beyond the product or service you are offering will be considered extremely valuable to them.
I had another client that was trying to sell law books to lawyers. Over the years, they had been reduced to talking to just the librarians in these law firms. And since the lawyers are the ones using the law books, their ability to get new product into the market became severely hamstrung.
We helped them build a presentation that laid out: “The Five Most Dangerous Trends Facing All Major Law Firms Today,” which resulted in meetings with entire committees of lawyers. The data was excellent, legitimate and packed with bad news. Oh, did I mention the part about bad news?
A great presentation is loaded with bad news to your prospects. Why? Because bad news motivates. We’d get in front of a group of lawyers and show them that lawyers keep growing, but the annual billings are flat (less money per lawyer): That their firms would be sued (something like 44% of large law firms will be sued by unhappy or dissatisfied clients): That the case law from which they must find their information is out of control now, with more than THREE MILLION cases to chose from when trying to find a single precedent. This presentation was packed with bad news. Much of this news had nothing to do with law books. Keep in mind, it didn’t matter. Bad news motivates, even if it’s unrelated.
Your prospect, when viewing a great deal of bad news, will suddenly feel the need to take some action. Any action they take will make them feel better. In the case of the law book company, every lawyer in the room wanted more information or wanted to purchase the law books outright, after they saw the presentation.
Now don’t take this too far. The more the data in the presentation sets up a need for your product or service, the higher your closing ratio. So in the case of the law firm, the massive case law to be studied, created a need for law books that already studied that for you. Plus, we tied the litigation against lawyers directly to the massive case law, so that seemingly unrelated pieces of data, pieced together with other data made the bad news more excruciating.
So rule number two to building a killer presentation is that the data should “set up a buying criteria” in which your product or service becomes the most logical choice. When my telephone client laid out all the ways most companies were wasting money on their voice and data spending, it made the prospects open their arms and invite my client to look at how they might help them. This almost always ended up being a new system that would help them save money in many different ways.
What’s your client’s current buying criteria? Is it price? Easy to overcome with the right presentation. Is it that they want to buy only from the biggest provider? Easy to overcome with the right presentation. Is it that they don’t think they even need what it is that you sell? Easy to overcome with the right presentation. Data can motivate your prospects in all and any of the situations mentioned.
I have a client that is a distributor in a market where they once had only four main competitors. In the past several years, many other types of companies have added my client’s type of product as an add-on. Since it’s not their main product, these hundreds of new competitors can sell it even cheaper than my client can. Result? My client was in big trouble and fading fast.
Presentation to the rescue.
We used data, compelling and riveting data to show that these competitors didn’t know anything about this particular industry and as a result, in the long run, poor choices in purchasing were going to cost their penny wise and pound foolish buyers a lot more money later. The presentation set up a buying criteria where price became secondary to expertise. Will that work with you? I do not know. But I do know this. There’s no situation where one of these presentations, properly prepared, can’t overcome any challenge you may be facing.
Declining market? Price is the main motivator? Inability to get appointments? Inability to get to see the higher decisions makers? All of these challenges can be met with a fantastic presentation.
The Core Story.
I call these “Your Core Story,” or your stadium pitch and they serve another extremely valuable purpose. I had one client who used to take four months to train a new person on all the subtleties of why a prospect should buy their product. The Core Story used data as the motivator and suddenly, this core story could train an outsider how to really sell this product and in a single pass through the information.
So a great core story makes for a fantastic new-hire training tool.
How to build a core story.
Let me tell you, it isn’t easy. But greatness never is. If you want to be the ultimate player in your market, you have to take the time to carefully craft one of these, using data as a powerful access vehicle as well as an urgent motivator for your otherwise slow moving clients to make faster and more urgent decisions. You are the only one these prospects what to buy from.
Here's how to build a good stadium pitch or core story:
Step One: Research your industry over a thirty year period. That’s where you’ll find trends that no one else has spotted.
Step Two: Look for the bad news. That’s what motivates. Specifically, look for bad news that you might be able to tie to a solution that involves your product or service.
Step Three: Manipulation of that data is the most difficult part of it. It is an art form onto itself. Stack the info, cross reference the info, blend it with other info, etc. I do all the original panels by hand on 3X5 index cards. This way you can erase info, and keep shifting the order of how you want to present the info, all in a delicate balance of insight that eventually leads to that prospect wanting YOUR product or service over all of your competitors.
Do NOT pitch your product until the very end. You want the material in the front and 3/4 through to all be a “set up.” Then somewhere toward the end, you want a section that says: “What to look for in X type of provider.” At this point you would present all this data about yourself without really saying it’s you. In the telephone company example, they presented: “What to look for in your telephone system provider” and they had five things and every one of them set them up to be the most logical provider.
A great title is critical. Here’s a great title for everyone: “The Five Most Dangerous Trends Facing all (your prospect’s type of company or issue here) XYZ Type Companies/consumers.”
The second panel is always “Areas Covered,” and is used as a teaser and pre-sell opportunity. It should make their mouth water with anticipation. The rest of the layout and ideas on graphics and how to utilize them is covered quite effectively in your module entitled “Effective Presenting” (That module is in both the Business Growth Masters Series and Mega Marketing).
In summary, your core story can accelerate:
Training
Client access
Decision making process
Appointment setting
Closing skills
Rapport opportunities
Increased credibility,
Chet Holmes is sponsoring a Karate Master Takes on 5 Business Owners and Solves Their Biggest Challenges over the phone on Sept. 13. For more information visit www.chetholmes.com/5on1.htm
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