I help founders who sell, but aren't "sales"people. Are you open to one hyper actionable sales tip per week, useful for your very next sales meeting and consumable in 4 minutes or less?
079: Momentum
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Hey, 👋 Scott from The Sales Mastermind here. Today’s edition only takes 3 minutes. No Decision will ALWAYS be your number one competitor because, in any buying journey, 40-60% of deals end in "No Decision."
This week we'll cover:
Momentum is Everything I'm working with a company that serves over 10,000 small businesses with a grudge purchase. A grudge purchase is something your customers HAVE to buy, but no one really WANTS to buy. For example, no one is excited about buying insurance, electricity, or shipping physical products from a warehouse to the customers. When it comes to grudge products, especially those that require behavior change from the customer, such as the shipping example, the sales process is all about momentum. This lesson applies to every business. One of the reasons so many deals end in "No Decision" is that most buyers don't really want to buy; they want the outcome of the purchase without any of the inputs required. Just like a company wants its customers to have the product without paying for shipping.
Passive Momentum I'm sure you've found yourself at the end of a sales call asking: "What's next?" And the buyer responds: "I'll think about it and get back to you tomorrow / next week / next month / when I am interested / if hell freezes over" (maybe not that last one). Then you never hear from them. No matter how many polite "Just checking in" emails, texts, WhatsApp, LinkedIn messages, and voicemails you leave. Passive momentum means a buyer can take no action, and the deal is over.
Active Momentum Active momentum is the opposite. The buyer agrees to a specific next step by a specific date and, ideally, accepts a calendar invite for the next meeting. Therefore, if the buyer chooses not to continue the buying journey, they have to take an active decision to either:
By forcing a buyer to actively opt out of the next step, the buying journey maintains momentum for at least one step longer than when the momentum is passive.
Putting it together There are two ways you can use active momentum in your sales calls:
BAMFAM stands for Book A Meeting From A Meeting and is the superior of the two options. BAMFAM means every single sales meeting ends with the following:
Ideally, the next meeting is as short a time away as possible because time also kills all momentum.
Deadline Commitment means doing everything above without locking in the calendar invite. It's best explained with a talk track I shared in newsletter #55:
Buyer: No, I am not booking anything. But I promise to get back to you next week.
You: Perfect, and does next week mean Monday, Friday, or another day?
Buyer: Let's say Tuesday.
You: Easy, Tuesday 9 am, 5 pm, what are you thinking?
Buyer: noon.
You: Awesome, so you'll let me know if you want to move forward with phase one by noon on Tuesday. Just before I let you go, if I don't hear from you, what do you want me to do? Should I assume you're not interested or chase you up?
Buyer: Please chase me.
You: That sounds good; I'm happy to. My rule is to send one email and leave one voice message. If you're keen, you'll let me know. If I don't hear from you, I'll assume it wasn't a priority. Is that fair?
Buyer: Absolutely.
When you work for active momentum at the end of every sales meeting, no matter the outcome, you'll learn how your buyers feel about the pain you're solving. They can book for the next day if it's a priority. Or they can decline any next step if there is no priority - either way, you learn a lot through active momentum.
For the next week, try BAMFAM'ing every sales meeting and learn - do close rates increase? Do you identify that many buyers are nowhere near as interested as you thought? Somewhere in the middle? Let me know. Until next week, PS Did someone forward you this email and it seems like something you want more of: Link to subscribe PPS All new link for the back catalog. You can find all 70+ newsletters here: https://thesalesmastermind.kit.com/ |
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I help founders who sell, but aren't "sales"people. Are you open to one hyper actionable sales tip per week, useful for your very next sales meeting and consumable in 4 minutes or less?
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