You probably heard of the 4Ps of marketing or were told to learn it at one time or another. It’s quite a foundational marketing concept. However, it doesn’t directly apply to sales.
This is where In The Funnel’s 3Ps of selling come in, which was developed for sales professionals by sales professionals.
1. PREPARE
The world of sales is fast-paced. Sometimes, salespeople get caught up in the act of getting leads that they forget to adequately prepare for interactions with prospects or clients.
Effective preparation includes two main things:
Understanding who you’re going to engage with (e.g., job title, where they work)
Identifying points of interest to warm up and facilitate conversations
Thanks to social media (like LinkedIn), this basic information is very easy to come by.
2. POINT-OF-VIEW
If your prospect perceives your interactions to be positive and meaningful, they will end up asking you, “So, how can you help me?”
A strong answer requires a point-of-view (“POV”).
Your POV is created using the research conducted during the prepare phase and the insights received through your prospect’s responses to specific leading questions. These questions need to be deployed early on to best understand your prospect’s needs and wants.
TIP: The top salespeople have great questions, NOT just great pitches. This allows them to better understand their prospects, which allows them to provide better value.
3. PROGRESS
Picture this...
A buoyant sales rep returns from a first sales meeting with a prospect to happily announce to his manager that the meeting was a smash success. When the managers asks why, the sales rep indicates that the prospect is a terrific guy and that their children both play hockey in the same league. The manager asks, “What business problem do they have that we can solve?” and the sales rep responds, “That’s a very good question.” The manager then educates the sales rep that he should have thought about this question long BEFORE going to the meeting.
Pre-pandemic when sales professionals met prospects in person, most salespeople spent more time travelling to a sales call than planning for it. Now, the time is often spent solely focusing on getting leads as opposed to also preparing for meetings with them.
If you want a productive meeting, you need to do four things in advance:
Determine your meeting objective(s)
List your desired outcome(s)
Define your core messaging
Write a list of open-ended questions to guide and drive discussion around helping the prospect run a better business
Rapport building is part of the game, but it’s not all of it.
Marketing has had the 4Ps for quite some time, and now you have ITF’s 3Ps of selling as a foundational tool for your sales team!